Year: 2010

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Who We Lost 2009

There are a lot of lists of who died last year, but I haven’t seen any specific to LGBTQ and feminist communities, so here goes:

  • Mike Penner / Christine Daniels – transgender sports writer
  • Michele La Freniere – transgender activist
  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick = queer theorist
  • Bea Arthur – gay icon/actor
  • Dr. George Tiller – abortion doctor
  • Virginia Prince – crossdressing pioneer
  • Ted Kennedy – key legislator on LGBT rights
  • Dottie Laing – crossdresser’s wife & out trans partner

Stars, all. Rest in peace.

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Just Say Sorry, David Letterman

Ox Freeman of the Alabama Gender Alliance just posted the info from GLAAD about the stupid joke that was made on David Letterman about Amanda Simpson, and with it he commented that, “Trans people will not be safe from hate violence until it is safe to be attracted to us, to love us, and to regard us as human.”

He’s entirely right, of course, and it’s nice to have someone else articulate exactly why I do what I do.

Betty and I are both for trans people having more of a sense of humor, but we both agree: this joke is not even a little funny, exactly because this reaction to finding out a woman is trans is the same reaction that causes the heart-breaking violence trans people — and especially trans women — face.

As Allyson Robinson of HRC put it in an article by ABC News:

“Your skit affirmed and encouraged a prejudice against transgender Americans that keeps many from finding jobs, housing, and enjoying freedoms you and your writers take for granted every day,” HRC’s Allyson Robinson wrote in the letter.

Robinson said the punch line of the bit has “been used as a defense in nearly every hate crime perpetrated against transgender people that has come to trial.” She cited two cases in which individuals suspected of murdering transgender people claimed they did so in a rage after learning about their victims’ gender identity.

So now go to GLAAD.org and bug CBS, or do the same thing via change.org.

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No Discrimination Based on Gender Identity

From today’s NYT:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has inserted language into the federal jobs Web site explicitly banning employment discrimination based on gender identity.

More here. But yeah, let’s keep criticizing the guy for not doing enough fast enough. Honestly? This blows my mind, though lately I’ve been wondering if the LGBT community has general amnesia.

(h/t to SJ)

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Two Tune Tuesday: Rufus Wainwright

You may as well start off the year right, so here’s Rufus. Apparently he’s someone people either hear & love or hear & think “What?” For me, it was all about the Gap commercial, back in the day. I’m one of those people, who will probably always prefer the first record for it’s lovely vaudevillian richness.

The tracks are mostly in chronological order:

  • Foolish Love from the eponymous Rufus Wainwright (which has that lyric of all lyrics, “so the day noah’s ark / floats down Park / my eyes will be / simply glazed over”)
  • Greek Song from Poses (when I’m not paying attention, & he hits that first “All” of “all the pearls of China” I just cry. It’s pathetic, but it’s true.)
  • Beautiful Child from Want One (the song Radiohead should cover, or Rufus should perform with Thom Yorke).
  • The One You Love from Want Two (let’s fuck this art party, indeed.)
  • Between My Legs from Release the Stars (all i can say is : i can’t fa a a aa aaaaaake it; the voiceover is from I, Claudius)
  • & an older soundtrack song, Instant Pleasure, which he didn’t write but – well, just listen & you’ll understand why Rufus fans still want to hear it live.

There are so many more I love, songs that make me cry or laugh out loud. He is absolutely, a million percent great to see live.

Thank you, Rufus. & Long live Rufus.

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SistersTalk Radio Interview

I’ll be on SistersTalk radio this Wednesday, January 6th, at 7PM Central time.  & Yes, they’re on Facebook. They recently interviewed Rachel Kramer Bussell, erotica empress.

Other upcoming for me: a reading at Appleton Public Library on March 3rd, and I’m doing a reading for the Fox Cities Book Festival on April 12th. My best calendar is still on the front page of my author site, www.helenboydbooks.com (along with a list of past appearances, etc.)

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Anti-Trans, RadFem, Catholic Theologian Mary Daly Dies

Mary Daly died yesterday.

She resigned from her position at Boston College because she wouldn’t let male students into her Women’s Studies classes. feh.

From her Wiki entry:

Also in Gyn/Ecology, Daly asserted her negative view of transsexual people, whom she referred to as “Frankensteinian.” She labels transsexualism a “male problem” and claimed that post-operative transsexuals exist in a “contrived and artifactual condition.”[13] Daly was also the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, whose dissertation, published in 1979 as The Transsexual Empire, is critical of “transsexualism.” Transsexual activist Riki Wilchins has accused Daly of being transphobic.

Mostly we’ll just wait for the rest of them to go, too. Being an anti-trans feminist these days is about as logical as being against same-sex marriage: wrong side of history.