Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Congratulations to Tristan Taormino on her 200th “Pucker Up” column for The Village Voice. She’s been writing that column since 1999, and even mentions the column about The Queer Heterosexual that I cited in My Husband Betty. (She also wrote a column about My Husband Betty, which did the book a world of good).
So congrats Tristan, and keep on putting your nose (or whichever parts you choose) into other people’s sex lives – with their consent, of course.
Seal Press rocks so hard it’s ridiculous. Not only has word come that the first reprint of My Husband Betty has come out with Seal’s imprint, but they’ve apologized for the situation that lead to me being left off the Transgender category nominees’ list for the Lambda Literary Awards.
Buy Seal’s books, people. They are a great press, & do good work.
I’ve already team-taught my first class in Gender Studies 101, and later today I get to teach my first session of Transgender Lives. It’s a 200-level course, and I opted to allow trans people to speak about their own lives instead of focusing on what other people have said about trans lives. How? I used books written by trans people: Jenny Boylan’s, James Green’s, Kate Bornstein’s, some of Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl, Leslie Feinberg, and… a lovely little book by The Lady Chablis called Hiding My Candy. Plus a few chapters from my own My Husband Betty in order to represent the crossdressers.
I figure as a non-trans person teaching trans, I’ll already be there as a kind of lens, so getting as much primary reporting from trans people themselves was important.
It’s the day Betty and I have been waiting for: the first day that isn’t 2007, at long last. We’re hoping 2008 will be a little kinder, maybe a little more amenable, which looks a little ironic from where I’m standing: amidst all the bags I have packed for Wisconsin. I am looking forward to teaching, to meeting various professors and students and even MHB readers, but there is also a part of me that doesn’t want to travel at all anymore; I just want a job, teaching most likely, somewhere I could live, and live with Betty, and have a home big enough for three cats and way too many books. As a result of the commute to North Andover this past fall, this trip to Wisconsin seems like the final test of my resources, or rather, if I ever had any slight bit of agoraphobia after 9/11, this trip is my proof that it’s all gone.
So, off we go. Tomorrow, Betty and I drive to Wisconsin, and we’re planning on arriving on Friday. If we can post from the road we will, but we might not be able to. Or we might not want to. Who knows? In either case, I’m on my way, and so is the new year.
Aurora is not very interested in the mHB boards, though she does allow me to view them while she’s sleeping on my desk. Sometimes. Unless I’m typing or moving the mouse, for which I get swatted. Or she starts in with what I call The Tail of Annoyance and flicks items on my desk to the floor.
& A very happy birthday to Ian (& his mom) today!
For more reading about ENDA than you might ever want, I’ve put together a bunch of the articles, essays, & blog posts on the topic since it was introduced in April, below the break:
& Now The NY Times has published an article about the whole Dreger/Bailey fiasco. It’s reasonably objective, even if the title of the article is ridiculously overblown.
Moreover, based on her own reading of federal regulations, Dr. Dreger. . . argued that the book did not qualify as scientific research. The federal definition describes “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation.â€
Dr. Bailey used the people in his book as anecdotes, not as the subjects of a systematic investigation, she reported.
Which makes it not scientific at all. Either that or someone owes me a Ph.D. for My Husband Betty.
After Avalon was bought by Perseus and Perseus eliminated the Thunder’s Mouth Press imprint altogether, I was wondering – and worried – as to what would happen to My Husband Betty, since it was published by Thunder’s Mouth. Lo & behold, I got the news that MHB is going to be moved to Seal Press, who published She’s Not the Man I Married.
I’m very pleased, since MHB has continued selling – not in giant ways, but more like The Little Engine that Could. But more than that, I feel like I have a home as a writer (& from what they tell me, the folks at Seal feel similarly.)
Ironic perhaps that Betty & I should be doing what looks like the last of our “in person” gigs via rental car instead of by train – since there have been times in the past few months that I felt like I lived on the latter. Not that I mind: I really do love trains in nearly an irrational way. It’s something about the sound of a train whistle – all at once so melancholy, so romantic, & so hopeful.
It’s fitting that we should wind down in Poughkeepsie, since the group I’ll be visiting, MHVTA, is one that let me interview them when I was researching My Husband Betty. What I remember best was asking, “What would you want the world to know about crossdressing that they don’t?” and I got a variety of answers that informed my intent when I wrote it.
So thanks to everyone who has let me ask them questions, emailed me with input, and told me their stories.
An interesting article from The Village Voice about fundraiser party for top surgery for masculine spectrum types. Interestingly, this is about someone who’s removing hir breasts in order to have a more androgynous body, not a male one, per se.
I read at one of these years ago when My Husband Betty was just published, and it was very cleverly called Take My Breasts Away.
We did.