Dubya just failed to fund the UNFPA, again. I hate him I hate him I hate him. It’s literally a death sentence for thousands of women and children, and could have prevented 12 million unwanted pregnancies via birth control and contraception.
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”
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)
Half-Empty: Helen Gets Cable, Pt. 1
Betty finally talked me into getting cable, so expect more cranky blogging than usual for a while, at least until I figure out how to turn off the tv.
Just now, on VH-1’s “I Love the 90s, Part Deux” (hey, was this what I was missing? how nutty of me not to have wanted cable before now! what quality!!) they mentioned that Demi Moore was “gender bendering” in that GI Jane movie.
Genderbendering? Hello? How much do those people get paid that they couldn’t work out the verb form of genderbender?! Oy.
Hey, VH-1, the verb form is “genderbending.” Kinda simple now that you see it, isn’t it? I tell you what: you can pay me half whatever you paid the numbnut who wrote that bit and I won’t fuck it up.
Wondering What They'll Think
It’s been one weird (long) month for me. I handed in the manuscript of the next book way at the beginning of the month, recently found out it’s already listed at amazon.com, and my publisher tells me that the initial copies have gone out to “early readers” – which is code for “people who might say nice things about it that we can put on the cover.”
So, my first readers. Well actually my 5th – 12th, or thereabouts, since a few people read the whole of it, or nearly so, while I was writing it. But still, nerve-wracking. I just hope if they hate it they don’t tell me that. But they have until late this fall to send in a blurb so I may not know for quite a while. It’s this waiting bit that really is the hard part.
(I hope they don’t hate it. Betty keeps telling me they won’t, but I think Betty’s biased.)
Bordering on Misogyny
More thoughts on the MWMF controversy: I find sometimes the anger expressed toward the exclusionary policy-makers at the MWMF bordering on misogyny. Because relatively speaking, lesbians want to keep trans women out of a camp. But when I look around at the world, and what goes on with trans women, I see really horrible things, like rape and horribly brutal murders and cops and media using phrases like “he” or even “it.” & I wonder if sometimes the level of outrage against MWMF isn’t kind of – overamped. I mean they’re just keeping trans women out of a private music festival, not firing them or denying them housing or health treatment or hormones or life.
You know? I don’t think their policy is right, but I also think there are bigger eggs to fry, and using all this energy and rage over MWMF might find people exhausted when something else comes up.
I understand that it’s much easier to be very angry and disappointed with people who should know better, and yes, I think the organizers of the MWMF should know better. But their actions, in terms of comparison, are not as hateful as some of the anger describes it as being. Discriminaton and exclusion is horrible, yes, but it’s a music festival, not the right to live and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I’m just not sure the level of anger is – well, appropriate.
But then I don’t think the level of hate and suspicion being tossed around by MWMFers toward trans women is anything like appropriate, either.
Neither of these reflections, by the way, has anything to do with what people have been saying on our message boards – they’re observations taken from other things I’ve been reading.
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.
"Having Boobs Sucks."
I never expected my quote of the day to come from South Park, but there you go: Having boobs sucks.
It was the single funniest South Park I’ve ever seen. That it happened to completely explain sexism made it even funnier. If I taught Sex Ed in high school, I’d show it to my classes.
Short version: a girl named Bebe, who’s in the the South Park class starts to develop breasts. Boys go wonky and can’t figure out why Bebe seems so cool all of a sudden & they never noticed it before. Other girls start to call her a slut, simultaneously. Bebe hates new attention, asks mom about it, who encourages her to use her breasts as power. Bebe asks mother, “Mom, what’s 6 x 8?” Mom replies, “Honey, 6 and 8 are two different numbers.” (It’s somewhere in here she says, “Having boobs sucks.”) Later, after boys have
become neanderthal, beating each other up and mumbling about tatas, Bebe – after failing to convince a plastic surgeon to give her breast reduction surgery – comes to school wearing a box. Boys behave normally, can’t figure out why she doesn’t seem so cool anymore. School guidance counselor explains the power breasts have over male minds. Jealous girl shows up with new implanted breasts; boys mock her in order to regain control over breast mastery of their brains.
(Though the show where some kids from NYC call the South Park kids “queefs” and the SP kids don’t know what it means was pretty hysterical, too. Really, I’m very ashamed of myself.)
* the picture on top is Betty as an SP character, and the other one is me, as same. Make yourself into a SP character at SP Studios.
F***king Ticketmaster
I’ve been a music fan my whole life, and I’m sick of goddamn Ticketmaster. I was just about to buy tickets to go see one of my favorite bands, World Party, who haven’t toured stateside since, oh, 1998, and the f***ers at Ticketmaster want $8.25 handling fee – PER TICKET!!
Oh I hate ’em, hate ’em, and have my whole concert-going life (which is now 23 years, 23 YEARS of paying their idiot handling charges).
I hate you like a sister…
Since I can only use the word companionship so many times, I decided to look up synonyms to vary my word choices.
So as I’m reading the differerent shades of meaning for companionship – like fellowship or hospitality or partnership – I come across this entry for fraternity:
Main Entry: fraternity Part of Speech: noun Definition: brotherhood Synonyms: Greeks, association, camaraderie, circle, clan, club, companionship, company, comradeship, fellowship, frat*, guild, house, kinship, league, letter society, order, organization, set, society, sodality, union
Antonyms: sorority
Source: Roget’s New Millenniumâ„¢ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.2.1) Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
* = informal or slang
and it surprised the hell out of me. Sorority is the opposite of fraternity? I’m a firm believer in the existence of mean girls but I think that’s overstating the case for them, no? Surely sororities are also about camaraderie and companionship, fellowship and society.
I’m not sure if I think this is funny or disturbing. Or both.