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To Tom Gabel

Here’s an interesting article by CL Minou to Against Me!’s Tom Gabel about what (not) to expect out of transition. I mention it because she recommended by books – thank you, Ms. Minou! – but this part rung true, too:

People will surprise you, for good and for ill. Some you assumed would be accepting will disappoint you. And some of the people you would never think able to accept you will prove themselves greater allies than you could have ever hoped for. An uncle of mine who worked for years in the gay community is estranged from me now, while an aunt of mine who lives in the heart of the American Bible Belt showed me more love and acceptance than any of my other relatives. These things will work themselves out, but not in patterns you can easily predict. Your music is cool and your fans will be there – the ones you really want in any case.

You can check out Against Me! in this clip where they share the stage with none other than Joan Jett for a live cover of The Replacements’ “Androgynous” – kind of like queercorps comes home.

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Childfree, Not Childless

In this article by a 55 year old woman about being childfree, this was the part that landed most squarely with me.

At one of many going-away parties, the wife of one of my colleagues in the philosophy department, after asking if I had children or planned to, blurted out a version of what my mother had said years before, telling me that having children was essential because it opened one up to a world of opportunities one would otherwise not have. What stands out in my mind from this conversation was this woman’s anger. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why my decision not to have kids made her so angry, why she insisted so stridently that I was wrong not to want them. I wasn’t angry with her for wanting and having them, after all. What I learned, from this and other conversations on the subject with women who are parents, is that it is usually quite difficult to explain your decision not to have children to those who have chosen to do so without offending them in some unspoken but very deep and palpable way. I believe this is partly because many of them are secretly envious of the child-free and also—perhaps more importantly—see the child-free person as a repudiation of their own life choice and, worse, as a sign of “non-envy.” Imitation is the highest form of flattery and the surest sign of envy. My child-free state was like a mirror that did not reflect their image. I gradually learned to provide nonanswers to questions pertaining to children and parenthood. (It is interesting to note, from my own experience, that men rarely if ever asked me about children and my lack of them.)

Because, well, YES. I was recently told by someone that I probably didn’t understand “their world” and I bit my tongue to keep from saying “oh yes I do – that’s why I didn’t choose it.”

I’ve often taught that one of the things that happens in trans communities – as well as in others, no doubt – that many people want you to do what they did in order to validate their own choices. There is tremendous pressure about a lot of life decisions, but for me, the feminist option is to respect women who decide to have children, no matter what they give up to do so. Me? I couldn’t. Didn’t want to. Needed to write, adventure, love broadly. I find so much maternal expression in so many other things I do; I am both loyal and protective, demanding and comforting. That is, I don’t think you need to be a mother in order to be one, so to speak. Continue reading “Childfree, Not Childless”

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Two Tune Tuesday: Gotye


But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
I don’t even need your love,
but you treat me like a stranger And that feels so rough

I can’t stop listening to it.

(it’s pronounced something like “Got E.A.”)

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First Father’s Day Without

This is for him.

He must have been shopping for my mother’s Christmas present, except that I don’t remember that it was Christmas. But that is the only thing that might explain why my father was shopping with me only, and why it was so crowded at TSS that night. There was a rush of human beings around us, and I was the kind of small that I saw humanity as an army of knees and legs and belts and hands. I was double stepping to keep up with him. I clung to his hand like a prehensile kite, light as nothing and skipping and running because he was in a hurry, which meant he wasn’t as happy as he could be. When he was happy, he moved at a leisurely pace, and when he was really happy, he didn’t move much at all.

In the whoosh of people, I lost his hand for a second and then reattached myself like a homo sapien grasping instinctually. But I picked the wrong hand, or the hand of the wrong man, a man who wasn’t my father. I didn’t notice. I just kept up my skipping and walking, until I saw my father approaching me. Only then did I wonder whose hand I was holding, and now, why he held my hand for so long. Maybe he saw my father looking for me before I did and brought me to him. I don’t know. But I was transferred from the strange man’s hand to his. It took all of my hand to grasp only two of his fingers.

I have no idea if we bought anything at all that night, and I still don’t think it was Christmas, but I can’t think of any other reason we would have been shopping, just the two of us, in a department store past dusk.

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Trans + Dads

Here are two stories concerning fathers and transness: one, the story of a woman who is only meeting her dad at age 30 after her mother’s death – and after her father abandoned the family when she was still an infant (declared male at birth).

The other is a big mess, to be honest: the story of a woman whose father had a lot of issues, like being an abusive asshole, on top of the trans stuff. For the record, these things don’t have anything to do with each other. While I certainly sympathize at her loss and confusion, the story gets mired in her father’s anger and illegal activities. But I don’t think it’s hard to imagine, either, why a 6’7″ blue collar guy struggling with the need to transition might be a ball of rage. The writing is pretty horrendous as well, but there you go.

More from me later about my own father, who took the trans in our lives with grace and humor. This is my family’s first father’s day without him, and thanks to all of you who remembered that & send me a short note letting me know you were thinking of me.

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Get Off the Bus: Anton Valukas

I had the pleasure of attending Lawrence’s 2012 Commencement, where I saw so many of the very best of my former students graduate. But the commencement address by Lawrence ’65 alum Anton Valukas really inspired me, both personally and professionally:

It is so, so rare to hear anyone talk about economic justice and the class system in America. And while I love the “Paint the Bus” idea, I was far more struck with what it would take to “Get Off the Bus” – the story he tells about a minister who had to do so as a Freedom Rider really made me wonder if I could do it. I don’t know that I could. But I do know, from other things I’ve done, what it means to feel that kind of free. They are terrifying and profound moments, but they are some of the only times in my life that I feel an intense connection to life, to being present, to the amazing dignity of what it can mean to be a human being.

Thank you, Mr. Valukas. It’s not often an activist gets this kind of adrenaline shot of re-affirmation.

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21 Years Later, Aung San Suu Kyi Receives Her Nobel Peace Prize

Good news, at long last.

“To be forgotten,” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi added, “is to die a little.” In a quiet, throaty voice on Saturday she asked the world not to forget other prisoners of conscience, both in Myanmar and around the world, other refugees, others in need, who may be suffering twice over, she said, from oppression and from the larger world’s “compassion fatigue.”

She wears flowers in her hair because she remembers her father threading flowers into her hair before he was assassinated, when she was 2. She’s now 67.