Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
I saw these guys about a month ago here at Lawrence and they were amazing.
Only now did I discover this hour-long video of a performance of theirs from before 2004, and you can imagine – if they were this good then – how much better they’ve gotten in the nine years since.
(Props to my friend Veronica for making sure I knew about it and had tickets.)
Wow, this is cool news. Howard University’s Law School has filed an amicus brief in support of same sex marriage. (An amicus brief is filed by an amicus curiae, or “someone who is not a party to a case who offers information that bears on the case but that has not been solicited by any of the parties to assist a court. . . a way to introduce concerns ensuring that the possibly broad legal effects of a court decision will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case.)
from the Summary of Argument:
Today, public debate over interracial unions ha sgenerally died since this Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967 such that we are now long past the time when anyone would seriously claim that race-based marriage equality threatens the moral fabric of our civilization, is contrary to nature, or is harmful to children. Yet these arguments, however discredited, have not disappeared altogether.Instead, they have been recycled to oppose same-sex marriage.This brief demonstrates that there is nothing new about the arguments marshaled to oppose same-sex marriage; the very same arguments – eventually categorically rejected in Loving v.Virginia — were assembled in opposition to interracial marriage. As a society, we have rightfully come to embrace full human dignity for interracial couples and individuals. We should do no less for same-sex couples.
To which I can only reply: YES. This is especially cool, coming as it does, from an historically black university.
As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found . . .
When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.
and this:
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”
which doesn’t surprise me one bit. It’s still atrocious and terrifying, that so many people have either lied about them or somehow blocked them to such a degree they don’t even know they were lying. (I think it’s the former, for the record.)
SpaWorld, a Fairfax, VA spa openly denies trans and queer clientele. I have always been a little amazed by people who will not even accept our money – I mean, that’s real hate.
The worst part? It’s their policy, not an accident or an overzealous homophobic employee, AND it’s perfectly legal.
“It is our policy to not accept any kinds of abnormal sexual oriented customers to our facility such as homosexuals, or transgender(s).”
“Also, for the safety and the comfort of young children at Spa World, we strongly forbid any abnormal sexual behaviors and orientation in our facility. Despite the controversial issue of homosexuality and transgender, it is our policy to not accept them.”
Wow. I assume there is no actual policy against child molesters, however.
Somehow, I missed Anne Fausto Sterling’s newest book, Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World, which sounds like a more accessible but still scientific take on the science of gender. Her Sexing the Body is, in my opinion, without peer.
Just recently she spoke at Tufts on early childhood gender development:
Using data from lower middle class families in Rhode Island, Fausto-Sterling has discovered that parents’ differential treatment towards male and female infants tends to result in gendered behaviors.
She played four videos where mothers played with their children, rewarding them for certain behavior more than others. For example, the mothers’ tendency to coddle girls and reward fine motor behavior contrasts with their focus on activity-related attention to boys, she said.
“Infants experience gender from before birth and via the minutiae of everyday care, but they also bring their own individually differentiated physiological systems to the table,” Fausto-Sterling said. “Infants assimilate the world.”
Infants experience gender from before birth. Not surprising, but I’m glad someone said it.
Well isn’t this cool? The Victory Fund just endorsed Mel Wymore, a trans candidate running for NYC City Council on the Upper West Side.
(god love the Upper West Side, ha. My favorite story about it is when George Bush Jr. was touring the devastation of 9/11, and he and Giuliani were sharing a ride up Riverside Drive, and Giuliani turned to Bush while waving his hand at the numerous beautiful apartment buildings up there and said, “No one up here voted for you.” For those not from NYC – it’s where a lot of Columbia and CCNY professors live, along with many other overeducated liberals. It’s the kind of place you can get into a conversation about Pynchon while buying bagels and three other people in line join in just to clarify some obscure point about Lot 49.)
Anyway: cool a man who happens to be trans is running, and cool that Victory Fund endorsed him.
If you can donate – or vote for him – please do.
These guys just made me smile: one of their frat brothers needs chest surgery, so they’re raising the funds – and the awareness – so he can get it. Awesome.
CNN ran this article on trans people and employment and economics a few days ago and it occurred to me that perhaps this is new news to some people. It’s a known problem within the trans universe, although of course I know plenty of well-employed, well paid trans people as well – at universities, of course, but also at Google and Twitter, and there are quite a few like Babs Siperstein (in the video) who decided to go their own way and so not worry about discrimination from a manager or boss.
But as with all things the intersectional issues are huge: education, previous employment, the visibility of a job; ethnicity, race, language skills; support from family, faith community, and work — all of these aspects of a trans person’s existence are highly variable. So much can be the luck of the draw; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many trans people are in tech because there is so much more of an emphasis on being excruciatingly smart and capable in very demanding and specific ways; someone, for instance, who has had a life in sales is not going to be as likely to keep a job — although of course a good salesperson shouldn’t have to rely on gender normativity to be able to sell a product.
(I do, as ever, feel the need to point out that it’s pretty cool that CNN is covering issues like this, and not in the “shocking expose” bullshit kind of way.)
Thoughts? If you’ve got a story to tell, feel free. Also, if you need a job or have a job, post those here too.
Wow, it’s snowing again, for like the 18th time this week, feels like.
I have decided that there will be an exclamation point next to my little weather app until April, although at that point, of course, tornado season starts.
Making it through winters here is a little like making it home on the subway during rush hour: exhausting, but you really do feel like you’re made of sterner stuff than you thought.
This is the view from our front step.
For the very first time since the publication of My Husband Betty I’m going to be doing a conference & keynote talk on the West Coast – specifically, at Esprit, up in Port Angeles, WA. I’ll be there on May 17th & 18th, with one workshop on the 17th (on Trans Relationships) and one on the 18th (on sex), in addition to the keynote on the 18th. It’s supposed to be beautiful there, so I’m looking forward to that, but also, I’ve heard a lot about how fun this conference is over the years.
I would love to do something in/around Seattle while I’m there as well as in Portland, OR, if that’s possible, so if you’re at a school or bookstore or with an organization that brings in speakers, let me know! It’s a good time to book me to do something out there as I can discount any “piggybacked” events.
I am still also thinking about trying to be in San Francisco for my birthday which is earlier that week, so if you’re in the Bay Area, get in touch.