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helenboydhelen boyd is the author of My Husband Betty (Thunder's Mouth, 2004) and She's Not the Man I Married (Seal Press, 2007).

Komen News: Not So Fast

Posted by helenboyd – February 3, 2012

Yay, everyone’s happy Komen changed their decision. But I am a cynical, suspicious type, and I read their statement, which says:

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”

That last bit, the “while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions” just left a back door, wide, wide open. By which I mean, Komen just figured out a way to say, the next time they don’t fund Planned Parenthood, that their FUNDERS choose not to. And if they tend toward finding funders that are more conservative – which this current Director of Komen seems likely to do, Komen will have found an official way not to fund Planned Parenthood and to Pass the buck.

“I would never do anything like that.”

Posted by helenboyd – February 3, 2012

I made it to page 9 of this New Yorker article about Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi and stopped reading. It was so sad, so difficult to read. I did finish it later, and it’s still so fucking sad.

What a waste.

Seven + D.C.

Posted by helenboyd – February 2, 2012

Washington state’s Senate just passed a bill to make same sex marriage legal. It’s expected to pass all the way through to the Governor’s office, who is expected to sign it.

Washington will mean that seven states and D.C. have made it legal, folks. (Only 16 states had full suffrage for women before the Federal Government gave women the right to vote, and I don’t think there will be even that many before same sex marriage becomes legalized on the national level.)

Scott Walker Better Drive Her to the Polls Himself

Posted by helenboyd – February 2, 2012

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this actually made me cry. Voter suppression is disenfranchisement, and disenfranchisement is criminal.

This is not the America anyone should stand for.

Sliding Scales

Posted by helenboyd – February 1, 2012

 

Two Tune Tuesday: Passer Guitaruus Est

Posted by helenboyd – January 31, 2012

Josh Williams was performing the song “Mordecai” at a Bluegrass festival this past May 5th when he had a little visitor. Check it, around 1:30, and watch to the end.

Gorgeous.

Humans of New York

Posted by helenboyd – January 30, 2012

One of my favorite blogs – especially now that I live in Wisconsin – is Humans of New York, which is a project that’s a little bit like a photographic census. Not only does it consist of great photos of people in New York, but there’s an interactive map for where they were taken, too.

This is one of my favorites. It’s called “bike.”

HUD: Equal Access to Housing Rule Trans-Inclusive

Posted by helenboyd – January 29, 2012

Wow. Housing non-discrimination for trans people? Really? What amazing news. Via NCTE:

“I am proud to announce a new Equal Access to Housing Rule that says clearly and unequivocally that LGBT individuals and couples have the right to live where they choose [...] If you are denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, actual or perceived, you’re discriminating, you’re breaking the law, and you will be held accountable. That’s what equal access means, and that’s what this rule is going to do.”

The new rule makes several urgently needed changes to current federal housing and housing-related programs including: prohibiting owners and operators of federally-funded or federally-insured housing, as well as lenders offering federally-insured mortgages from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation;and clarifying the definition of “family” to ensure that LGBT families are not excluded from HUD programs.

Read the whole article. Honestly, when i first started doing advocacy around trans issues, I didn’t expect to see these kinds of rules put in place by 2012.

How to Say ‘Panties’

Posted by helenboyd – January 28, 2012

(There are some other really great ones, like coccyx, synechdoche, and carpe diem.)

RIP Juan Epstein

Posted by helenboyd – January 27, 2012

I don’t know if anyone else has said it, but I thought Juan Epstein was hot. Either way, the actor Robert Hegyes, who played him, died at the age of 60. So here’s a clip of Kotter’s first day back at Buchanan High.

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

Dear Mr. Kotter,
Epstein was not able to turn in his history assignment on account of he’s dead.
Sincerely,
Epstein’s mother

Which is nearly horrible yet somehow perfect.

Income Calculator

Posted by helenboyd – January 26, 2012

Find out how long it takes Mitt Romney to make your salary. Really.

Maddow Tumblr

Posted by helenboyd – January 26, 2012

Oh, yes.

