Tag: history

Trans Exhibit Takes OutHistory.org’s 1st Place

Posted by helenboyd – July 2, 2010

OutHistory.org announced the winners of its “Since Stonewall Local Histories Contest” on Monday, June 28, exactly 41 years after Stonewall and 1st place went to a trans oriented exhibit.

1st – “Man-i-fest: FTM Mentorship in San Francisco from 1976 – 2009,” created by Meghan Rohrer, documents Lou Sullivan’s transition from female to male over the course of thirty years, with evidence drawn from Sullivans’ photos and letters, as well as video footage of interviews he did with the mainstream and community press, and medical professionals. D’Emilio and Meyer praised “the exhibit’s attention to the less studied FTM transition,” and noted “the critical role of mentors in these transitions is remarkable.”

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Lady Painter & Hunger Striker

Posted by helenboyd – July 26, 2009

An old friend of mine wrote a cover article for the Times Literary Supplement about the first hunger striker, Marion Wallace-Dunlop. What interesting about his research is that it’s not about her alone, but about the way she understood media – in her case, at the time, painting – and its relationship to politics. He writes:

Wallace-Dunlop’s innovation was to create a kind of political theatre in a prison cell, its impact more dramatic than any she could have made on the image of women in art.

Very cool article about a very cool woman – whose life occupies a nice intersection of colonialism, feminism, suffrage, political strategy, art, and theatre.

NYPD Stonewall Documents Now Online

Posted by helenboyd – June 22, 2009

Wow: Jonanthan Ned Katz & David Carter filed an FOI (Freedom of Information Act) to get NYPD documents for the days of the Stonewall uprising, and has put those documents up at OutHistory.org. The New York Times has done a great article about those documents. They’ve also posted photos taken on the last day of the uprising.

This is very cool stuff. Get your queer history geek on, & go see the police documents & the photos.

Lambda Lit Awards

Posted by helenboyd – June 1, 2009

Congrats to all the winners!

21st LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNERS for BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2008

TRANSGENDER
Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word), Thea Hillman, Manic D Press

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WTF NY?!

Posted by helenboyd – May 11, 2009

It’s damned pathetic that same sex marriage isn’t a done deal in NYS yet, but senators are still waffling? Get with the program, folks. You’re on the wrong side of history. (via Queerty)

Hoyden

Posted by helenboyd – May 6, 2009

The precursor of “tomboy” is hoyden, which Michele Ann Abate describes as follows:

First appearing in the late 16th Century, the term shares a similar etymology history: it also referred to rambunctions boys and men rather than girls and women. Ineed the Oxford English Dictionary provides the following definition for “hoyden”: “A rude, ignorant, or awkward fellow; a clown, a boor”. By the late 17th Century, however, this meaning shifted and the word began referring to like-minded members of the opposite sex: “A rude, or ill-bred girl (or woman): a boisterous noisy girl, a romp.” Unlike a tomboy, a hoden was more closely associated with breaching bourgeous mores than female gender roles.

She adds later:

Wen the concepts of “tomboy” make its debut during the mid-19th Century, it supplanted “hoyden.”

I think I’ve found the answer to my “what do you call a grown-up tomboy?” question: hoyden.

Trans Couples Talk

Posted by helenboyd – May 2, 2009

This is the text of the talk I gave at the Liberty Conference on May 2nd, 2009:

How We Love You: Let Us Count the Ways

There are partners who are male, female, and trans; there are partners who met their trans person before the trans person knew what was going on; there are partners who married crossdressers who had sworn off crossdressing who purged and then dressed and then purged and then dressed again; there are partners who met their husbands crossdressed; there are partners who met their trans person during transition; there are partners who met their trans person long after transition; there are partners who didn’t know their trans person was trans when they met.

You, the individuals who are in love, were in love, who are seeking companionship and partnership and occasionally a good spanking, are said to be like snowflakes. Flawless Mother Sabrina told me that one night at the now defunct Ina’s Silver Swan, and she was right. Each of your stories is unique, even when there are similarities; each of you realizes your transness, as I like to call it, in a different way: some crossdress, others do drag, others transition. Some do all three, and others – none of these, but you express your genders in some other way. But you have your stories, your characters in movies, even if and when they are comically or tragically or unfairly drawn, but those you love have – well, we’ve got a machete and a spot on the edge of the wood we mean to get through.

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Poland’s Transgender Activist History

Posted by helenboyd – April 27, 2009

I love the idea of gathering individual countries’ histories with trans activism. Here’s Poland’s, written by
Wiktor “Latarnik” Dynarski (as far as I can tell(. Has anyone seen / written / compiled ones about other countries?

