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RIP Virginia Prince, 1912 – 2009

Dr. Richard Docter announced at dinner last night, here at the Liberty Conference, that Virginia Prince had died at the age of 96. She was in good health and mentally acute until about a month ago when her health began a steep decline. Docter was her biographer as a well as a friend.

I met the grand dame here, in this Philly Airport Hilton hotel, about five years ago, and I am a little surprised by how moved I have been to hear of her passing. She was an imperfect person, as we all are, but rocked where it counted: having the cojones to be an out-transvestite in the 1950s. Her bravery is something we’d be fools, as a community, not to acknowledge.

Imperfect, problematic, heroic. You often don’t get one without the others. We have lost an important pioneer.

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LGBT Parents’ Survey

A couple of students here at Lawrence are conducting a survey of LGBT families in the US, and would like the help of anyone (parents and children) who would like to give their perspective. I’ve attached the message from the students, who are seniors working on their honors project. Their work is being supervised by two friends and colleagues–Beth Haines who is the current head of Gender Studies and Julie Konik, who has a visiting position in psychology.

The website for the survey is www.lgbtparents.org

To LGBT parents:

We would like to explore the experiences and perspectives of LGBT parents in a wide range of communities in the United States. In particular, we are interested in your views on the unique set of challenges that families with same-sex parents may face as a result of social policies and attitudes, and how they may overcome or manage these challenges.

Our research team consists of Beth Haines (who specializes in child development and gender studies) and Julie Konik (who specializes in personality and LGBT studies). In addition, Katy Fohrman and Kim Vachon are senior psychology majors at Lawrence University. We all feel strongly about being advocates for the LGBT community, which is why we have chosen to pursue research in this particular area. With this research, we hope to better understand challenges facing LGBT families and promote social policies that support all families.

If you would like to learn more about us, please check out our website:

www.lgbtparents.org

We have developed a survey that explores the ways in which same-sex parents and their children manage social pressures within their communities. The survey will take approximately 30 minutes to complete. We want to learn about your individual perspectives, experiences, and opinions. Parents will be asked questions about topics such as attitudes in your community, parenting and family dynamics, social pressures and sources of support, as well as questions regarding your child(ren). We also invite your child(ren) under 21 years old to complete questions about themselves and their relationship with their parents, as well as optional questions about their perceptions of the community. Of course, whether your child(ren) complete questions is entirely up to you–you will have the option to give consent for whatever you feel comfortable with for your child(ren).

If you are interested in participating in our survey, please go to our website: www.lgbtparents.org We truly appreciate your help!

Please feel free to email us at survey@lgbtparents.org or our individual emails (hainesb@lawrence.edu; konikj@lawrence.edu) if you have any technical trouble, questions, or comments.

Thanks again for your help!

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Trans Couples Talk

This is the text of the talk I gave at the Liberty Conference on May 2nd, 2009:

How We Love You: Let Us Count the Ways

There are partners who are male, female, and trans; there are partners who met their trans person before the trans person knew what was going on; there are partners who married crossdressers who had sworn off crossdressing who purged and then dressed and then purged and then dressed again; there are partners who met their husbands crossdressed; there are partners who met their trans person during transition; there are partners who met their trans person long after transition; there are partners who didn’t know their trans person was trans when they met.

You, the individuals who are in love, were in love, who are seeking companionship and partnership and occasionally a good spanking, are said to be like snowflakes. Flawless Mother Sabrina told me that one night at the now defunct Ina’s Silver Swan, and she was right. Each of your stories is unique, even when there are similarities; each of you realizes your transness, as I like to call it, in a different way: some crossdress, others do drag, others transition. Some do all three, and others do none of these, but you express your genders in some other way. But you have your stories, your characters in movies, even if and when they are comically or tragically or unfairly drawn, but those you love have — well, we’ve got a machete and a spot on the edge of the wood we mean to get through.

Continue reading “Trans Couples Talk”

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Wink

Endymion tends to have one eye that doesn’t open for a few minutes after he wakes up from a nap. It’s been that way since he was a kitten, but I’ve never managed to get a photo of it before.

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Sir, Check In Please

I just got “sirred” by the lady checking people in at the special Sleeping Car Passengers Only Amtrak Waiting Room. There’s free beverages, even. She corrected herself as soon as I turned my head, so I suppose it was just the buzzcut and my 20th Century newsboy cap.

So I’m in Chicago. & What I’ve realized I like about trains is you can feel the traveling. Instead of just being one place & then being in another, I get to see the countryside change, along with the industries, and homes, and malls. (Far too many malls, if you ask me.) Not only that, but you get to say hey to friends who live in the city you’re passing through when you’ve got a couple hours layover.

Yep. Love trains.

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Intermodal Travel Day

I’ve made it back to Milwaukee again, but this time I’m just passing through the Intermodal Terminal – how great a name is that for a train/bus terminal? – right now utilizing the free wifi and waiting for my train to Chicago to board. I take a train from Chicago to DC which takes about 17 hours, and luckily I’ll be in one of those nifty “roomettes” for that trip. Then from DC to Philly.

& Whilst plenty of you think I’m insane, I really prefer nothing more than sitting and looking out a window listening to music and thinking. Writing. Reading. It’s all the stuff I do anyway, but somehow doing it while moving feels more productive.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m on my way to the Liberty Conference in Philly, and yes, I did think I would be living in NYC when I said yes. I speak at Saturday’s luncheon about How We Love You (Trans People) and then later the same day about sex being a four letter word. Do come if you can.

Sunday, I get back on the train and do the whole thing in reverse, but not in heels.

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Femmes

I’m not one & I don’t understand them, somehow like a teenager who doesn’t understand the boys or girls he ogles. They are a mystery: a perfect, empowered, complicated mystery.

I have had, like so many tomboys and masculine spectrum and androgyny-leaning and genderqueer sorts, the kind of frustration with femininity that is about me & about the world & its expectations, but one day while listening to a femme talk about intentionally trying to look like a dyke so that others would know she wanted to date women, I had one of those revelatory moments. I explained why I was smiling to her: that I had experienced the reverse, trying to fem up my naturally dyke-spectrum gender even though i wanted to date men. We both had a moment of why is this shit so absurdly stupid along with a little and why are there always uniforms and prescriptions that go along with desire?

I don’t know the answer but I do know I have mocked femininity like the injured tomboy I can be, but this book – so full of longing and coolness and love and desire and girlness and attitude that I feel once again something like that teenaged boi or grrl utterly confounded but this time, a little in awe.

This book Visible: A Femmethology Parts 1 & 2, edited by Jennifer Clarke Burke and published by Homofactus, is full of the narratives of the people who call themselves femmes, and they ponder such a range of questions: the obvious ones about invisibility and identity – especially relevant to readers here when that (in)visibility relates to having a trans-masculine partner — to the femininity of a self-confessed “stopped pretending to be a male to queer to femme female” trans person. They are full of gender theory, concerned about community, biphobia, butch-femme dynamics and too many other things to mention. It gives me hope that even I, one day, can overcome being a jerk and punching those girls I like in the arm instead of just telling them how awesome & fabulous they are.

Thanks femmes, for making me look again at femininity. You can read more at www.Femmethology.com.