Category: books & writing

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Us in Boulder

Today we’ll be part of the TRANSforming Gender 2007 Conference at the University of Colorado @ Boulder. More details about other speakers – including Matt Kailey (author of Just Add Hormones) & Julia Serano (author of Whipping Girl) – can be found on the conference’s website.

Where: Dennis Small Cultural Center, University Memorial Center Rm 457

When: I’ll be doing a workshop on Queer Heterosexuals/Emerging Identities from 3:30-4:45

and then will be part of a panel with the other speakers from 5:15-6:30.

The full schedule is as follows:

  • Matt Kailey, 10 – 11:15 am
  • Julia Serano, 11:30 – 12:45 PM
  • Dylan Scholinski, 2 – 3:15 PM
  • Me, 3:30 – 4:45 PM
  • All of us for a panel & book signing, 5:15-6:30pm, UMC Senior Dedication Lounge
  • and then a screening of Call Me Malcolm, from 6:30 – 9 PM
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CO Events

Finally, I have all the details on the stuff we’ll be doing in Colorado!

On October 9th, I’ll be speaking at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Where: MSCD Campus, Denver

When: Tuesday, October 9th, 1-3PM

then, in Boulder:

We’ll be part of the TRANSforming Gender 2007 Conference at the University of Colorado @ Boulder. More details about other speakers – including Matt Kailey (author of Just Add Hormones) & Julia Serano (author of Whipping Girl) – can be found on the conference’s website.

Where: Dennis Small Cultural Center, University Memorial Center Rm 457

When: Wednesday, October 10th

I’ll be doing a workshop on Queer Heterosexuals/Emerging Identities from 3:30-4:45

and then will be part of a panel with the other speakers from 5:15-6:30.

Both/all these events are open to the general public, so do come if you can.

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Banned Books Week

Yesterday was the start of Banned Books Week, so go out & buy one of the many books people objected to this year. Among them, the regulars: Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, two by Toni Morrison, and new ones on the list seem to have been chosen for having homosexual themes/characters: And Tango Makes Three, Gossip Girls, Athletic Shorts; and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

You can find a Banned Books Week event near you, or you can just go out & buy one of the Top Ten most challenged books of 2006.

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Five Questions With… Julia Serano

Julia Serano is a Bay Area slam-winning poet, author, performer, activist, & biologist. She organized the GenderEnders event from 2003 until last year; plays guitar, sings & writes lyrics for her band Bitesize, and oh – has a Ph.D. in biochemistry. We got to meet her when she was in town promoting her book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, recently published by Seal Press.

(1) I loved Whipping Girl, for starters. I think it’s a pivotal work for trans communities, especially in building trans pride. But you know I kept waiting for you to actually define “feminine” – maybe if not for all time, but in some way that I could understand what you meant by it specifically. Your “barrette Manifesto” came close, except that I see barrettes as childish, not feminine per se. So can you help the genderblind like myself? What is femininity? Can you be feminine without being girly?

In the next to last chapter of the book, “Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism,” I talk about that a bit, but I’ll try to define it here a little more clearly. I would say that femininity is a heterogeneous set of traits (some of which are cultural in origin, some biological, some psychological, and many are a combination thereof). The only thing that all feminine traits have in common is that they are typically associated with women in our culture. But they certainly aren’t exclusive to women, as many men and MTF spectrum transgender folks also express feminine traits (similarly, many women express masculine rather than feminine traits). I think most of us tend to express some combination of both feminine and masculine traits.

Continue reading “Five Questions With… Julia Serano”

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DO & My Profile

Betty & I are off at that twice-annual conference we go to, & are looking forward to catching up with old friends & enjoying the green.

But in the meantime, a local arts paper called The Brooklyn Rail did a profile of yours truly.

Some things aren’t quite right, and “frilly feminine” is certainly not right – more like “trendy” or “stylish” – but it’s the first type of piece about me like this. I have decided it’s nearly impossible to talk about our past as a couple – when Betty’s identity was still male – and not have a journalist throw in a “he” when talking about our present tense.

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The Sound of Their Wings

The author who came up with three of the most extraordinary characters of children’s literature has died, her publicist confirmed today. Madelaine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, which shaped so many of our lives, died in a nursing home of natural causes at the age of 88.

Those three characters were all children, and children who defied stereotypes: (1) Megaparsec, the pugnacious, practical and strong older sister of (2) Charles Wallace, who is a brilliant, delicate, intuitive boy. And then there is (3) the frequently forgotten but equally lovely Calvin O’Keefe – poor, gangly, and heroic.

For me, all of them – plus the Wallace parents, the angelic Proginoskes, and of course Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit – lived in a universe (well, several) I longed for. A Wind in the Door was my favorite of all her books, one I will take the time to re-read this weekend, in her memory.

It’s an extraordinary thing for me as she was the author whose stories inspired me to pick up a pen: the first story I ever wrote, when I was about 9, was a terrible knockoff of A Wrinkle in Time I called “Rainy Day.” My sister always related to Meg, and not too surprisingly, I always felt a simpatico with Charles Wallace.

Godspeed, Ms. L’Engle. Thank you for everything.

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Black Men Can’t Read?

It turns out young black men have a better chance of getting made fun of for reading books than for playing sports. Not news, I know, but the commentary on how that fact intersects with gender is:

John Thomas, superintendent of the Aliquippa School District, said the notion that black men who read books are less masculine is one that should be dispelled in the African-American community. “It’s just as powerful to carry a book as it is to carry a football or a basketball, because the power of knowledge is in the books,” he said. “If we prepare our bodies for the gridiron or the basketball court, to me it’s just as important to prepare your mind to survive in society. The body will soon wear out for athletic competition, but knowledge you have will carry you through life.”

What’s interesting to me is that the cultural forces that would discourage black men from learning – because being brainy isn’t considered “masculine” or “strong” – are exactly the opposite of the ones at play that have historically kept women from learning, who are/were told that being too brainy makes a woman “unfeminine.”

& When cultural forces say being smart isn’t masculine to one group, & too masculine to another, you know there’s something rotten in Denmark.