Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Interestingly, Ted Kennedy is sponsoring ENDA in the Senate, and even more interestingly, the Senate version will also exclude gender identity.
Of course Bush has already said he intends to veto whatever version comes his way. Still, this may be another opportunity for more education.
In the meantime, Mara Keisling of NCTE will be on C-SPAN tomorrow morning at 7:45 AM, & if you miss it, you can catch it on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal site.
ENDA will be voted on tomorrow, without the Baldwin Amendment.
& Apparently the decision to go ahead was based on HRC surveying 500 LGBT people across the country as to whether or not they should go ahead even though transgender people were included.
As if the 500 organizations that already said NOT to go ahead don’t count at all.
What really pisses me off is that this is how the question was worded:
“This proposal would make it illegal to fire gay, lesbian and bisexual workers because of their sexual orientation. This proposal does not include people who are transgender. Would you favor or oppose this proposal moving forward?”
No mention that the Tammy Baldwin variation isn’t just inclusive of transgender identities, but of GENDER IDENTITY. No mention that the inclusive ENDA would also protect gays and lesbians whose genders aren’t normative. That is, no mention of the butches and queens, sissies and bulldaggers. Apparently there to be hung out to dry along with the trans population. So now we can hear that a woman wasn’t fired for being a lesbian, oh no. She was fired because she’s just too masculine, of course.
Feh. Or, as a friend of mine comments when HRC comes up, “You expect anything from an organization that can’t even put GAY in its name?”
(Sources: PageOneQ, Gay.com, The Advocate, The Associated Press)
When I introduced the subject of transgender identity to the class, one of my students told a story about a guy he saw when he was out fishing with a friend one day: they were at the end of a pier, fishing, like you do, when a 60-something year old guy got out of his car in a tiny bikini, walked the length of the pier, & then got back in his car & drove away.
& What the student wanted to know was whether or not that was illegal, specifically because there were children around.
In most cases, I explained, it isn’t, unless of course the bikini didn’t cover everything it was supposed to, in which case he was publicly indecent.
But I also thought: it’s a shame that this student’s first encounter with someone (presumably) trans was so sucky & inappropriate. As the student said, there was no issue with a guy wanting to wear a bikini. He just didn’t feel it was appropriate for the person to parade himself, with no attempt at passing, in front of kids, in such skimpy clothes.
Obviously this guy was within his rights, but still: it makes a lousy first impression, especially the lack of concern about his surroundings. It just comes off as kind of pervy & inappropriate.
So, thoughts?
So I read The First Man-Made Man
But that’s not what bothered me so much: the tone of the book was remarkably condescending. The interview with the monk at the end just felt like a dick joke. & A lot of the time, the narration made me so uncomfortable I really just wanted to read the actual manuscript the first trans man wrote, instead. (Although from what I hear, no one seems to know if a copy exists at all anymore, or not.)
Don’t get me wrong: this is a valuable & interesting book & really gets at how remarkably new the tech was; I especially enjoyed the section on the early practitioners of plastic surgery. But it just felt to me that the author never really believed he was a guy at all, which strikes me as a remarkably unsympathetic way to write about not just transness, but about a trans man who was so inexorably alone as a trans person. Michael Dillon strikes me as a remarkable soul who had a tremendous amount of integrity and bravery, and frankly, this book gives you just enough about him to know that the book didn’t do him justice.
There are not a lot of stories of successful transsexual / non-trans partner marriages. One recurring theme that I see is the need for pacing. Unfortunately too many trans-partners once they have their epiphany rush like a runaway freight train towards transition. Like most runaway freight trains these relationships typically end in destruction.
I’m not going to say that there is any one right way to transition. We all know that those paths are as unique as the individuals who tread them. However, if a couple is going to have any possibility of remaining intact each partner must be willing to recognize that compromises will be an integral part of the process.
From NCTE:
ACTION ALERT on ENDA from the National Center for Transgender Equality
House committee meets Tuesday to decide whether or not a version of ENDA that cuts out protections for transgender people will advance in Congress.
Your Representative needs to hear from you TODAY.
The House Education and Labor Committee is holding a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss the strategy proposed by some House leaders to pass an ENDA that cuts out protections for transgender people. A committee vote on the bill is tentatively scheduled for Thursday.
A list of Committee members is available at http://edlabor.house.gov/about/members.shtml
Your Representative needs to hear from you TODAY about your opposition to the flawed strategy of advancing a bill that leaves transgender people behind.
Call your Representative right now at 202-224-3121, even if you have already called him/her already about this issue. Tell him/her to oppose advancing H.R. 3685, the bill that leaves transgender people behind. Tell him/her to push for a vote on H.R. 2015, the transgender-inclusive ENDA, instead.
Please call today. You have been asked to do a lot in the last few weeks to support transgender nondiscrimination protections. The action you take today might make the difference.
We were planning to go to the whole of Fantasia Fair this year, where I was supposed to present my keynote on Monday, but 2007, being what it has been for us (complicated, frustrating, exhausting) has proved itself more in charge of us then we are. As a result, we’re going to FanFair on Thursday, 10/18, instead.
I will, however, present my keynote on Friday, 10/19, since Stephen Whittle has had to cancel, as has Marilyn Volker.
But the Fair officially starts today for anyone going for the whole week.
I just wanted to thank the couples, and their children, who were on Oprah show today for the Transgender Families show.
They were all articulate and well-spoken.
So thanks Joan & Sydney, and to Fran & Denise. You made us all look good today.
This is the text of the talk I gave in Denver on Tuesday. It probably won’t surprise anyone that I’ve been busting at the seams wanting to have a say in all of the dialogue going on about ENDA. At least I don’t think it should surprise anyone, not by now.
**
First, let me thank Ed and Jordan and all the students who asked them to bring me here. It’s a pleasure to be here in celebration of National Coming Out Day, a pleasure to see all of you gathered, celebrating who you are. Thanks to all the crossdressers, the gays, the lesbians, the genderqueers, the trans men & women, MTF and FTM, & to their partners. Thanks to all of you who are family, or friends, or allies, for being here.
Betty and I have been on tour a lot this year because I had a book published in March, and we’ve gotten a chance, once again, to meet a lot of people and to talk to a lot of trans people and partners, and this year, we’ve met more gay and lesbian people who aren’t trans than we did before. And it’s been a pleasure all around in hearing people’s stories of their own gender variance, or the stories of how they came out to loved ones, or of their first big crush or the moment when they realized they were trans or gay or lesbian or how they came to understand the first identity they understood themselves to be was not quite accurate in the long run. What I love to hear the most is about how queer people find one identity fits for a while and then not at all; like Oliver Wendell Holmes’ chambered nautilus, queer people build themselves bigger chambers, bigger categories, labels that are not so confining, over time.
That’s how it’s been for us, certainly. By the time people get used to what we’re calling ourselves our identities have shifted a little, changed usually by experiences we never expected and wouldn’t trade for anything. Continue reading “On ENDA, on National Coming Out Day”
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: