Year: 2010

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US Nuns Rock the House (& the Church)

It’s rare that a bit of political news actually makes me tear up, but the efforts by the Catholic US nuns today did:

Their numbers and influence may be declining, but American nuns demonstrated Wednesday what generations of schoolchildren already knew: They are a force to be reckoned with.

By sending a letter to Congress in support of the Senate healthcare bill, a wide coalition of nuns took sides against not only the Republican minority but against their own church hierarchy, as represented by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes the bill. The nuns’ letter contributed to the momentum in favor of the legislation, despite opposition that is partially rooted in a disagreement over abortion funding.

“We agree that there shouldn’t be any federal funding of abortion,” said Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of Network, a national Catholic social justice advocacy organization that spearheaded the effort. “From our reading of the bill, there isn’t any federal funding of abortion.”

Rock on, ladies.

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Two Tune Tuesday: David Garza

Ah, David Garza: I discovered him years ago & he has been scratching my itches for a long while. His range is amazing, his love songs heart-breaking (or, happily, heart-warming) and his voice is hot hot hot. This is a decent sampler but there are a lot more styles he’s done; if you can find somewhere to hear a song called “One Drop” go do it.

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On a Landing

Not too long ago I went to what’s called “the Big Gay Conference” which is a conference for LGBTQIA ETC students who are attending colleges in the midwest. On Friday night, after we’d checked in and gotten Miss Bornstein checked in, I went down to register. As it turned out, there was a wedding going on the same weekend as the conference, so I found myself, name tag and schedule in hand, standing on a landing.

To my left, a cocktail party of the heteronormative variety: men in suits, women in cocktail dresses, hose and heels.
To my right, blue haired, pierced kids; boys in cigarette leg jeans; girls in ties, starched button-downs; trans people of many types.

I stood there for a while, hoping I had Moses’ staff, or at least his gumption, to ask for a parting of the waters that would provide a third, middle path. My life has been spent on that landing, really, popping back and forth between groups, hanging out in one because it’s where I feel more comfortable, but hanging out in the other because it’s the way I desire. Like Superman, I had to change clothes pretty often, and often with my clothes, my gender; I still long for a heterosexual space where I could be a het woman in a suit & tie, or for a queer space where I could be a woman who loves sex with men.

Sometimes, in rare moments, that third space appears: in the music scenes of the late 80s in NYC was one. Fetish clubs are sometimes another. But mostly I have had to decide between being with my people as a queer woman or pretending to be more gender normative than I actually am when I’ve had boyfriends.

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Drinking Game Redux: Stanton Biopic on CNN

The day has finally arrived when the trans community groans collectively: Susan Stanton’s CNN myopic is on tonight. Get out the fifth (or your drug of choice) because this one is going to be worse than the usual; previews are clear about that. We’ll get to see Stanton insult crossdressers and other trans people.

Sigh.

Mostly I would like for non-trans community to know that most trans people are nothing like Stanton: they don’t reek of privilege, for starters. White, wealthy trans women who transition later in life have always gotten more than their share of the media spotlight, and that’s unfortunate if only because it skews the picture of who trans people are, what they need, and what kinds of discrimination they deal with. Most cannot afford GRS, much less FFS (facial feminization surgery) or, alternately, phalloplasty & the like. People like Stanton (Chloe Prince, etc.) also make it seem as if every trans person comes from a heterosexual history and not only gets GRS but needs it; in fact, most MTF spectrum people don’t get genital surgery, for various reasons.

So if you’re not trans, please don’t bother someone you know who is tomorrow. If you really want to know more, try a book.

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Porn Is Good?

Milton Diamond, who is otherwise best known for being the person who exposed John Money’s failed “experiement” that was the life of David Reimer, has a new article in The Scientists on the cultural, societal value of porn.

Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women. There is no doubt that some people have claimed to suffer adverse effects from exposure to pornography—just look at testimony from women’s shelters, divorce courts and other venues. But there is no evidence it was the cause of the claimed abuse or harm.

I’ve always been a fan – mostly because I grew up in a family where we were born fully dressed, and where no one was going to show me photos of what a vagina actually looked like (which, if you’re a woman, is hard to see for yourself). It can also be a useful instruction manual that’s actually fun to watch.

That said, I know there are plenty of feminists, and non-feminists, who hate porn and will only ever see the side of it that degrades women. I think of it more like comedy – sure, a lot of it’s lousy and mean-spirited and serves no cultural function, but the cultural function it does serve can’t really be fulfilled in any other way.

Read more: Porn: Good for us?