I just got the crap news today that my cousin in the Navy is going to Iraq, after which he’s being shipped to Afghanistan. So today’s cat picture is for him.
May he keep himself safe.
Five Questions With… Loren Krywanczyk
Loren Krywanczyk is an undergraduate at Yale where he first organized Trans Issues Week in 2004, as a sophomore. The 2nd Annual Trans Issues Week took place in 2005, and Krywanczyk is currently planning the 3rd in the series.
< Loren (left) with his partner Vera
1) What encouraged you to start Trans Issues week at Yale?
I founded Trans Issues Week through my capacity as Special Events Coordinator of the Yale Women’s Center my sophomore year, a job that entailed putting together a speaker series during the spring semester. I was at the time purely woman-identified, and yet for some reason which I am still not entirely sure of I decided that it would be a good idea to devote the week to an exploration of intersections and tensions between feminism and trans/gender issues. I met with Jonathan D. Katz of the Larry Kramer Initiative for some direction in potential speakers, since I had very little knowledge of trans/gender issues or theory, let alone key visible figures in the field. Through contacting speakers and getting closer with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale, I received a one-month crash course in gender while throwing together what became the first annual Trans Issues Week at Yale. The week itself inspired me personally as well as academically, and shortly after the series my sophomore year I began incorporating genderqueerness and fludity into my own everyday life and intellectual pursuits. I guess you could say that a personal interest and activist/education-buildling initiative sparked my organization of the series, but even so I don’t know exactly where that personal interest stemmed from at the time.
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Recommended Reading list (website update)
Some of you might notice that my former list of “Required Reading” (which listed 10 books with their amazon.com links) has been changed to a “Recommended Reading” link, instead.
It looks simpler on the main page (good thing #1) and provides me with more flexibility to update the list (good thing #2). By creating a page – instead of just links – I was able to add more information (good thing #3), like links to discussions in the Reader’s Chair Forum and to interviews with authors originally posted on this blog.
I hope, in time, this will grow into a valuable resource and bibliography. I’m not listing books I didn’t like, since my mom taught me not to say anything when I didn’t have anything nice to say.
Please Donate
If you have the means and the intention, please donate to help affray our costs this month.
Thank you,
Helen & Betty
Gloria Anzaldua
I just found out – when looking up a reference – that writer Gloria Anzaldua died last year. Her essay “Speaking in Tongues” was an important one for me (it’s in the collection This Bridge Called My Back) and I’m sorry we have lost such a firebrand.
There’s a good interview with her from 2000 that appeared in the journal MELUS.
Blogging Betty
My lovely partner has decided to start a blog in order to rant about the innumerable things she thinks and reads. My best guess is that little will be trans-related, but it’ll be a great resource for interesting reading, especially political notes.
I suppose this means I have to start acting.
http://bettoi.blogspot.com/
Keeping Cool with Aeneas
Five Questions With… Interview with Jamison Green
Jamison Green is the author of Becoming A Visible Man
(Vanderbilt U. Press, 2004), which won the CLAGS’ Sylvia Rivera Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Finalist. He writes a monthly column for PlanetOut, and is a trans-activist of unmatched credibility. He is board chair of Gender Advocacy and Education, a board member for the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, and served as the head of FTM International for most of the 1990s*. He is referred to in many other books about trans issues, including Patrick Califia’s Sex Changes, Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, and Body Alchemy by Loren Cameron.
1. Betty and I often repeat your “there is no right way to be trans” idea, and I was wondering if any one thing contributed to you believing that.
I guess you could boil it down to the desire not to invalidate other people, but that desire has been informed by exposure to a wide variety of transgender and transsexual individuals of many ages, from many cultures, and many walks of life. Some people take it upon themselves to judge other trans people, to say “You’ll never make it as a man” or “as a woman,” or “you’re not trans enough,” “radical enough,” “queer enough,” whatever the case is. But I’ve known people who were told those things who went on to have successful transitions and generally satisfying lives, though they often felt burned enough by “the community” to stay away from it. I think it’s a shame that people cut themselves and/or others off from the potential for community, and I think that if we all truly believed there was room for everyone and we could learn to truly appreciate other’s differences and each person’s intrinsic value as a human being –and if we worked to make that a reality– then we, as collective trans people, might really make a positive difference in the world.
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Advantages of Having a Crossdressing Husband:
None, as far as I can tell.
Someone posted this ‘wish list‘ (or this one, or this one) of the good things about having a CD for a husband, and I mentioned how it was this kind of article that bothered me so much way back when. Ironic or not, I was about 300% more positive about having a CD for a husband than most of the women I met online too.
But this list, I suspect, was written by a CD, not a wife, or maybe it was written by a very cheerlead-y wife in an optimistic mood. (If anyone has any info on the actual origin/writer of this piece, I’d love to hear it.)
While I think it’s an advantage to have a considerate, gentle, domesticated husband, conflating one with the other is a mistake. I know considerate, gentle, domesticated men who are husbands who are not CDs. I have met CDs who are insensitive, beer-cracking, remote-stealing boors. And while I know that many CDs feel that their desire to be feminine makes them – well, more feminine – I’m not sure that CDing has anything whatsoever with how nice a man is, or how nurturing he is.
What I think CDing *can* do for a man is bring along the kind of crisis that forces a man to dig deeper into himself, to think hard about difficult issues of identity, and to think about who he wants to be, and how. Likewise, for a couple, that same kind of crisis can open new pathways: to conversation, to the meaning of trust, and to a reconsideration of expected gender roles and even sexuality.
But it doesn’t do any of those things automatically, by any stretch. It requires a great deal of integrity, responsibility and sheer nerve to face this stuff and deal with it in a way that isn’t destructive to self or family. And someone capable of that is not a “good man” nor a “good CD” but really just a good partner, spouse, parent, or child.
Cat Scratch Fever
Have a lovely weekend, all – and make sure you scratch whatever itches need scratching!