I’ll be interviewed tonight on the Queery show, WORT-FM out of Madison. Listen live!
Category: comings & goings
Two Tune Tuesday: With Love from Daughter #3
Posted by – August 9, 2011
My father was a gentle man who lived a life of decency and took pleasure in simple things – music, food, family, & the Brooklyn Dodgers. He passed away suddenly yesterday morning at 83 years old after a tricky aorta surgery. He ate like he was 25, danced like he never might again, and quietly, simply, taught me everything I know about social justice.
Godspeed, Dad.
Life in Wisconsin, Pt. 4?
Posted by – August 4, 2011
I’m not sure how many of these updates I’ve done, but here’s another!
This summer I’ve been spending most of my time reading, thinking, bicycling, and learning how to drive and cook. Weird, all of it, besides the reading & thinking parts.
There are times I find myself on a little path that’s actually called the Apple Creek Trail looking at the huge sky and the tiny finches and think, how the hell did this happen? Not in a bad way. It’s just a surprise, still, on a regular basis, and the more bucolic the scene, the more surprising.
I’ve been biking every day for a month now, & recently I’m up to at least 20 miles a day. I usually do that in two stints – an hour in the early afternoon & another 40 minutes around dusk – but it varies. I don’t really go anywhere in particular, but sometimes I stop at a picnic bench and read and/or write and/or smoke (yes, really!) for a while.
I’ve lost a little over 30 lbs. since I was first here in Winter 2008. Intentionally, and somewhat slowly.
Another day I’ll write more about the experience of teaching, of seeing the first students I knew as sophomores graduate, but for now, birds and clouds and fresh mushrooms from the weekly farmer’s market.
Bastille Day, 10 Years Later
Posted by – July 14, 2011
It’s Bastille Day, the day of revenge against the worst excesses of bullies.
It’s also the day which started a long scourge of violence by the bullied; it’s a day that started a bloodletting of revenge, paranoia, & cruelty.
Still, it’s the day that the Marquis de Sade was freed – as one of only 7 prisoners – from the Bastille. (He was in prison for his debts, not his perversity.)
It also happens to be our 10th wedding anniversary. We’ll celebrate properly later this year, instead — for many reasons, none of them bad. This was our wedding cake the way it looked at the end of the night:
& Yes, in fact that is a guillotine on top of it, & yes there is a Barbie head, & a Ken head, both done up in perruques, & yes, there is blood, too. We’re goth like that. We have incredibly amazing memories of that day and that night of dancing and drinking and singing and performing and poetry reciting. There are so many of you whom we wish we had known at the time who would have loved it. We want to thank all of you who were there, especially, for your love & support that day as well over the years for our union, our love, & our marriage.
I am so glad that 10 years later, we would be able to marry in our current genders in our own home state and city of New York. That is about the coolest anniversary present this trans queer couple could have hoped for, to be honest.
Now go have some cake.
Green Bay Pride
Posted by – July 9, 2011
I’ll be tabling today for Fair Wisconsin at Green Bay’s Pride event, Pride Alive. You can get more info about the event on their website, and let people know you’re going/invite others via the FB page.
Author for Hire
Posted by – July 8, 2011
For the next two months, I’m a freelancer again! So if you’ve thought about hiring me to read or edit your manuscript, or consult on transition or relationship or sexuality issues, or write something for you, now is the time.
Feel free to contact me for information, or to bounce an idea to see if I’d be willing: helenboyd(at)myhusbandbetty(dot)com.
Happy Graduation!
Posted by – June 5, 2011
Today is Lawrence University’s Commencement, when several hundred seniors receive their degrees in tents set up on the main lawn of campus; faculty wear all their finery, and friends and family come to watch & celebrate. It’s a big day a crowning achievement, and for me, the first time I’m seeing a big group of students I’ve gotten to know over time graduate. I will no doubt get teary because I’m a sap like that. This is my 3rd in attendance.
The best news is that the one & only Russ Feingold is our commencement speaker, which is just too damn cool.
So congratulations, Lawrence seniors! Well done!
