I am waiting to hear back from the photographer as to which charity or non-profit he’d like to direct donations to now that he’s achieved his goal.
If anyone has any suggestions for directly helping trans teens, please let me know.
Happy Birthday
A very happy birthday to my lovely wife on her birthday. This is the 12th we’ve spent together, even though we met 13 years ago. (We only missed the 1st one!)
(We both love sharing a birthday with Little Stevie Wonder. For the record.)
Writing About Bodies
Dean Spade recently wrote a short piece about how we might use language to de-gender bodies. It’s smart and concise – just as you’d expect from Dean Spade.
About Purportedly Gendered Body Parts
I have been thinking about how much I would like it if people, especially health practitioners, exercise instructors and others who talk about bodies a lot, would adjust their language about body parts heavily associated with gender norms. Lots of people who identify as feminists and allies to trans people still use terms like “female-bodied,” “male body parts,” “bio-boy,”and “biologically female.” Even in spaces where people have gained some basic skills around respecting pronoun preferences, suggesting an increasing desire to support gender self determination and release certain expectations related to gender norms, I still hear language used that asserts a belief in constructions of “biological gender.” From my understanding, a central endeavor of feminist, queer, and trans activists has been to dismantle the cultural ideologies, social and legal norms that say that certain body parts determine gender identity and gendered social characteristics and roles. We’ve fought against the idea that the presence of uteruses or ovaries or penises should be understood to determine such things as people’s intelligence, proper parental roles, proper physical appearance, proper gender identity, proper labor roles, proper sexual partners and activities, and capacity to make decisions. We’ve opposed medical and scientific assertions that affirm the purported health of traditional gender roles and activities and pathologize bodies that defy those norms. Continue reading “Writing About Bodies”
Anti-Non-Discrimination, or Legal Discrimination
What the hell is going on in this country? While I find most of my students are surprised – and appalled – that there is no federal non-discrimination legislation that includes LGBTQs, states are now passing amendments to prevent any cities or towns in that state from passing any.
That is, states are passing legislation that makes it illegal to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
What?
Bill Headed to Vote in State Senate Would Gut Nashville’s Anti-LGBT Discrimination Ordinance
In a letter to Tennessee state Senators, TLDEF and the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition (TTPC) raised concerns about the constitutionality of a proposed bill that would make it unlawful for any city or town in the state to pass a law protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Tennesseans from discrimination. If this sounds familiar, it should. We recently faced a similar bill in Montana.
Senate Bill 632 – which today passed the Senate State and Local Government Committee by a vote of 6-3 – would strike down local legal protections from discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Tennesseans, and would make it impossible to pass such protections in the future. It previously passed the House of Representatives (where it was known as House Bill 600) on April 25 by a vote of 73-24. It is expected to be voted upon in the full Senate shortly.
On April 5, 2011, the Nashville and Davidson County Metropolitan Council passed an anti-discrimination ordinance which bars the Nashville government from doing business with any entity that does not prohibit discrimination in employment against LGBT workers. Mayor Karl Dean signed it into law three days later. SB 632 was immediately rushed through the Tennessee House of Representatives by opponents of Nashville’s anti-discrimination ordinance. Their goal was to strike down Nashville’s ordinance and ensure that no city or town in Tennessee could ever enact a law protecting LGBT Tennesseans from discrimination again.
SB 632 is motivated by bias, which is a constitutionally impermissible basis for legislation. It would deprive LGBT Tennesseans of their right to participate in the political process and seek help from their local governments. It would turn lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Tennesseans into strangers to Tennessee’s government and would violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection under established United States Supreme Court precedent.
“Tennesseans have spoken through their local governments and have stated clearly that they want to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Tennesseans from discrimination,” said TLDEF executive director Michael Silverman. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Tennesseans want the same right to live and work free from discrimination that everyone else enjoys. It is unconstitutional for Tennessee to target them by taking away their right to pass local laws that protect them from the discrimination that they face in the cities and towns where they live,” he added. “Tennessee must treat all Tennesseans equally. It violates the Constitution when it closes its doors to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Tennesseans simply because some people do not like them.”
“This bill is blatantly discriminatory,” said TTPC President Dr. Marisa Richmond. “It is an attempt to deny basic rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Tennesseans and we hope that the Senate will defeat it when it comes up for a vote.”
