Recently, a suggestion was made that I quit doing what I do as a moderator on the message boards, or maybe that I do a little less of it, or a little less frequently, or zealously. Or something like that.
Since then, I’ve gotten numerous emails and comments from people that I really should cut back, that it’d be good for my sanity.
Maybe it would.
But the thing is, I moderate the boards the way I do because I like the way they are, the way they’ve attracted intelligent, occasionally captious types who are also funny, creative, and supportive of each other. I mean where else on the trans internet are you going to find a Trans Periodic Table and abstracts to Blanchard articles? There’s a 15 page thread on football (football!), too, and that’s in addition to the empathetic comments from a TG who saw a young child made fun of for wearing nailpolish.
The boards are, in some way, the kind of community I was looking for years ago, before I wrote My Husband Betty, and it’s kind of nice that the book has given me the kind of reach to create that – to fill a void, as it were. I’m proud of them, and pleased to be doing the work that makes them a good place for both support and debate.
Sometimes I can be sensitive to criticisim – precisely because I do spend a lot of time moderating the boards – and it hurts to have someone tell me I should be doing it differently, or could be doing it better – tempting me to say (mostly to myself) “you get what you pay for” on a regular basis. But snarkiness aside, I enjoy the boards, and I’m proud of having built them – so they would come.
Most of the time that’s enough – other times, it’s just nice to hear that others appreciate them and are getting something out of them they can’t find anyplace else. For the nearly 500 of you who are registered users, and the 60 of you who post regularly, and to the lurkers, I’m thankful, not burdened.
To Your Pens!
Amnesty International has picked up Kelly McAllister’s case.
From their site:
Kelly McAllister, a transgender woman, was reportedly beaten, pepper sprayed, hog-tied, and dragged across the hot pavement face down by arresting deputies from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department after refusing orders to get out of her parked truck. She was later put in a cell with a male inmate who reportedly raped her. Urge the police to conduct a thorough investigation into Kelly McAllister’s allegations of abuse and the actions of its deputies leading to her rape.
The Dark Side: Women, HPV, and a Cancer Vaccine
Back in April, I wrote about how a potential vaccine for one form of cancer – cervical cancer caused by HPV – might be blocked as a result of our usual anti-sex, unrealistic Religious Right. The thing is, girls could be saved the chance of ever getting cervical cancer by getting the vaccination, but some people would rather those girls risk dying of a preventable cancer because they feel that giving the girls a vaccination might ‘encourage’ them to have sex.
It’s along the same line of thinking as ‘let our kids die, but don’t give them condoms.’ That is, an idiotic line of thinking.
One of the regulars over at DailyKos has written an astonishingly good piece about women, HPV, the vaccine, and why some people have a problem with saving girls’ lives. I strongly recommend reading it through to the end.
Body Mods? Mod This!
How do I love Dan Savage? Let me count the ways…
This column made me wonder if a married TG might use being en femme or making body mods precisely to keep their partner from wanting sex.
Because if they are the type of CDs who are already auto-sexual, or have low libidos, or don’t like the male sexual role, or can’t get off without wearing panties or fantasizing about wearing panties, this just works a little too well, doesn’t it?
The CDing kills the wife’s desire for sex, & the CD is free to be autosexual, as he really prefers it. No performance anxiety. No topping. No being the seducer. Just a wife who rants once in a while about how much she wants to have sex and doesn’t get it.
Not in a conscious, manipulative way, but more in a subconscious, pacifying kind of way.
Just a thought.
(Thanks to Andrea for the link.)
Founder of Rome?
Aeneas, chowing down.
Happy Birthday, Adam Ant
Okay, I just couldn’t help myself. Adam turned 51 today.
Five Questions With… Susan Stryker
Susan Stryker is a researcher, writer, queer historian, artist, and a filmmaker. She is the former executive director of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, and a former history columnist for Planet Out. She has written and co-authored books like Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and edited “The Transgender Issue” of The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol 4, No 2, 1998. She recently discovered and made a film about the Compton’s Riot – riots by transpeople in San Francisco that pre-date Stonewall – and turned that discovery into a documentary film, Screaming Queens.
1) I was really excited to learn that someone else is a fan of Cronenberg’s films. Why do you love them?
I love Cronenberg because he disturbs me, and because he’s such a fierce auteur who’s not afraid to show even the most unsettling aspects of his sensibility. I like that he is such a philosphically smart filmmaker, and a whiz at making things look stylish on a low budget. But I think my favorite thing is that he really, really pays attention to the fact that we are bodies, that bodies are different from one another, and that bodily difference is a source of fascination, pleasure, dread, and horror for everybody.
That said, I don’t always like Cronenberg. I think his take on women is sometimes mysogynistic, that he finds horrific things I find familiar and desirable. I think he sometimes despairs that his mind is inextricably embedded in flesh, rather than reveling in that. But I totally admire the unflinching way he looks at and represents those feelings. I guess that’s the biggest turn-on for me–that he is alive and engaged with the phenomenogical, existential, emobodied situation of human experience. He feels what it means to be made of meat, and helps us see that.
Favorite moments? Hard to top Videodrome, start to finish–the snuff films, growing new orifices, the flesh gun, infections by viral images, the disemebodied Great White Man in a post-death virtual existence on videotape. What a brilliantly twisted film. And Deborah Harry was just plain ol’ hot. I also love the doomed romance between Jeff Goldblum and Gina Davis in The Fly, and those dwarves who burst out of the rage-sacks growing on Samantha Eggar’s body in The Brood, who then beat that kindergarten teacher to death while all the kiddies look on. When I saw that, I though “this is what filmmaking is all about–see it, don’t say it; show it, don’t tell it.” Cronenberg is such an amazing visual storyteller. He lets you see feeling in an unprecedented way. I could go on and on, but I guess I should stop here.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Susan Stryker”
Ate All Her Cookies!
Okay, nearly. Caprice came to Rasputina as Little Red Riding Hood, and even brought a basket of very tasty cookies. I ate a few.
^ We were doing a kind of New Orleans vampire theme, but I got asked if I was the lead singer of Rasputina not once, but twice.