Tag: trans partners

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Five Questions With… Julia Serano

Julia Serano is a Bay Area slam-winning poet, author, performer, activist, & biologist. She organized the GenderEnders event from 2003 until last year; plays guitar, sings & writes lyrics for her band Bitesize, and oh – has a Ph.D. in biochemistry. We got to meet her when she was in town promoting her book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, recently published by Seal Press.

(1) I loved Whipping Girl, for starters. I think it’s a pivotal work for trans communities, especially in building trans pride. But you know I kept waiting for you to actually define “feminine” – maybe if not for all time, but in some way that I could understand what you meant by it specifically. Your “barrette Manifesto” came close, except that I see barrettes as childish, not feminine per se. So can you help the genderblind like myself? What is femininity? Can you be feminine without being girly?

In the next to last chapter of the book, “Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism,” I talk about that a bit, but I’ll try to define it here a little more clearly. I would say that femininity is a heterogeneous set of traits (some of which are cultural in origin, some biological, some psychological, and many are a combination thereof). The only thing that all feminine traits have in common is that they are typically associated with women in our culture. But they certainly aren’t exclusive to women, as many men and MTF spectrum transgender folks also express feminine traits (similarly, many women express masculine rather than feminine traits). I think most of us tend to express some combination of both feminine and masculine traits.

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SoCo Keynote: Jenn Burleton

SOUTHERN COMFORT CONFERENCE 2007
KEYNOTE ADDRESS – SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2007

One Community, One Family

by Jenn Burleton, TransActive Education & Advocacy, Portland, OR

Thank you to the organizers of this amazing conference and in particular, Cat Turner, Lola Fleck and Elaine Martin. And I must thank my longtime friend, Mariette Pathy Allen. My life has been truly blessed as a result of knowing her and sharing many adventures with her…some of which are suitable for sharing with the whole family.

When Cat Turner called back in January and invited me to come to Atlanta I was of course, very honored. I was also surprised. After all, we’d never met. I’d never attended a previous Southern Comfort Conference and I am not, in my opinion anyway, one of the gender community heavy hitters.
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Jerry Sanders Says No Veto

The Republican mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, who opposed same sex marriage when he was campaigning, opted not to veto a bill providing marriage rights to same sex couples on Thursday.

Why? Well, his daughter is a lesbian, but that’s not all.

In the time since, he said he realized he could not accept “the concept of a separate-but-equal institution.” Because of that, he continued, he was unwilling to send the message to anyone that “they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”

The mayor, now crying openly, noted that he has close family members and friends in the gay and lesbian community, including staff members and “my daughter Lisa.”

“In the end, I couldn’t look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana,” said Sanders, who quickly thanked reporters and dashed from the room. (emphasis mine)

Separate but equal, folks! You heard it hear first! It’s unconstitutional! Who knew?!

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Trans Couples: Natasha & Kyle

“Tranny, 24, slim attractive brunette, seeks fun loving friend for laughter and love.”

Hey, every story has to begin somewhere, and this one’s starting with that. It’s the text of a personals ad, submitted to a local free weekly paper. The sort of thing that’s three quarters real estate listings.

I can’t claim sole authorship for the ad. My ex wife and I penned it. We started with the vague notion that it was about time I started seeing people. She, after all, had hooked up with a new guy and was rapidly approaching domestic bliss. I’d been moping around for a while, but was now finally starting to re-emerge into the world; to get my shit together, as it were.

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Dinner and Conversation

Last night I was taken out to dinner by a partner who is local to where I’m teaching during the week. She told me she was surprised I was willing to go to dinner with someone I’d never met before, & as she was saying it, I thought, ‘If only I had a trust fund, I wouldn’t do anything but meet with partners and give them someone to talk to.’

Because her story was like so many stories of partners: her trans person didn’t like to talk about it, only one friend knew who even kind of understood, and everyone else in their lives, she feared, would completely freak out if they knew.

So it is nice to go out and just listen to someone who needs to talk, to validate their experiences in whatever ways I can, & really, more than anything, provide a real flesh & blood person instead of a cold computer screen.

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Don’t Get Married

Had I known this before, I might have told Betty we had to wait until she learned to do more chores:

Within marriages, the study finds that women do about twice as much housework as men, even after adjusting for employment status and other factors. While men living with their partners do more housework than married men, women still shoulder the burden of household chores. (bolded for emphasis by yours truly)

What’s interesting, however, is that in cohabitating couples, the chores are split more evenly.

Every study I’ve read backs this up, and that women do more chores than their husbands seems to be true despite childcare breakdowns and employment status. One woman I know worked fulltime and made most of the family’s money and still came home to do most of the chores.

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Gender Traitor

Recently I did a talk that one of my queer femme friends attended, and at some point during the talk I mentioned what a hard time I had with Betty’s femininity because it brought up my own issues with my own “failed” femininity. Afterwards, she asked, “Well don’t I drive you nuts, then?” or something like that.