Keith Ablow Goes to Hell
Posted by – May 18, 2011
Dr. Keith Ablow recently wrote a piece about Chaz Bono that is hateful. I won’t link to it – fuck Fox News – but I did want to say something about it because Betty and I were on his show.
At the time, he was compassionate and even-tempered. I remember reading his articles about pedophiles and how sane & sensible he seemed about such a difficult topic — and which gave me the idea we would be treated even-handedly on his show. I was right. We were.
Apparently somewhere along the way, Ablow sold his soul to the devil. It’s a shame to see someone LCD* like this, but it won’t be the first or the last time I’ll see it. I don’t know what happens to people – they get just enough of a taste of celebrity that their humanity departs, maybe – but it’s always pathetic.
Ablow sold out, sold his soul. I think that’s 7th Circle, right?
He’s not a quack. He is an actual doctor with actual credentials. But what I want to know what he thinks “do no harm” means these days and how, or why, he has switched from understanding people to judging them and condemning them. It is not an easy world for trans people – not even for trans people like Chaz Bono, for all his privilege. I don’t understand how anyone could make a decision and use a public pulpit to preach condemnation; the kind of language he uses, the lack of respect he shows, directly contributes to why trans people’s lives are as hard as they are.
I’m not sure I can even explain the depth of the betrayal I’m experiencing. Ablow was one of the good guys, or at least one of the guys who looked good when everyone else sucked so much. He should be deeply ashamed of what he’s written, and owes Chaz Bono – and the rest of the trans community – an apology.
Don’t hold your breath.
Warm(ish) Welcome
Posted by – April 30, 2011
I read an article in Slate recently, by the author of Stiltsville
It was this section of her article that rang (sadly) true for me:
Midwesterners are wary of prying—they consider it impolite, even unfriendly—and they don’t readily reveal personal information. Which means they exist comfortably at a certain remove that can take years—and I mean years—to breach. When my family gets together in Florida, we share a meal, heatedly discuss current events, then retire to separate bedrooms to catch up on email. When my husband’s extended family gets together, it’s an all-day family-fest. They might not talk about much, but they truly enjoy just being together. To a coastal-hearted misanthrope like myself, it’s mind-blowing. But spending time not saying much of anything with family is one thing—doing it with acquaintances is another thing entirely.
I might find, say, having dinner with acquaintances, where the topics range from the weather to the menu, disappointing. Exhausting and depressing, even. But acquaintances are acquaintances, no matter where you live. The trouble here is the trouble everywhere: how to find close friends, how to really connect. And though I appreciate Midwestern civility (a departure from Miami, for example, where in an afternoon one might witness a fight at a traffic light, have one’s cart rammed at the store, then be persistently ignored by a waiter), I continue to wrestle with the barriers of it.
When you are both an introvert and a “coastie” (as we’re called), there’s real trouble. I generally know when I like people and feel that I can trust them, and in NYC, at least among my group of friends, sexual peccadilloes, money woes, medical diagnoses and trashy humor are conversation starters; I can’t recall ever talking much about the weather — although it may be that midwesterners talk more about the weather because there is so much more weather here (a recent day featured not just snow, sleet, rain, and hail, but thunder, lightning, and tornadoes).
That doesn’t mean there aren’t others like me; for starters, there are other transplants, other “coasties” who leap right in too. And there are most definitely midwesterners who are the NYC pilgrim sort, and who obviously understand, and even like, slightly brassier manners. In an odd way, as depressing as it was, this article was incredibly useful to me as well; I’ve felt like a bit of an outsider, but in the context she’s given me, I’m doing just fine.
But I hate to break it to her that Danskos are quite hip in NYC, especially since we all walk and stand so much more,which leads me to wonder if standing in subways close enough that we can smell each other breaks the ice much more easily than always being cocooned and enveloped in your own private car and your own private smells. I, for one, think we underestimate being both social and animals.
Community Activist Award!
Posted by – April 22, 2011
Fair Wisconsin, the large LGBTQA organization in the state, has decided I deserve an award as an activist; I am honestly humbled and ridiculously pleased.
