On 2nd thought, maybe I’ve just been reading too many masculine-spectrum books in a row. First Bear Bergman’s Butch is a Noun, and I just finished Max Valerio’s The Testosterone Files.
Expect interviews with both authors in the next month or so.
Curvy Tomboy
As some of you know, I think of myself as a tomboy – or whatever the adult term for that might be for a het/queer woman. (I haven’t come up with a term yet, so your coinages are appreciated.) But tomboys are supposed to be muscular & straight, you know, boyish, & my body hasn’t been boyish since I was a boy’s age, as it were.
I’ve decided that since I’ve got this generosity of breast these days, which is really unreconcilable with being a tomboy, that I needed to be creative. If I can wear my bevy of breastness like macho guys wear a big dick, you know, outta my way, kids, substantialness coming through, and yeah, I do need two seats on the subway.
So far it’s the only way I’ve managed to work out intersecting masculine and curvy. I don’t want to cancel out my woman-ness; I just want to have it register as a kind of masculine form of power.
Maybe They Should Call It a Guy-line, Instead
Wow, this is depressing news. I’m especially embarassed because Harper’s is my favorite magazine, and has been for many, many years now. So much for my life-long dream of getting published in it.
Women writers continue to be underrepresented at five of the top “thought leader” magazines. An update of a report in last winter’s Ms. magazine reflects that the number of women writers has not increased since last year.
In The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, women earned just 447 of the 1,446 bylines—about 31 percent. Harper’s had the most glaring disparity of men to women writers, with a ratio of seven to one. Moreover, women are often relegated to “hearth and home” stories, rather than to “hard-news” stories.
Ruth Davis Konigsberg, a deputy editor at Glamour and the author of the reports, points out that the number of women writers does not reflect the readership of these magazines. The New Yorker (with a byline ratio of four men to one woman) has a fairly gender-balanced audience of 1,799,000 women and 1,710,000 men. Vanity Fair, with a byline ratio of three men to one woman, has an opposite ratio in terms of readership: three women to one man.
Details about Columbia
Just a reminder that I’ll be speaking at Columbia U. on Monday, October 9, 7:00pm – 8:30pm, in the Sulzberger Parlor Room, Barnard College. It’s open to the public.
Here are directions to Barnard’s campus (which is right across the street from Columbia):
http://www.barnard.edu/visitors/directions.html
Here is a map of campus that shows where the Sulzberger building is located:
http://www.barnard.edu/visitors/map2006.pdf
Click the 9th on QUAM’s October calendar for the full description.
Not Jon Benet
Last night on America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks did her usual suspenseful schpiel: “I have before me 12 young girls who have a chance at becoming America’s Next Top Model blah blah blah.” Except I’m not sure it was her usual schpiel, because “young girls” just rang out at me, and I’ve seen the show before and it never did on any other occasion. Does she always say that? I mean it’s one thing to not call them women – since half of them aren’t over the age of 18, I don’t think – but “young” girls, too? To me “young girls” means 8 or 9 year olds, not 17 or 18 year olds. Young women would be far more appropriate, no? I mean if they really need to use “girl” instead, then how about just “girls” – 12 hopeful girls, 12 beautiful girls, 12 painfully-overdramatic girls, even.
No Toothpaste, No Shoe-Wearing, No Kissing
It could be an Onion headline, but it’s not: an American Airlines flight attendant asked a gay couple to stop kissing on a recent Paris to New York flight.
Look, I’ve kissed my husband on plenty of flights and no one has ever asked us to stop kissing. We haven’t flown so much since Betty stopped passing much as a guy, but I now have another reason not to bother. (Flying, not kissing.)
Interview with Kate B. (Pt. 2)
The other half of my interview with Kate Bornstein is now up at beatrice.com. This one is more about writing (as opposed to the Five Questions With… half which I posted here, which is more about gender/trans stuff).
Shimkus the Pimpkus
Does anyone else remember this joke from the last time around?
Q: How does a Republican congressman mark the place he stopped reading in a book?
A: He bends over a page.
The Republican this time around is Mark Foley, and apparently Rep. Shimkus (R-IL) knew what was going on and encouraged Foley’s socializing with these young men.
The Sound of JFB
You can now hear Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Southern Comfort speech, (the text of which is here).
The 5th Annual Blogger BoobieThon
They’ve raised over $26,000 for Breast Cancer Awareness, so for this year’s Breast Cancer Month, I’m in!
My mother survived breast cancer, & I bet she can think of about a gazillion other ways she’d prefer to have me help raise money. I can hear her already, “You could have just walked or something.”
But no. I think using breasts to raise money for the health of breasts makes way too much sense – so go! Make a donation! Guess which ones are mine!!