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Sports Illustrated on Trans Athletes

I have to say that this is kind of amazing: Sports Illustrated has taken on the topic of trans athletes.

For transgender men and women, the physiological traits that distinguish them as male or female don’t conform to how they feel about themselves. Some have undergone sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy to make their biological and gender identities match. Others, such as the 28-year-old Godsey, have not: He was born as a female and therefore competes as a female, but he identifies as male. Imagine a body, especially one as finely tuned as an elite athlete’s, feeling inescapably foreign—as if it were intended for the opposite sex. “I take a lot of pride in the fact that I have a good amount of muscle mass, and I’ve done it naturally,” says Godsey. “But in some ways, this is the last body I would ever want.”

. . .

Consider something as simple as going to the bathroom. When using men’s rooms—his preference—Godsey usually tries to conceal his chest; in women’s rooms he accentuates it by wearing what he calls tight “girl shirts.” Still, he has been escorted out of an airport ladies’ room by security, interrogated at restaurants and once had to flee a group of snarling men at a truck-stop bathroom in Nebraska.

The world is a-changing. Maybe not fast enough, but faster than I expected.

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Sissy!

There are so few articles about sissies; there really should be more. But Brianna Austin gives us a little bit of a rundown:

The sissy, however, doesn’t see himself as a women; in fact he is firmly rooted in the reality that he is not a women, nor can he every truly become one, but no longer a man either. In many instances the sissy sees women as the superior species, and is happy to simply elevate themselves to their highest possible feminine representation of female.

To that end, the sissy acts and dresses as frilly and feminine as possible, but never in a mainstream way. They love ruffles, satin, and lace in yellow, white and pink, anything that accentuates femininity – usually garters & stockings, high heels, and costumes.  But it can also include baby girl and little girl attire and actions as well.

Their goal is not to assimilate; thus the frills are both an adoration of feminism, and a reminder that they’re merely emulating that which they can never actually be.

It is then no surprise that most sissies are usually submissive in nature, a soft demeanor that earns to serve.  Often when you come upon social profiles of sissies, they are seeking a “strong master or mistress” to train them. This is yet another way of saying, “bring out the girl in me and suppress the male … PLEASE!”

Is being a sissy then really about being and looking feminine, or is it really – at the root – about power, the lack of, and/or exchange of it?

I’m fond of them myself, as is Dan Savage. As I’ve often said, some of the strongest, bravest people I’ve met are sissies, and yes, this is for you PettiPie. 🙂

 

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Senior Banquet

Tonight’s the night at Lawrence when graduating seniors get dressed up & invited faculty and staff get dressed up and we all go for drinks and then for dinner and then for speechifying and then for more drinking. I have lucky enough to be invited three years running, and it is always a blast.

So congrats, seniors! More advice later, but for now: make sure you drink a lot of glasses of water while you’re drinking a lot of glasses of everything else.

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For Pops.

Because today would have been my father’s 84th birthday, some Louis, who he loved.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

It is sometimes reassuring to think of all the people who knew him – and he knew a lot of people, some for a second, some for decades – and to know he probably got to tell them a dumb joke, or complimented them in some old-fashioned way, or even just smiled at them as they went by. It’s the jauntiness, the joy of him, that I miss the most now; there are very, very few men who can tell me a dumb joke that will actually make me laugh, & who think it is important enough to try, & he was the first and the last. You getta you papers.

Pops, I miss you. I wish I could pick up the phone so you could tell me every last detail of your most recent conversation with the guy about the extra charge on the cable bill right now.

He found joy in almost everything: in the photos taken around the same time as this one, there’s one of my mother worried about her electric scooter; my nieces are splitting a cotton candy; my sister was probably counting tickets or finding  a map or some something for my mother, and my nephew was waiting to see what ride next. Rachel volunteered to go on any ride the kids would go on, even the ones that made everyone else sick and dizzy, and I took pictures. But my dad just watched and smiled: at a toddler taking a step, at his beautiful wife, at the ice cream stand, at this small part of his assembled family. He’d tell a story about a guy he knew growing up in Brooklyn, or about the guy he knew in the service, and the funny thing is, not all of his stories ended happily. A lot of them didn’t. But he just told them, because they were relevant or because something had reminded him of the person or that particular story. They rarely had  an ending, or a moral; he wasn’t that kind of guy who is always trying to impart wisdom or experience. In almost the same breath, he could finish a story about not having his number called during the Korean War, and then wonder out loud where to get ice cream.

Stories and ice cream. I thought I’d get to share a lot more of both with him, but I’m glad, at least I managed to snap this photo: you may not be able to see his eyes, but you can’t not see the twinkle in them, too.

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High Heels for Men

High heels for men? But of course! Their rules? ” No adult content and men wear heels as men.” Sometimes I wish I could just read things without deconstructing them. “Adult content” means “not a of a sexual nature” I’m sure, but “as men”? No idea what that’s supposed to mean.

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Exactly Why Slutwalk

You don’t really have to wait even a minute for an example of the kind of victim-blaming that Slutwalk is all about, but this one is particularly horrific, as the young woman died in a fire on Saturday and the coverage of her death appeared in The New York Times. The journalist quotes someone who calls her a “he”, comments on the men she invited to her apartment, and describes her curvaceous body.

As if any of these things had anything to do with her dying in this fire. Pathetic reporting, pathetic culture we live in.

From Feministing:

Other folks, including GLAAD, Janet Mock, and Autumn Sandeen are calling out this incredibly offensive and dangerous article as well. You can let the New York Times know you’re sick and tired of their victim blaming and transphobia by writing to them here or tweeting @NYTimes. Update: GLAAD also recommends tweeting @NYTMetro, the paper’s Metro Desk, which might get to the reporters more directly.

Please speak up.

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Me: Slutwalk: Appleton

It wasn’t the most formal talk I’ve ever given, but I didn’t know it was being filmed at all, so I’m glad to see it.

And let me tell you “slut” + “faculty member” + “”43” is not the easiest sartorial equation to solve, and on Mother’s Day, no less!