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Help Vicki Marlane

via Susan Stryker:

Michelle Lawler is producing a documentary film about Vicki Marlane, a 74-year-old transsexual woman who is an amazing drag performer, and who still puts on two shows a week at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Drag performance, particularly the traditional “record pantomime” style that Vicki does, is a joyous, subversive, heart-warming art form. Vicki has been doing professional theatrical drag for 50 years. She is a total inspiration to me, and an honored elder of my community.

Michelle and her editor Monica Nolan have completed a final cut of the film, titled “Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight,” (so-called after a line in Vicki’s signature number, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”). We expect the film to premiere at Frameline’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival in June 2009–look for the official press release on May 19!

We’re still trying to raise the last few thousand dollars we need to pay for music rights and the final audio mix to finish the film. I’m writing to ask you to make a donation that will help us complete this important film.

You can watch a short clip from the film at our page on the BAVC web site (our fiscal sponsor). Check out Vicki’s performance, too, while you’re at it.

You can make a tax-deductible contribution online from that page or you can make a non-tax deductible donation by sending a check made out to the film’s Executive Producer, Kim Klausner, at 1541 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.

All donations — $5, $25, $100, $500 or whatever — will help. Feel free to forward this email to people who might be interested in supporting this project.

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RIP Bea Arthur

Bea Arthur died today. We shared a birthday, and we shared being the butt of jokes about masculine women and women with facial hair and women who prefer comfortable shoes, but she did that on the national stage, and for many, many, many years, with grace and humor.

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider / She didn’t’ care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her / She was a sister who really cooked.

Isadora was the first bra burner / And you’re glad she showed up. (Oh yeah)
And when the country was falling apart / Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.

And then there’s Maude.
That old compromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizing, / Right on Maude

She was, most famously, Maude, which by my accounting is one of the funniest shows that was ever on television, – and it was about a feminist! – followed closely by The Golden Girls, where she played Dorothy.

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Zapata Family Statement

The Zapata family has their say:

From me to them:
God Bless all of you for stepping up and speaking with such love about your kid sister. We can only hope that your sister’s death will help the rest of us keep educating people so that other teenagers like her won’t die the way she did.

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Spanish Language Trans PSA

I don’t read/speak Spanish myself, but was sent this by someone who does:

Surprising campaign, under the auspices of the (Chilean goverment’s) Division of Social Organizations (they provide grants and help to NGO’s) and the communications division of the Metro in Santiago (2,000,000 riders a day).  The posters appeared at all the metro stations and their design is very good; one can see a full size version from the last link. It was produced by a transmen’s org but displays very balanced info about MTF and FTM treatment and most of all about the difficulties and discriminations associated to being trans, pointing out that this is not a choice but an inborn condition.  Trans orgs there are also in conversations with the government’s civil registry to be able to get national ID cards with the appropriate gender marker without having to certify surgeries (as in Spain).

(Apparently trans guys who speak Spanish are as cool as they’re English-speaking counterparts.)

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For Milwaukee

We had a great time in Milwaukee this past weekend: a gathering of LGBT people on Saturday night, a sex workshop at The Tool Shed on Sunday, and then a workshop on gender variance Monday afternoon followed by a 7PM lecture about queer heterosexuals.

I did meet a bunch of people who asked me about various resources I mentioned in passing, so here goes:

& I think that’s it. If I’ve failed to mention anything I said I would post to here, feel free to email me about it or remind me in the comments section.

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Two Tune Tuesday: It’s Peter’s Fault

My friend Peter used to make me mixed tapes that had really interesting juxtapositions – so interesting that some of them I’ve remembered them for a long while. I actually don’t know if these two were next to each other, but that’s my story & I’m sticking to it.

Donovan’s “There Is a Mountain” (which Heidi tells me is a Buddhist proverb, too)
&
Bowie’s “Queen Bitch”(which you may know from the Milk ads)


Get a playlist!
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Ausperger’s: Girls Express Differently

I admit that this article really weirded me out, not becuase it’s a surprise that the medical commuity has failed to understand or diagnose Ausperger’s in girls particularly because their symptoms present differently (as the same for true for many years for women & heart disease, for example) but because her description of the way Ausperger’s presents in females is a little too close to the bone for me. I’ve already come out as an introvert, after all.

Girls slip through the diagnostic net, said Attwood, because they are so good at camouflaging or masking their symptoms. “Boys tend to externalise their problems, while girls learn that, if they’re good, their differences will not be noticed,” he said. “Boys go into attack mode when frustrated, while girls suffer in silence and become passive-aggressive. Girls learn to appease and apologise. They learn to observe people from a distance and imitate them. It is only if you look closely and ask the right questions, you see the terror in their eyes and see that their reactions are a learnt script.”

Girls also escape diagnosis, said Attwood, because they are more social than boys with the condition. Their symptoms can also be missed because it is the intensity of their interests that is unusual, and not the oddity of what they do.

“The impairments to their social life or interests tend not to stand out in the same way as boys’ do,” he said. “They might have one friend, while boys with the condition won’t have any. Also, boys hyperfocus on facts and certain interests, such as trains or weather. Girls escape into fiction. They have imaginary friends, live in another world with fairies and witches, obsessively watch soap operas or become intensely interested in celebrities.”

Hrm. The boldfaced bits pretty much describe my childhood & teenaged years in a nutshell. Frightening.

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Peeing, Again

Have you all seen this latest iteration of trans + feminist(ing) + bathroom issues? Oy, it makes me tired. Here’s what I had to say about it four years ago.

Some days I just want to apologize to all the trans people who I ardently needed to talk to about bathrooms when I was working this stuff out, so let me: sorry, all of you, and thank you for educating me when it wasn’t your responsibility.

In the meantime, Gunner Scott has started a new blog about trans people + bathroom experiences, and he put up a sample at TGB (& info about how to send him your own stories, too).