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A New Day

It’s the day Betty and I have been waiting for: the first day that isn’t 2007, at long last. We’re hoping 2008 will be a little kinder, maybe a little more amenable, which looks a little ironic from where I’m standing: amidst all the bags I have packed for Wisconsin. I am looking forward to teaching, to meeting various professors and students and even MHB readers, but there is also a part of me that doesn’t want to travel at all anymore; I just want a job, teaching most likely, somewhere I could live, and live with Betty, and have a home big enough for three cats and way too many books. As a result of the commute to North Andover this past fall, this trip to Wisconsin seems like the final test of my resources, or rather, if I ever had any slight bit of agoraphobia after 9/11, this trip is my proof that it’s all gone.

So, off we go. Tomorrow, Betty and I drive to Wisconsin, and we’re planning on arriving on Friday. If we can post from the road we will, but we might not be able to. Or we might not want to. Who knows? In either case, I’m on my way, and so is the new year.

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Good Riddance, 2007 – #6

2007’s Least Done with the Most Potential:

Oprah‘s show on trans couples, which provided absolutely no resources for trans couples on the show or on their website.

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Advene Advent

Betty & I regularly have conversations about what’s Christian and what’s specifically Catholic, since neither of us seems to know all the time. That is, I was raised Catholic and I’m never sure if an idea or ritual I was raised with is specifically Catholic or if it’s believed/practiced by other types of Christians, too. & For her it’s similar, since she was raised 7th Day Adventist.

The holiday season tends to bring more points to discuss, of course; this year we were buying a bottle of wine for some folks who put us up when I saw an Advent calendar for sale. I hadn’t had one with the little doors with the chocolates inside since I was a kid, so of course I had to buy one, because I’m just old enough to feel sentimental about kid stuff.

& Since then, Betty & I have been trying to figure out if Advent is a Catholic thing specifically or if it’s something a lot of Christians “do” with the exception of 7th Day types. (I think it’d be pretty damned funny if they don’t mark Advent, considering they call themselves “Adventists,” no?)

We could just look it up but we’re not going to. Instead, we’ll keep bugging each other, as I introduce her to a lovely bit of fun; everyday we’ll take turns opening the doors of the calendar though in all likeliness I’ll eat most of the chocolate (since she has no sweet tooth). That said, everyone can go check out some nifty online Advent calendars. My favorite so far is this neat one of comic book art because I like the tech – only the doors that should open, do – and the art itself.

So, happy Christmas season, all!

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New Piercing

I’m pleased as punch that I got a chance – right after my keynote at Fantasia Fair – not only to meet the Bearded Lady of Provincetown, but to get her to stretch my previous ear piercings so that I could wear these lovely new omegas I bought in her shop.

She tells me that I can make them bigger in a few months, too. Betty’s starting to worry.

If you’re coming here after Fantasia Fair, do remind me of the resources I said I would post. I know some (a lot) of them are probably about sex, so you might want to start by browsing the posts marked s.e.x. on this blog.

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Non-Trans Woman in Men’s Prison

Okay, I’ll admit it: I was entirely astonished to read the story of Virginia Grace Soto over on Autumn Sandeen’s blog. Ms. Sota was born and raised female, but due to her androgynous appearance, was housed with men, in the men’s jail, in DC. Again, Ms. Sota is NOT TRANS. From the DC-area MetroWeekly (where you can see a photo of Ms. Soto as well):

Despite being strip searched and having female genitalia, Soto’s androgynous appearance led to assumptions that placed the 47-year-old in a male facility where she had to shower with four other men. Her pleas to be moved to a female facility were repeatedly ignored.

There is no mention as to whether Soto is straight or gay, though I’m going to guess that the guards acted out of homophobia (on the assumption that all gender variant people are homosexual, which of course isn’t true at all). The good thing is that three of them will be fired over their misconduct, at least.

But the underlying issue of course is that we have no standards in place for people who are not obviously gendered male or female, or whose male appearance doesn’t correspond to their female genitalia, or vice versa. Sandeen quotes local trans activist Ruby Corado:

“It’s the perfect example of how not having a plan on how to deal with individuals that do not fit in the binary gender of this society, of being male or female, creates [problems],” she says.