ACTIVIST: Helen Boyd
Author of My Husband Betty and She’s Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband, Helen Boyd is a nationally recognized and trusted voice on issues concerning gender and has championed gender equality for years. She lives in Appleton with her partner Rachel Crowl and teaches gender studies at Lawrence University.
I’ve won as part of their Education Fund Leadership Awards, for which there is a reception on May 4th in Milwaukee. I hope you can join me and Rachel, FAIR and the other honorees that evening.
13 Years
Posted by – April 14, 2011
It’s 13 years to the day since our first date. Amazing to think about how much has gone down since then, to each of us individually, and to us as a couple, and considering all that in the context of all that has gone on in the world makes my brain hurt.
Still: happy anniversary, doll!
(We celebrate two anniversaries because (1) we do, and (2) because we have the same birthday, and didn’t want one less celebratory day in our lives. So there.)
My Secret Life
Posted by – April 11, 2011
Well, not really, but a student journalist interviewed me for a Lawrence University series called “The Secret Lives of Our Profs” series that runs in the school paper, The Lawrentian.
Safe Space Radio Interview Up
Posted by – March 25, 2011
The interview I did the other night is now up at Safe Space Radio’s website. It was a good one, and I think you can tell that we both enjoyed the conversation which is the best kind of interview. Honestly, we probably could have talked for another hour.
Interview: Safe Space Radio
Posted by – March 23, 2011
Tonight I’ll be interviewed on Safe Space Radio, out of Maine.
Definitely do check out some of the other interviews Dr. Anne has done on trans issues – the one on the trans youth summer camp is particularly interesting.
Off to Madison
Posted by – February 19, 2011
I decided I need to be counted, granddaughter of a union member & all.
& Once I saw this guy in Egypt holding this sign, I thought: how could I not go?
Russ Feingold was on Rachel Maddow the other night explaining that Wisconsinites couldn’t be in a better mood: the Packers won the Superbowl, the Badgers (UW team) just beat a major competitor, and it’s been 50 degrees warmer than it was last week. It’s true.
& Just to clarify: it’s not about the budget.
Hey Geeks – Some Help, Please
Posted by – February 13, 2011
Geeks, I need your help. I seem to be unverified in my Wiki entry, which I rather like having & which I’d prefer to stay. So if you would, please do go ahead & add some additional verification, pretty please.
Things like my own author website should help, as might my publisher’s. My notice on the AROHO website should help, too, as might the page where I’m listed as a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
On Your Radio
Posted by – February 1, 2011
I’ll be interviewed on “Your Time with Kim Iverson” tonight (Tuesday) at 10PM CST. And look! She just had John Gray on her show back in May! I can’t wait to talk about “man caves”. [/sarcasm]
Update: Life in WI
Posted by – January 15, 2011
Before I came to Wisconsin, the most common use of the word “packer” in my life was for these little dudes. Not so much anymore. Even the local gay bar is showing the game tonight. I find myself more cautious around the subject of football than of Christianity.
I have not seen any live music that wasn’t jazz, classical, or world music. No punk, no alt, & definitely no pscyhobilly.
I find myself talking about the envelope of warm air I can create around my head & face with the clever use of a large hat & my coat’s hood. I have actually thought, “Oh, 15′s not so bad” when getting dressed to walk to my office.
For the first time in my life, when people find out my name is Kramer, they assume I’m German — not that I’m Jewish. Similarly, this is the first year I was not wished a Happy Chanukah.
After speaking with a woman from Chicago visiting this past week I realized I have not had a conversation with a woman in dreds and/or mudcloth since I moved here.
I have considered invitations to go snowshoeing (but haven’t yet).
I found out that ducks eat fish. Who knew? I thought they ate bread/grasses & assumed they were vegetarians.
I’m sure there will be more, but it really is a pleasure to discover that life really isn’t the same elsewhere, despite mass commercialism, cable, & the internet.
Winter Term
Posted by – January 3, 2011
Today is the first day of Lawrence’s winter term, and I’m pretty pleased to be back to teaching: this term, Freshman Studies 101 and Feminist Theory 200. I look forward to meeting new students, seeing old ones, and getting back into the thick of things.
In the meantime, it’s snowing and the river is frozen again.
