A recent blog post written by someone who attended SCC reminds me, again, that whoever is in charge of partners’ events at SCC isn’t doing their job.

The only thing that I attended that did not live up to my expectations was the Comfort Zone, a group for SOFFA (significant others, friends, family and allies) of MTF trangender women. I qualified for the group as a wife of a MTF. The group was predominately made up of wives of cross dressers with about 4 of us being partners or wives of transgender people. It appears we all left before the meeting was over. The next morning Sarah and met two young women who had not been eligible for the group since their partners were FTM. They were in happy relationships. We exchanged email address and may try to put something on the internet for happy partners and wives of trans people.

This really thrills me. Two years ago a partner of an FTM was told she wasn’t welcome because she identified as lesbian, & this year they just don’t allow partners of FTMs into the partner support group.

It’s not hard to run an inclusive partner group. I’ve done it tons of times. I offer every year. I don’t need to get paid, just to have my costs covered. I would be willing to go down there to train some locals as to how to be inclusive of all partners.

Whoever is doing this workshop needs to be asked not to do it. The isolation most partners experience is quite enough, but isolating them further - at a trans conference! - is entirely unacceptable.

Please, SCC organizers, please. You have no idea what a knife in the heart it is, as a partner, to get to a conference and feel like no one bothered to care that you have a sense of community, too.

Here we are again, off to DO, and I probably won’t be blogging or checking the boards (much) while we’re gone. The internet is always a little iffy from camp, and really, honestly - a little too cyber when there are people having sex near you on lounge chairs.

We’ll be back Monday-ish.

A guest post by Quetzalli Cold Thunder, who is a regular on our message boards and trans and Native American, on the use of the term berdache.

During the IFGE Conference, I heard the term ‘berdache’ mentioned A LOT. In fact, at a session regarding transgenderism and Native People, folks continued to use the term after the presenter said that among Native People it is derogatory, that he respected their opinion and that he would prefer that the term not be used. (In that audience, a fine, gender counseling Dr. uttered the term that caused the presenter to give his statement. He continued using the term and had he mentioned the expression one more time, I fear I would have made a spectacle of myself, and gone home with a scalp.) The term is my nigger and yes, I also understand its usage among blacks, but I know of no Native People that use this term in any ‘endearing’ form among themselves. Quite the contrary, it is much more demeaning when directed at a skin from a skin. More…

I missed the morning sessions given by Kelly James and Bernadette Barton (which I now regret missing) but knowing I had a train to catch at midnight encouraged me to shorten the day a little so I wouldn’t be cranky by dinner. As it turned out, it was a long day anyway; I got to the conference at noon and found Lisa who then found Ash who was the student who was going to introduce me. Lisa brought me to a table full of her students, who just turned and looked at me as if I’d sprouted an alien head, and I must have looked at Lisa bewildered, so she explained: “They’re having a fan moment.” I was just more bewildered. (Over the course of the day, I got to talk to all of them, and they are all so charming and bright and good-looking! I’m not kidding. & Like so many queer students, most of them smoked.)

After lunch Marilee Lindemann spoke about creating and administering her LGBT Studies program at U. Maryland and how she managed to ‘Queer the Turtle’. (It’s a long story & I couldn’t do it justice, but she did.) It was good to hear an administrator’s view of the current gender/sexuality/LGBT academic scene, though I can’t say it’s particularly good news for me: they got 200 applicants for 1 open position last year, mostly from people with backgrounds in English and an interest in gender. Sounds awfully familiar, no? *sigh*

More…

What a trip! I haven’t had so much fun without Betty since before I met her, and while I’m sad she wasn’t there to enjoy it all, I also know that she wouldn’t have found the train much fun at all (& so might have ruined it for me, ahem). But I was early for my train, & so hung around the ass-end of Penn Station for a while (that would be the 8^th avenue side, of course), talking to guys trying to bum change and cigarettes. I don’t know why I like those guys; I must’ve been a hobo in a past life. But the guy I talked to was originally from New Orleans, and it’s hard not to have a good conversation with an older brother from NOLA, imho. In exchange for a cigarette, he said he’d buy me a drink next time we’re both down that way.

On the way down I was seated next to an older man who carried only his Bible, which was a “welcome to the south” a little early for me. He was a minister from Greenville, SC, it turns out, & his stop was the one after mine, so we were stuck with each other for the duration. He slept mostly, and I got very good at climbing over his napping legs.

But I ate dinner with a man and his 15 year old son on the way down; the guy was originally from the east coast, a professor and scientist, who knew Ben Barres when he was at Stanford, but who’d moved to VA and was traveling back to VA with his son after a short sojourn in NY. They were both really nice, and I had a great chat with them despite getting a little drunk on the half-bottle of wine I had ordered (which I had ordered in order to put myself to sleep).

More…

Tomorrow, all day, is the Bodies of Knowledge Conference at University of South Carolina, in Spartanburg. I’m speaking at 2:30, but others include:

• Kelly James
• Bernadette Barton
• Marilee Lindemann
• Jasmyne Cannick

From the website:

The Bodies of Knowledge Symposium is designed to raise awareness on campus about sexual diversity, to cultivate anti-homophobic attitudes among Upstate students, faculty, staff and administration, and to provide LGBTQ students with opportunities to deepen their ties to each other, to the LGBTQ community, and to their straight allies on campus, as well as in the region of the U.S. Southeast.

I’m really looking forward to it, so do come if you can, & are in the area.

We’re at the IFGE Transgender 2007 Conference in Philadelphia, and just so people know, I’ll be doing two workshops:

• On Friday, Trans Sex & Identity, 2 - 3:15PM
• On Saturday, a reading/discussion/Q&A of She’s Not the Man I Married, 2 - 3:15PM.

