This other article, however, in a Madison alt weekly called Isthmus, focuses not so much on Rhiannon Tibbetts’ transition but on her activism and the inequalities and injustices in trans people’s lives.

I prefer the latter, especially as the journalist actually spoke to someone who knows about the trans: Anne Enke, who teaches Gender Studies at UW Madison. It’s not just that, either — it’s that the focus is on what the trans person in question does much moreso than about who she is, per se.

You’d think The New York Times might not suck occasionally, but they keep doing godawful coverage of trans stuff: not just Chaz Bono’s story but the recent Renee Richards myopic was covered in a sloppy article by Maureen Dowd that presents every old saw about the unhappy, regretful trans person, and somehow connects it to the recent abuse suffered by Chrissy Lee Polis in that Maryland McDonald’s. As a writer, what I see in this article is Dowd at her desk, a press release from Richard’s producers on her desk, and the viral video of the attack on Polis on her laptop. Brilliant, Dowd: that took about 12 seconds of research. Maybe you should forward the check to Mary Ellen Bell who actually did some work.

You can buy a copy here, check out a t r u t h o u t column about it (& Caster Semenya), or check out the filmmakers’ website.

• Here’s Part One,
• Part Two
• & Part Three

and you can see hir do a bit of stand-up that’s also in three parts

• Stand-Up 1
• Stand-Up 2
• Stand-Up 3

but may be harder to understand without subtitles – and as zie points out, zie talks fast, on top of the regional humor about the first family of Singapore, Malaysia, and the Chinese in Singapore, but I think the joke about rooster eggs translates okay.

She’s 15, and her father, now female, transitioned about five years ago. She was about the same age as Prince’s eldest when she as told of her father’s imminent transition.

At first all I really felt was sadness for the children and the wife. The poor woman had to watch her spouse say on TV that she thought she might not have transitioned if she had stayed with her ex-girlfriend, something that must have felt awful and been humiliating to watch. I was shocked that the children’s reaction to the fact that their father was going to become a woman had been recorded in the first place, let alone aired on TV. As the child of a transgendered person I would be horrified if my initial reaction was shown to people all over who I didn’t even know. It’s an incredibly private moment that the rest of the world doesn’t have any business in watching.

As the show progressed I started to feel increasingly angry, and not just because she seemed to me a parody of a woman, intent on acting like a stereotype of how a woman “should be” and appearing very feminine, or because despite this femininity she still did all the “masculine” chores around the house, and we got to see pictures of her working with tools and at her job (I would have expected someone who had undergone a male to female transition to not be sexist).

I wanted to punch a hole in the wall every time it was mentioned that the children had “lost” a father. I never lost my father, just because she’s a woman doesn’t make any difference to the fact that she is my father. A sex change operation doesn’t change that. Chloe had no right to be upset about being missed out on the mother’s day photo- it was for mother’s day, not father’s day. Those children are going to have a hell of a time growing up now, and will have to deal with people they don’t know recognizing them and even judging for something they didn’t even do.

Thanks very much B. for sharing your thoughts with us. I would love to read comments from other trans people with kids, if their kids watched, what they thought.

Sadly, it was a lot of the same old same old: cursory interest in parent, partner, & children. The kids were adorable. The wife was determined. The father was exhausted.

• Multiple shots and references to surgery, instead.
• Trans woman discovers surprising, sudden interest in men.
• Expresses longing to be mother while wife is pregnant.
• Voiceover talking about wife meeting her husband for the first time “as a woman” post Thailand, even though the husband had been living in female gender role for a year as per SOC.

Atypical trans documentary bits?

• Added insult to injury for wife, while trans woman wonders – fleetingly – if she’s married her ex-girlriend if she’d have needed to transition. Fleetingly, stressed by Prince, but goddamn do wives of trans women everywhere hate her for that one. Yeah, thanks, it’s our fault you needed to transition. Do you really think we don’t wish, sometimes, that you’d married your ex-girlfriend, too?!
  
• Newly female husband going up telephone pole in gear
• “  “  ” mowing lawn with reference to still “wearing the pants”
• ‘out of the mouths of babes’ testimony that natal female still does all the parenting and housework
• bee stings lead to discovering of IS condition which justifies transition. (the years of crossdressing certainly don’t count for shit, right?)

So yeah, I’m drunk.You?

They all seem like reasonably nice people. I hate documentaries about teh trans. Hate ‘em. I hate the way our lives our distilled into reverse camera angles and earnest questions across kitchen tables. I hate how the beauty of a trans woman admitting that she still sees her wife the way “he” did is degraded by the “sudden interest” in men. I hate the sad, confused, tendentious quality of trans women’s wives who are obviously overwhelmed with the whole business and still in love with their spouses.

