Tag: resources

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Fidelities

The NYT publishes a column about Polyamory and specifically about Poly Pride, a celebration being held in NYC this weekend.

Alex Williams, the journalist who wrote it, seems to have come away with the main impression I’ve come away with: too much talking. I can barely manage one person in my life, but I can’t imagine more. I just don’t have the patience.

Toothbrush disputes are the least of it. In the era of safe sex and cellphones, a life that seems to promise boundless sex in fact involves lots of talking. And talking. And talking.

For one thing, they constantly have to explain the way they live.

That last line ring out to any trans people & their partners out there? One of the reasons Betty & I love the various alt.sex communities we’ve run into is that there is a shared experience: you may not be explaining the same thing, but you’re still explaining. Or, as I like to explain in my Uneven Libidos class, the further you are from the socially-condoned relationship – heterosexual marriage with something like traditional gender roles – the harder it is to find validation and support for the way you live.

If you want to know more about poly, I highly recommend Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up, and her website, which lists tons of resources for poly people.

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Five Questions With… Monica Canfield-Lenfest

As many of you know, Monica Canfield-Lenfest is the daughter of a trans woman and created a new resource, with COLAGE, for kids with trans parents. I highly recommend it.

1) First, tell me about COLAGE & how the book for Kids of Trans happened, what your goals were.

COLAGE (www.colage.org) is a national movement of children, youth, and adults with one or more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer parents. We build community and work toward social justice through youth empowerment, leadership development, education, and advocacy. I first contacted COLAGE five and a half years ago, when I was working on my undergraduate thesis: “She’s My Father: The Social Experience of People with Transgender Parents”. Looking for references for my project, I discovered a diverse community of queerspawn who gave me the space to better articulate my experience and encouraged me to continue my work, since there are hardly any resources for transgender parented families. I started presenting at transgender conferences and gained a renewed sense of responsibility to build community and develop resources for people with transgender parents.

During a COLAGE conference in Dallas two years ago, I suggested to Meredith Fenton, COLAGE Program Director, that perhaps I could fill a fall internship position at the national office. We came up with a Fellowship model for my position, which has become a new program for the organization. I worked full-time for eight months focused specifically on the Kids of Trans Program. The major goal of the fellowship was to develop resources for people with transgender parents. Since there was no book detailing our experiences and offering advice to people with trans parents, the Kids of Trans Resource Guide became the obvious main project.

My goals in writing the guide were: first, to tell other people with trans parents that they are not alone; second, to recognize that the entire family transitions when a parent transitions; and third, to provide compassionate advice from people who have similar families. In short, I hoped to create the book I wanted my father to give me when she came out to me over ten years ago. Continue reading “Five Questions With… Monica Canfield-Lenfest”

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Book Review: Live Through This

Not long ago, I picked up a copy of Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction. As many of you know, I used to write fiction all of the time – all of it as yet unpublished – and thought I might get in touch again with my creative self, and the relationship that creative self has to my own personal demons.

Because I remember avoiding therapy when I was 19 for fear that it would hurt my art.

It didn’t. But as a result, my favorite of this collection of essays by various female artists about the intersection of their angst & their art was Diane DiMassa‘s, who, in pictures of course, traces the way her conversations with her therapist became Hothead Paisan.

Of interest to a lot of people who read here is Kate Bornstein’s essay on her experiences with art, demons, & Scientology. So now we know she’s not only a remarkable author, playwright, and performer, but she’s also a pretty fantastic visual artist. (Not that that’s surprising.)

In some ways, this book may be more useful as a way to read about the women’s lives than it is to read about artistic process, though: so many of the essays are more about the strife that caused the art (which ranges from sexual abuse to drugs to cutting to anorexia) than about how the person managed to channel that into their art, exactly. What I’m always interested in is how artists – especially female artists – find the resources to keep going.

So it’s not a how-to guide, but it doesn’t purport to be one, either; it IS a remarkable bunch of women writing about what made their art. It’s published by the very cool Seven Stories, and of course available at amazon.com and independent booksellers.

