Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
The National Stonewall Democrats are doing a cool thing: trying to track transpeople’s donations to Barack Obama. The letter they sent out not along ago is reprinted below the break in full, but the basic idea is that, if you’re trans, & you want to donate to Obama’s campaign, you donate through their website, so that the donations can be “counted” as a bloc.
Excellent idea. Go do it.
Today is America’s first Congressional Hearing on transgender issues. The hearing, “An Examination of Discrimination Against Transgender Americans in the Workplace,” is scheduled for Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 10:30 am in room 2175 of Rayburn House Office Building. Congressman Rob Andrews (D-NJ) called the hearing as Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor. Witnesses have not yet been announced.
“I am really proud of the role that NCTE played in getting us to this historical day. This is not only an opportunity to be truly heard by our fellow Americans, it will help to build the foundation for significant changes in federal laws protecting transgender people from discrimination,” notes Mara Keisling, Executive Director of NCTE.
Committee hearings are open to the public and you are welcome to attend in person if you are in the area, but please be aware that space is limited. Some hearings are broadcast on CSPAN and streamed live through their internet site. You can stay up-to-date by checking NCTE’s blog.
WATCH:Â If you would like to watch the first Congressional Hearing on transgender issues, you may be able to watch it through the committee’s live webcast at http://edwork.edgeboss.net/wmedia-li…eam_070124.asx
Larry Sabato, in commenting on Michelle Obama, just said on Anderson Cooper, that “probably the best thing a first lady can be is innocuous.” I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt & assume he wasn’t talking about his own personal opinion, but more as a spin-doctor and political historian.
Still: Eleanor Roosevelt, anyone?
Just in time for Pride month, Lena found this lovely 1st Battalion Transvestite Brigade: Airborne Unit t-shirt. Now before anyone gets upset with me for using the term transvestite (again), this shirt is drawn from an Eddie Izzard routine in Dress to Kill, and Izzard is, of course, a self-identified transvestite himself.
Were you surprised?
I was surprised.
Which are lines that Betty & I use on a regular basis at home.
& Yes, I’ve already ordered one for myself, even if I already missed wearing it to Brooklyn Pride.
I feel a little stupid admitting this, but I’m actually feeling tenuously excited about being an American again.
But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand†overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.
It’s that America I hope to see re-emerging with Obama’s presidency, and internationally, I think it’s already good news. I traveled quite a lot to other countries before we destroyed our international reputation with Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo (amongst other things) and I’d like to do so again without people hating me due to being an American. (Although, interestingly, just saying you’re from New York, & not America per se, grants a person more respect abroad.)
But the attacks from McCain have already started, of course: that Obama is essentially running for Carter’s 2nd term. And wow does that scare the more conservative democrats. But I’m just gonna say this once: um, wasn’t Carter right? Would we be in Iraq if we’d done the energy independence stuff he wanted to do in the 70s? Didn’t he negotiate with Iran for the hostages? Don’t get me wrong: ineffective leadership is bad all the way around, but you know, after the last however many years of opportunist nihilism we’ve experienced, an idealist well-versed in empowering rhetoric seems like a great antidote. Obama’s got a lot of leadership skills that Carter didn’t have, but what makes America work, in my humble opinion, is when Americans are inspired. And Obama does that, for a lot of people. What’s better is that he seems to be inspiring other politicians as well, and that bodes well.
So who’s your vote for VP?
Someone who has been fascinated with the “I won’t vote for Obama” reaction of some of the ‘Clintonistas’ wrote to me to say that she thought, perhaps, that women of a certain generation are sore losers when it comes to outright competition because they were never taught to compete with grace, and that’s mostly because they were never allowed to play team sports.
I’m pretty sure she’s onto something, because losing with grace takes training & effort.
However, for many of them, and for someone like Hillary herself, there is always this extra burden of not only gaining for yourself, but gaining for ALL women, which is an awful lot to carry into a competition. That is, it’s not about the presidency only; it’s about all women, the history of women, and the future of feminism. Losing all that – and not just her bid for president – is bound to make the stakes higher, which makes it harder to lose gracefully.
Imagine if your average businessman went out in the world every day to earn points of Capitalism. Look at the Cold War for a good example of when carrying an ideology around gets to be absurd.
One of the things that has amazed me is not the bizarre commentary about race and gender that’s gone on, or the lack of it. What amazes me is how much the dialogue about race has changed. Obama is, no doubt, expected to score one for the team. But the burdens of that are not obvious, nor talked about. & I think that’s precisely because he felt forced to address race issues due to Rev. Wright.
I know I was sitting there listening to Senator Clinton give her suspension speech and endorsement of Obama and thinking, “I’d have voted for her if she’d made her feminism a little more obvious earlier on.†It was how she was NOT addressing gender that bugged me, & instead we got Ferraro talking about racism, which didn’t make any damn sense. Because that comment about the glass ceiling having 18 million cracks in it was very empowering and positive; she personalized the politics in a way that spoke to me and to many women, I bet.
The whole thing about being “othered” is that you don’t get to pretend you aren’t. If you’re a woman, you have to be a woman; you don’t get any choice in the matter. You have to address gender issues publicly, all the time. Likewise for being a gay person, or a black person, or a disabled person. It sucks. I’ve complained about having to be a woman writer. But you can’t pretend the world doesn’t see your “otherness” as much as you’d prefer a world like that. & That goes doubly for a woman who is a politician, and who has to deal with the oldest of old boys’ networks and the public policies they’ve devised.
… for making the first real run of a woman for the White House. She has made history, already, and no doubt she’ll go on to make more.
(I really love this photo of her, and wish more of the photos of her showed this contemplative, earnest side of her.)
Betty has brought it to my attention that much of the lefty blogosphere is upset with Fr. Pfleger – that going to Obama’s church & mocking Hillary was not good for Obama, at all.
Which may be true. Surely it is. But that’s not what I was talking about.
I was talking only about the way that white people often deny white privilege & entitlement in ways that seem logical & make sense. For the record.
What’s a politico to do? I am an ardent feminist, which most of you reading already know well enough. But I’m so saddened by the way women are talking about the Democratic nomination and how they feel they’ve been sent to the back of the bus. I don’t doubt that there was some sexism at play, in the media & elsewhere, for Hilary Clinton. It’d be a surprise if there weren’t. But that’s not a good enough reason not to vote. I mean, imagine the Suffragists! Imagine what they fought for, what they went through, & imagine explaining how you, as a woman, chose not to vote because your candidate didn’t get the nomination.
I couldn’t do it. I’m not happy about Obama’s “sweetie” remark at all. And it’s true that I just don’t like Hilary Clinton and never have; her ambition scares me. Not because it’s wrong for a woman to be ambitious – I so wish more were! – but because hers seems more about what it would mean to her to be president than being about what she could do for the country. And it scares me, when someone’s goals seem more about having something to prove than about accomplishing something.
If Ann Richards had run for president, I would have worked on her campaign and given up a year of my life to get her elected. And if Obama doesn’t win the nomination, I will work to get Hilary Clinton elected. Because the sad reality is that John McCain is not pro-woman: he’s not pro-choice, he voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act, and he actually had the nerve to suggest that women should get more education and training if they want to be paid as much as men.
So please, Clinton supporters: get out & support whoever the Democratic nominee is. I will.