* sigh*

Having been someone who has done shite like this, my only excuse is: it was in my contract. Not that that’s much of an excuse, but you do usually have a clause saying that you will in good faith blah blah blah consent to blah blah blah that will help sell the book. I’m not sure there’s any other reason to do these things anymore, but I hope, for Rene’s sake, & the boys’ sake, & the dad’s & Chloe’s, that this one will be forgotten when it’s Sweeps Week next year or in five years. Not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t. There are things I said and wrote at the time of My Husband Betty that embarass me now, as well as plenty that I”m still happy about. But I wrote a book, so when I”m lucky, you can see its brown spine in the LGBT section of bookstores these days. But a show like this is going to be dredged up at 3am for a few years, and every once too often, Rene and Chloe and her boys and dad will be online at the supermarket / drugstore / in the waiting room / at the doctor’s office / showing up for parent teacher night when someone they’ve never met couldn’t sleep and saw them on the TeeVee. And then, well, then is when you wish you could change your name and move to Timbuktu.

My best to all of them. Can we stop making these now?

So, the rules, such as they are, for watching a trans documentary:

1. Putting on makeup. Two drinks for reverse camera shot into mirror.
2. Doing anything better done in jeans and sneakers in heels and a skirt. Examples: cleaning the house, shoveling the sidewalk, yard work, walking the dog.
3. Before picture shown. Two drinks for picture in stereotypical male mode (sports team, facial hair, military, wedding tux)
4. Camera shot putting on or taking off a bra.
5. Photo of any wig, breast form, padding, etc.
6. Surprise disclosure, when a trans woman is introduced and then partway through the piece, her secret is revealed.
7. Camera focus on masculine body parts: hands, feet, Adam’s apple, height, etc.
8. Any reference to genital surgery that refers to “becoming a woman” or “finally a woman”
9. Minor chords played softly on a piano
10. talk show host saying “you go girl”
11. any discussion of plumbing or electricity
12. black and white childhood shots, MTF with cap gun and cowboy hat, FTM as ballerina.
13. Trans woman saying, “I am not a crossdresser. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
14. Trans woman clutching large teddy bear in hospital bed.
15. Birthday balloons after surgery.
16. Trans woman with new boyfriend (after shot of tearful ex-wife).
17. Trans woman sitting in chair in above-the-knee skirt, posed so you can see what great gams she has.
18. Patient wheeled off to surgery …
19. … lingering shot of the hospital bed with the teddy bear (or wife) left behind.
20. Shot of protaganist sitting at the computer keyboard, looking at a trans support website or surgeon’s website….
21. Any helping professional teaching deportment
22. Camera in the operating room – just drink the whole bottle
23. Any and all deployments of soft focus = 1 shot
24. Close up of dotted lines in magic marker on pale fleshy body parts = 1 shot
25. Earnest surgeon describes his motivation as “to help [girlname] become the woman she’s always really felt herself to be” = 3 shots
26. Before picture with extreme facial hair – 1 shot
27. Before picture in uniform – Military, Football, etc… – 2 shots
28. Video from hair removal session : Laser – 1 shot, electrolysis – 2 shots
29. Before picture – Last time she wore a dress (F2M) – 1 shots
30. Breast binding – 2 shots
31. Taking Hormones – Self-injecting -3 shots, orals – 1 shot
32. Did anyone mention an arduous and lonely childhood?
33. Meeting the school bully as “the new me” at the High School reunion?
34. Looking at the old picture of self and saying something to the effect of “he was a nice guy….” or “Ken was a lot of fun, but his time is over. It’s Ginger’s turn now!”
35. Trans woman claiming to have IS chromosomal pattern, an affinity for washing dishes, a sudden dislike of sports, etc.

Believe it or not, these are not the most snarky suggestions by some of our mHB board members. Also remember: there are quite a few people who hang out on our boards who have done this kind of media work, including me & Betty, of course, but also Jenny Boylan, amongst others. We need to laugh at ourselves as much as we laugh at the inanity of it all.

Twelve-Steppers should find their own version, of course. Maybe those ice cream poppers? But the point is to feel as physically ill by the end as the drinking crowd.

(Thanks and love to Gwen Smith who wrote her own version of this back in 2005 and to anyone else who has posted their version of this game.)

(h/t to Matty)

Worthy project, no? On top of that, she’s made some other cool films. To help her out, you can make a donation via PayPal via her website, or you can buy another cool short film of hers, or you can pass this message on via Facebook or other social networking sites.