The Tibetans have been trying to open a dialogue with the Chinese for forever, but with the international pressure now on them because of a potential boycott of the Olympics if they don’t violently crackdown on Tibetans, there’s a new chance to get them to talk.
Subprime
If you want an explanation of the whole subprime mortgage situation check this out.
& Yes we’re back. Back in Brooklyn, land of pizza places and churches.
Transgender Sims
The news about Sims 3 is out:
With 98 million games sold around the world in 22 languages, the transgender appeal of the franchise has made The Sims the third best selling game in history, behind Mario and Pokemon.
I’m pretty sure that they didn’t mean transgender in the way we use it around here, but still it’s pretty damn cool. What they meant is that it’s the only game that has sold MORE to female players than male, but without the usual drop-off of sales to the other gender. That is, many games sell most to male with precious few female players, but The Sims franchise has sold to more women than men, and yet sells to more males than most games sell to females.
Got it? It’s a giant cyber dollhouse, really, but they encourage same-sex attractions and no one’s going to yell at you when you want to make your dolls have sex.
Leaving WI
Well, we leave Wisconsin today, drive home through Illinois and Ohio and Pennsylvania and whatever other states I’m forgetting, and in a few days we’ll be back in Park Slope.
I’m sure I’ll be happy to be home. I hope I’ll be happy to be home. But wow did I enjoy living in Wisconsin. & Believe me, that surprises me more than it surprises just about anyone else.
I’ll try to blog from the road.
Here’s Your Hat
Apparently Wisconsin wants to make sure I remember how rough the winter is here, and is kicking me out with a fresh coating of snow.
(We drive tomorrow.)
Stogie
Endymion with a catnip cigar he got for Christmas. I had a lot of scratches on my hands by the time he was through.
Being Helen Boyd
So here’s my dirty secret, which I re-realize every time I update my author site, helenboydbooks.com: “renaming” myself Helen Boyd for the sake of publication (& some privacy, theoretically) was about the smartest thing I’ve ever done in terms of my own self-confidence. Why? It gives me the feeling, sometimes, that I just work for her.
Which kind of allows me to shove my lack of self-confidence to the side and do what I need to do.
(Of course it did nothing for me in terms of privacy, since it was very shortly afterwards that I started using my legal name on this site & in my bios & elsewhere.)
I wonder if trans people experience anything like that in their own “renamings,” if they let you get rid of old baggage that might have little or nothing to do with gender.
Top Ten Trans Reads
Out Magazine recently put together a really asinine list of transgender books for their transgender issue. I haven’t seen the issue, but the list doesn’t really inspire me to go buy it, either, since Myra Breckinridge is on it.
For the past years I’ve always mixed my gender / feminism / trans books, but since that Top 10 of Out‘s is so lame, and the Lammies recently neglected Whipping Girl, which they shouldn’t have, I thought instead I should post my own Top Ten Recommended Trans Reads for LGBTQ readers. There are a few everyone might not need to read – like Virginia Erhardt’s Head Over Heels, which is about the partners of MTFs – or they might want to substitute Minnie Bruce Pratt’s S/he
I might suggest different books for family & friends who are trying to understand transition but who aren’t big readers, & I’ll have to think about that list, too.
Of course now that I’ve written it I have to say I’d add my own books, My Husband Betty
& Maybe The Drag Queens of New York as well.
- Butch is a Noun
- Gender Outlaw
- Crossdressing, Sex & Gender
- Sex Changes
- Head Over Heels
- Transgender Warriors
- Becoming a Visible Man
- Mom, I Need to be a Girl
- Whipping Girl
- Transition & Beyond
You’ll notice none of them is a YETA (Yet Another Transsexual Autobiography), since after you read Jenny Boylan’s She’s Not There
NYC: Trans Partners Meeting
Today, in New York, at the Center. For more info.
Lambda Lit Transgender Finalists
But despite the absence of Whipping Girl, I do want to congratulate the finalists:
- Transparent, Cris Beam (Harcourt)
- Male Bodies, Women’s Souls, LeeRay M. Costa, PhD, (Haworth)
- The Marrow’s Telling, Eli Clare (Homofactus Press)
- What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz (University of Nebraska Press)
- Nobody Passes, Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Seal Press)
I have an essay in Mattilda’s Nobody Passes of course, but I especially wanted to congratulate Eli Clare and thank him for all the work he’s done in/for the trans community.