No More Gay/Trans Panic Defense?

I hope so. It’s a ridiculous idea. The American Bar Association has voted on it, with these stipulations:

The resolution passed by the ABA House of Delegates says that legislation should:

(a)    [Require] courts in any criminal trial or proceeding, upon the request of a party, to instruct the jury not to let bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion influence its decision about the victims, witnesses, or defendants based upon sexual orientation or gender identity; and

(b)   [Specify] that neither a non-violent sexual advance, nor the discovery of a person’s sex or gender identity, constitutes legally adequate provocation to mitigate the crime of murder to manslaughter, or to mitigate the severity of any non-capital crime.

Mirror Images

My friend Miriam Hall recently wrote about her experience seeing herself in a mirror when she wasn’t expecting to. She didn’t like what she saw:

The mirror showed me my body—stout, short and plump. But what the mirror really showed me is something far deeper. It showed me how much I try and pretend that I don’t look like I do. The mirror showed me I am not who I think I am.

The whole article she’s written for Elephant – a guide to mindful life, as it calls itself – is, to my mind, more about seeing than feeling, seeing what is and not with a critical eye, just with a seeing one.

It made me think even more about my boobs post the other day and the ways we contextualize our own naked selves in ways that make us not right, less attractive, less whole.

There is a problem here, but it’s greater than the commodification of women’s bodies, or bodies in general. It’s more than seeing skinniness as health (when it often isn’t, at all, & is so often the opposite). It’s more than equating fatness to unhealthiness.

It’s more about the way we want to see bodies as objects, as things outside ourselves, not at the vessels we carry our souls in. I saw a few naked photos of myself, taken recently, and like Miriam, actually saw something I was pretending wasn’t there – all of the sadness of the past few years, the losses you all know about, & some you don’t, reflected in my posture and my body – in my everything, in my gestalt, for lack of a better word. And like a woman who might see her post pregnancy belly and post nursing breasts as what they are – vastly perfect because of what they’ve been and done and not because of how they look – I saw a body that had eaten so much emotion I couldn’t otherwise express.

So look at yourself, at your body. Not in the mirror, to see what needs fixing. Just glance at yourself in a mirror, in a shop window’s reflection, to see what’s there that you’re pretending isn’t. We only ever distract ourselves with weight loss and gain, muscle tone and beauty. There is so much more a body is and says than the stupidly limited vocabulary we choose for it.

 

Boobs.

The other day I was poking around the internet for the answer to a particular question: whether or not wearing a bra at night keeps boobs safe from the forces of gravity. I started doing that very thing a few years ago with my older bras that are a little stretched out & so pretty comfy to sleep in.

The answer: the jury is out. There are very strong opinions on both sides. Some say bras in general are bad for boobs & actually cause them to sag. Others that bras are vital. Breastfeeding has been viewed as a culprit. It’s not. It’s actually the thickening and then thinning of milk ducts that causes women who have been pregnant and/or nursed to have less “bouncy” breasts. Weight loss and gain isn’t good for them either, if you needed yet another reason not to yo-yo diet.

So it’s pretty much surgery if you want higher boobs post pregnancy or weight loss/gain or just because you do. Of course you can and should work out your pecs, stand up straight, get fitted for the right bra (if you don’t believe the pervy French researcher) and – get this – squeeze your own breasts to potentially prevent both sagging and breast cancer.

But in the meantime, look at these breasts of regular people. I have to say that I looked at these photos more than once while I kept thinking about the breasts I am used to seeing – say the absurdly perfect rack of the brunette in the Robin Thicke video, for instance – and wondered about how often ANY of us see regular breasts.

Nudists do. Kinky folks in play spaces. Doctors. But most of us don’t really see the breasts of regular women on a day to day basis ,& that fact blew me away. Theoretically, it’s entirely possible for young women never to see anything but (1) their own breasts and (2) “famous” breasts (of movie stars, porn stars, etc.) That’s kinda fucked up.

Moreso, read what the women themselves say about their breasts: one woman with a really lovely pair wants them to face forward more. Another wishes she didn’t have stretch marks. Women with small breasts want bigger ones; women with larger breasts worry about sag. Asymmetry seems pretty routine. I kind of love that this one young woman lists everything that is “wrong” with them but still loves her own:

“I’m eighteen and have never been pregnant, but I come fully equipped with real flesh-and-blood breasts – my right is larger than my left, I have one inverted nipple, visible veins, stretchmarks from rapid adolescent development, even light downy fuzz covering the entire breasts. Whatever. I love them. They don’t belong to men, they don’t belong to society: they belong to me.” (bold added by me)

So the next time you think yours are imperfect, go look at some real women’s breasts – these are ones of women who have been pregnant – and remind yourself once again that we are, in fact, an uptight prudish culture – which means we don’t see other people naked casually – and that commodifies women’s bodies in ways that suck – which means we only see breasts that are selling products or entertainment.

How To?

I didn’t even know about this how-to website, much less that someone might use it so creatively & list the ways to treat a trans person of your (implied: recent) acquaintance.

  1. respect their gender identity
  2. watch your past tense
  3. use language appropriate to the person’s gender
  4. don’t be afraid to ask questions
  5. respect the trans person’s need for privacy
  6. don’t assume you know what the person’s experience is
  7. begin to recognize the difference between gender identity and sexuality

Do go read the full descriptions as they do have plenty of caveats. To me this is pretty incomplete, to be honest, and yet also beside the point. I mean, don’t you try to respect any/everyone’s gender identity and use gender appropriate language?

To me, the really important one is #5, which I might rephrase as: if you know someone is trans, you should not be telling other people the person is trans. You can, often, ask the trans person what their own policy is with who knows and who won’t. Some only tell a handful of very close friends & family; others not even those people, and still others will tell anyone who asks & don’t mind having other people tell people they’re trans either.