Sasha’s Sex

Posted by helenboyd – January 25, 2012

The couple who chose to keep their child’s sex a secret so that s/he might be raised free of gendered expectations and stereotypes, have now revealed their child Sasha was declared male at birth.

The reason, of course, is that Sasha is starting school.


Miss Laxton, a web designer from Sawston, Cambridgeshire, admitted that keeping her child’s gender under wraps for so long had not been easy. At her mother and baby group, she said she was regarded as ‘that loony woman who doesn’t know whether her baby is a boy or a girl’. ‘I could never persuade anyone in the group to come round for coffee,’ she said. ‘They just thought I was mental.’

At school, Sasha sometimes wears a ruched-sleeved and scalloped-collared shirt from the girl’s uniform list. But he has yet to encounter any teasing or bullying. ‘Nobody’s ever mentioned it and I would hope that if they actually said something to Sasha, he’d be confident enough to make a good response,’ his mother said.

I think they sound entirely sane and reasonable, and I applaud their efforts to raise their child without the restrictions gender places on all of us.

Two Tune Tuesday: Einsturzende Neubauten

Posted by helenboyd – January 24, 2012

Rachel calls it my clink-bang-whizz-brr music. (Tom Waits, amongst others, is in the same category.)


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It still makes me happy, and they were amazingly cool live. They were the only band I ever played that my mother asked me to turn off, and I vaguely remember her calling it something like “Nazi death music.” I love this description at Trouser Press:

Part deadly earnest post-musical composers, part boys- with-toys goofballs whipping up a ruckus for the pure joy of making noise, Berlin’s Einstürzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings) have built a distinctive, challenging and extremely imaginative sonic career out of implements generally intended for other utilitarian purposes: power drills, humming power lines, water towers, air-conditioning ducts, plate steel, glass, boulders and various large metal objects beaten with sledgehammers, pipes, wrenches and axes. Even traditional tools receive similarly brutal mistreatment — Blixa Bargeld’s pained vocals and guitar are often blurred to the point of abstraction. While Einstürzende Neubauten occasionally veers into song form with intriguing, even attractive, results, the group’s output more typically resembles a bunch of highly amplified (or, in some cases, barely audible) industrial sound-effects records being played at each other with little concern for anything but the raising of blood pressure and artistic hackles. Good shit.

Ah, Blixa: check out the creepiest version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” ever recorded. (He was one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds too, by the way.)

Ringtone.

Posted by helenboyd – January 23, 2012

or there’s always this option.

As someone who goes to see a great deal of music these days – go figure, but it turns out I love chamber music – I tend to leave my phone somewhere in the entrance / antechamber to the actual performance hall. It would make sense if people could check their phones before walking into an event.

Roe v. Wade…

Posted by helenboyd – January 22, 2012

… is 39 years old today, & still, thankfully, the law of the land. It is not, of course, guaranteed, and the pro life forces are quite aware that the next presidential choice of a Supreme Court justice is incredibly important, and they’re feeling pretty cocky after the 2010 elections.

So for those of you who are “fiscal conservatives” – I put that in quotes because I don’t think you can separate fiscal issues from social ones, since how we make and spend money, is, ultimately, a moral issue – who are thinking of voting against Obama, but who are feminists, think twice.

Being Pro Choice is not being Pro Abortion. I have yet to meet anyone – feminist or not – who is pro abortion. What we are, rather, is feminist, and think a woman’s life – which is actual, apparent, and breathing – should have at least some influence on the potential life – which is debatable, uncertain, and not breathing – she is carrying.

100 Trans Blogs

Posted by helenboyd – January 20, 2012

Sugar and Slugs put together a list of 100 trans-related blogs; not all of them are primarily dedicated to trans issues, but still, this is pretty amazing.

I think there were three when I started, & I’m not sure any of those are still online/active.

Unironically?

Posted by helenboyd – January 19, 2012

I expect some of our Appleton peeps will read this & we will make a lot more sense. Maybe. Anyway, it’s great.

Bagel.

Just to Say

Posted by helenboyd – January 18, 2012

It’s been seven months since he left us, & we both still miss him everyday.Here he is with his star pendant. Because, you know, he was one.

Her First Period

Posted by helenboyd – January 17, 2012