& The funny thing is: no, she doesn’t. Aside from her being a nice person who takes people as they come (moreso even than most other open-minded folks I know), she’s a queer femme. & The girls who were the bane of my existence – and the women who still are – were almost always straight femmes. Because queer femmes are somehow different than their straight sisters. For starters, they flirt with me, & I can flirt with them, & even though everyone knows nothing is happening, there’s a script of sorts that jives with everyone involved. Queer femmes have met other women with my gender before, & a lot of the time, they’ve dated them too. Our genders are mutually complimentary, you might say. Butches seem occasonally puzzled by me, or they seem to understand me, or they accept me as some kind of liminal butch, but they certainly aren’t threatened. Gay men – femme and masculine – seem to get that I’m not a jerk. (Or, as a gay friend said when he met me, “Oh, so you’re hip?” – after which we didn’t really need to discuss anything about my gender or SO beyond that.)

But it’s straight feminine women I can’t seem to have an un-awkward conversation with; often I feel like they’re worried I’m going to hit on them, and/or that their boyfriend is going to like me better than them (because of that “one of the guys” thing). Sometimes I swear they’re worried about both simultaneously. Straight feminine women seem to have way more invested in a kind of combative, competitive relationship between women – you know, who is the prettiest, the most feminine, the most fashion sense, or who gets the most attention from boys. Mostly I feel like I’m being asked to a duel but I haven’t got a pistol & I don’t the rules and I don’t know who I challenged and certainly didn’t mean to. It’s really like being in a culture that I don’t know & I’m not familiar with, the way that sometimes, as a white person, another white person will say something racist to you as if assuming you agree, or as a straight person, having another straight person make a homophobic joke assuming you’ll think it’s funny, too. Straight women like to complain about “what a guy” their man is, & how they don’t understand them at all, especially how they don’t hear anything when they’re playing a computer game or the like. And when I’ve said something along the lines of, “yeah, well I tend to tune out when I’m playing The Sims,” I get stares all around as if they’ve discovered a traitor in their midst.

And I am, I guess, a gender traitor. I don’t have much in common with the people who are assumedly “my tribe” – other heterosexual women. I don’t know how to talk to them. I don’t know how to make them feel better about themselves, or reassure them that I really dress the way I do on purpose. But it hadn’t occurred to me that it wasn’t all feminine women I felt that way about until my friend asked me that question. Looking back, it’s often been queer femmes who have helped me think about femininity in ways that didn’t just piss me off.

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Sept. 5th: Trans Partners Group

I have good news, & good news, & bad news.

The good news is that at the last minute, I’ve been invited to teach a Gender Studies class up at Merrimack College this fall.

The other bit of good news is that the Trans Partners Group is meeting at the Center today, September 5th, at 7:30 PM.

The bad news is that I’m teaching on Tuesdays & Thursdays, & so I will be in Boston on Wednesdays when the trans partners group meets.

I have been so enjoying co-facilitating this group & it nearly kills me not to be able to continue. I will be teaching in Wisconsin coming January as well so it seems the August group was the last group I’ll attend until April or May 2008 when I’ll be back to residing in New York fulltime. I will miss the group a lot – both personally & as an advocate for partners.

If any of you who attend the group want to get in touch, you know where I am.

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Virtual Book Tour

Today The New York Times published this piece, “The Author Will Take Q.’s Now,” about what it’s like to be an author these days. The funny thing is that I probably do more in-person touring because of the various trans conferences, and because – let’s be honest- the trans community isn’t the same as a bunch of people who are enthusiastic about baking or reading novels, because there are real needs involved, whether for trans people or partners themselves or for the community as a whole.

Still, if any of you are regular readers of other blogs, especially ones that review books and authors, do let them know about my book so that I might guest blog elsewhere.

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Five Questions With… Marilyn Frank

Marilyn Frank has been sharing her story with wives at Fantasia Fair, IFGE and Tri-Ess seminars since 1982. She married her husband Len in 1954 and didn’t learn about the cross dressing until 1964, 10 years and 3 children later. At that time the only information available to her was Virginia Prince’s book The Transvestite and His Wife (now titled The Cross-dresser and His Wife) which she still finds to be one of the best books written.

1) First, Marilyn, I want to thank you on behalf of all the partners out there, for stepping up at a time when most of us weren’t even in high school yet. Without women like you & Peggy Rudd, the struggle to have partners’ issues recognized would be a lot more difficult. So what caused you to do the educating you did?

In the 1970’s I was a volunteer on a crisis intervention hot line in Morris County, NJ. When I became Director, I questioned some of the professionals in the group, who did not know much about cross dressing, but were able to assist me in finding people who did know. During this time we came upon Tri-Ess, and then in 1980 Len read the article in Playboy about Fantasia Fair and in 1981 we spent a few days at the Fair. I had many discussions with Ariadne Kane about the wives’ needs, and this brought Niela Miller to the Fair and that’s where my true education began. Since it had been a very lonely road not only for Len, but for me, I decided I would reach out to help others, so that’s when I started facilitating a wives group at our local Tri-Ess Chapter, which I did for for over 10 years. I also was instrumental in starting the wives’ program at the first IFGE Convention. My philosophy is that every time I help someone, I help myself. It’s true the marriage had its ups and downs where the cross dressing was concerned, but for us it was a small part of our overall marriage. We have always had good communication, enjoy many of the same things and do have a sense of humor (that helps).

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