Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Our radio interview on WPR’s The Kathleen Dunn Show is now up & available for listening or downloading. It’s a call-in show and we got a lot of good questions. Ms. Dunn was, and is, a great interviewer.
Topics included: Caitlyn Jenner (of course), including that misguided NYT piece from yesterday (I won’t link to it), trans youth, why we don’t answer questions about genitals, family, but mostly it was about trans partners and what it’s like to go through transitioned while married.
So, yeah.
Created by my good and super talented friend Alex Colby, whose photography & other creative work hangs out here. Photo by Annie Liebovitz, of course, and Wheaties box by – well, Wheaties. (Yes, that’s Jenner’s original Wheaties box.)
Congrats, Caitlin. The first time I saw the cover – via Janet Mock, natch – I didn’t realize who it was. (Context is everything.)
I really do wish people would stop referring to their own selves – even Caitlyn 1.0, as it were – in the third person. It’s just kind of weird. #bobdole
Otherwise, trans female friends of mine are already starting drinking games based on how many times the new photo appears on their FB feed, which is pretty goddamned hilarious. Others are bemoaning her RWT status, and still others just want her to start doing activism for healthcare for trans people.
Also, why does she appear to be wearing bridal lingerie on the cover? Surely VF had access to some clothes.
And so it goes.
Here’s an interesting, interactive map that will give you an idea of how many people who are trans live near you.
Our county in NYC has the highest number of all the NY counties, but our county here in WI has more than I expected.
Things You've Always Wanted To Ask a Trans Person… But Probably Shouldn't
"What's the difference between transvestite and transgender?""Which bathroom do you use?""Have you had 'the op'?" "What do you do in bed?""Are you a drag queen?"We got together some people from the transgender community to pick out questions they often hear. We asked, so you don't have to!
Posted by BBC Free Speech on Wednesday, May 20, 2015
(if it’s not working, try this link.)
I think this is the first time I’ve been in Salon, and look at that! A whole interview with me.
If you’ve come here from the Salon article, here are some of the resources/community I’ve been running for years.
The MHB Boards – is a private community open to trans people of all kinds and partners, children, parents (SOFFA) of trans people. Here’s more about them.
(en)gender partners – a private list only for partners of trans people. inclusive of trans masculine & trans feminine, genderqueer, wives of crossdressers, etc.
You’ll find other resources by searching my blog or clicking on the ‘trans partners’ tag.
Welcome!
My wife and I were lucky enough to score tickets to see The Replacements this past weekend in Milwaukee; neither of us had ever seen them back in the day and both of us were fans. And they were, as expected, amazing; Paul Westerburg’s voice still sounds incredible and the band was tight.
But today, while doing an interview – I’ll post info about it when it turns up – I realized something about even going to concerts that sucks these days: my wife can’t sing to me when we’re in public and use her full range; instead, it makes me nervous when she drops below a certain register instead of it making me happy. We can’t hold each other or kiss, much less make out, for fear of our own safety. I worry that she doesn’t have much of a spideysense for that too-drunk dude next to her who has started to stare at her or me or worse still, us, in that disconcerting too-drunk dude sort of way.
Mostly, though, what upsets me is the thinking about it. Yes, we both want to say to hell with all of it so she can sing anyway and we can make out where we want to and ignore too-drunk dudes because they are idiots. We want to be awesomely brave, progressive, proud queers who don’t give a shit.
But we’re not.
And we know straight people don’t entirely get it; as I’ve said many times, I thought, as an LGBTQ ally, that I understood, but I didn’t. Yet a lot of same sex couples don’t get it either because they haven’t lived on the heteronormative side of the fence or haven’t for a very long time. Our heterosexual past, as it were, is always present; that guy I met, our ability to make out in public, it all happened, and with each other, and not very long ago. So we find ourselves between the demanding ethics of LGBTQ* politics and well-intentioned but clueless straight people.
What I resent, mostly, is that a simple urge to kiss my partner because she is smiling so hugely because oh wow we’re watching the goddamned Replacements, I wind up in my head thinking about what to do or how to do it and then getting angry that I have to think about it at all, feeling guilty, talking myself out of feeling guilty, coming up with another (non verbal) way to tell her I’m happy she’s happy, and by then I’m noticing too-drunk dude who is listing creepily in our direction and the whole thing starts all over again.
Mostly we both feel cheated of our lives, of the life we had together, and even though it’s no one’s fault. there it is.
A reporter just called me and asked me to respond to this quote:
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, how do you account for the fact that, as far as I’m aware, until the end of the 20th century, there never was a nation or a culture that recognized marriage between two people of the same sex? Now, can we infer from that that those nations and those cultures all thought that there was some rational, practical purpose for defining marriage in that way or is it your argument that they were all operating independently based solely on irrational stereotypes and prejudice?
Silly, silly man. Of course there have been, both nations and cultures, who have married people of the same sex. Some of those people weren’t of the same gender, but that’s not what he said now, is it? I expect SCOTUS justices to be exacting in their language, and if doesn’t know the difference between sex and gender, he has no business making such blanket statements.
I’ll let you know if the article comes out.
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