Tag: ENDA

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So It’s Begun

I’m starting to get emails from people asking about the new book and whether or not I’d be willing to come to one trans conference or another. Likewise, the “call for presenters” emails are also showing up.

This year, for obvious reasons, Betty & I would love to go to all the conferences we’ve attended before – to celebrate the new book, to help more people, to dispel what rumors we can and to share what we’ve learned in the years since we’ve been to them.

But the same old problem stands in my way: we can’t afford it. My publishers don’t pay for conferences, and a physical book tour, per se, isn’t financially feasible. And as per usual, unless I’m to be the keynote speaker – such as at First Event – I’m told over and over again that the conferences do not help presenters get to these conferences or even waive conference fees, much less pay for hotel rooms or travel costs or the like. I say “I’m told” because that’s what conference organizers tell people when they have requested my attendance – and yet that’s not what I hear from other presenters.

Interestingly, I’ve been told that because I’m selling books I’m a “commercial interest,” which amuses me, considering that even if I sold a book to every single person who came to these conferences – which is far from likely – I still wouldn’t make enough money to break even! But of course I don’t actually sell my own books at these conferences: IFGE does.

So my response to everyone just now is that I honestly don’t know if we can come. We can’t afford to put out the $1000-2000 it costs for us to go to a conference, but we certainly can’t do that several times next year. It costs us more of course because there are two of us – and people always want Betty to come, because she’s Betty.

Mind you, I’m not asking to make money going to these things. I just don’t want to have to spend my own money working for a conference that is – from all reports – making money. I’m happy to donate my time and costs to conferences that are non-profit and have done so in the past. It would help if I felt any of these conferences had a clear-cut policy on these issues. But beyond all that, I know I can draw an audience because I’m told I make a decent advocate for partners, and that a lot of what I have to say is very different from what you hear in the rest of the trans community, and that that difference is useful.

Unfortunately, then, I can’t go unless my expenses are covered, and that is up to the organizing committees of the various conferences.

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Word-a-Day Tarot

Sometimes I forget to pull off my Word-a-Day calendar pages as the days pass, & so I’m left with a stack of them when I finally catch up. I put them in my inbox and read through them at a later time; words I already know well & use regularly get thrown out, and ones I find interesting or useful and are less known to me I put back in the inbox so I can re-read them and re-read them until I use them in a sentence somewhere (usually only in my journal) and so learn to use a new word.
Writer’s habits 101.
But there was an odd little sequence when I pulled off a clump of pages recently.

On October 19th sansculotte showed up.
On October 18th, hirsute.
On the 17th, opusculum.
On the 16th, popinjay.
On the 15th, alterity.

To me it read like a Tarot reading. Had I asked the right questions as I pulled the pages off, of course.

What is my past?
The biggest hurdle of my past?
My probable reality?
My greatest fear of who I really am?
My truth?

I’m sure I could keep on doing this, since the 20th is mogul. (What is my most unrealistic wish?) I feel like I’ve invented a verbal I Ching.

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Partners, Why Not?

For the past three weeks I’ve been co-moderating a Trans Partners’ group at the LGBT Center in Manhattan, and for three weeks we’ve had outright pathetic attendance.
In the meanwhile, I get emails all the time from partners, and I’m in groups online where they post, and they’ve got plenty to say. This group is cheap/free, and yet very few people are coming, and I can’t figure out why.
So partners, why aren’t you coming? Is your partner stealth/closeted & you’re scared about outing him/her by showing up? Do you think it’s a huge bitch session? Do you think it’s a bunch of cheerleaders? Do you think you have nothing in common with other partners? Do you think your stuff isn’t important enough to talk about? Would you rather not think about your partner being trans altogether?
I know you’ve got stuff to talk about, because you write to me, and to other partners, and you post in groups online.
So tell me why you’re not coming.

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Details about Columbia

Just a reminder that I’ll be speaking at Columbia U. on Monday, October 9, 7:00pm – 8:30pm, in the Sulzberger Parlor Room, Barnard College. It’s open to the public.
Here are directions to Barnard’s campus (which is right across the street from Columbia):
http://www.barnard.edu/visitors/directions.html
Here is a map of campus that shows where the Sulzberger building is located:
http://www.barnard.edu/visitors/map2006.pdf
Click the 9th on QUAM’s October calendar for the full description.

