The Gender Identity Project (GIP) Center here in NYC has created a 20-minute film called Transgender Basics. It’s not necessarily thorough – it’s only 20 minutes! – but it does cover what it needs to for an introduction to the idea. You can view it on the Center’s website.
The Dating Game
According to Perez Hilton, Calpernia Addams is going to be the star of her own new reality show, where she gets to choose from among eight bachelors.
MTV’s GLBT channel, Logo, will be airing a reality dating show starring a transgender woman as the lead!
Transamerican Love Story is centered on transgender activist and actress Calpernia Addams.
The show follows Calpernia as she whittles down a group of eight bachelors, living together in a Los Angeles-area home, with the help of her best friend and fellow transgender activist Andrea James.
So what do we think of that? Really, I’m not sure what I think, though I do wish Calpernia well in the endeavor, & that she picks a guy who doesn’t suck.
Cold Case
I was talking to my mother the night before TDOR, about all the stuff trans people often need to do, the legal stuff, the ID changes, sometimes the medical issues, and she mentioned that she was really touched by a recent Cold Case show she’d seen. I haven’t seen it yet, though I’m a fan of the show and watch it pretty often. The story was about an FTM in the 1960s who at the time was assumed to have committed suicide but who, in fact, was dead before he hit the water. Thus, the re-opening of his “cold case.”
My mom didn’t call him an FTM; she doesn’t have that language yet. What she said was, “She was a girl who was really a boy.” And I had a moment where I wasn’t sure if she meant an FTM or MTF, but once again, my mom impressed me; he was an FTM, &, to her mind, “really a boy.”
Which is of course the opposite usage of most people who throw their “reallys” around when talking about trans people, which strikes me as too cool.
But what she wanted to know was whether things were better now, and she was asking me this the night before TDOR. And I told her for some people it is, but the violence against trans people is still too up-close & personal. She thought people should be taught to keep their hands to themselves, at the very least. But I did also tell her about FORGE’s document, about us allies and partners and family being recognized as also often being the victims of violence, and she said, “of course.” She said she’d light her candle on the 20th, too.
Yeah. My mom rocks.
Another Goth Christmas
So it turns out Tim Burton has re-made Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Johnny Depp (of course) playing Sweeney Todd… but who knew he could sing? Apparently he didn’t.
& It’s coming out on Christmas Day. Nice to have a little Grand Guignol to offset the holiday cheer.
Mara Keisling on C-SPAN
If you haven’t seen it yet, Mara Keisling’s appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal last week is worth viewing, and apparently isn’t going to be online forever, so do go watch it within the next week or so.
(You want the 11/10/2007 show.)
My favorite bit is when the woman calls to talk about how the founding fathers were Christian, & how Mara shouldn’t be allowed to talk at all, & Mara drinks her coffee stone-faced like Buster Keaton, the smile only showing at the very corners of her mouth, after which she explains, again, that the Bill in fact exempts religious institutions. (It’s at about 1:17 or so.)
& As one caller put it, I agree with him: Mara is a brilliant woman, and I’m happy to see her doing advocacy. That anyone said, “you can’t be a full person if you have to hide all the love in your life,” on Washington Journalis amazing, but I’m pleased as punch it was someone talking about LGBT rights.
TV Boyfriend (No, Not That TV)
My friend Guy always refers to the men he has the hots for on TV (& the more-than-occasional musician) as his “TV boyfriends.” I know there’s a guy from Grey’s Anatomy that made the list lately, but I never watch it so I don’t know which one it is. A while back it was Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day.
So since I kinda miss being with a guy sometimes, I’ve decided to have my own TV boyfriend as a way of indulging the beauty of men without risking actually doing anything with any.
Anyway, since all I ever watch is Animal Planet (& yes, Cesar Milan has his moments of hotness) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Vincent D’Onofrio – he’s the guy who plays Robert Goren – is pretty much my ongoing TV boyfriend. Out of curiosity, or some kind of erotic masochism, I found some clips of him on YouTube, but this one is – damn. It’s just about the hottest kiss I’ve ever seen. So now, even though I’ve never seen the movie it’s from, I’m not sure I can.
For those that bat for the other team, here he is in a 1998 film making out with a guy.
Up Closer & More Personal
As she promised on the air during our last interview, Bonnie Graham of WGBB’s Up Close & Personal is having us back on her show to talk some more about relationships, change, & gender. Do tune in as we’ve got the whole hour, from 6-7 PM.
Marc Theda Bara Bolan
I did decide, after seeing the Theda Bara documentary, that Marc Bolan was her reincarnation. (Or a better guess is that Bolan knew about Bara, & was borrowing her vamp for his stage persona.)
What’s interesting to me is that both were the sex symbols of their time – one male, one female – and yet they look nearly exactly alike.
Kids These Days
At least here at Merrimack, they’ve got it good, even though they probably don’t know what’s right under their noses.
They get free films, for instance. I’ve been going to see them, which is kind of funny considering I don’t like most movies most of the time & don’t go see them – not American movies, anyway, or anything contemporary. They’re rarely worth the $10.
But Tuesday night I saw Deepa Mehta’s Earth, which is about the Partition of India in 1947, into India & Pakistan, and which came with Independence. It’s a stunning movie, & I’ve been thinking about the plot and themes and scenes and characters since I saw it. It’s a terrifying film, but deeply moving as well.
Last night I saw one of the earliest Theda Bara films, A Fool There Was, in which she plays her legendary vampire character, and afterwards they’re screening a documentary about her. A Fool There Was made so much money that it helped launch Fox Studios. It’s such a lovely rare treat to get to see a silent film on the big screen.
& In a couple of weeks, they’re screening a film about Dorothy Day, though it’s not the one that I missed when it played at the Brecht Forum in NYC.
Writer’s Digest
There’s an article in this month’s Writer’s Digest about “Alternative Fare” and specifically the LGBT markets in publishing, and I was interviewed for the T section.
Boyd points out that people of variant sexuality have always appeared in literature. “There is a long line of novel characters who are gender variant, from The Well of Loneliness to Orlando to Middlesex. I like to think of my work as having inherited a great deal from writers like Gertrude Stein or [Virginia] Woolf.”
The bit that was clipped was my clarification that people have always written books about being in love with someone who is gender variant, as in Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Woolf’s Orlando.