Otherwise, we’ll be around, so do say hello. A bunch of us who post on the mHB boards have been planning a get-together, too.

In case you forget when or where, you can just check out the invite, instead.

Good news: the launch party for She’s Not the Man I Married has been re-scheduled.

Date: Thursday, April 26th
Time: 6 - 10 PM
Where: Marion’s Continental Lounge.
Do let me know if you intend to come by emailing me.

Just to repeat, once more: the launch party for She’s Not the Man I Married is NOT happening tonight. It is currently being re-scheduled.

That said, tonight is Night of 1000 Gowns, with this year’s fundraising going to PFLAG.

I just wanted to let people know, if they didn’t yet, that the She’s Not the Man I Married launch party is NOT happening at Mo Pitkins this Saturday night. I don’t know when/if it will be rescheduled at this point, but I’ll let you know when I do.

I contributed to a book by Mattilda called Nobody Passes, and I will be doing a reading on Wednesday, March 21st with other contributors tomorrow at the bookstore Bluestockings at 7PM.

& In the meantime, Namoli Brennett is playing Mo Pitkins on Tuesday night, 3/20, $5 cover.

It looks like I’ll be going to Chicago, and the Chicago Be-All this year, and am certain I’ll be doing a reading at the fantastic Women & Children First bookstore. Just before that I’ll be checking in with our friends in Cleveland, too.

I’ll be speaking tomorrow night at Yale, for the fourth annual Trans Issues Week. Do come, if you can. I’ll be reading and talking about female genders viz trans folk. 7PM at the Women’s Center.

Other highlights of the 2007 Trans Issues Week at Yale:

• 2/26: Screening of Beautiful Boxer.
• 2/27: Helen Boyd, Images of Women: Trans Femininity and Feminisms.
• 2/28: Paisley Currah, Fixing Bodies: Tracking Transgender Identities in the Post-9/11 U.S.
• 2/28: Screening of Boy I Am.
• 3/1: Keynote: Imani Henry - Mounting Strategies to Fight Racial, Sexual, and Gender Oppression on Campus
• 3/3: Drag Ball

For those in & around the NYC area, please put aside Friday, March 16th: I’ll be having the launch party for She’s Not the Man I Married at KGB Bar, from 7-9PM.

(It’s not absolutely confirmed yet, but looking definite.)

What with all the publicity I hope to be doing in the upcoming months, I decided to put up a calendar just for my book events & the like.

& Of course you can always check out my list of upcoming (& past) appearances if you want to know where we’ll be next.

Another article about First Event, in the local Burlington Union: Props to Jodi Blase for doing a better Trans 101 for her readers than most I’ve read.

from my journal, 21 january:

we’re in the bar @ the burlington marriott waiting for our car to take us to the amtrak station, after the long week/end that was first event. what a trip - the whole of it. we hit the ground running, arriving around 7pm thursday just in time for a comedy show. we didn’t even change out of our travel clothes - but found ourselves having a tasty buffet dinner & laughing at the jokes of Amy Tee & three other comedians. i’m usually pretty good at being a little stealth & getting the lay of the land before people figure out i’m “that helen” but this time around there was a big picture of my mug in the catalong - so the guys working security knew me right away. usually of course there’s an expectation that people named Helen & Betty will be significantly older that we are, since they’re old lady names, & the surprise we’re greeted with often entertains me.

We leave for First Event today, and are really looking forward to experiencing this legendary trans conference. Just so you know - and because I probably won’t be answering emails for a bit - this is what I’ll be doing at First Event:

on Friday:

• a reading from She’s Not the Man I Married during the luncheon
• a trans sexuality workshop open to all

on Saturday:

• a workshop for partners/SOs only
• the keynote speech during the Awards Banquet

Betty will be with me, and we’ll otherwise be around, so do say hello if you see us.

I’m starting to get emails from people asking about the new book and whether or not I’d be willing to come to one trans conference or another. Likewise, the “call for presenters” emails are also showing up.

This year, for obvious reasons, Betty & I would love to go to all the conferences we’ve attended before - to celebrate the new book, to help more people, to dispel what rumors we can and to share what we’ve learned in the years since we’ve been to them.

But the same old problem stands in my way: we can’t afford it. My publishers don’t pay for conferences, and a physical book tour, per se, isn’t financially feasible. And as per usual, unless I’m to be the keynote speaker - such as at First Event - I’m told over and over again that the conferences do not help presenters get to these conferences or even waive conference fees, much less pay for hotel rooms or travel costs or the like. I say “I’m told” because that’s what conference organizers tell people when they have requested my attendance - and yet that’s not what I hear from other presenters.

Interestingly, I’ve been told that because I’m selling books I’m a “commercial interest,” which amuses me, considering that even if I sold a book to every single person who came to these conferences - which is far from likely - I still wouldn’t make enough money to break even! But of course I don’t actually sell my own books at these conferences: IFGE does.

So my response to everyone just now is that I honestly don’t know if we can come. We can’t afford to put out the $1000-2000 it costs for us to go to a conference, but we certainly can’t do that several times next year. It costs us more of course because there are two of us - and people always want Betty to come, because she’s Betty.

Mind you, I’m not asking to make money going to these things. I just don’t want to have to spend my own money working for a conference that is - from all reports - making money. I’m happy to donate my time and costs to conferences that are non-profit and have done so in the past. It would help if I felt any of these conferences had a clear-cut policy on these issues. But beyond all that, I know I can draw an audience because I’m told I make a decent advocate for partners, and that a lot of what I have to say is very different from what you hear in the rest of the trans community, and that that difference is useful.

Unfortunately, then, I can’t go unless my expenses are covered, and that is up to the organizing committees of the various conferences.