I’m really starting to wonder if I live in the US anymore. This kind of thinking seems antithetical to what I was always taught was American.
We need a national ENDA, and we need one with teeth.
Two Tune Tuesday: Morphine
One of the biggest regrets of my musical life was that I didn’t know about Morphine before the death of Mark Sandman in ’99. Hugely regrettable – I wish I’d seen them live.
There is something so sexy – in the dirtiest way possible – about this music. And aside from having the coolest name ever, Sandman had a voice like bitter honey – just listen to the way he says “devil made of honey” or “she says it’s sweet and good” in “Honey White”. It’s rare I recommend Morphine to anyone because it’s just so rare I meet someone who is cool enough and – oh, let’s just say it’s a high bar, and damned rare.
i propose a toast to my self control – you see it crawling helpless on the floor
Today, though, I’m feeling generous, so I’m sharing with the lot of you. You can be grateful later.
Two Trans Lives
There’s the celebrity version of Chaz Bono and a puff piece about him and the documentary of his transition in The New York Times which is unsurprisingly vapid, predictable, and full of gender essentialism and stereotypes about trans people.
This other article, however, in a Madison alt weekly called Isthmus, focuses not so much on Rhiannon Tibbetts’ transition but on her activism and the inequalities and injustices in trans people’s lives.
I prefer the latter, especially as the journalist actually spoke to someone who knows about the trans: Anne Enke, who teaches Gender Studies at UW Madison. It’s not just that, either — it’s that the focus is on what the trans person in question does much moreso than about who she is, per se.
You’d think The New York Times might not suck occasionally, but they keep doing godawful coverage of trans stuff: not just Chaz Bono’s story but the recent Renee Richards myopic was covered in a sloppy article by Maureen Dowd that presents every old saw about the unhappy, regretful trans person, and somehow connects it to the recent abuse suffered by Chrissy Lee Polis in that Maryland McDonald’s. As a writer, what I see in this article is Dowd at her desk, a press release from Richard’s producers on her desk, and the viral video of the attack on Polis on her laptop. Brilliant, Dowd: that took about 12 seconds of research. Maybe you should forward the check to Mary Ellen Bell who actually did some work.
Coontz on Mothers
For Mother’s Day, a cool piece by Stephanie Coontz about moms. Coontz’s Marriage, A History
For their part, stay-at-home mothers complained of constant exhaustion. According to the most reliable study of all data available in the 1960s, full-time homemakers spent 55 hours a week on domestic chores, much more than they do today. Women with young children averaged even longer workweeks than that, and almost every woman I’ve interviewed who raised children in that era recalled that she rarely got any help from her husband, even on weekends.
In the 1946 edition of his perennial best seller, “Baby and Child Care,” Dr. Benjamin Spock suggested that Dad might “occasionally” change a diaper, give the baby a bottle or even “make the formula on Sunday.” But a leading sociologist of the day warned that a helpful father might be suspected of “having a little too much fat on the inner thigh.”
I’m not even sure what exactly that’s supposed to mean: can any of you explain that expression? I’m guessing it’s a bit of gender baiting, in the sense of more fat = less muscle and less muscle = not sufficient masculine, but it’s not familiar to me.
Happy Mother’s Day, moms and non-moms and dads. For me, to be honest, this day is a very pleasant reminder of why I’m child-free.
Williams on Trans
Here’s a brief meditation on the legal issues ignited by transgender identities by none other than Patricia Williams. I liked this in particular:
Transgender identities challenge us to think about the morphisms of “sex” and “gender,” “woman” and “man,” “real” and “not real.” This is a hot topic in academic circles: for example, attempting to disambiguate the notion of “identity” as a matter of legal subjectivity, when, say, a man with a heap of warrants is finally arrested—but by the time the police catch up, he has become a she, and in the name of that transformation asserts as a defense that “he” was a different person. It’s easy to dismiss this sort of discussion as funny or unimportant, but I think it’s necessary, not merely because it directly affects the lives of the transgendered but because it tests and expands the thinking of those of us who are not transgendered yet whose collective responses shape the social environment.
How Many More Gay People Does God Have to Create?
:)
