Month: February 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS: TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.4, “Trans* Cultural Production”, deadline: April 15, 2013

The arts have served as a cultural arena for imagining, creating, and proliferating transgender experiences and communities around the world. As part of its inaugural year TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly will feature a special issue examining trans* cultural production in art, film, dance, design, architecture, literature, and music. We seek papers that critically analyze the current state, history, and significance of these expressive forms as they address, depict, and are mobilized by trans* subjects broadly defined, including people whose gender/sex expression is not informed primarily by contemporary Western constructions and conventions. The issue will feature trans* makers and communities alongside essays exploring cultural production by non-trans* makers as such production impacts trans* lives, trans* politics, and/or trans* theory. We invite submissions exploring the repercussions and resonances of trans* representation in non-trans* contexts as well as work developing trans* interpretations of creative work not originally intended to engage specifically trans* people or concerns.

Rather than a survey of best practices or major figures, the issue aims to offer a forum to examine the wider issues attending to the representation of trans* in the arts and to demonstrate the value of trans* as a heuristic lens for interpreting creative work more generally. While the focus of the issue is scholarly research, we also hope to include a small selection of shorter, less formal essays that engage with critical issues in trans* cultural production from curatorial, marketing, and practitioner perspectives. Continue reading “CFP: TSQ”

I’m aware that publishing a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto has caused some chagrin, and my explanation for why I did so even more.

So I’d like to point out a few things:

1. I was unaware, when I read Ms. Benvenuto’s book, that her ex was Joy Ladin, who has also written a book about her transition.
2. I will be reading Ms. Ladin’s book and doing a brief interview with her, in future.
3. I do not claim to know what “really” happened between them. No one does but them, and they don’t agree, so really: no one does.
4. I would like to point out the phrase “despite transphobic tendencies” – which I used to describe Ms. Benvenuto’s book. Her transphobia is not lost on me, by any stretch. Some of the most vitriolic transphobia comes from ex spouses, specifically of trans women.
5. That does provide an interesting problem, doesn’t it? Why is it that the ex partners of trans men don’t similarly explode with transphobia? Some do, no doubt. But not anywhere near the same, at least not from my perspective, and I know plenty of trans men and plenty of people who have been partnered to trans men who aren’t anymore.
6. Suggesting that people who are going to need to transition, do so YOUNGER than they have historically, is not essentialism. I do not now and have never believed that all trans people need to, want to, or will transition, and many are very happy being something like crossdressers and not transitioned women, either. I respect any choice a person makes when dealing with transness, even the awful ones, to be honest. Transness in a deeply transphobic culture is a really difficult thing to manage.
7. Do non transitioners need more support? Fuck yes. We all do. Therapists are still pathetically under-educated when it comes to dealing with holistic treatment for trans identities, much less support for partners and families and loved ones. Most gender therapists are only, if ever, prepared to deal with transitioners, and the rest of us are still left out in the cold. Good therapists – Ari Lev and Reid Vanderbergh come to mind – are aware of this sad state of affairs. Most are not.
8. Finally, at long last, I’m going to reiterate that I found a lot of what Ms. Benventuo had to say about her ex offensive and difficult. It is not my story. Whether or not it is accurate, or The Truth (which is a thing I don’t believe exists, for those of you who are wondering) has nothing to do with it. The experience, as she told it, is very typical, whether or not it was true in her case. A lot of partners and former partners will find some kind of resonance, and so healing, in this book. And that’s again why I’m standing by having blurbed it and having interviewed her.

I’ll leave it there for now. There’s plenty more coming, I’m sure, as these pieces make their way through transland.