Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
I contributed to a book by Mattilda called Nobody Passes, and I will be doing a reading with other contributors here in New York, on March 21st, at the bookstore Bluestockings.
(Other upcoming readings for Nobody Passes below the break.)
Continue reading “Nobody Passes NYC Reading”
This month’s Trans Partners Group topic is family. You’ve all gotten back from holiday trips you may have taken, or you’ve stayed in your home and wondered why you feel so estranged for your family – or your partner’s.
The meeting starts at 7:30PM, lasts until 9PM, on Wednesday, January 3rd (that’s tomorrow if you’re reading this when this post goes up!), and meets at the LGBT Center on West 13th Street.
I’ll be co-facilitating the group just as I did this past fall, and the next one isn’t until February 7th because of the new monthly schedule, so do come! The upcoming themes are as follows:
(& Tonight, of course, is the monthly meeting of the mHB group, with a special guest visit from Marlena!)
Here are the final entries into NCTE’s “52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality”:
It’s been 52 weeks; how many have you done? Did you do other things they didn’t list?
The Task Force recently issued a report about homeless youth: up to 42% of homeless youth are LGBT (even though only 3-5% of the population is).
While I’m glad to hear NYC has stepped up funding to help serve these kids, I wonder if a public education campaign isn’t also in order. That job, however, might need Federal support, which we certainly aren’t going to get just yet. Still, you’d think we could maybe let people know that throwing their LGBT kids out on the street is not a solution to anyone’s problem.
These throwaway kids are one of the ‘side effects’ of all the anti-gay rhetoric being thrown around, & that includes the anti-gay marriage rhetoric, in my opinion. Define a group of people as second-class citizens and this is what you get.
You can read the full report at The Task Force’s website.
I’m starting to get emails from people asking about the new book and whether or not I’d be willing to come to one trans conference or another. Likewise, the “call for presenters” emails are also showing up.
This year, for obvious reasons, Betty & I would love to go to all the conferences we’ve attended before – to celebrate the new book, to help more people, to dispel what rumors we can and to share what we’ve learned in the years since we’ve been to them.
But the same old problem stands in my way: we can’t afford it. My publishers don’t pay for conferences, and a physical book tour, per se, isn’t financially feasible. And as per usual, unless I’m to be the keynote speaker – such as at First Event – I’m told over and over again that the conferences do not help presenters get to these conferences or even waive conference fees, much less pay for hotel rooms or travel costs or the like. I say “I’m told” because that’s what conference organizers tell people when they have requested my attendance – and yet that’s not what I hear from other presenters.
Interestingly, I’ve been told that because I’m selling books I’m a “commercial interest,” which amuses me, considering that even if I sold a book to every single person who came to these conferences – which is far from likely – I still wouldn’t make enough money to break even! But of course I don’t actually sell my own books at these conferences: IFGE does.
So my response to everyone just now is that I honestly don’t know if we can come. We can’t afford to put out the $1000-2000 it costs for us to go to a conference, but we certainly can’t do that several times next year. It costs us more of course because there are two of us – and people always want Betty to come, because she’s Betty.
Mind you, I’m not asking to make money going to these things. I just don’t want to have to spend my own money working for a conference that is – from all reports – making money. I’m happy to donate my time and costs to conferences that are non-profit and have done so in the past. It would help if I felt any of these conferences had a clear-cut policy on these issues. But beyond all that, I know I can draw an audience because I’m told I make a decent advocate for partners, and that a lot of what I have to say is very different from what you hear in the rest of the trans community, and that that difference is useful.
Unfortunately, then, I can’t go unless my expenses are covered, and that is up to the organizing committees of the various conferences.
Watch this short film about a Taiwanese-born Chinese-American trans person.
As if I didn’t like Tina Fey enough already, she’s gone and done it again.
But Tina, please don’t insult the trannies like that. Paris Hilton aspires to look like a tranny.
“Just ask whether Lumeric was a man or a woman.”
