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Five Questions With… Julia Serano

Julia Serano is a Bay Area slam-winning poet, author, performer, activist, & biologist. She organized the GenderEnders event from 2003 until last year; plays guitar, sings & writes lyrics for her band Bitesize, and oh – has a Ph.D. in biochemistry. We got to meet her when she was in town promoting her book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, recently published by Seal Press.

(1) I loved Whipping Girl, for starters. I think it’s a pivotal work for trans communities, especially in building trans pride. But you know I kept waiting for you to actually define “feminine” – maybe if not for all time, but in some way that I could understand what you meant by it specifically. Your “barrette Manifesto” came close, except that I see barrettes as childish, not feminine per se. So can you help the genderblind like myself? What is femininity? Can you be feminine without being girly?

In the next to last chapter of the book, “Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism,” I talk about that a bit, but I’ll try to define it here a little more clearly. I would say that femininity is a heterogeneous set of traits (some of which are cultural in origin, some biological, some psychological, and many are a combination thereof). The only thing that all feminine traits have in common is that they are typically associated with women in our culture. But they certainly aren’t exclusive to women, as many men and MTF spectrum transgender folks also express feminine traits (similarly, many women express masculine rather than feminine traits). I think most of us tend to express some combination of both feminine and masculine traits.

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Hate Crimes Vote – Thursday

ACTION ALERT from the National Center for Transgender Equality

On Thursday, the Senate will be voting on Senator Kennedy’s Hate Crimes amendment to the Defense Authorization Act (S.1105). We need you to call your Senators now to urge their support of this critical bill, which would extend hate crimes protections to transgender people.

Please, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 right now; let them know what state you are from and ask to be connected with your Senators.

The language of the amendment is identical to that passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 3, 2007 (H.R.1592). It is vital that you contact your Senator today or tomorrow. As you read this, the Radical Right is mobilizing to oppose the federal hate crimes bill and attempt to prevent its passage in the Senate. They’re using scare tactics and flat-out lies in hopes of killing the amendment. Make sure that your Senators hear your voice and how important this bill is to you and our community.

The Hate Crimes bill would:

  • Extend existing federal protections to include “gender identity, sexual orientation, gender and disability”
  • Allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes
  • Mandate that the FBI begin tracking hate crimes based on actual or perceived gender identity
  • Remove limitations that narrowly define hate crimes to violence committed while a person is accessing a federally protected activity, such as voting.

Find your Senators’ contact information.
Background information about the hate crimes bill is available on NCTE’S webpage.

Call your Senators today and urge your friends and family to do the same.

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Monks Defy Orders

Imagine! Dubya finally said something in public I agree with! Today at the beginning of the UN’s general assembly, President Bush announced tighter sanctions on Burma:

He outlined a tightening of financial sanctions on Myanmar and an extension of a ban on visas of officials “responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights” and their families.

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear,” Mr. Bush said. “Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common.”

& In the meantime, the junta (formerly known as SLORC), have pulled soldiers away from where they’ve been fighting the Karen tribesmen for years now. The Karen will, no doubt, take advantage of the situation, as they were the largest ethnic majority to rise up against the military junta in 1988, as well. Interesting for U.S. policy, but one of the objections of the Karen tribe is that they are not allowed to practice their religion because the practice of Buddhism is state-imposed, and a third of them are… Christian.

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Turning Over the Rice Bowl

For six days in a row, young monks in Myanmar (Burma) have protested the treatment of monks by the ruling junta – the same junta who put down the protests / revolution of the early 90s, the same one that keeps human rights leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

This time, can we please pay attention? Thousands, including monks, lost their lives last time around, & looking at these young men – I worry about them too.

At least some monks were reportedly refusing to accept alms from members of the military, a refusal, known as “turning over the rice bowl,” that amounts to an ad-hoc gesture of excommunication. The A.P. reported that one monk at the head of the procession held a begging bowl upside down as he marched.

I went to Myanmar years ago now, before I knew that human rights activists asked tourists not to come, & the place haunted me with its beauty. The young monks especially. The U.S. needs to back them, absolutely, loudly & with no apologies to the military. I fear we won’t, considering what’s gone on in Tibet, but at least we don’t have to stand up to the Chinese to help this pro-democracy movement, so maybe there’s a chance. Hopefully the UN sessions later this month that promise to address the issue will.

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SoCo Keynote: Jenn Burleton

SOUTHERN COMFORT CONFERENCE 2007
KEYNOTE ADDRESS – SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2007

One Community, One Family

by Jenn Burleton, TransActive Education & Advocacy, Portland, OR

Thank you to the organizers of this amazing conference and in particular, Cat Turner, Lola Fleck and Elaine Martin. And I must thank my longtime friend, Mariette Pathy Allen. My life has been truly blessed as a result of knowing her and sharing many adventures with her…some of which are suitable for sharing with the whole family.

When Cat Turner called back in January and invited me to come to Atlanta I was of course, very honored. I was also surprised. After all, we’d never met. I’d never attended a previous Southern Comfort Conference and I am not, in my opinion anyway, one of the gender community heavy hitters.
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Jerry Sanders Says No Veto

The Republican mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, who opposed same sex marriage when he was campaigning, opted not to veto a bill providing marriage rights to same sex couples on Thursday.

Why? Well, his daughter is a lesbian, but that’s not all.

In the time since, he said he realized he could not accept “the concept of a separate-but-equal institution.” Because of that, he continued, he was unwilling to send the message to anyone that “they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”

The mayor, now crying openly, noted that he has close family members and friends in the gay and lesbian community, including staff members and “my daughter Lisa.”

“In the end, I couldn’t look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana,” said Sanders, who quickly thanked reporters and dashed from the room. (emphasis mine)

Separate but equal, folks! You heard it hear first! It’s unconstitutional! Who knew?!

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Cranky Cat

Aeneas, still on his diet, still sitting next to my chair grumpy about not being fed. They are losing weight, though: so far they’ve lost about a pound each.

Recently too we heard a huge, raging cat fight out the window, & the boys – who haven’t lived outside since they were kittens, & before we got them – rushed to the window to see what was going on. Aurora, on the other hand, curled up on her pillow & slept, figuring that what you want to do is stay the hell out of it when other cats are fighting.

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Trans Couples: Natasha & Kyle

“Tranny, 24, slim attractive brunette, seeks fun loving friend for laughter and love.”

Hey, every story has to begin somewhere, and this one’s starting with that. It’s the text of a personals ad, submitted to a local free weekly paper. The sort of thing that’s three quarters real estate listings.

I can’t claim sole authorship for the ad. My ex wife and I penned it. We started with the vague notion that it was about time I started seeing people. She, after all, had hooked up with a new guy and was rapidly approaching domestic bliss. I’d been moping around for a while, but was now finally starting to re-emerge into the world; to get my shit together, as it were.

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Dinner and Conversation

Last night I was taken out to dinner by a partner who is local to where I’m teaching during the week. She told me she was surprised I was willing to go to dinner with someone I’d never met before, & as she was saying it, I thought, ‘If only I had a trust fund, I wouldn’t do anything but meet with partners and give them someone to talk to.’

Because her story was like so many stories of partners: her trans person didn’t like to talk about it, only one friend knew who even kind of understood, and everyone else in their lives, she feared, would completely freak out if they knew.

So it is nice to go out and just listen to someone who needs to talk, to validate their experiences in whatever ways I can, & really, more than anything, provide a real flesh & blood person instead of a cold computer screen.