Tag: youth

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Giving Birth (& Other Metaphors for the Creative Impulse)

I chose to take my road without children. It doesn’t make me shallow or immature, it makes me realistic. If I had children it would be to satisfy other people, not me. I am a lover, daughter, sister, writer and friend. I don’t need the label of mother to make me more. I am enough.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this article since Marlena posted a link to it, because it is so often my own experience (except that I never moved to the West Coast and most of my friends are right here, in the tri-state area, and still I see them about as often as she sees hers). That said, I know that having children is a lot like a new relationship in the way it can completely occupy someone, becoming their sole focus for a while. But I also know they come back; maybe they don’t come back as the same person they once were, but they do. Older, wiser, fatter, perhaps.

For me there’s been a simultaneous self-occupation, in my writing, which is a kind of trade-off. My friends with children understand that my writing occupies my mind and my time better than anyone else. But what bothers me about women “disappearing” into having children is when they expect the rest of us to want to, or otherwise to think that everyone cares about the details of what their kids did. I mean, I know I bore people because I have gender on the brain. I don’t assume spending eight months writing a book is a universal experience.

Most of the women I know certainly know that child-rearing isn’t either, but other parts of our culture do assume that. For us childfree types, it becomes kind of tedious, explaining that we don’t want children or don’t feel incomplete or that – god forbid – we are completely oblivious to any biological clock that’s supposed to be ticking so loudly in our heads.

You’d think, what with overpopulation, those of us who choose not to have children would be encouraged – but we’re not.

Often what I hear from parents is something along the lines of “It’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done,” as if my life is without meaning because I don’t have children. My standard response these days is, “Well apparently you’ve never written a book.” Smug Street can go both ways, after all.

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Christmas Mo(u)rning

Betty and I went shopping at Macy’s the other day because we’re going to be taping a television show later in the week (more on that when I get around to it), and the windows at Macy’s were really spectacular. The entire 34th street side is an ode to the movie Miracle on 34th Street. The Broadway side is much more magical, and in one window, a huge roaring lion is absolutely gorgeous. You could see the kids just glassy-eyed, full of wonder, reflected in the glass. I felt the crying coming on, tried to hold it back, and then Betty asked me what was wrong – and out it came. My grandma used to bring me in every year to see the windows, just me & her, & then we’d go to the Radio City Christmas Show. She died in early December & Christmas has felt a little wrong since then, even though it’s been twelve years now. It surprises me that a moment like that can get me, but you know,you throw in a big lion & there’s Narnia in the mix, and it’s like all of my childhood laid out in front of me. I become a huge puddle of a person, still missing her company, still sad to have lost – to some degree – that glassy-eyed wonder at the world.

Christmas is a rough season when you’ve lost someone close to you. My love goes out especially to the Heskins this year and to a few mHB posters who have lost loved ones this year (you know who you are).

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When I’m Not a Feminist

We all read a lot about women having babies and not having careers as a result, and some feminists tend to present women’s inability to have a career and have children as a form of gender discrimination.

But you know, I don’t think it is. I thought that was the point of choice – that women who choose to have babies can, and women who don’t choose to have babies, don’t. The women without babies are then able to work the ungodly hours required of the top strata of high power jobs, and the women with them aren’t.

& I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but I thought that was the whole “revolution” birth control brought with it: that women can CHOOSE whether to have children or not. I wonder often if this assumption – that women need to have babies – isn’t a result of all that “women are nurturing” bullshit. I don’t know. I’ve wanted to be childfree my whole life, and what I see are a lot of women in my life who wanted children – wanted them more than their careers – and made that choice. So why the bellyaching? We all make decisions, and we all have to live with them. To me it’s such a fantastic thing that women have been freed from having to have babies, that there are healthy ways to prevent pregnancy and plan to have a family (or plan not to have one).

I have a funny feeling there’s a privilege thing in here somewhere that might blind me some. I just can’t imagine walking into the universe expecting the world to allow me everything I wanted. I mean, imagine if I wrote an article claiming that it was “discrimination” because I can’t hold a high power job *and* write novels – which I can’t, because of the time required of both. I’d be laughed right off my blog, and well I should be if I made that argument. But some feminists portray having a baby as some requirement of woman-ness, and I thought the whole point was – it’s not. We’ve freed women up to have careers if they want. Or to have babies if they want. & That’s all cool.

I mean, if women want babies and don’t want to give up their careers, adopt and marry a house-husband father type.

Of course it is expected that women raise their children once they have them, & that’s the problem, as far as I’m concerned. The expected gender roles are unfair, because fathers are and can be parents as much as women can be mothers. Is it “fair” that men can have children and expect their wives to take care of them? No. But I don’t see why women can’t decide to have children and expect their husbands to take care of them – especially if the women is the one making the higher salary.

But in speaking to a feminist friend recently, she told me she’s having an absolute blast raising her son and not working so much – but still somehow sees it as “wrong” that she can’t be a litigator at the same time. I just don’t get it. She not only chose to have a baby but to raise the baby; she could have gotten a nanny and gone back to work at that high-powered job. She didn’t. And again, that’s all good. But I don’t see it as discrimination; I see it as a decision. Would she catch some flak if she went back to her fulltime job and left a nanny and her husband to raise her child? Sure. But she could do that, if she wanted.

