He’s got a Buster Keaton thing going on, doesn’t he? I think so, but then I’m a big fan of Buster and of Aeneas. He is not so slothful that all he does is rest himself on the slope - he does, also, sharpen his claws on it.

The thing is, I love the anger in the trans community. I’m an old school punk rocker; anger is in my blood. So stay angry. Just don’t, as my mother would say, let it cut off your nose to spite your face.

Starting a conversation on the understanding that accusing someone of privilege of whatever kind - straight, male, white, cis - is usually met with a “fuck you i’ve suffered” rejoinder is a good place to begin. Most people’s lives are hard, so it’s unlikely anyone wants to hear how much less hard his/her life is because s/he is male / white / rich / educated / physically abled / cis.

In the light of all the LGBT violence this past month, the news that Sean Kennedy’s killer was releaed from prison early - for good behavior? - is like insult to injury, salt in the wound.

Why take the death of a young gay man seriously? They’ve treated this crime all along as if the kid broke a fucking window — not that he caused the death of this poor handsome, well-loved and much-missed young man.

Heartbreak. Heartbreak all around.

In today’s Salon, a nice piece about the failure of Thomas Beattie, and another about the romantic failure of Jennifer Finny Boylan.

Mara Keisling, quoted in the first piece:

Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, resents the way that the Thomas Beatie flap has overshadowed more important developments. “The media hasn’t gotten a message yet that they ought to get a life,” she snaps. Last week, Congress held its first-ever hearing on discrimination against transgender employees, and on June 17, the American Medical Association passed a resolution stating that it “supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder,” but these items have received nowhere near Beatie’s media attention.

& Boylan, quoted in the second:

The women I knew, for their part, liked the fact that I had a feminine streak, that I seemed to be sensitive and caring, that I didn’t know the names of any NFL teams, that I could make a nice risotto. A lot of straight women love a female sensibility in a man, an enthusiasm that goes right up to, but unfortunately does not quite include, his being an actual woman.

The romances didn’t last, of course. Because, let’s face it: I was keeping the basic fact of myself camouflaged. How are you supposed to fall in love when you’re so frequently lying?

Have you all seen these arguments going on about the use of the word cis? Here’s Pam’s House Blend and Questioning Transphobia on the issue. Unfuckingbelievable.

I hate the word myself, but it’s a useful lens on a type of privilege others can’t see or identify, which is one of the reasons it can upset people. I can’t imagine telling others they can’t use it, though.

I also prefer a crowbar between “cisgender” and “cissexual” because I am one but I’m not the other (as many other queerios may be, as well, since many of us have more than one gender).

Another round of Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl, everyone, please.

But the idea that trans people are always righteously angry, entirely respectful, and never diminish their own anger and hurt by throwing invective and insult at the people they’re arguing with… oh, that’s RICH. The trans community is notorious, at this point, for going batshit over things in a way not seen before by - well, most people.

I myself prefers “not trans” or “variably gendered” or “pantywaist” or ” trans ally” or just “tomboy” but I’ve long ago given up on having anyone respect my self-chosen identities, to be honest, having been told I am trans, that I’m not masculine enough to “count” when it comes to female masculinity, etc.

(Now Autumn Sandeen has had her say, too.)

Yes, it’s a depressing thought, but I’ve seen so many of them in the trans community over time that I thought I should share these two articles I found on the topic.

One of called “What Every Married Woman Should Know About Money,” by Carol Mithers and has a bulleted list of 7 items:

1. Carry your own plastic.

2. Read the fine print.

3. Define what’s yours, mine, and ours.

4. Don’t give up bill-paying duties.

5. Get to know your financial advisers.

6. Make plans for the future.

7. Keep your professional hat in the ring.

The other is “What To Do When You Can’t Afford a Divorce” also by Carol Mithers and has this useful bit of advice about credit:

Credit is a different story. “Shred joint cards and get a new one in your own name,” recommends Lisa Decker, an Atlanta-area-based financial analyst specializing in divorce. “It can be hard for a woman to get credit after a divorce, especially if she hasn’t been working. If you have a balance you can’t pay off on existing credit cards, freeze the account so that neither partner can run up the debt further. Also put freezes on home equity so that neither of you can take out a second mortgage or line of credit.”

