Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
I don’t know if many people saw this, but recently, The Washington Times published an attack on identity document changes of the type sought by transgender people:
I won’t bother to reproduce their text here, but did want to say: what a bunch of prejudiced hogwash.
There should be some version of Godwin’s Law that clarifies: once you’re using animals in your metaphor to justify your own prejudices, you’re not allowed to talk anymore.
A woman named Veronica Baxter died in police custody a year ago. Inquiries into how she died and what the circumstances were surrounding her death have gone unanswered: local activists call it a charade and have reasons to be suspicious, including emergency calls made by Baxter the night of her death, and reports that she was happy and smiling.
The inquiry revealed Baxter made four emergency calls during the night of her death. No witness addressed if those emergency calls had been answered, or by who.
The inquiry also revealed all the psychological assessments made of Baxter before her death said she was not suicidal. One counsellor said she was “smiling, happy and talking”.
I hope they can get some kind of definitive answer, and justice if there was any wrong doing.
Our lovely friend Nina Hartley is having an upcoming surgery and needs some recovery time she can’t afford alone. Friends have set up a website helping her gather the funds to manage it all.
If you’re a fan, do help her out by donating.
A man whose job it was to make sure men in recovery don’t switch their urine for someone else’s got fired because he wasn’t born with a penis.
TLDEF brought the case, which has now been reported in The New York Times.
So here’s how you tell this is discrimination: if a man who had lost his penis in an accident had this job, no one would have fired him for being penis-less. If a man who had hypospadias & had to pee sitting down had this job, likewise. If a man who had a penis that required a catheter for him to pee had this job, he wouldn’t have been fired.
THUS: El’Jai Devoureau was fired for being trans. As a culture, we still haven’t worked out how wholly incorrect this “genitals at birth determine gender for a lifetime” idea is.
Well, not really, but a student journalist interviewed me for a Lawrence University series called “The Secret Lives of Our Profs” series that runs in the school paper, The Lawrentian.
Safe Space Radio, who did an interview with me a few weeks back (and who just celebrated their 100th show!), has just done an interview with Jen Hudson on the intersections of the lesbian & trans communities.
Jen speaks about how delicate the relationship can be between two oppressed and marginalized groups, and her intention to speak only about her particular experience. She described the forces that bring the two communities together, including gender variance, oppression and risk of violence . . . Jen also spoke about tensions within the communities about the F to M transition and whether it reflects a misogynist rejection of femaleness.
A film made about the life & death of Angie Zapata is premiering this week in Denver:
This local story is told by local filmmakers. Denver company Loco Lane Filmworks, helmed by Director Alan Dominguez, created this 1-hour documentary by speaking to Angie’s family and friends as well as showing photographs of Angie. Scored by Mackenzie Gault (of Flobots fame) and featuring a song by L.A.-based band Ozomatli, the film focuses on Andrade’s life as remembered by her family as well as the trial of her killer.
It’s called Photos of Angie.
Surprisingly sympathetic, no?
…. she was trans. After one researcher comments that “he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transvestite. What we see here does not add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms” because of the position she was buried in and because of the implements she was buried with.
Why must otherwise intelligent, educated people conflate sexual orientation and corss-gender identity? At least one of the other researchers seems to know what’s what:
Another member of the archaeological team, Katerina Semradova, said that colleagues had uncovered an earlier case dating from the Mesolithic period where a female warrior was buried as a man.
She added that Siberian shamans, or witch doctors, were also buried in this way but with richer funeral accessories appropriate to their elevated position in society.
‘This later discovery was neither of those. We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a transvestite or third-gender grave in the Czech Republic.’
That said, we don’t know that she wasn’t gay, either: maybe some of the things she was buried with were given to her by her wife.
All kidding aside: ze could have also been part of a third gender tradition, male-identified but fulfilled a woman’ role.
Or ze might have been trans in a period before people used hormones, identity documents and surgeries to transition. That is, we seem to know a little something about this person’s own gender role, but not necessarily about hir gender identity, and we absolutely don’t know who this person desired, partnered with, had sex with, or loved, while ze was alive. Therefore: we really don’t know anything about hir sexual orientation whatsoever (or rather, no indicators of such were mentioned in the article).
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1374060/Gay-caveman-5-000-year-old-male-skeleton-outed-way-buried.html#ixzz1InnbGDRT
What do you expect of two people who went on their first date to see Point of Order and now live in the birthplace of Joe McCarthy? You expect gung-ho progressive politics, dammit.
Tonight, after being a Daily Kos reader for a goddamn long time, Betty posted a piece about our local elections here in Appleton, WI:
I live and work in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Two of our Alderman elections were won by people I know and respect. Both were first-timers.
…
This is big and it’s nice. The town I live in has a progressive backbone and just showed it. The birthplace of Joe McCarthy.
Nice.
Appleton is part of the Green Bay/Oshkosh corridor (probably the biggest by population) and from what I can tell, leans conservative (I’m a recent emigré from Brooklyn, NYC).
Wahl and Metille are progressive. And they won. Impressively.
In Prosser’s back yard.
Small victories.
Appleton, WI has two more progressive voices in elected positions.
Nice.
I like the small victories. They smell like big ones.
Of course we are still waiting, will be waiting a while for the Prosser/Kloppenburg results, but in the meantime, we have these victories.