Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
The Zapata family has their say:
From me to them:
God Bless all of you for stepping up and speaking with such love about your kid sister. We can only hope that your sister’s death will help the rest of us keep educating people so that other teenagers like her won’t die the way she did.
I don’t read/speak Spanish myself, but was sent this by someone who does:
Surprising campaign, under the auspices of the (Chilean goverment’s) Division of Social Organizations (they provide grants and help to NGO’s) and the communications division of the Metro in Santiago (2,000,000 riders a day). The posters appeared at all the metro stations and their design is very good; one can see a full size version from the last link. It was produced by a transmen’s org but displays very balanced info about MTF and FTM treatment and most of all about the difficulties and discriminations associated to being trans, pointing out that this is not a choice but an inborn condition. Trans orgs there are also in conversations with the government’s civil registry to be able to get national ID cards with the appropriate gender marker without having to certify surgeries (as in Spain).
(Apparently trans guys who speak Spanish are as cool as they’re English-speaking counterparts.)
We had a great time in Milwaukee this past weekend: a gathering of LGBT people on Saturday night, a sex workshop at The Tool Shed on Sunday, and then a workshop on gender variance Monday afternoon followed by a 7PM lecture about queer heterosexuals.
I did meet a bunch of people who asked me about various resources I mentioned in passing, so here goes:
& I think that’s it. If I’ve failed to mention anything I said I would post to here, feel free to email me about it or remind me in the comments section.
My friend Peter used to make me mixed tapes that had really interesting juxtapositions – so interesting that some of them I’ve remembered them for a long while. I actually don’t know if these two were next to each other, but that’s my story & I’m sticking to it.
Donovan’s “There Is a Mountain” (which Heidi tells me is a Buddhist proverb, too)
&
Bowie’s “Queen Bitch”(which you may know from the Milk ads)
I admit that this article really weirded me out, not becuase it’s a surprise that the medical commuity has failed to understand or diagnose Ausperger’s in girls particularly because their symptoms present differently (as the same for true for many years for women & heart disease, for example) but because her description of the way Ausperger’s presents in females is a little too close to the bone for me. I’ve already come out as an introvert, after all.
Girls slip through the diagnostic net, said Attwood, because they are so good at camouflaging or masking their symptoms. “Boys tend to externalise their problems, while girls learn that, if they’re good, their differences will not be noticed,” he said. “Boys go into attack mode when frustrated, while girls suffer in silence and become passive-aggressive. Girls learn to appease and apologise. They learn to observe people from a distance and imitate them. It is only if you look closely and ask the right questions, you see the terror in their eyes and see that their reactions are a learnt script.”
Girls also escape diagnosis, said Attwood, because they are more social than boys with the condition. Their symptoms can also be missed because it is the intensity of their interests that is unusual, and not the oddity of what they do.
“The impairments to their social life or interests tend not to stand out in the same way as boys’ do,” he said. “They might have one friend, while boys with the condition won’t have any. Also, boys hyperfocus on facts and certain interests, such as trains or weather. Girls escape into fiction. They have imaginary friends, live in another world with fairies and witches, obsessively watch soap operas or become intensely interested in celebrities.”
Hrm. The boldfaced bits pretty much describe my childhood & teenaged years in a nutshell. Frightening.
Have you all seen this latest iteration of trans + feminist(ing) + bathroom issues? Oy, it makes me tired. Here’s what I had to say about it four years ago.
Some days I just want to apologize to all the trans people who I ardently needed to talk to about bathrooms when I was working this stuff out, so let me: sorry, all of you, and thank you for educating me when it wasn’t your responsibility.
In the meantime, Gunner Scott has started a new blog about trans people + bathroom experiences, and he put up a sample at TGB (& info about how to send him your own stories, too).
I love this idea.
Love and mourning can be such interesting inspirations for art, and in her case, activism.
What we’ll be up to:
So do come to whatever you can if you’re in the Milwaukee area, & do spread the word. All the links are to Facebook pages, since that’s how the kids are doing it these days.
Details magazine did an interview with and profile on Stu Rasmussen, who they’re calling America’s 1st Trangender Mayor.
Anyone know if that’s actually true?
Our big Endymion trying to find the catnip cigar he got for his birthday. (They turn 9 this year.)