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Tucker Carlson: Not Condoning Gay Bashing

The Larry Craig story just keeps going. Tucker Carlson, after saying that he & a friend roughed up a man who hit on him in a DC public bathroom, now says he & his friend only held the man until security arrived. He explains:

“Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.”

“Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.”

Not condoning the use of violence against anyone, much less gay men in public bathrooms (or the ‘not gay men looking for gay sex’ types like Larry Craig, even), but I do think it’s different when you’re not being hit on but assaulted, or when you’re not a peer to the person hitting on you but a minor.

Not that any of that makes Tucker Carlson any less of a bonehead.

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Trans Couples: Adrien & Elena

I’m going to tell you the story of me, Adrien an FtM transman, and my partner, Elena a free-spirited, open-minded, adventurous, bi-sexual genetic woman. Y’all get ready, because some parts of it are scandalous. OK, here we go.

When Elena and I first met, I think it was late 1998, we just really hit it off, the way you do. The meeting that stood out was at the state fair, for a friend’s birthday. We were there with lots of friends and acquaintances and between us there was that magnetic energy – we were more interested in each other than anyone else and for reasons soon to be disclosed, this wasn’t entirely appropriate. Soon after that night at the fair, we met again at a party, a lesbian party. At this point on the timeline of my transition, I was just getting into the transgender vocabulary and ideas and was definitely starting to recognize myself as trans, but I was pre-everything with only some glimmerings that chest surgery might be something feasible for me. So, I was still living at home in the bosom of the lesbian community, but starting to scratch the itch that would bring my time there to its end. At present, we still have many gay and lesbian friends, but some have dropped out of our lives as well. Since the beginning of our relationship, we always found that we felt more aligned with our straight couple friends and I definitely do not call myself a lesbian any more. Elena’s relationship and sexual history includes men and women but at the time we met, she was identified as lesbian and had a female partner. But back to the story…

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Bathrooms in Arizona, Letters to The Advocate

Michele DeLaFreniere, a trans woman in Arizona, is suing a bar that kept her from entering.

The bar’s owner objects to having been quoted as saying he doesn’t want “her kind” in the place, but does admit that he’s blocked trans women from coming to the bar because of the bathroom issue: trans women were being harassed in the men’s room, and female bar patrons didn’t want the trans women in the women’s restroom.

As the story was reported in The Advocate, Anderson told the AP, “There was no place I could put these people.”

Two letters to the editor about the issue weigh in on the side of keeping women’s restrooms free of trans women, one calling them “men” and the other calling them “‘women’.”

Yet another “women’s space” issue, but I’m not sure the best answer is simply to insist that trans women use the ladies’ rooms. Education, unisex bathrooms, – surely there are more intermediate ways of handling this instead of just telling women – who may be ignorant but also fearful, for good reason, of sharing bathroom space with people they view as male. Convincing women raised female that trans women are not male requires a hell of a lot of education, which will take time, so what do we do in the meanwhile?

(My thanks to Joanne Herman for the heads-up.)

(Xposted to Trans Group Blog.)

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Long, Loud Summer

The folks over at Wolfgang’s Vault just put up a ’78 Ramones gig that is so damned great – and very much what their live shows were like: practically no breaks, DeeDee’s “1-2-3-4!” about the only ‘between songs’ chatter, and adrendaline, speed, and power chords. The Palladium, where this show was taped, is now sadly gone; the last band I saw there was Los Fabulosos Cadillacs.

Damn. It makes my old, tired self exhausted just listening, but I can remember pogo-ing for the entire time they played at some shows I was at. My fondest memory – kind of my own ‘coming of age’ ritual, since I didn’t have a Sweet 16 – was going to see a Ramones show at Hofstra University: a bunch of us loaded into someone’s van. The energy was great, positive, aggro: when some Nazi punks showed up, the entire audience (& the Ramones) shamed them out of the room. But my coming of age ‘ritual’ was more specific than that: at some point during the show, I thought I was sweating obscenely because I’d rubbed my hands down my thighs and they were damp. So I went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face and neck and arms, but once I hit the bathroom area – which was better lit – I saw that my hands were actually bloody, not sweaty. I went into a stall and my thighs were streaked with blood, and finally I found a huge gash/hole that’d apparently been made by someone’s spike or safety pin or something. I wasn’t bleeding profusely by any means, but I hadn’t noticed and in all the jumping around had managed to get it all over me.

Ah, good times.

