Trans Canada

I’ve got someone who needs trans resources in Ontario, Canada. Please feel free to post them here, or email me with them & I will.

Thank you!

“Viagra Review Board”

There’s a jokey photo circulating that’s meant to be a humorous response to the (male) (Republican) attempt to make birth control illegal and/or not covered by health insurance. In it, a group of women, most of them white haired,  all wearing dour clothing, old fashioned hats. They have a sign that says “Viagra Review Board.”

And it keeps bugging me to see (feminist) friends posting this as if it’s funny. Why?

There is a long, long history of women being considered the morally responsible gender, for starters, which is based on the (false) assumption that women don’t like sex. There is also a long line of feminist thought – eugenicists, anti-porn activists, & the like – who have been extremely sex negative, accusing men’s sexualities of either “ruining racial purity” (via miscegenation, because, as the thinking went, men will fuck anyone,while women innately know better & so only have sex with members of their own, appropriate race).

Similarly, women “of a certain age” and older are as well, historically, either considered the “third gender” post menopause – and that’s courtesy Simone de Beauvoir, of all people – or otherwise considered sexless, frumpy, or just unattractive. A friend of mine commented to me recently that men only seem to get more attractive as they get older, while women only decline, and as she’s a peer — well, I wanted to smack her.

So I give you Helen Mirren, who is 67 this year.

There is nothing but our own vision, and our own cultural bullshit, that allows even smart, feminist women to see men as aging well & women not aging well.

But in either case – women as sex negative and older women especially as prudish or sexless – this “jokey” response confirms and reifies (there, I said it) a bunch of ideas about women WHICH ARE THE EXACT SAME IDEAS that cause male politicians to pass laws that shame women who have sexualities – and who insist on being in control of them – in the first place, that women aren’t actually supposed to like sex, that women are only attractive when they’re young, and that any woman who is in control of her body must be a slut.

So let’s give that joke up, shall we? I mean, the Boomers are now our “women of a certain age” after all, & they were the first generation truly liberated by the pill and who were actively practicing “free love”.

That is, my feminist “Viagra review board” would be handing that stuff out to anyone who wants to continue to have sex despite physical limitations, just as they would also freely give out birth control and other safe sex tools to anyone who wanted them.

Women like sex, dammit.

Traveling While Trans

Cool new information about Traveling While Trans when it comes to the TSA and security. Amongst other things:

Private Screening: Screening can be conducted in a private screening area with a witness or companion of the traveler’s choosing. A traveler may request private screening or to speak with a supervisor at any time during the screening process.

Travel Document Checker: The traveler will show their government-issued identification and boarding pass to an officer to ensure the identification and boarding pass are authentic and match. Transgender travelers are encouraged to book their reservations such that they match the gender and name data indicated on the government-issued ID.

I am quite pleased to see the use of the term “prosthetic” – by which they mean, if you weren’t sure, things like breast forms and packers. Of course NCTE has more information, and follow-up on the info TSA has provided.

Sad News Out of Mexico

A trans LGBTQ activist named Agnes Torres Sulca was found dead as her friends and family feared she would be.

It’s hard to read about this kind of violence and not think there but for the grace of god.

Condolences to her friends and family, but as well to all the people who benefited from her work.