Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
So if I were to host a trans couples/trans partners weekend retreat, would you come? What if it were in Philly?
If you’re interested, let me know by leaving a comment or posting in our thread about it or emailing me. Let me know what you’d like the conference to be like by describing a day at it.
I’m very much in the planning/idea stages, so input is welcome.
There’s two events coming organized by the Center that I wanted to let people know about.
The first one is Trans on the Sands, on August 12th, from 11am – 5pm: a day at the beach for transgender, gender non-confirming, genderqueer people, their families and allies, at Coney Island. Meet directly across from the boardwalk entrance to the New York Aquarium under a ‘GIP’ sign.
The second is a Femme Symposium, on August 18th, from 11am – 5PM: an opportunity for self-identified femmes in the New York City metropolitan area to socialize and connect with other femmes. It provides femmes and our allies with space to discuss issues and topics of relevance and is intended to increase the visibility of femmes. All who attend are entitled to explore their own definition of femme throughout the day. While this event is for, about and by femmes, allies are welcome. There is a $10 entrance fee to cover costs, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. For further information: nycfemmesymposium@gmail.com.
We meet tomorrow, August 1st, at 7:30PM at the LGBT Center on 13th Street. If you’re a partner of a trans person, straight gay or otherwise, do come.
In Curve magazine’s current issue (Vol. 17, #8), there’s an interview with me and Julia Serano aptly titled “A Queer Three-way.” The interviewer was Curve editor Diane Anderson-Minshall.
A reviewer recently misquoted me as having written that I was called a “dyke” when I was a kid, when in fact the word I used was “butch.”
That mistake, while minor on the surface, has got me thinking.
The difference between the words is that essential difference between sexual orientation and gender presentation, which are often conflated in the first place, but which I tried to dissect in She’s Not the Man I Married. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t issues like this that cause some of the rift between the gay/lesbian community and the trans community; I’d imagine, for many masculine-leaning lesbians, “butch” and “dyke” are pretty much the same slur. But the thing is, “butch” bothered me – because it was true. I was butch. Being called a dyke never had the same effect, exactly because I knew myself to be heterosexual.
Of course reading that kind of error made me wonder about how much the critic could have actually gotten out of my book, or how much she might have been willing to get out of it. I’m fascinated by the ways gender variance is allocated to gay & lesbian people but not to heterosexuals; it’s a big theme of the book. For someone for whom the words “dyke” and “butch” are the same thing, I must seem like I’m splitting hairs. But the review, alas, did end:
(I)t’s an earnest book that might appeal to those questioning the nature of gender identity, marriage, and social attitudes about both.
& I did learn, quite a long time ago, the vital importance of being earnest.
There’s an event happening in San Francisco (of course) called “Not Queer Enough” on June 27th. Among the speakers are people like Max Wolf Valerio & Julia Serano.
I wish I could be there.
My own feelings of being “not queer enough” I’ve mentioned at various times, usually when I’ve felt shunned at an event or gathering, or been made to feel otherwise square for being married or monogamous or heterosexual. Shoot, I’ve felt “not feminist enough” for being heterosexual & married, too.
& I’m very very certain that plenty of trans people feel “not trans enough.”
But not queer enough? What defines someone as queer? Their politics? Being visibly queer? Their worldview? Their haircut? Who they have sex with?
I don’t know. But I’d like to be in San Francisco that night to hear other people talk about their experiences.
Info about the event below the break.
I was like an addict trying desperately to find love, or even the perfect relationship. But I always fell short and was disappointed. Little did I know it was never the relationship; it was the image in the mirror that made no sense. I was the one that needed to change. I was lost, I felt broken, it wasn’t until I was 38 years old when my life finally took a right turn. I met the most amazing female. She was different, not like the other girls I had known. She was special, something about her allowed me to be myself. She was straight and had lived with men all her life. Yet, she was curious about girls, having had a few encounters in the past, but nothing too serious. Continue reading “Trans Couples: Mark and Violet”
NCTE has reported today that since they sent out their alert for calls to your senators to support The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act more senators have signed on to support it!
So keep calling! Tell your friends to call!
You can find your senators’ contact information through NCTE.
Here are a couple of photos from the Borders reading up in Albany:
<<< the first of me with a nice display of She’s Not the Man I Married
& the second of us with a bunch >> of friends (& a Harry Potter poster): from left to right: Betty, me, Hawk Stone, Tristan, & Colten.
How do we know with transness that there isn’t just something in the brain that’s mistaken? I don’t mean that in a bad way. I say that from the position of someone whose body was gender variant due to a hormone imbalance. When I see people’s before/after photos, I see FTMs who are physically quite feminine (i.e., normatively physically gendered), with no excess body hair, few large jaws or big hands, who get regular periods, etc. Likewise with MTFs: pre transition can be quite masculine, with very male skeletal structures, musculatures, a lot of body hair. I see such externally “gender normative” bodies I’m even jealous, though of course there are trans people whose bodies are gender variant, in various ways, too, who have ovaries or testicles that don’t function right, or make too much of the “wrong” hormone, etc.
It’d certainly be simpler if trans people all had physical evidence of their gender variance but obviously that’s not the case. All people who have physically gender variant bodies due to hormone imbalance are not trans, either, of course. But when I read that a lot of FTMs have PCOS like me, that makes perfect sense. Or when MTFs have gynecomastia or no body hair. Continue reading “Princess Amygdala”