Do check out this show if you did or didn’t get to see the Ramones live. If you can only take a song or two, then I’d recommend the first two, “Rockaway Beach” / “Lobotomy” since that’ll give you the general idea, but they’re really on for the “Surfin’ Bird” / “Cretin Hop” bit of the show.

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Five Questions With… Max Wolf Valerio

max wolf valerio

It’s been a while since a Five Questions With… Interview, but I can’t imagine a better re-entry interview than one with Max Wolf Valerio, the author of The Testosterone Files. Max and I “met” as a result of us both being published by Seal Press, and because we were both friends with the late, great Gianna Israel. His Testosterone Files are a fascinating account of his move from his life as a radical dyke and poet to being a ‘straight guy.’

1) I often joke that I only ever “passed” as a straight woman, and there were parts of The Testosterone Files that made me feel like you “passed” as as lesbian. Is that even close to right? How do you feel about your former identity now?

Yes, I definitely did “pass” for a lesbian, a dyke, whatever you wish to call it. I was dyke-identified for at 14 years, and more, if you count my adolescence. Early on, I realized I was attracted to women, and so, a lesbian identity made the most sense to me. It was all I knew to name myself. The idea of transitioning in 1975 and before, when I was a teen, was completely off the map.

I am proud of the person I was as a dyke, and I learned a lot in my years as a lesbian. I understand many of the finer points of feminism, in all its permutations. Through lesbian feminism, I also came to an understanding and empathy for other types of radical politics. It was quite an education, and an amazing immersion in female life. Ultimately, dyke life is about immersion in female life I think, and it provided an axis for me as well as a point of departure.

However, as I show dramatically in The Testosterone Files, I was much more than simply a lesbian feminist or dyke. I was, actually, just as involved in the punk rock scene, as well as in being a poet who crossed all lines of identity and just “wrote” and read for an audience that appreciated poetry as an art form period. So, this involvement gave me an “out” from dyke life and provided a portal to the fact that there is so much more out there in the world than simply lesbians or feminism. This portal would prove to be invaluable as I came into male life.

On the other hand, I think my perspective was a bit constrained anyway from being a lesbian all those years. I have had to re-examine many of my feminist beliefs and attitudes anyway, even if I was not entirely cloistered within the dyke perspective. Some of these attitudes no longer fit my male life, and I find them to be restricting. More importantly, I also have come to see that certain of these ideas were just wrong-headed, even if they served a purpose for me then. I mean, some of the anti-male attitudes, and anti-het attitudes that I absorbed. These attitudes and ideas not only do not serve my present life, they are not rooted in truth. I think I was often coming from a place of defensiveness, and I have learned, and am learning, to drop that.

Even so, I have many fond feelings about my past dyke life, and about lesbians in general, and will always feel related.

Continue reading “Five Questions With… Max Wolf Valerio”

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A Queer Sunday

Reading John Waters’ article about Tennesee Williams – and in The New York Times Book Review, no less! – was a treat. I love them both, for being queer, for their art, for their humor and sarcasm and truth.

These are my people, and always have been.

But it made me think about the books I had to “steal” as a kid, or read secretly. For me, it was Joe Orton’s biography, Prick Up Your Ears, first and foremost. I heard about him reading interviews with Adam Ant, who simultaneously introduced me to Marc Bolan, the erotic art of Allen Jones, Derek Jarman, and Tom of Finland. Around the same time I discovered Soft Cell and Marc Almond, who in turn turned my head toward the likes of Jacques Brel and Jean Genet. (And I wonder why I turned out the way I am, reading about rough trade and anonymous bathroom sex when I was 15.)

They were all great “bad” influences, their books and art I hid from my mother. They told me there was another world out there, just as Tennesee Williams told John Waters there was.

So who were yours?

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Not Dancing

So I found this interesting article – way more measured and frankly, sympathetic, than most articles about transness that throw around the word “mutilation,” so instead of ignoring it as I’d normally do, I responded.

I certainly understand where you’re coming from, Josie, but tell me this: what do we do with the people who could be either? Who are both?

My husband is. She never knows what bathroom to use. We worry about someone disagreeing with the M on her license.

A lot of people who are innately gender variant, or androgynous, may transition only because more cards fall on the F than on the M when they fall from the sky.

And at the moment, the only way to get your ID changed is to get genital surgery.

I think a lot more of them would keep their healthy, operative genitals if that weren’t the case, but you try telling the DMV you want neither gender marked on your license.

Go ahead.