It’s not like those of us who are childfree don’t catch flak. Or that those who decide to stay home with their kids don’t catch flak. The thing about being a woman is that nothing you do is right: someone, somewhere, will have a problem with whatever choice you make. But for me, being a feminist is in supporting any woman in her choices, and that includes calling her out when she’s complaining about having to make them. Having a choice doesn’t mean you get everything; it means you get one thing & you have to live without the other.

But then again, I was raised by Devo.

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Playing Bully

The folks who brought us Grand Theft Auto are at it again, bringing kids (& one has to assume, some adults) a game called Bully – where the point is to bully or be bullied.

There are those who think that a game that makes “play” out of bullying is despicable. But in fairness it should be pointed out that this is not a shoot ‘em up game, and there are no guns or blood. Some experts believe it can be a healthy outlet for kids to get these sorts of fantasies out of their systems on the screen and not in the real world. On the other hand, the game shows that to survive the bully culture you need to become one.

I’m going to guess there is no way to bring about a peaceful solution to being bullied.

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Curvy Tomboy

As some of you know, I think of myself as a tomboy – or whatever the adult term for that might be for a het/queer woman. (I haven’t come up with a term yet, so your coinages are appreciated.) But tomboys are supposed to be muscular & straight, you know, boyish, & my body hasn’t been boyish since I was a boy’s age, as it were.
I’ve decided that since I’ve got this generosity of breast these days, which is really unreconcilable with being a tomboy, that I needed to be creative. If I can wear my bevy of breastness like macho guys wear a big dick, you know, outta my way, kids, substantialness coming through, and yeah, I do need two seats on the subway.
So far it’s the only way I’ve managed to work out intersecting masculine and curvy. I don’t want to cancel out my woman-ness; I just want to have it register as a kind of masculine form of power.

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Jennifer Finney Boylan's Southern Comfort Speech

Thanks to Ms. Boylan for allowing me to reproduce it here; this is the complete & unedited version.
Hi everybody. Gosh, look at you all. You all look fantastic from up here. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room before with so many large women.
(improvised joke #1)
(improvised joke #2)
I notice that some of you look a little tired today. Which is not to say, you don’t look fabulous, I’m just saying that some of you seem like you were up kind of late last night. Did you check out the parties last night? You know the one I mean, the theme party—Come as Your Favorite Nude Author?
(beat)
First time in my life I’ve ever been in a room full of a hundred and fifty nude Kate Bornsteins.
(improvise joke #3)
I have to be honest and say I feel a little bit like a fraud up here today, because I know that there are so many of you who are so much more articulate about these issues than I am. I am an English teacher from Maine, a storyteller— what I’m not is a therapist, or scholar of gender studies, or for that matter, much of an activist. I’ve tried doing some of those things sometimes, because I want to do my part, but I have to say I just so lame at them. I’m grateful that there are people doing all the work around the country that’s being done on behalf of people like us, including the organizers of this conference—our fabulous chairwoman, Kristen, as well as heather O’malley and Cat Turner, and Lola Fleck. I’m just as grateful for all the people who came before me, who blazed the trail that has made my life easier.. I know I would not be here without them, quite literally.
There is an old saying that I find true for me this afternoon—one reason I am able to see so far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
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That Forbes Article

I’m a little surprised, though I guess I shouldn’t be, by the brouhaha created by Forbes re-printing an article from 1973. (That’s a joke, folks, it’s a new article, but it could have been written in 1973. The whole premise of said article is that career women suck as wives and mothers – more likely to: not have kids, not stay home with kids, cheat, get divorces, etc. etc. etc.)
What amazes me is that this got by an editor. Is sexism so not apparent to people? I mean if a woman wrote an article in Forbes that men who have careers make bad husbands and fathers, the hue & cry would be outrageous. But writing an article judging how good women are in their “natural” role is perfectly reasonable?
The whole thing makes me ill. As does the use of the term feminazi. What a bunch of schlock. I’m reminded of that old feminist slogan, “Men of Quality Love Women’s Equality.” Not many quality men out there, apparently, at least not if the Forbes’ forum for discussion of said article is to be believed.
But the sense of humor in response is quite satisfying: this little slideshow on why to marry a career bitch, in particular. Oh, & Forbes took down the original article, so if you want to read it, it’s archived here.

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More Things You Can Do: #s 26-34

I’ve missed a few weeks of posting more things you can do to further trans rights and protections, according to the NCTE:
#26: Locate Support Services
#27: Collaborate with another group on a community project or social event.
#28: Work to Pass a Nondiscrimination Policy at Your Workplace
#29: Connect with PFLAG!
#31: Plan to Come out on National Coming Out Day on October 11
#32: Register New Voters!
#33: Fund Scholarships!
#34: Programs for Youth

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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!

kate bornstein & betty crow1b. 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.

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