Honored Finalist: Yours Truly

Posted by helenboyd – March 31, 2009

As it turns out, A Room of Her Own Foundation chose a short list of their “Honored Finalists” and yours truly is on it. Yes, I used my legal name, and someday I’ll say more about that, but you’ll be able to tell from the bio that I’m still me, and I am quite honored to see myself in this list.

I’ve been a writer a long time & it’s really something to receive this kind of recognition – and that from other women writers and a foundation created precisely to fund people like me. What’s more interesting about this award is that it’s based on the writing, of course, but also on community service.

It’s certainly a lovely way to end Women’s History Month.

Women’s History Month Quiz

Posted by helenboyd – March 25, 2009

(via Feministing)

Deborah Siegel, over at Girl w/ Pen, is trying to start a little infectious blog quiz. If you’ve got one, paste these questions and add one of your own, then post it up at your blog so we can spread the knowledge.

1. In 2009, women make up what percent of the U.S. Congress?
A. 3%
B. 17%
C. 33%
D. 50%

2. How many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are female?
A. 12
B. 28
C. 59
D. 84

3. Who was the first First Lady to create her own media presence (ie hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column and a monthly magazine column, and host a weekly radio show)?
A. Eleanor Roosevelt
B. Jacqueline Kennedy
C. Pat Nixon
D. Hillary Clinton

4. The Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced to Congress in:
A. 1923
B. 1942
C. 1969
D. 1971

5. Who was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
A. Phyllis Wheatley
B. Alice Walker
C. Toni Morrison
D. Maya Angelou

6. What percentage of union members are women today?
A. 10%
B. 25%
C. 35%
D. 45%

7. What year did the Griswold v. Connecticut decision guarantee married women the right to birth control?
A. 1960
B. 1965
C. 1969
D. 1950

8. The only person to win two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences was both female and Polish. She had a relative who won one as well. Those people are:
A. Marie Curie & her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie
B. Marie Curie & her husband, Pierre Curie
C. Marie Curie & her son in law, Frederic Joliot-Curie
D. All of the above

Answers after the jump… & thanks to Prof. Megan Pickett for my question. More…

Lambda Literary Awards

Posted by helenboyd – March 23, 2009

This year’s Lambda Literary Awards Finalists have been posted. In the Transgender category:

  • 10,000 Dresses, Marcus Ewert & Rex Ray, Seven Stories Press
  • Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word), Thea Hillman, Manic D Press
  • Two Truths and a Lie, Scott Schofield, Homofactus Press
  • Boy with Flowers, Ely Shipley, Barrow Street Press
  • Transgender History, Susan Stryker, Seal Press

I highly recommend the last of these, which I’ll admit is the only one I’ve read this year, but I’m hoping to read Scott Schofield’s soonly.

In LGBT Studies, that Tomboys book is up for an award, & I hope it wins. It is the book I am most looking forward to reading now that I’m not teaching an excessive amount.

Even cooler is to see Diane and Jake Anderson-Minshall’s joint effort Blind Curves in the Lesbian Mystery category, and good luck to them!

(But I still think they need way more categories for transgender – maybe trans studies & trans memoir/other non-fiction to start, for instance. Surely there’s enough out there these days, & for years when there isn’t, they can just ignore the category.)

Holly Would (Play with Gender)

Posted by helenboyd – March 1, 2009

Just got this cool press release which makes me wish I was anywhere near West Hollywood:

Grrrl, boi, lezbo, butch, femme, lipstick, drag king, trans, dyke, bulldagger, tomboy, genderqueer, one-way, kiki, power femme …

Each generation of lesbians uses new and different terms to describe how we present ourselves and what attracts us. GenderPlay in Lesbian Culture is the first ever Los Angeles exhibit to talk about labels and explore gender and its boundaries.

The OPENING EVENT, at the One Museum on Saturday March 14, will feature singer Phranc, emcee Marie Cartier and performance art from Latina trio, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan. More…

Law & Order: “Transitions”

Posted by helenboyd – February 17, 2009

Law & Order‘s show tonight is about a trans teenager who is accused of attacking her father who insists she’s a boy and is trying to get custody of her from her mother.

9:59 PM definitely sympathetic. hopefully indicative of a sea change. still problematic in some ways, but pretty damn good for within the context of a police procedural.

9:57 PM crying.

9:54 PM history, violence, genitals.

9:52 PM oy.

9:51 PM hooboy. non trans advocate of trans youth loses her mind.

9:48 PM the kid can ACT. (& he’s from Poplar, WI.)

9:46 PM wow. sympathy for the loved ones of the trans person who don’t get it! & also the anger & frustration & sadness of the trans person, too.

9:39 PM getting worse. & worse than that. fast.

9:34 PM hooboy. weird turn. righteous trans youth activists who knock off pharmaceutical companies.