Or, just read some of Dr. Harry Benjamin’s work. People have tried to relieve transsexualism via therapy, spirituality, and all sorts of other non-operative means. But what Benajamin notices is that it doesn’t work. So he fixed their body (since their minds wouldn’t be changed).

There are plenty of us working within the trans community who would like to see people be able to peacably live as either gender, or both, or fluid. But living that way is, for now, brutally hard work. I’d agree with you, philosophically, if I didn’t see what my husband and other friends go through every day, all day long, day after day after day. The world just beats the crap out of them, puts them at greater risk for hate crimes, and insists on them being “ma’am” or “sir” when it comes to buying a cup of coffee to using a public toilet.

So, join us. Make the world safe for the gender variant, with us.

helen boyd
www.myhusbandbetty.com

There are a lot of other ways to respond, but this was the one that struck me. I’m sure some of you can add other important facts. Just please, be polite and be reasoned.

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Five Questions With… J. Michael Bailey

J. Michael Bailey is the author of the much-heralded The Man Who Would Be Queen as well as one of the authors of a groundbreaking study on bisexuality released last year.
1. So, Prof. Bailey, what amazing things have you discovered about tomboys? Have you worked out that we’re more likely to beat you up in the bathroom if you say stupid shit about us, like you do about everyone else you study?
Thank you, Helen. I’m glad you asked that question. In fact, the title of my next book is “Tomboys: The Girls Who, if They Existed, Would Be Dykes”. It is a nonscientific scientific popular nonscience book, so it is pretty easy to digest. I’m proud to say that much of the work that went into writing the book was conducting in and around the campus. We’re engaged in exciting, cutting edge research here at Northwestern, and, assuming that human subjects rules apply, or even if they don’t, we are doing it safely. I think. Yes, there has been some controversy stirred up by a few hysterical ‘tomboy activists’, or, as I like to call them, ‘dykes’, but when you are on the cutting edge of scientific nonscience popular science, you learn to take these, um, blows.
Mostly, these dykivists have taken issue with the last third of my book, which deals with the simple fact that tomboys do not exist. Oh, they think they do. Their parents may even think they do. But I can quote many esteemed references I’ve never actually read to bolster the point that people often are deluded and lying when they speak to me. I mean, it just isn’t possible that so many people dislike me or disagree with my work. It has to be delusion. Has to.
But, in answer to your question: yes. If tomboys exist, then, yes, please don’t hit me.
2. From your “research” methods in The Man Who Would Be Queen, you seem to hang out in gay/trans bars a lot. I do too, so I understand. But I hang out in them because I love trannies, while you seem to have more of a love/hate relationship with transwomen. What gives?
Any reasonable person will conclude that I am very sympathetic to the plight of gender nonconforming boys. Very sympathetic. Very, very VERY sympathetic. Any reasonably observant person who happened to be at my favorite bar, Chick or Meat, will conclude that I absolutely love young, hot, feminine trannies.
As far as love and hate, well, yes, it is only natural. I love my time with the hot ones. When I come home, however, I have to spend a few hours in my Punishment Closet. Longer if I had to settle for one of the uglier ones.
As I have written in my lovingly crafted book, there are two kinds of transsexuals: the Faggos and the Uggos. So you have the “Homosexual Transsexuals” (Faggos), and, let me tell you, they are all pretty hot. These guys tend to transition early, date macho, straight guys like me, and make money as strippers. Then you have the “Autogynephilic Transsexuals” (Uggos) who transition later, are pretty homely, and if they can get a date, it is usually with themselves. Usually these guys can only find work as low grade prostitutes (ones who charge about $25 for a handjob, which really sucks because they won’t break a $50 or cash an NSF check).I wouldn’t date one of those men. Unless I was really hard up.
Or I couldn’t find a Faggo.
I love the Faggos. I’ve even loved an Uggo or two in my time, though human subjects and several pending law suits mean I can’t mention their names. I am not gay, though, just so you understand. I’m married, and everything.
3. Do you think bisexual men are really gay and bisexual women are really bisexual because that satisfies your fantasy of watching two women together? Or it because all of your research is really a life-long struggle to convince yourself that your interest in chicks with dicks means you’re still really het?
Yes.

