For those of you in Philadelphia or its environs, Doug McKeown and some of the writers of Queer Stories for Boys will be doing a reading/signing at Giovanni’s Room bookstore, at 12th & Pine Streets, at 7:30PM on Saturday, June 18th.
It’ll be a good night of story-telling, no doubt.
That Time of the Month
No, not that time of the month – but the time of the month to donate to help support the message boards and my blog. If you like what you see here, please consider donating whatever you can to help keep us going.
Overheard in NY
I added a website to the “Very Various” section of links today – it’s a website that blogs conversations “overheard in NY.” From what I’ve read, they’re very authentic, funny reading, and a nice little insight into my favorite town.
Overheard in New York
One of my favorite recent entries – and quite relevant – is this one:
Chick: I think the difference between a blog and a website is that a blog is something you can set up without doing any of that website shit.
(Thanks to Lynne W-U for this one!)
Warning Labels: This Person is Gay
The leader of the New York Christian Coalition has announced that gays should wear warning labels.
Why?
Because being gay is bad for your health, and by his logic, others’ health as well.
I wish I were kidding.
The story as reported by www.365gay.com.
The comments about the story by the MHB Boards.
Amancio Corrales
I just heard from friends in Phoenix that a 23-year-old female impersonator named Amancio Corrales was found in/near the Colorado River. There is a memorial planned for June 25th in Yuma, AZ.
Please check the boards for more information.
Reader Privacy
Rep Bernie Saunders of Vermont is once again going to try to get the Freedom to Read Amendment passed. The Amendment would cut off funding for library and bookstore searches that came with the USA Patriot Act.
You should contact your House Representative and urge him or her to vote yes on the Freedom to Read Amendment. You can find your Rep by checking the House’s website.
For more information, check the boards, and these organizations.
American Library Assocation
American Booksellers Association
Association of American Publishers
PEN American Center.
www.readerprivacy.org for more information.
Hot Pussy
gotcha!
This is our big Endymion, trying to keep cool.
Think-Tank
Tonight Betty and I did a presentation on trans/GLBT issues for an emerging lefty think-tank. It was formed just after the last presidential election, formed out of frustration, anger, and a sense of outrage – not just at who won, but at how the right had stolen words like “morality” (by which they really mean heteronormativity), “family” (again, only heteronormativite families need apply) and “family values” (when they meant, keep those freaks out of my neighborhood).
A lot of the conversation was just trans 101, which Betty and I rushed into and interrupted each other and circled around and back and forth. (The poor guy keeping notes gave up at some point, I think.) We got some of the basic points across, and of course the group got to meet Betty – not your average tranny, but who is?
One of the pertinent questions asked – and this is a smart group – was Where are the Surveys? Where’s the equivalent of the Kinsey Report on trans stuff? and, in a more tactical sense, How many are you, and how do we count you?
There weren’t any good answers for these good questions. Aside from Lynn Conway’s numbers on the prevalance of transsexualism, which doesn’t include crossdressers or drag kings or any of the rest of the gender-variant community, I don’t have any. How many of us are there? More importantly, how many of us are there who will stand up and be counted? What are our issues? Who will lead us? Who are our allies, and to what other (non-trans) causes can we lend our weight?
These are only some of the questions currently being discussed on the message boards, of which I’m very proud.
Come join the dialogue.
Masculinity, Androgyny, and Young Greek Gods
Yesterday Betty met my agent for the first time, and at some point in our conversation – amazingly enough, gender did come up – she mentioned that she not only read Betty as androgynous, but that her reading of his/her androgyny caused her to not know, exactly, how to interact. That is, all the social rules were gone. She is my agent, after all, and likes my work, so for her, this was a good thing; for her, it meant she had to connect with the person, and not her own expectations of who the person was based on his or her gender.
Others, of course, resent not having those kinds of social cues, and get confused and angry. Especially when conflated with sexual desire, or power, or even a tiny black and white world where there are no shades of gray.
Tonight, because it’s gotten hot here in Brooklyn, Betty was walking around for a while in a green Batik sundress of mine. (Note to CDs: babydoll sundresses are not very gendered, and did nothing for Betty’s figure.) A little while later, she gave up on the sundress as well and was walking around naked.