“And what’s the right answer?” Candy asked.
“Both,” Malingo and Jimothi replied at the same moment.
Candy looked confused.
“Lumeric was a Mutep,” Malingo explained. “Therefore both a he and a she.”-from Clive Barker’s Abarat, where Lumeric the Mutep was also a magician of the highest order.
We taped an episode of the Dr. Keith show last week, and I’ve been sorting out my thoughts since then. I found the experience exhausting. From all reports (Donna, my sister, another friend) we were good. But some days it’s hard to consider the toll that’s paid.
I’m not sure yet what that toll is exactly, but it feels something like a distilled version of all the other work we do for college audiences & at trans conferences except the audience is so different: at one point during the taping I looked at a woman in the audience whose jaw was literally hanging agape.
It doesn’t help that I’ve replayed it all a million times in my head, hoping I said things that make sense. Before that I worried for days beforehand about whether I could really get something across of what this life is like for both the partner and the trans person. It’d be nice to be able to shut off my brain, to stop wondering what the whole show will be like, since we weren’t on alone: we had the company of a trans man & his ex as well as an intersex person.
Overall, I liked Dr. Keith’s take: his general tone was one of “Wow, that’s one hell of a hand you’ve been dealt,” and although the show was a little too anatomically-focused for me, people DO want to know about body mods and I think it was handled about as well as it could have been. It couldn’t have been thorough – transition, transgender, and intersex are a lot to cover in an hour – but it wasn’t sensational.
So I can only wait to see what the rest of you think. It should air before mid-March, and of course I’ll post info about the airdate as soon as I get it.
There is a part of me that would like to rename this, “How to Estrange the Love of Your Life” or even “How Not to be Trans” but I think Katherine’s original title, “8 Easy Steps,” is a touch more delicate. Katherine is an mHB boards veteran.
I’ll teach you all this in 8 easy steps
A course of a lifetime you’ll never forget
I’ll show you how to in 8 easy steps
I’ll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best
–Alanis MorrissetteOne: My trans-needs and experiences will always be more exotic, painful, and interesting than your existence.
Two: Excessive narcissism can look like, “Hey, I’m just finally taking care of myself here!†but is every bit about creating the I-It relationships that Martin Buber warned us about.
Three: “I’m trans. You don’t understand me. I am complicated and, like—for sure, you’re not,†so you don’t have permission to judge me even when I am fully deserving of your judgment, even when your life is equally if not more complicated. I scored the ultimate “get out of jail free card†in life’s version of Monopoly. “Do not pass ‘Go,’†etc., and get your ass back on Baltic Avenue. My life is Boardwalk and Park Place, special.
Four: My martyr complex is so much fun for others! Thank you for hating me and disapproving of what I am doing; it makes me so much more special than you and is the ultimate buzzkill toward having a meaningful conversation about how and what I am doing is scaring and confusing to you, is scaring and confusing me.
Five: Let me be wonderfully sympathetic about your weight gain, about your angst, about your doubts, about your sense that this isn’t right for you, but let me still manage to appropriate your feelings and help you feel guilty again for having them.
Six: Oh, you want something to say about how my identity change is affecting your identity too with our friends, family, and co-workers? How shallow of you. Let me make you in these matters too feel guilty about caring for such things.
Seven: Let me attempt to appropriate the womanhood experiences you spent a lifetime living, reacting to, and making peace with in this sexist culture and act as though your role no longer matters and that the space you earned as wife, daughter, and sister can be appropriated by the “How to be Transsexual for Dummies†manual.
Eight: Let me shirk my responsibility to you by spending more time online, on the phone, and in person with my trans acquaintances than I do with you, designing for example cutesy posts about eight steps, while you are in the other room alone and afraid, facing as you do so often another day with bravery and grace.
I’ve been doing research for years
I’ve been practicing my ass off
I’ve been training my whole life for this moment (I swear to you)
Culminating just to be this well-versed leader before you
–Alanis Morissette