4. So what makes your plethsmograph really bump up?
I am so glad you asked me that, Helen. As a matter of fact, Everything gets my Penile Plethsmograph stiff. How do I know this? I’m not just a researcher, not just a dedicated scientist in search of the truth, not just an advocate and humanitarian who deeply cares about the plight of transsexual faggots. As someone once said, I can’t ask the troops to do something I wouldn’t do myself. And while that isn’t completely true, I do find that I prefer wearing a PP. All the time. Sure, it can be an inconvenience; for one thing, not a few people have asked me what the wires sticking out of my belt were for, and I’ve had to switch to wearing sweats most of the time. The side benefit is that the PP does really make it look like I’m packing some major Academic Rolls, if you know what I mean.
Let’s try a test. I have in my desk a selection of photographs. I’ll view them one at a time and give you the PP feedback. Here we go.
First up: A picture of Seigfried and Roy. With a soft, furry tiger. Oh, look, it’s a boy tiger. A big boy tiger. PP reading: “Tingly”.
Next: The Eiffel Tower. Long, tall, hard, erect, with a bulbous end. Years to build, by hundreds of sweaty Frenchmen in the hot Parisan sun. PP reading: “Ooo, la la!”
Next: Captain Kangaroo. Moustache. Side Burns. Deep, deep, deep pockets. Sailor. PP reading: “Ping Pong Balls!”
Next: A place of Nachos. PP reading: “Call Doctor if Erection lasts longer than 4 hours.”
Next: Tula.
Right, Helen, I’m going to have to get back to you. I need to, ah, recalibrate and rewire the PP. Yes, recalibrate. And change my pants.
mb J. Michael Bailey at Homecoming, date unknown.
5. I know you think you can tell a gay man by the sound of his voice, but did you know most gay men can tell you really like sucking cock if you suck cock all the time?
This has been a real source of frustration for me, Helen. When some in the Stanford audience giggled at some of the demonstrations in my talk (e.g., my playing the voices of gay and straight people), this was all in good humor. I can’t understand the fuss. It reminds me of when I was an undergraduate, and I demonstrated how you could tell the difference between real black men and white men in black face (in that groundbreaking study, white men with black face did not want watermelon). It was all in good fun. At least, it seemed funny to me, and that’s all that matters, in the end.
There is a difference, I would suggest, between cocksucking for pleasure and cocksucking For Science. I would not engage in the former. I admit that, in my nonscientific pseudoscientific science studies, I needed to sample–I’m sorry–collect information about the oral sex habits in the gay community. As senior researcher, it was encumbant upon me to collect this data first hand if possible. It was a great sacrifice, especially once my wife found out about it.
So, yes, I have sucked my share of cock. But you have to understand that I was not so much sucking cock as placing some strange man’s penis in my mouth, then stimulating this wonderful reproductive organ until ejaculation. There is a difference, and it does not mean I am gay. I swear, the hundreds of blowjobs I have given have meant nothing to me. Not a thing.
Except that one time in Bermuda. Oh, wait, that wasn’t for research. Can that be off the record?
(Happy April Fools, everyone! Thanks to Mad Megan Bailey for standing in for Mike.)

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Five Questions With… Mara Keisling

mara keislingMara Keisling is the founding Executive Director of NCTE (National Center for Transgender Equality). A Pennsylvania native, Mara came to Washington after co-chairing the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition. Mara is a transgender-identified woman who also identifies as a parent and a Pennsylvanian. She is a graduate of Penn State University and did her graduate work at Harvard University in American Government. She has served on the board of Directors of Common Roads, an LGBTQ Youth Group, and on the steering committee of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition. Mara has almost twenty-five years of professional experience in social marketing and opinion research.
1) How much do you think your personality and sense of humor have to do with your success as a lobbyist? What personality? What humor?
I’m not yet ready to claim personal lobbying success, though I know we definitely are having an impact and NCTE was integral to getting the first ever piece of positive trans legislation introduced in Congress this year. I do know though that my sense of humor is a vital part of my personality and helps keep me strong. “They” say that keeping one’s sense of humor is important to weathering bad situations and I certainly believe that. And I have always been lucky enough to be able to amuse myself. Hopefully sometimes others are amused as well.
The work we do educating policymakers, though, is deadly serious and I do treat it that way. That doesn’t mean I do not inject humor as appropriate though. I think it humanizes us and me and makes our stories somewhat more accessible to those who may be trepidatious at first.
By the way, kind of as a hobby, I have begun to do a little bit of standup comedy again and may be coming to a town near you, or at least a trans conference near you.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Mara Keisling”

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Five Questions With… Lacey Leigh