At home, I often flirt with her girl self – whether she’s presenting as female at the moment or not. At some point, she stood in the doorway to talk to me while I was at my computer, and I confess: I had a split-second – a kind of atavist split-second – of noticing what a beautiful man my husband is. I covered it by saying something about her being a girl, but she’d seen it. “When you look at me like that, doll,” she said, “I know what you see.”
What do I see? I see a young man who at age 36 has all the masculine and feminine beauty the Greeks were after. Betty is naturally hairless, naturally svelte, and has a full head of hair that goes wavy in humid weather like this. Go ahead and picture Michelangelo’s David, albeit less muscular, with longer legs. His looks both defy gender and confirm it; his beauty is not the type of masculinity we admire now, in modern 21st Century America, but it is a classic type of beauty, and – dare I say – the kind of beauty that men who love men seem to excel at portraying.
Others who meet him in male mode often remark to me privately that they’d have a difficult time letting go of a man who is so perfectly beautiful. And I admit, it does make it harder. I still go weak in the knees when I see my husband walking around naked; I still go weak in the knees when he’s in women’s underwear and leaning over to apply make-up, too. But in either case, I am responding to physical beauty, the kind that inspires poetry and love songs. And blog entries.
A long time ago I saw a magazine cover with a photo of Johnny Depp on it. A friend and I stopped to ogle and gossip, since we’re both fans. And suddenly it occurred to me: transness had to be real, because my husband looks like Johnny Depp and doesn’t want to. I don’t know anyone else who wouldn’t want to look like Johnny Depp if they could – male, female, or otherwise. (Johnny Depp, of course, also looks good as both male and female, too.)
In some senses, when I see how beautiful my husband is as a man, I really do think that God has a sick sense of humor to put such a beautiful body on a soul with no libido, to put such a beautiful male body on a soul that wants to be female. It’s a double sucker-punch, and it doesn’t make any sense to me – none at all. Add to that Betty’s desire to be my husband – and it becomes some kind of evil triple-play. (Hey, did I just use a sports metaphor? Did someone give me a lobotomy when I wasn’t looking?)
I wish I could bring Betty any kind of comfort or solace in his beautiful self. I wish I could help him feel more at home in a male body. I wish I thought I was a sufficient door prize for not transitioning (but I don’t) and I also wish I didn’t have this feeling that I’m somehow torturing the person I love most in the world.
But all that I’m laying aside tonight. Right now, I just want to get it off my chest: I married the most beautiful man in the world.
^ That’s his acting headshot. And yes, I had his permission: not just to post the photo, but to write this blog entry, too.
Robert Hanley
One of my agent’s fellow hopefuls was entertainer Robert Hanley, who was there with his wife Corrine. We were waiting around at one point for Nancy to show, and we all started talking about our pitches, the responses we were getting, and about what kind of book we were pitching.
The only things I knew about Robert and his wife when I told them about My Husband Betty was that they were practicing Catholics and that Robert was an entertainer. (A little while later he told me he was originally from the Bronx). So I explained my next book a little cautiously, not knowing if they were judgemental Christians or not. But once what I was saying became clear to them, we had a great chat about homosexuality, acceptance, Catholicism – you name it. Robert said he’d pray for me – not because he’d cast me or Betty as sinners, though – but because he recognized the challenge to our marriage that transness was. Corrine even mentioned how she felt it must be an “at birth” condition, like homosexuality, because who would choose it?
One of the most wonderful things about being out is being surprised like this. That is, I end up talking to all kinds of people, not just people who I think might be cool with transness. And more often than not, I find people are more sympathetic than judgemental. And honestly, I think they can connect with me – even if they, like I, don’t innately understand transness, because anyone who is married, anyone who has been in love, understands that you do what you can to be with the person you love.
So thanks to Robert, and Corrine, and all the lovely people out there who instead of thinking I’m a sinner or insane, know instead that I’m a woman struggling to preserve and honor her marriage, and that trans-folks are, in the same vein, neither sinners nor crazy, but people struggling with something that the rest of the world can’t understand.
Here’s a little more about Robert Hanley, if you’re interested. If you’re like me, you’re going to see his picture and think “I’ve seen him somewhere” and then, as you read the article, you’ll realize you have: he’s been in movies and tv shows, and did stand-up comedy, too.
But you know, I really should know to trust Catholic former New Yorkers. I mean, if you can’t trust a mensch from the Bronx, who can you trust?