Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
I assume the corniness is typical for daytime TV, but there’s no reason a same-sex sex scene can’t be as corny as anyone else’s. With fireworks, even.
For someone who went to see My Beautiful Laundrette about a dozen times – in theatres, people! – it makes me happy to see this on regular old television.
Love is love is love.
(h/t to Alex Blaze @ TBP and to Feministing)
I have no idea if anyone in the world watches the show Conveyor Belt of Love, but I did find this clip (& this blog post about it) interesting.
Scott Schofield, as he introduces himself, is Scott Turner Schofield, trans guy, activist, artist.
More interesting to me is the whole “geek hot” idea – I mean that it requires its own terminology. I didn’t know other people didn’t find geeks hot. When is smart not hot? Baffling. Once again, I discover that I have never done “straight woman” correctly.
Ox Freeman of the Alabama Gender Alliance just posted the info from GLAAD about the stupid joke that was made on David Letterman about Amanda Simpson, and with it he commented that, “Trans people will not be safe from hate violence until it is safe to be attracted to us, to love us, and to regard us as human.”
He’s entirely right, of course, and it’s nice to have someone else articulate exactly why I do what I do.
Betty and I are both for trans people having more of a sense of humor, but we both agree: this joke is not even a little funny, exactly because this reaction to finding out a woman is trans is the same reaction that causes the heart-breaking violence trans people — and especially trans women — face.
As Allyson Robinson of HRC put it in an article by ABC News:
“Your skit affirmed and encouraged a prejudice against transgender Americans that keeps many from finding jobs, housing, and enjoying freedoms you and your writers take for granted every day,” HRC’s Allyson Robinson wrote in the letter.
Robinson said the punch line of the bit has “been used as a defense in nearly every hate crime perpetrated against transgender people that has come to trial.” She cited two cases in which individuals suspected of murdering transgender people claimed they did so in a rage after learning about their victims’ gender identity.
So now go to GLAAD.org and bug CBS, or do the same thing via change.org.
(spoiler alert for tonight’s episode)
WaMo has an article about Rumsfield & Katrina that won’t surprise anyone who was paying attention. What it does, however, is point up exactly how much of a f***head he was.
After the president had returned to the White House, he eventually convened a meeting in the Situation Room to discuss the government’s response. Bush barked, “Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?“
When Dubya is frustrated by your willful inaction, you are a Grade A f***wad.
Bea Arthur died today. We shared a birthday, and we shared being the butt of jokes about masculine women and women with facial hair and women who prefer comfortable shoes, but she did that on the national stage, and for many, many, many years, with grace and humor.
Lady Godiva was a freedom rider / She didn’t’ care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her / She was a sister who really cooked.Isadora was the first bra burner / And you’re glad she showed up. (Oh yeah)
And when the country was falling apart / Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.And then there’s Maude.
That old compromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizing, / Right on Maude
She was, most famously, Maude, which by my accounting is one of the funniest shows that was ever on television, – and it was about a feminist! – followed closely by The Golden Girls, where she played Dorothy.
A Peruvian television station was invited to a planned attack on a local prostitute who is a “travesti” – a MTF trans prostitute. It aired on television, and was later aired with a longer segment.
Blabbeando covered it, as did Queers United.
Note: prostitution is not illegal in Peru.
(1:15 AM) …I get a night to stay up late enough to catch some old Cold Case episodes & guess what the plot twist is tonight? The girl who gets killed was a boy…
(2:00 AM )… & this was a really good one, despite some language that made me wince … I guarantee it’d make most trans women cry their eyes out, in a good way. Check that: it’d make most people cry, I think.
Aeneas on the coffee table where I frequently grade papers, re read texts, and watch Law & Order. & Eat. In other words, Aeneas as usual near my center of attention.
Law & Order‘s show tonight is about a trans teenager who is accused of attacking her father who insists she’s a boy and is trying to get custody of her from her mother.
9:59 PM definitely sympathetic. hopefully indicative of a sea change. still problematic in some ways, but pretty damn good for within the context of a police procedural.
9:57 PM crying.
9:54 PM history, violence, genitals.
9:52 PM oy.
9:51 PM hooboy. non trans advocate of trans youth loses her mind.
9:48 PM the kid can ACT. (& he’s from Poplar, WI.)
9:46 PM wow. sympathy for the loved ones of the trans person who don’t get it! & also the anger & frustration & sadness of the trans person, too.
9:39 PM getting worse. & worse than that. fast.
9:34 PM hooboy. weird turn. righteous trans youth activists who knock off pharmaceutical companies.
9:27 PM hrm. so far so good. inaccurate information, sure, but so far sympathetic. nearly an after-school special.