Category: trans

Posted on

Keisling on Trans Successes

Mara Keisling has a good – and lengthy – op-ed in The Advocate on why it’s been such a good year for trans people.

  1. more non-discrimination state and local laws
  2. white house prioritizes trans issues
  3. trans health policy improves
  4. the US & UN speak up for LGBT rights worldwide
  5. massive study on trans discrimination released
  6. improved Standards of Care
  7. all of the federal legislation introduced this congress was trans-inclusive

and that’s only a few. Go read the whole of it. As an activist/advocate of 10+ years, this is really mind-blowing progress (even if we’re all well aware there is plenty more to do).

Posted on

Tonight in Brooklyn

Tonight we’re going to see The Schmekels at Southpaw here in Brooklyn for an evening of “Hanuka Rock”. The Schmekels are “100% Trans Jews” and although what they play isn’t really klezmer, they certainly seem to have a sense of humor — “schmekel” means “small penis” in Yiddish.

So if you’re around & this is your kind of thing, feel free to say hi if you see us there.

Posted on

Trans Etiquette Graphic

I don’t like the way “transphobic” is thrown around – when often, what’s at work is ignorance. When I talk about non-trans attitudes toward trans people and identities, I refer to it as “trans etiquette” – as in, give people a chance to learn how not to be ignorant and rude before deciding they’re transphobic.

If they persist in re-gendering people, asking surgical status or for a “real” name, then they’re just assholes.

Posted on

New Children’s Book: When Kathy is Keith

The author of When Kathy is Keith, in a phone interview with straight.com out of Vancouver, says:

“A lot of times, parents with straight kids, they think like, ‘You know what? That would never happen to my kid so why would my kid need to learn something like this?’ And I think the key is your kid doesn’t need to be LGBT. As long as your kid is perceived with any trait associated with LGBT, they can be bullied. They can be made fun of. Your kids can be a victim of any of that.”

He adds that parents of transgender children go through a difficult emotional process of their own.

“Parents, they have to go through different stages themselves,” he explains. “In the beginning, they tend to deny it. They hope their kids will grow out of it. They are having a tough time. They have to grieve over losing a son or a daughter and welcoming a new gender of a child. And I think that’s a process. It’s not easy for any parent to accept that because no parent has a kid and then think that this kid may be a transgender kid…. It’s tough… [when you have] a dream for your kid and all of a sudden that dream vanishes, and you have to recreate a dream for your kid[’s] future, and at the same time, knowing that society is not so tolerant out there. And I think that is very tough [for] a lot of parents to accept that.”

He advises parents who have transgender children to talk as much as possible with other people about these issues.

“I really think that [they should] talk to people about it, talk to other parents about it. And don’t just talk to one person. I would talk to multiple people. Talk to the school principal, talk to the counsellors, talk to the professional psychologists or social workers…even family doctor[s], so they can know there are people like this out there, they are not alone, and they can get help.”

Good advice all around.

Posted on

Bad Advice to Trans Student?

The mom of a trans young adult wrote to Cary Tennis of Salon’s “Since You Asked” column because her daughter is

away at college and underachieving in a major way. She says that she can’t motivate herself to attend her less-than-full load of classes, can’t think of what she wants to do with herself, even in a short-term way.

The mom clarifies that the family has been supportive of her transition, etc.

Cary responds with: do nothing. Really? Her parents are paying for college and she’s doing so little she may fail all her classes and the advice columnest says “do nothing”? I think that’s ridiculous, but I’m not a parent.

I’d have her withdraw and get a job, pay her own rent for a while, & then when she was ready for someone to spend a ton of money on her education, I’d send her back to college.

As far as I can tell, this doesn’t have much to do with her daughter being trans, except that the mother seems to think that’s an important piece of information. It may be, but it may not have anything to do with it.

Posted on

“100% Trans Jews”

The band’s name is Schmekel and they play klezmer-core punk. Oh yes. If they’re playing any gigs while I’m in NYC I will be at one.

The music itself merges traditional klezmer scales and rhythms with the aggressive energy of early gay punk bands like Pansy Division.

If the musical satirist Tom Lehrer were to write a hard-core anthem about sex reassignment surgery, with a driving guitar lick, a “Hava Nagila” breakdown and a keyboard line lifted from Super Mario Brothers, it might approximate the Schmekel sound.

Schmekel means “little penis” in Yiddish. And people wonder why I like hanging out with trans guys.

Posted on

Topics

Here’s a short list of the topics my students researched for papers this term:

  • Marlene Dietrich
  • Intersex activism
  • Justin Bieber’s gender
  • David Reimer, or the John/Joan case
  • The invention of heterosexuality
  • Korean pop band f(x)
  • Kyle Alums and gender in college sports
  • Genderqueer identities
  • Femininity in male-bodied people
  • African trans identities/activism
  • De-homosexualized femme identities
  • Tribe 8’s “Femme Bitch Top”
  • Pete Burns’ gender
  • Barsexuals
  • Feminism and femme activism
  • GIDC

It makes grading a lot easier, that’s for sure.

Posted on

Reader Letter

There’s a very nice letter from a reader of Insight Into Diversity about the article on transgender people in employment that was in last month’s issue. She writes:

Hundreds of the top employers in our country don’t think so (IBM, Xerox, Apple, Starbucks, universities, city and county governments, to name just a few). Thanks to education, activism, and the medical profession the reality is that many employers are now supporting transgender workers in ways never seen before. They do this because it makes business sense to retain talented and very loyal employees. They have effectively integrated transgender employees into their workforces by developing trans-friendly policies, insurance coverage providing for trans-health related services including surgeries, and have begun working hard to retain their talented employees and managers. Speaking of policies, I differ from the author on a small but important point: Most employers realize that requiring transgender employees to use specific bathrooms is not inclusion, so their employees use the bathroom appropriate to their expressed gender.

I’m even more pleased to have been a part of it.

Posted on

Best Trans Books

Oh gosh. Someone’s gone & called me straight again, but never mind: She’s Not the Man I Married was featured in The Advocate’s list of the best trans books.

She’s Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband($15, Seal)
Helen Boyd’s first memoir, My Husband Betty, introduced the world to her and her cross-dressing husband and her own concerns about whether the man she married is a cross-dresser or a transgender woman just waiting to transition. In She’s Not the Man, the funny, sometimes infuriating follow up, Boyd deftly explores the role of gender in her own marriage and culture at large and gives us a thinking straight girl’s treatise on the complex world of gender identity.

Plenty of other favorites of mine are also on the list: Kailey’s Just Add Hormones, Green’s Becoming a Visible Man, and Califia’s Sex Changes.

For a list of books on trans subjects I recommend, I’ve got a whole pile of reviews from over the years (which needs updating, but still, the books mentioned covered a great many aspects of transgender life).