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T Family Resource

There’s a new publication available for families & parents of trans youth:

Families in TRANSition: A Resource Guide for Parents of Trans Youth is the first comprehensive Canadian publication to address the needs of parents and families supporting their trans children. Families in TRANSition summarizes the experiences, strategies, and successes of a working group of community consultants – researchers, counsellors, advocates, parents, as well as trans youth themselves.

The guide aims be inviting and inclusive of families who may be at any one of a number of stages, and especially so for parents who may have had their adolescent or young adult child come out recently as trans. Families in TRANSition provides practical and sensitive parent-to-parent and professional therapeutic advice, and tries to anticipate and address common questions and concerns, as well as normalize the varied reactions families may have. The guide offers accurate, up-to-date information on terminology, health, and issues related to transition, and suggests to families important ways they can take care of themselves and one another through this challenging and critical time. Families in TRANSition provides a provincial context and relevant Toronto resources for continued youth and family support towards strengthening families.

The guide will be available as a free pdf download from our website (www.ctys.org) after June 8th. You will also be able to purchase a hard copy through our website for a nominal fee.

It is so great to see more and more information like this out there.

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NC Robo-Calls

I was recently in the running in a “Top Ten Female Bloggers” contest sponsored by WVWV.org, which, as it turns out, is the organization that seems to be behind some baffling robo-calls to voters in NC (amongst other places).

Now Women’s Voices is plunging North Carolina into the same confusion. State officials tell Facing South they are still receiving calls from frustrated and confused voters, wondering why “Lamont Williams” is offering to send them a “voter registration packet” after the deadline for mail-in registration for the primaries has passed.

In correspondence with North Carolina election officials, Women’s Voices founder and President Page Gardner merely said that the disruptive timing was an “unfortunate coincidence” — a strange alibi for a group with their level of resources and sophistication.

There are other questions about Women’s Voices’ outreach efforts. Although the group purports to be targeting “unmarried women,” their calls and mailings don’t fit the profile. Kevin Farmer in Durham, who first recorded the call, is a white male. Many of the recipients are African-American; Rev. Nelson Johnson, who is a married, male and African-American, reported that his house was called four times by the mysterious “Lamont Williams.”

Please let anyone you know in North Carolina that these robo-calls are probably illegal & contain misleading information. How much WVWV’s intent is to buck up Clinton’s chances in the primary remain to be seen, but in a state where something like 45% of the voters are African-American, sending voters confusing and wrong information is anti-democratic. If it’s intentional, then I’d call it racist, too.

White feminists, you’re really fucking up here.

(via Daily Kos).

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Wish List

I’ve found myself back in Brooklyn after teaching a term at Lawrence and a semester at Merrimack, needing work.

I’d prefer teaching work in the NYC area, or lectures at colleges or the like, but really I’ll consider anything that pays okay. Lecture gigs are always good fun.

I am, of course, for hire as a coach, to help find transition resources, and for other trans-related stuff. I’m happy to provide an ear or a shoulder to cry on for trans people & partners alike.

I’m also a decent editor, writer, and admin. I’m a good lecturer and teacher. I can bookkeep if necessary. If you want to see more about what I do and what I’ve done, my author website is the place to check: www.helenboydbooks.com.

But if any of you know academics, especially in English or Gender Studies, please mention me to them.

& While I’m at it, I need a new literary agent who represents fiction, too. & A grant to finish writing my novel.

Okay, I think that’s it for now.

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New Resources

So I’ve discovered a few interesting new resources in team teaching Gender Studies 100 this semester, and never posted some I discovered last term. Here are a few:

  • The Trouble with Testosterone by Robert Sapolsky – a very accessible read about the popular misunderstandings about testosterone (for instance, that it causes aggression)
  • Iron Jawed Angels – about the last push for the vote for women in the US
  • The Fire, Earth, Water trilogy by Deepa Mehta – stunning, beautiful film series by a woman director about various aspects of Indian culture. Mehta has a gentle but powerful hand as a story-teller.