9:27 PM hrm. so far so good. inaccurate information, sure, but so far sympathetic. nearly an after-school special.

More Wow

Posted by helenboyd – January 21, 2009

It’s really incredible: watching the Obamas walk hand-in-hand (which is beautiful in & of itself) to the White House just blows my mind. I’m not sure it’s actually sunk in yet that we actually pulled this off. Damn.

& What a mess he inherited, but still it’s incredible.

Here are some of the references made today, either directly or indirectly:

  • Lowery opened with the words of what’s called the “negro national anthem” – called “lift every voice and sing” – originally written to introduce Booker T Washington.
  • tanks into tractors = swords into plowshares. Interesting choice for a wartime president.
  • the reference in the poem not just to picking cotton but to picking lettuce, which was a reference to the UFW & Cesar Chavez.
  • Feinstein mentioned the ballot or the bullet, which is Malcolm X’s most famous speech.

Anyone catch any others?

Call the Pope

Posted by helenboyd – January 21, 2009

So here’s another bit of political history that was made today: Joe Biden is our first Catholic VP. For those of you who don’t know, Al Smith was a candidate for president in 1927, and one of the reasons he lost was the tremendous anti-Catholic sentiment expressed in this country. As the story went, a US President who was Catholic would obey the Pope over the Constitution.

1st Trans Officer of State Dems

Posted by helenboyd – January 15, 2009

From National Stonewall Democrats:

Washington, DC – Today, the Stonewall Democrats congratulated Laura Calvo upon her election as Treasurer of the Democratic Party of Oregon. Calvo, a seasoned Democratic operative, becomes the first openly-transgender officer of a state Democratic party. A member of the Board of Directors for National Stonewall Democrats, Calvo also serves as Chair of the Oregon Stonewall Democrats and as Treasurer of the Multnomah County Democrats. Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, is the largest county in the state of Oregon.

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Douglass

Posted by helenboyd – December 26, 2008

One of the partners on our MHB boards mentioned recently that she’d never apply for an LGBT scholarship, because she doesn’t identify as LGBT, and it reminded me that I never told the story about me & the LGBT Blogger Initiative Conference I went to.

It seems I am perplexing to people, & I felt a little bit like an odd duck while I was there. It came up because at some point, someone announced that grants might become available for LGBT bloggers, and a few people told me that they hoped I would get one. But someone also mentioned that they could see others have an issue with the fact that I’m not LGB or T. My standard response these days is – “I’m the Q that gets left off a lot.”

But still it’s an issue that has come up, & may come up even moreso that I’m thinking about going back to grad school. Will I choose, like the partner above, not to apply for any LGBT scholarships? As a sort of liminal queer, probably I wouldn’t, except that then there’s the whole issue of what I do & what I’d want to study – which is all about the LGBT, and the T in particular.

The other question I was asked, which I’ve been asked before, is why? Why the trans community? & To be honest, I just don’t know. I was charmed by my very first meetings with trans people, & continue to have a deep love for the trans community & for trans people. Aside from my Debsian sense of social justice, that is.

Tim McFeeley did a wonderful “short history of the LGBT movement” (which I was pleased to note I knew cold!) as a workhop that Sunday morning, and he closed with a quote by Frederick Douglass:

When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.

That’s my answer & I’m sticking to it.

Girl Reader

Posted by helenboyd – December 23, 2008

From an article in the December 2008 Atlantic Monthly about why teen girls love vampires:

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life – one that she slips inot during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice pasat her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs – to be undisturbed while she works out the big quetions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others – are met precisely by the act of reading.

I don’t agree with the gendered conclusion she comes to, but I thought it was a nice description of reading, especially of reading novels, especially when you’re a child or young teenager. At least it described me somewhat, right down to the passé composé (which I did manage to pick up, eventually).

I remember reading a theory once that young female readers figure out how to masturbate sooner than their peers, exactly because they’re used to & look forward to time alone.

Tomboys

Posted by helenboyd – December 17, 2008

How exciting is this? A book called Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History.

Random page quotes:

“The link between childhood tomboyism and adult homosexuality might seem to have eradicated this code of conduct from American literature and culture, but the late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s actually witness the release of a considerable number of tomboy-themed novels and films.”

I suppose this is what makes me a freak, but I’m going to devour this one. Yay! Tomboys!

Last OC Column, or That Was Quick

Posted by helenboyd – November 24, 2008

Easy come, easy go: I got word last week that OurChart.com is no longer, or will soon be no longer, or will no longer be updated, or something like that. So no, I wasn’t fired; everyone was.

So here’s the last column I wrote for them. It went up today, as planned, but there will be no more to follow.

(If anyone knows of a magazine that needs a queer relationships columnist, you know where to find me!)

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