Lacey Leigh is the authr of Out & About: The Emancipatedlacey leigh Crossdresser as well as 7 Secrets of Successful Crossdressers. She moderates an online community, speaks publicly as a crossdresser, and helps a lot of CDs gain confidence as they take those first fledgeling steps out the (closet) door.
1. What do you think is the most important thing crossdressers need to know?
One of the major changes I have made is in my personal lexicon – my working vocabulary, as it were – is to eliminate the words that carry semantic undertones of judgement or personal imperative: should, must, ought, need, etc. We use them unconsciously, not realizing how such terms of absolutism color the message we’re trying to communicate.
People and friends, beginning with my wife, have reminded that while I have the zeal and passion of a recent convert to faith, there is also a frequent tendency to climb on the soapbox and get a little ‘preachy’. Mea culpa. I’m working on it. It’s especially difficult to keep the lid on it when sharing an attitude, a mindset that has provided such an empowering personal perspective – for me as well as everyone else who has tried it.
Terms that carry such cultural sovereignty are often reliable indicators of personal bias. Count the number of times people use similar words of subtle judgement, multiply by the frequency of the personal pronoun (I, me, my, etc.) and you’ll get a pretty good indicator of how deeply a person is into himself – and whether that person is operating with a closed or an open mind.
A favorite theme is “Why allow people to ‘should’ on you?”
Anyway, I would rephrase “need to know” with “might benefit from understanding.”
Back to your question…
You started with ‘the biggie’; a topic for which a glib reply can lead to greater confusion. To lend a perspective, it might benefit readers to jump over to one of the essays on my outreach website.
Clothing serves as a primary cultural communication. Absent that imperative, we might just as well wrap rags, moss, or bubble wrap around ourselves for protection and comfort. This point is essential in order to grasp a further understanding of crossdressing. We send myriad signals about ourselves through the medium of personal attire and decoration; our ethnicity, our religion, our social status, our allegiance, our mood, our gender, our fantasies, our ‘availability’, our mood – the list is infinite.
Crossdressing is communication.
Which leads to a plethora of additional questions. What, exactly, are we communicating? To whom are we sending the message (trick question)? Is it getting through or is it somehow garbled or confusing? Is the message content accurate at the source? Is the communication important in the first place?
Crossdressing is not about the clothing. Rather, the clothing is a conduit of expression – about our very essential, inner natures. Doesn’t it make sense to say positive, empowering things?
A famous Russian tennis player was once the butt of a locker room prank when his new ‘friends’ educated him with a few phrases in English to help him get by. When he thought he was asking, “Where is the men’s toilet” the words he’d been taught were more on the order of “I need to s**t, which way is the G**damn crapper?” As he became more fluent in English he didn’t appreciate the humor.
In the crossdressing ‘community’ there are many who start out the same way, attempting to communicate in a language they don’t really speak. Little wonder they don’t get much in the way of tolerance; they have made themselves (albeit unintentionally for the most part) intolerable, primarily from restating the messages they absorb from their less thoughtful sisters and from a sensational media that emphasizes the lowest common denominators.
It’s common sense that if we wish to earn respect, it’s a good idea to appear respectable. Our culture, while uncomfortable with nonstandard gender expression, is waaaaaaaaay more uneasy about things deemed overtly sexual. Thus, when crossdressers openly display as clueless Barbies, truckstop trannies, or BDSM submissives it’s understandable why the public at large react as they do. A natal female attired in the same manner would generate a similar reaction. Get a clue! As it harms no other, do as you will – behind bedroom doors, and keep them closed please.
At a recent Eureka En Femme Getaway it was an uphill battle with one middle-aged CD. When asked why she favored miniskirts and CFM strappy platform shoes she replied, “My legs are my best asset.” To which I replied, “Your legs are writing checks that your face and waistline can’t cash.” Her rejoinder was, “I don’t care – people will just have to deal with it.” Sure, a chip-on-my-shoulder attitude will win tolerance every time. Where is a good cluebat when you need one?
I finally got through to her by opening a side door; vanity. She was out on the street the next morning, blissfully displaying her butt cheeks to everyone in her aft quarter, when I walked up to her and in a conspiratorial whisper said, “One word – ‘cellulite’.” That afternoon, she was wearing trousers.
Just as with any language, there are blessings and curses; bold proclamations and subtle suggestions; the vulgar and the tasteful; the shout and the whisper; the symphony and the grunge. It’s helpful to keep in mind that we master a language through practice, total immersion, feedback, trial, and error. The kind of feedback we receive in an echo chamber (‘support’ groups, ‘trans friendly’ venues, and TG social circles) isn’t nearly as helpful as that which we gain by expressing among the culture at large.
Thus, my advocacy for open crossdressing.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Lacey Leigh”