Not cheery, but still important reading.

In this ESPN article about Hedo Turkoglu - the “Michael Jordan of Turkey” - Mert Uyar explains the player’s early years in the section captioned “Hidayet Turkoglu” and happens to mention that he had a female coach. It’s the kind of thing that still stands out - not just that she’s female, but that she was a female basketball coach in Turkey. Your average reader might have a question about that.

But what’s interesting is that they don’t mention that the coach transitioned until they’re talking about how the player himself responded to her transition - that is, when they mention it only as evidence of his commitment to his own playing and the game, because he didn’t let it get in the way the way others did. it’s in the second to last paragraph of the article, to boot.

A good example, in my opinion, of when & where mentioning a transition is relevant, or isn’t.

From TLDEF:

We’re sad to bring you the news of another brutal attack on a transgender woman, this one coming during the height of LGBT Pride month. On June 19, 2009, at approximately 2:30 am, Leslie Mora was walking home from a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens when she was accosted by two men who brutally beat her with a belt. They stopped only when a passing motorist threatened to call the police.

Throughout the attack, Leslie’s assailants called her a “faggot” in Spanish. The attack left Leslie with multiple injuries, including bruises all over her body, and stitches in her scalp. Police called to the scene found Leslie nearly naked and bleeding on the sidewalk. They also recovered a belt buckle from the assailants that was covered in blood.

We want you to know that we’re working with Leslie to ensure that the perpetrators of this attack are brought to justice.

The full story, along with other resources, photos of Leslie Mora, at TLDEF’s site.

CNN did a condescending story about the turtles being saved in Tallahassee a little while back; the newscaster (Abbie Boudreau, I think) who delivered the story was obnoxious, unsympathetic, & completely failed to present the benefits of the project in anything resembling objectivity. Yes, she pissed me off.

But today The Washington Post did a much better job covering the story & the project.

The one question no one has asked: why did we need the road to be right there? Couldn’t we have gone around the lake altogether? Or over it? We are such arrogant bastards, assuming that what we need is the most important thing. Turtles do not interfere in our lives, but our lives end turtles’ lives on a regular basis. I saw a turtle that had been run over on a lake road near Appleton last week, and honestly there is nothing sadder: it’s not like the turtle’s got a fighting change, being the slow, lovely critters they are.

Does anyone else ever look at all the cars on the 8-lane highways we have these days and just wonder, where the hell do we think we’re going? Because we don’t seem to be getting anywhere much. One stretch of road is much like the next; one town is much the same as the next. I feel a little better knowing I use mass transit here in NYC and walk to work in Appleton, but how do you animal lovers otherwise justify driving around in your cars knowing that what you’re doing contributes to x number of violent animal deaths a year? Maybe I’m getting old, but I just can’t handle it.

You can assuage your guilt by donating to the Lake Jackson Ecopassage Project. This guy, Matt Aresco, has his priorities in order.

(spoiler alert for tonight’s episode)

More…

Roger Cohen followed up his column mentioning the women of Iran with a column about them entirely:

A friend told me he no longer recognizes his wife. She’d been of the reluctantly acquiescent school. Now, “She’s a revolutionary.” I followed as she led us up onto the roof. The “death to the dictator” that surged from her into the night was of rare ferocity.

Very much worth reading - go check it out.

Emma Goldman has always been one of my heroes, and that’s despite the fact that she never quite said that famous quote attributed to her about dancing & revolution. Or rather, she didn’t say the t-shirt version. What she said was:

“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.”

Which doesn’t fit on a t-shirt as readily as “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” (If anyone can make a t-shirt out of what she actually said, I want one!)

It’s from her memoir Living My Life, Pt. 1, page 56. Definitely a book worth reading, and you can read it online, for free, at the Anarchist Archives.