Exactly. Solutions? If anyone has any resources links of people who are working on prison issues concerning gender, please post them in the comments section.

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Ch- Ch- Ch- Changes (to my Blog)

I’m sure that some people are unclear as to why I would have started Trans Group Blog, which is a separate, and group-oriented, blog about trans issues.

I did so because (1) I think it’s a resource that’s long been needed, so that authors on trans subjects can discuss various happenings and theories and resources, like a high-tech, low-budget trans magazine; and (2) because I’m aware I’ve been a useful resource on trans issues for people, which has been a privilege & a pleasure. But I’ve also realized that when I’m between books, I’d like to blog a little more about other things, & I assume other blog readers are something like me: they don’t want to wade through reports of concerts I’ve seen in order to get info/resources on trans stuff.

So in order to me to be more than a writer on trans issues, I started the new blog, where I will cross-post anything about trans stuff that I write for here. That way I can also write about other things here – writing projects, music, politics, what-have-you – so that people who read my stuff can read a ton more kinds of things, and people who are just looking for what I have to say on various trans subjects can read that.

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Five Questions With… Virginia Erhardt

Virginia Erhardt, Ph.D. is a licensed therapist, a founding member of the American Gender Institute, and the author of Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals. She published her first article concerning the partners of trans people back in 1999 after publishing a workbook for lesbian couples called Journey Toward Intimacy. She is a regular at trans conferences like the upcoming IFGE Conference.

(1) How long did it take you to compile the stories in Head Over Heels? Where did you find partners who were willing to talk about their experiences?

It was about two and a half years from the point at which I began soliciting participation in 2002 and then sent out questionnaires, until the time when I had created “stories” from the SOs’ responses to my questions. During that time I also worked on my substantive, didactic chapters. It took another two years and a few months from the time when I completed the project and signed a contract with The Haworth Press until Head Over Heels was in print.

I put out a Call for Participants to every online listserve and transgender print publication I could think of. I also requested participation from people at trans conferences at which I presented. Continue reading “Five Questions With… Virginia Erhardt”

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QueerCents Interview with Jamison Green

A while back, Nina Smith of QueerCents did an interview with me, and later asked me to introduce her to other trans folk who might be willing to talk about personal finance. She talked to Jamison Green, who of course managed to make an interview about personal finance a useful resource on transitioning costs and to articulate clearly the debate about what insurance should cover. I’m not sure how many times they’ll let me join his fan club, at this point, but count me in again.

For that matter, Nina Smith gets huge kudos for going out of her way to get trans issues into her forum.

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Five Questions With… Richard M. Juang

Richard JuangAlthough Richard M. Juang is an otherwise studious English professor, I came to know him through my participation with the NCTE Board of Advisors, and increasingly found him to be gentle and smart as a whip. We got to sit down and talk recently at First Event, where he agreed to answer my Five Questions.

(1) Tell me about the impetus that lead to writing Transgender Rights. Why now? Why you, Paisley Currah, and Shannon Price Minter?
Transgender Rights helps create a discussion of the concrete issues faced by transgender people and communities. Our contributors have all written in an accessible way, while also respecting the need for complex in-depth thought, whether the topic is employment, family law, health care, poverty, or hate crimes. We also provide two important primary documents and commentaries on them: the International Bill of Gender Rights and an important decision from the Colombian Constitutional Court concerning an intersex child. Both have important implications for thinking about how one articulates the right of gender self-determination in law. We wanted to create a single volume that would let students, activists, attorneys, and policy-makers think about transgender civil rights issues, history, and political activism well beyond Transgender 101.Transgender Rights

One of the things the book doesn’t do is get bogged down in a lot of debate about how to define “transgender” or about what transgender identity “means”; we wanted to break sharply away from that tendency in scholarly writing. Instead, we wanted to make available a well-informed overview about the legal and political reality that transgender people live in.

Oddly enough, Shannon, Paisley and I each did graduate work in a different field at Cornell University in Ithaca NY. (Apparently, a small town in upstate New York is a good place to create transgender activists!) The book represents a cross-disciplinary collaboration where, although we had common goals for the book, we also had different perspectives. The result was that, as editors, we were able to stay alert to the fact that the transgender movement is diverse and has many different priorities and types of activism.

Continue reading “Five Questions With… Richard M. Juang”