I’m teaming up with Gender Justice League to do a small event tonight, Tuesday 5/21, at 7PM. If you can join us, please let them know you’ll be attending. If you click on the calendar entry for tonight’s meeting, you’ll find the name of the venue & directions.
The Blame Game
I wrote this recently in response to a question, or an assertion, that nobody chooses to be born trans, but that often, the advice is that you can choose what to do about it. My wife says that a lot, and it makes some trans people unhappy. The way she puts it: you got a shit hand, but you still get to decide how to play it.
Whether or not to transition itself is a choice is an idea I will leave for another day. But here, in a nutshell, are some basic tenets I hope are useful.
does it matter why?
i don’t know what trans is – genetic, medical condition, etc.
no one makes any distinction between nature/nurture anymore. nature is what? DNA? as in, something made out of protein that is created within a physical environment which is impacted by all our culture. just forget it. that binary is over, done with.
are people trans?
yes.
do they need to transition?
yes.
should they own their shit & do so as responsibly as possible?
yes.
should cis people start to fucking understand transness is not going anywhere, that it IS, in the same way that, say, queerness IS?
yes.
if you got married & you’re trans & you’re going to transition you’re going to wreck your wife’s life, pretty much. own it. minimize the damage however you can.
your life was already wrecked by transphobia and represssion and who knows what else.
your transition will give you the chance to change in a way that you’re looking forward to. your wife may, in turn, change her life into something she wants, too, but in either case, you will both experience a great deal of loss. none of it is fair, not a damn thing about it, & not for anyone.
but stop, STOP, making it all about you. if there is anything i say to trans people all the time that none of you listen to – & that includes my lovely spouse – that is it.
as she likes to say: trans people make Narcissus weep.
Jennifer Finney Boylan is Stuck in the Middle with You
Here she is on the Today show, giving a great interview.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Just watch.
The new book is called Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders.
ABC News Anchor Transitions: Dawn Ennis
ABC News Editor Don ‘Dawn’ Ennis Comes Out As Transgender
In a lot of ways, not an atypical mid-life transition, and I wish her well.
She says:
Ennis has not yet undergone a sex change operation, but says her marriage is “wrecked.”
“Despite the heartbreak, [my wife] has encouraged me to start this new life that we both believe better fits who I now am,” Ennis continued. “Trust me, this is NOT the midlife crisis I was counting on — I’d much prefer to have bought a sports car. Even an affair, I think, would have been something we might have recovered from.”
So, yeah. That’s all true.
CA College Sports
California has just made it possible for trans college students to play as the gender they are instead of as the gender they were declared at birth.
It’s a good move, although it’s bound to come with complications.
Seattle + Portland
Have I mentioned that I’m going away for about a 10 days to visit Seattle and Portland?! I am, and SOON.
I’m going to Seattle in order to give the keynote at Esprit this year – which is in Port Angeles, WA, & I’m told it’s beautiful. I’ve been told many times it’s a fun conference, too. I’ll be doing two workshops while I’m there as well. I’ll be there from 5/17 – 5/19.
I will probably also be doing some kind of author gig in Seattle while I”m there, possibly on the 20th or 21st.
And I will get to see a very, very old friend in Portland who I haven’t seen in — at least a few years now — which is really too great.
Mariette Pathy Allen
Slate’s just done a nice piece about Mariette Pathy Allen, who has been photographing members of the trans community for a long while. Her books were some of the first I saw and read, in fact.
This is one of my favorites of hers, and it’s of Felicity, who died a few years ago at the age of 102. She is sitting in front of a photo of her child self at the turn of the last century.
It was almost a rite of passage when she photographed us when we were at Fantasia Fair in Provincetown nearly a decade ago.
You can see more of her photography on her own website.
Queer Wisconsin
Okay, maybe not queer Wisconsin, but definitely LGBTQ Wisconsin, at least. There are two interesting articles out about the state of gay rights and marriage equality and non-discrimination in this state.
One is mostly about Fair Wisconsin: its history, current goals, and what kinds of policy and legislation they’ve been addressing.
The details of how Action Wisconsin, the predecessor to Fair Wisconsin, got started are sketchy, though there seems to be consensus it coincided with the election of Tammy Baldwin to the state Assembly in 1992.
The story is that the newly elected Baldwin, then the first out lesbian elected to the Assembly, was in great demand as a speaker around the state. Belanger says Baldwin would go to these speaking engagements and collect names and contact information in a spiral notebook.
“The legend is that those lists started Action Wisconsin,” says Belanger. John Kraus, spokesman for Baldwin, now a U.S. senator, confirms the story.
The second is about the change of attitude about marriage equality and gay rights in the state:
Yet Wisconsinites are now out of sync with the rest of the country.
The latest poll from Marquette University shows that 42% of Wisconsinites support full marriage equality, while 26% support civil unions and 28% oppose any legal recognition of these partnerships.
That’s a positive change from 2006, when 59.4% of voters approved a constitutional ban on marriage equality and civil unions.
Although it’s the law of the land, the constitutional ban is at odds with Wisconsin’s long tradition of tolerance, said Katie Belanger, executive director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights group Fair Wisconsin. She noted that in 1982 Wisconsin was the first state to make sexual-orientation discrimination illegal and voters clearly supported the election of Democrat Tammy Baldwin, a lesbian, to the U.S. Senate in 2012.
“We may disagree on all of the issues of importance to the full LGBT community, but a Wisconsin value is that we treat people fairly and with respect,” Belanger said.
And people wonder why we moved here! There’s so much to do! You can donate to Fair Wisconsin to help us keep moving things forward.
At Least in Death: Help Give Cemia Acoff a Respectful Funeral
Cemia Acoff was murdered in a barbarous way, and now, multiple activists and organizations are working with her family, the funeral home and, yes, the morgue, to bring her home.
They need your help.
They have set up The Cemia Acoff Fund which will, literally, bring Ce Ce home and ensure that she receives a proper send off, full of love and support from the community – and that includes the love and support of her family.
You can donate to The Cemia Acoff Fund here.
The groups involved include:
TransOhio
Shane Morgan, Founder & Chair
Cleveland Trans Community Outreach
Jacob Nash, Chair
Equality Ohio
Elyzabeth Holford, Executive Director
LGBT Center of Cleveland
Phyllis Harris, Executive Director
AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland / Beyond Identities Community Center (BICC)
Tracy Jones, Chief Executive Officer
Miquel Brazil, BICC
RIP Cemia Dove or “CiCi” Alcoff
As I said on my FB page yesterday: I’m sorry, Ms. Alcoff, that we have not yet made the world a place that is safe enough for your beauty.
Rest in Peace.
(And journalists, and police, get your shit together already. For those who are wondering, she felt forced to admit she was a man, which, if she hadn’t had her ID changed legally, she might have done in order to prevent more complications and charges. Trans women do not “admit” to being men because they “know” they are, but because they know that people are stupid and hateful and shitty to trans people.)