Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Geeks, I need your help. I seem to be unverified in my Wiki entry, which I rather like having & which I’d prefer to stay. So if you would, please do go ahead & add some additional verification, pretty please.
Things like my own author website should help, as might my publisher’s. My notice on the AROHO website should help, too, as might the page where I’m listed as a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
Egypt is fascinating and amazing and cool, and it’s easy to enjoy the good news of democracy in progress.
That said, ours is being battered here in the US.
The “forcible rape” language has not yet been removed, for instance.
And health care for poor women (Title X) is on the chopping block as an “austerity measure.” Because we all know keeping poor women from contraception, HIV tests and abortion will make for a better world. Cost effective? Not at all. Better to prevent HIV and various STIs than to have to treat them later.
Write your politicians, write Chris Smith, and tell them to cut it out.
Then, join Planned Parenthood or NARAL or some other organization that will be fighting harder than usual for women’s lives and women’s health for the next few years.
US District (Federal) Judge Clevert struck down a Wisconsin law prohibiting trans people from receiving drugs in prison.
In Wednesday’s order, Clevert found that the law amounts to “deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” because it denies hormone therapy without regard to those needs or doctors’ judgments. He found the law unconstitutional on its face and also in violation of the inmates’ rights to equal protection.
In other words, he made it possible for doctors to decide what is appropriate medical treatment: sanity prevails occasionally.
I’ve always joked that my using a pen name connects me to the trans community in a way I never expected: I have an “old” name and a current name, and people get irritated if they feel I haven’t told them my “real” name. Transitioned people tend to get similar questions, albeit the gendered version. But this whole idea of having a “real” name is a funny one to me: Helen is my real name, in that it’s what people call me, and also it’s my legal middle name.
But the naming issue is really the tip of the iceberg, where the issue is more about having a “real” life compared to a persona’s life, and while I’m sure many people experience and understand this idea now, what with online handles and Second Life avatars, there is something about the aspect of being a public person that’s specific:
This fictional version of you is additionally compounded by the fact that, if you’re a writer, the version of you they’re building from isn’t the experience of you (as in, you’re someone they know in real life), but from the fiction you write and/or the public persona you project, either in writing (in blogs and articles) or in public events, such as conventions or other appearances. The fiction one writes may or may not track at all to one’s real-world personality or inclinations, and while one’s public persona probably does have something to do with the private person, it’s very likely to be a distorted version, with some aspects of one’s personality amped up for public consumption and other aspects tamped down or possibly even hidden completely.
All of which is to say these fictional versions of one’s self are to one’s actual self as grape soda is to a grape — artificial and often so completely different that it’s often difficult to see the straight-line connection between the two.
I might posit grape juice instead of grape soda, but you get the idea.
In honor of his new one, People’s Keys (which you can hear over at NPR), here’s two tracks by Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst both quiet & loud:
I went to see Wicked tonight – not intentionally to avoid football, although that was a benefit – and it was pretty damned amazing. That said, the story line goes: odd, earnest woman who doesn’t fit in grows up, falls in love with a handsome man who seems to be shallow and happy but is actually quite sad and serious, and he in turn is enamored with the pretty, but they do finally get together, but handsome man is magically transformed in order to save his life, and the new couple have to go into exile and leave their beloved city.
It sounds vaguely familiar but I can’t quite put my finger on why it seems so eerily familiar… wait… no. Hrm. It certainly does remind me of something.
(Now someone hand me my broom.)
Still & all, it wasn’t the easiest play in the world to watch at this point in my life: fitting in has never been my strong suit.
Even if this year’s Superbowl commercials suck, there’s always this incredibly offensive yet hilarious Guinness ad:
(If anyone knows where or when it was on TV, do let me know. Once again: a student sent me the link, & thanks to her for it.)
Happy Superbowl! Please don’t drink and drive.
Oh, if mass media and marketing to girls has its way, there won’t be any tomboys left at all. Check out this interview with Peggy Orenstein on The Diane Rehm Show about her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter
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This past week, Republicans wanted to redefine rape to mean only “forcible rape.” To understand how ridiculously insensitive – and ignorant – that is, read Jeanette Freidman’s account of her own rape 37 years ago and why she didn’t have any bruises in the aftermath. They failed, at least, largely due to ongoing pressure such as the #DearJohn campaign that happened on Twitter & focused on getting Boehner’s attention.
I don’t think we would even have to discuss something so heinous if we didn’t already live in a rape culture — where most forms of rape are already ignored or even openly encouraged:
Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.”Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another (“I’ll make you my bitch”). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men’s prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.
I wish we didn’t.
