Here’s a stunning, angry piece about trans people and media coverage, mostly inspired by the Thomas Beattie story.
Good work!
Sleeping Trans
So what do people who are stealth do about sleeping? Like what if you’re an older MTF and you talk in your sleep? Snore? Cough? Laugh?
I mean, isn’t it impossible not to use your deeper voice when you’re unconscious?
Goddess Worship
The Times of India ran an interesting story about a crossdressing religious tradition:
They are about to take part in the Kottankulangara Sridevi temple festival. The ancient temple in Chavara, Kerala, has a unique tradition. On the last two days of the festival, regular men, common office-going professionals, dress up as women for the chamayavilakku (chamaya is make-up, vilakku is lamp). Bedecked with flowers, lamps in hand, they wait patiently till the wee hours of dawn for the goddess to bless them.
It’s also become a gathering for “feminine men,” or Kothis – which the article identifies as homosexuals and transvestites.
(Thanks to Veronica for the link.)
The Pregnant Man Show
Thomas Beattie (the pregnant man) and his wife Nancy are on Oprah now.
He is just cute as pie, which is a good thing – charming, pretty articulate, bashful in a perfectly masculine way.
FTM Newsletters
If there’s an FTM or an FTM organization out there that would like a bunch of copies of the FTM Newsletter, let me know. The issues I have are #s 38 & 39, 41 & 42, 45 & 46, 48 & 49.
First come, first served.
Accepting Change
A partner who calls herself Madame George and who regularly posts on our message boards wrote this piece about growing up in a small town and about how similar that can be to watching your husband transition. I thought it was a beautiful piece, wistful, affirming, full of love but also change.
Growing up in a small town has its perks. Small town shop owners know you by name. In fact most times they know your family and your entire life story. That’s how it was growing up here. It’s one of my fondest memories of growing up in a small town. It has changed over the years and many of the shop owners that I knew are now gone. The store fronts now boasting dazzling electronics, plastic knick knacks, and country crafts. Gone is the independent pharmacist, the neighborhood greasy diner, and the ten cents store. Gone are the comforts of the past.
I loved the days when my mother would need something from the neighborhood drug store. There was a small one nearby that was complete with a soda fountain. It’s how I met Mr. Reider. An independent pharmacist whose shop was not far from my school. I knew him well. He knew my entire family well. He had a great store and seemed to always be adding unusual finds into his display cases and racks on a daily basis. It was probably more like a monthly basis, but to my young eyes I seemed to always find new items to wonder over. A favorite of mine was a metal bank depicting a monkey with it’s arms stretched wide. The one where you put a coin in one hand and you gently pulled the other one down and the coin would roll down its arm into a slot hidden ingeniously in the side of its head. Another favorite was the little porcelain nesting dolls with their funny looking painted faces. I remember well his gentle words of warning each time I would pick a set up. Never scolding, just a friendly reminder to be careful. Continue reading “Accepting Change”
Top Ten Trans Reads
Out Magazine recently put together a really asinine list of transgender books for their transgender issue. I haven’t seen the issue, but the list doesn’t really inspire me to go buy it, either, since Myra Breckinridge is on it.
For the past years I’ve always mixed my gender / feminism / trans books, but since that Top 10 of Out‘s is so lame, and the Lammies recently neglected Whipping Girl, which they shouldn’t have, I thought instead I should post my own Top Ten Recommended Trans Reads for LGBTQ readers. There are a few everyone might not need to read – like Virginia Erhardt’s Head Over Heels, which is about the partners of MTFs – or they might want to substitute Minnie Bruce Pratt’s S/he
I might suggest different books for family & friends who are trying to understand transition but who aren’t big readers, & I’ll have to think about that list, too.
Of course now that I’ve written it I have to say I’d add my own books, My Husband Betty
& Maybe The Drag Queens of New York as well.
- Butch is a Noun
- Gender Outlaw
- Crossdressing, Sex & Gender
- Sex Changes
- Head Over Heels
- Transgender Warriors
- Becoming a Visible Man
- Mom, I Need to be a Girl
- Whipping Girl
- Transition & Beyond
You’ll notice none of them is a YETA (Yet Another Transsexual Autobiography), since after you read Jenny Boylan’s She’s Not There
Lambda Lit Transgender Finalists
But despite the absence of Whipping Girl, I do want to congratulate the finalists:
- Transparent, Cris Beam (Harcourt)
- Male Bodies, Women’s Souls, LeeRay M. Costa, PhD, (Haworth)
- The Marrow’s Telling, Eli Clare (Homofactus Press)
- What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz (University of Nebraska Press)
- Nobody Passes, Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Seal Press)
I have an essay in Mattilda’s Nobody Passes of course, but I especially wanted to congratulate Eli Clare and thank him for all the work he’s done in/for the trans community.
Tragedy After Tragedy
If the killing of Lawrence King wasn’t sad enough, there are too many other stories — all murders of trans POC that took place this year.
This article from The Root has a list.
And this murder, committed a little while back, has recently come to more widespread attention, as has the murder of Simmie Williams.
My students have asked, because they’re reading Stone Butch Blues, if the violence against gender diverse people is still as bad as it was then. And what can I say? Ask Lawrence King? Ask Adolphus Simmons? Ask Sanesha Stewart? We can’t. They’ve all been killed as a result of trans/homophobic violence. The daily threat might not feel so great for many of us. But that doesn’t mean people who don’t conform to gender norms aren’t at greater risk.
I so long for a new president who will get gender identity included in Federal Hate Crimes protection, whether it does any good or not. What I want is to see articles written about people like Sanesha Stewart that at least respect their choice of pronouns, as well as articles that don’t ask what the person was doing at the time – as if what a person is doing at the time she’s murdered makes it more acceptable for her to have been murdered! When are the powers-that-be going to understand is that sometimes all you have to “do” is be queer to be killed?!
The news also came through this week that Gabrielle Pickett, twin sister of Chanelle Pickett, was killed during the summer of 2003. Chanelle was killed in 1996.
I’m just tired this week. Tired of counting the dead. Tired of feeling so sullen and leaden with grief.
Butch Borders
My class has expressed a lot of confusion as to where the thin line is between butch & FTM, so I had them watch S. Bear Bergman read “I Know What Butch Is,” the first chapter of hir Butch Is a Noun.
Should clarify everything, no?