& Always default to my rule #1: once you know 1 trans person, you know 1 trans person. & That is all you know. You don’t know anything about “trans people” as a group as a result of having one friend/co-worker/cousin.

Really, it’s just as impossible to say one true thing about trans people as it is to say one true thing about all women.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to Calpernia Addam’s brilliantly wiseass Bad Questions to Ask a Transsexual. AN ES THESIA is my favorite part. Buzzfeed has a clever, gif-heavy list of questions trans people are tired of hearing.

Two Tune Tuesday: Those Darlins

I love them.

I first heard of them and saw this this weekend at Appleton’s music fest Mile of Music. The whole thing was amazing, with 10k people in attendance (!), and the event managed to cause a Wisconsin bar to run out of booze — after they placed a special order on Saturday and ran out of all *that* booze by Sunday.

But this band – oh, this band, I just fell in love with.

“I may have girly parts / but I have a boy’s heart…” is probably the standout lyric, but the one that first killed me was the “I just wanna play in the mud with you / you just wanna stick it in.” How great is that?

I honestly didn’t know what to make of them when they first came onstage, but I already knew I was going to go home & look them up. They started with a track from their newest, Blur the Line, called “Oh God”. The room went still and we all listened to every lyric, I think, rapt. Amazing stage presence, and they rocked. It surprised the hell out of me that they won over that crowd, and the lead singer told me later it surprised her, too. I’m hoping I’ll get to interview her/them at a later date. Check out “Optimist” – “I used to be an optimist / but it got too dangerous” – for the flip side of the sound of “Oh God”.

This is them playing the more straight-up country “Wild One” at Brooklyn’s (now defunct) Southpaw back in 2008. I wish I’d been there. They tour all over this fall. I will most definitely see them in Madison.

(This post is dedicate to Darya, who I predict is going to love them at least as much as I do.)

CA Trans Students: Good News

Well, this is indeed good news:

Today, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the historic School Success and Opportunity Act into law, ensuring transgender youth have the opportunity to fully participate and succeed in schools across the state. Assembly Bill 1266—which goes into effect on January 1, 2014—was authored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and passed the California State Senate and Assembly earlier this summer. The law is the first of its kind in the country, and requires that California public schools respect students’ gender identity and makes sure that students can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity. . . 

and

California law already prohibits discrimination in education, but transgender students have been often discriminated against and unfairly excluded from physical education, athletic teams, and other school activities, and facilities. This exclusion negatively impacts students’ ability to succeed in school and graduate with their class. For example, physical education credits are required to graduate, but transgender students often do not have the support they need to fully participate in the courses.

It’s the first law of its kind, but it would be amazing to see this happen in a lot more states.

New Documentary: Americans in Bed

So this looks interesting:

. . . wide-ranging interviews with subjects who are filmed in the comfort of their own beds, asking probing questions about what people look for in a partner and how they know when they have found it. From a couple that has been together for 71 years to a pair of fresh-faced newlyweds, she encourages her subjects to open their hearts and minds as they share candid and touching insights into their relationships, underscoring the fact that no union is as simple as it seems on the surface.

Each couple gradually discloses intimate thoughts about the sometimes painfully private issues that affect every relationship, including passion, fidelity, family obligations, separation, conflict, negotiation and illness. As they talk about how they met and fell in love, some even surprise each other with feelings long held back, while others revisit old hurts as if they had happened yesterday.

Americans in Bed premieres Monday, August 12 (9:00 ET) on HBO. There’s a trailer here.

RIP Dwayne Jones

(I don’t know what his femme name was, or if he even had one, or even if he used female pronouns. His friend Khloe, in this article, refers to Jones as “him” so I’m going with that.)

This is another heartbreaking account of homophobia and transphobia, and another reminder to boycott Jamaica until they get their act together.

Dwayne was the center of attraction shortly after arriving in a taxi at 2 a.m. with his two 23-year-old housemates, Khloe and Keke. Dwayne’s expert dance moves, long legs and high cheekbones quickly made him the one that the guys were trying to get next to.

. . . Minutes later, according to Khloe and Keke, the girl’s male friends gathered around Dwayne in the dimly-lit street asking: “Are you a woman or a man?” One man waved a lighter’s flame near Dwayne’s sneakers, asking whether a girl could have such big feet.

Then, his friends said, another man grabbed a lantern from an outdoor bar and walked over to Dwayne, shining the bright light over him from head to toe. “It’s a man,” he concluded, while the others hissed “batty boy” and other anti-gay epithets.

Khloe says she tried to steer him away from the crowd, whispering in Dwayne’s ear: “Walk with me, walk with me.” But Dwayne pulled away, loudly insisting to partygoers that he was a girl. When someone behind him snapped his bra strap, the teen panicked and raced down the street.

But he couldn’t run fast enough to escape the mob.

Here’s the original report of the murder.

& To hell with anyone who isn’t speaking up about what they saw and who they saw. The same to Jones’ family who wouldn’t even claim the child’s body.

 

Trans*

In case you’re wondering, here’s a brief explanation of why some people are adding a * to the end of trans.

When the asterisk is put on the end of trans*, it expands the boundaries of the category to be radically inclusive. It can be understood as the most inclusive umbrella term to describe various communities and individuals with nonconforming gender identities and/or expressions en masse. In addition to its use as an umbrella term, it is also used by some individuals as an identity to describe just themselves (e.g. “I identify as trans*”).

Effectively, this is the same concept as trans-, which has showed up from time to time.

Betty used to say that she was trans – and you could add whatever you wanted after.