She was, as many know, a pro-choice, family planning advocate (for which she was arrested several times) but what a lot of people don’t know is that she disagreed with the majority of leftist contemporaries in her outspoken support for LGBT people way back when.  (She was also a free love advocate, which we might call poly these days.)

In the next two days, we’ll be driving back to Brooklyn, so I may not post here much.

(I got myself in trouble a long time ago for writing a short story about a lesbian teenager who went to her first support meeting at The Gay Center & who found her voice silenced by the voices of the young men around her. I called it “Stonwalled” and my gay but closeted writing professor was not happy with me about it.)

(h/t to Lena Dahlstrom)

& Then there is the issue of whether Michael Jackson was trans or not. I don’t think it’s anything we can know, but it wouldn’t have surprised me, or Betty, if he had announced a transition at some point.

It’s a lot of death in a week: first Ed McMahon, who we knew was ailing; then Farrah Fawcett, who was fighting her illness with bravery and in the spotlight, and then Michael Jackson - who was always ailing, invisibly.

Maybe it’s unexpected that I should admit I liked Farrah Fawcett, pinup as she as for the dumb blonde, but I was a tomboy in the 70s, and Charlie’s Angels were fantastic. They really were, in those crazy velour shorts and flippy hair. But I had the trading cards, and I remained a fan even through the Cheryl Tiegs season(s?). I became a fan of Fawcett’s when I saw her in Extremities and in Between Two Women - both of them, believe it or not, cementing what I would articulate as my first feminist awareness.

But Michael Jackson’s death is unreal, much like his life was. Keith Olbermann used the word “human” a lot tonight in talking about Jackson’s death, which is something we all need to be reminded of. He was a person, a broken, fucked-up soul, maybe wrong and bad in criminal ways, maybe just broken and sad. We don’t really know, and won’t really know, I don’t think.

As someone who loves to dance, though, there is no denying his talent: Off the Wall is a perfect gem of pop music, and it dances from track to track. I have it on vinyl from way back when - the secret perfect dance music of a punk rock child. I was a little surprised tonight to remember exactly how many “world premieres” of his videos I saw - “Thriller” I remember, as many Gen Xers do, but also “Bad” and even “Remember the Time,” which is a hokey but perfect little romantic song. It’s impossible to deny a man’s talent who was - despite your best efforts - a major soundtrack of your life. His music had something so perfectly immediate about it; I remember where I watched all of those world premieres, and I remember the first time I saw, and held, a copy of Off the Wall, and the party I was at the first time I heard the tracks on Thriller.

It’s hard to explain to younger people than me that MTV never ever showed videos by black artists before MJ (and that hip hop had its own special show in the late 80s, because hip hop was just too *whatever* to mix with the rest of what they played). & You can’t hate a man who obviously took notes on every move James Brown ever made & every sound he could make.

So goodbye to Ed, to Farrah, and to Michael. As the duo Yazoo once put it, a little early, Goodbye Seventies, too.

They certainly don’t get enough credit, in general, but here are MiApogeo.com’s “7 GLBT Bloggers to Watch” - including Charlie Vázquez (who I read with for the Queer + Catholic readings last year).

How can you not read someone who calls herself a Post Pomo Nuyorican Homo?

(via Audacia Ray)

It’s the 1st Korean film about the FTM experience, & it’s called 3xFTM. Here for more details.

(h/t to Matty)

ENDA is being introduced tomorrow in the House! Our next step is to call our Representatives and ask them to cosponsor of ENDA.  Below is a script to use. It is essential that we flood their lines to let them know how many of their constituents support ENDA! Once you’ve called, let United ENDA know what the staffer said by emailing laura.hart@unitedenda.org. Then ask all of your friends and family to call their Representative too.

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them:

I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I would like him/her to become a cosponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. ENDA would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace. Can you tell me whether or not Representative _______  has cosponsored  the bill?

Just go ahead & do it. Find your House Rep at www.house.gov. (On the upper left side, put in your zip.)

“English Only” advocates at their own conference standing under a banner where the word “conference” is spelled wrong.

Maybe that explains why they’re so adamant: they need to master their first language, first.

(via Think Progress and The Atlantic, & thanks to Betty)