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Guest Author: Michelle York

Des Scènes dans le Chemin Moyen
So, I’ve been thinking about this middle way stuff oh these last three or four…years. When I was married, it was to find an accomodation with my wife that would make us both happy; and now, it’s because of the very realistic possibility that it will be the only way for me to be happy, since I’m pretty sure just being a weekend princess won’t be enough but it remains very much to be seen if transition will ever make sense for me.So I wonder: how middle way am I? I know, no definitions, but…most days a week I wear a suit to work (even though it’s not necessary: but I like them to think they’re getting the high-priced consultant they paid for.) Sure, may nails are a little long, and if you look closely you’ll see I’ve “groomed” my brows (though I do wear my glasses a lot…)
And in my less princessy moments on the weekend I’m pretty metrosexual. I like floral shirts, I’ve been known to wear shirts to show off my chest and pants to show off my ass.
So right now I’m somewhere between Chelsea salaryman and victim of the “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” guys, right?
But: I’m out to every important person in my life, though not all of them have seen me cross-dressed (I find “as Michelle” to be a somewhat creepy construction for me.) I’m out as CD and other stuff to my current flame. I’ve told every lover I’ve ever had before we became lovers; hell, my ex-gf and I went to Edelweiss for our first “date” (though it only retroactively earned that appellation.)
I don’t scream to the rooftops that I’m trans, though I care less and less if anyone knows. One of my neighbors in the building saw me coming home one night, so I know at least some folks in the apartment building know. (She always smiles when she sees me now. Hmm.)
The guys in folkmusicienne E.’s band have met me both ways without flapping an eye.
I go where I go crossdressed. OK, I haven’t quite gotten to the point of doing my grocery shopping while crossdressed, but movies and dinner and just being out in New York I do without thinking too much about it. I’m not even sure when the last time E. saw me not crossdressed was; I think it was back in the middle of May. (She said, “I haven’t seen you in a while.” I told her that was because she was hanging out with that crazy Michelle chick.)
I’ve taken dance lessons crossdressed, and had the odd experience of having “Michelle York” called out for attendance…this really bizarre understanding that this, persona, mask, whatever you want to call it, was beginning to become an actual person. I go walking in daylight now, usually from my therapy sessions to wherever I’m meeting E. I did that today, without anybody saying anything or even staring (well, staring more than they would at anybody wearing a white skirt.) I don’t think I was passing, either; my predilection for tank tops may get my “ordinariness” points fashion-wise but does little to hide the fact that my shoulders have benefitted from years of testosterone in much the same way that a fraternity mixer benefits from a truckload of kegs–to excess, and frequently embarrassingly.
So where does that leave me? Over 75% of my waking life I spend in male presentation (financially I want to do nothing to fuck up my contract until my new corporate masters get taken over by their corporate overlords in about two years.) I try to take care of my male appearance and actually like shopping for my casual clothes.
On the other hand, right now, if I can conceivably go out cross-dressed I usually do so. (Caveats, and yet another wonderful “isn’t it great to bond with women” moment: I was thinking a couple of weeks ago about catching a movie I wanted to see down at the Film Forum one Saturday night (for those playing at home, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows) and then heading out to get a few drinks. But I didn’t have anyone to go with, and I didn’t think it would necessarily be such a bright idea to go out alone to a movie dressed to go to a bar later. Especially seeing as I’m, you know, a man. Maybe I was being paranoid; but maybe not…) The idea that I will dress up when I can is becoming so commonplace to my mind that I plan almost unconciously around it. (Even so, I’m still only dressing in public 2 or 3 times a week.)
So, middle way? Weekend Princess? I don’t know. I feel better, mostly, about myself and glad that I have these chances, though to tell you the truth it’s also really stirred the pot of my gender fuckedupedness (sorry, dysphoria.) And while I don’t have the full-blown body dysphoria of the cut- it- off- cause- it- disgusts- me, I- can’t- look- in- the- mirror- cause- a- man- looks- back variety, I’m less happy with my body nowadays, disenchanted with my broad frame and my peasant shoulders and my cowcatcher jaw.
And the sense of oscillation, of vibrating between different extremes of emotion, is hard to take. It’s not like crossdressing necessarily helps, either, though in general it quiets some of my dysphoric feelings; or, as I told my therapist a while ago, crossdressing lets me stop having to fight my impulses to be feminine. But at the same time, I’m acutely aware of what I look like and how little I pass, and that makes me feel sad as well. As sad as wearing a suit instead of skirt can make me feel? I don’t know, yet. Nor am I completely sure that the good feeling I get from wearing nice men’s clothing–and I do have that, I enjoy my peacock moments–will be enough to compensate for never living as a woman.
So, some scenes from a little down the Middle Way. I’m not sure I can help going further into the woods; but I’m not sure I’m blazing a trail either.

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Writer's Desk

I took this photo in order to figure out my desk ergonomics, & it surprised me to see exactly how much of my life it reveals.
desk

Starting at the upper right corner and going around clockwise, you can see: backup ream of HP paper on top of paper sorter stack; vintage lamp; large candle; my father’s old mahogany inbox; iPod (20 gig with black earbuds for subway safety); “Trans in the City” mug (a gift from the Hetrick-Martin Institute) of tea; scissors.

Center bottom: new underdesk keyboard drawer & old trackball mouse precipitously perched.

Starting at the bottom left corner: copy of Sims2 Nightlife on top of my computer tower & external hard drive; ashtray, cigarettes & matches; another inbox with articles I’m reading/using for the new book.

On the hutch, my bottles of painkillers, muscle relaxants, anti-depressants & allergy meds (so I remember to take them), a green page holder, Merriam-Webster’s Page-A-Day calendar, & the upper right corner of my new HP all in one printer.

On the top plane, above my monitor, the bottom edge of my Sandman “Still Life with Cats” poster with four postcards tucked into the frame: (1) Buster Keaton dining with an elephant; (2) postcard from the first Rufus Wainwright show I saw; (3) Our Mother of Sorrows 9/11 prayer card, and (4) Greta Garbo photo (the one the US postage stamp was drawn from).

If you look really close, you can also see that the monitor view is of the message boards, and in particular Lynne’s post about how to prevent CP and RSI, which is what caused me to take the photo in the first place.

(You can see a much larger version of the photo here.)

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No "Them" Or "Us"

from Dan Savage:

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: I’ve been running around with my hair on fire trying to convince my straight readers that religious conservatives don’t just hate homos. Their attacks on gay people, relationships, parents, and sex get all the press, but the American Taliban has an anti-straight-rights agenda too. As I wrote on March 23: “The GOP’s message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no lifesaving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You’re going to have those babies, ladies, and you’re going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that’s too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.”
After raising the alarm for months back here in the sex ads section, I was intensely gratified to read Russell Shorto’s brilliant cover story, “The War on Contraception,” in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. To readers who think I’m being hysterical: So you don’t think the religious right would seriously go after birth control? Fine, don’t believe me. But maybe you’ll believe Shorto when he lays out the American Taliban’s plan to deny access to birth control—any and all types, folks, not just emergency contraception.
“In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex,” Shorto writes. “Contraception, by [their] logic,” Shorto continues, “encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality), and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage.” Shorto quotes Judie Brown, president of the American Life League: “We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set. So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception.” And there’s this from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill… Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation.”
I’ll say it again, breeders: The American Taliban is not just opposed to straight premarital sex, with their abstinence education and hilariously ineffective virginity pledges, or gay sex, with their “ex-gay” campaigns and their anti-gay-marriage amendments. The American Taliban doesn’t think married heterosexual couples should be able to use birth control. If you care about your own freedom—not just your right to have premarital sex, but your right to decide whether, when, and how many children you’re going to have—you need to read “The War on Contraception.” And don’t comfort yourself with the notion that these are just some antisex religious wackos: The Bush administration not only listens to these wackos, it appoints them to important positions all over the federal government—and let’s not even think about the members of the American Taliban that Bush has already appointed to lifetime positions in the federal judiciary.
This is some serious shit, breeders. You’re being attacked. It’s time to fight back.

Copyright Dan Savage. Thanks to JoanieC for calling it to my attention.