Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Congratulations to Diego Sanchez for his new appointment as Barney Frank’s senior policy advisor.
There are misgivings, of course, precisely because Sanchez has worked with HRC & crossed picket lines in SF to speak at an HRC dinner (when even the SF mayor wouldn’t).
(I’m going to agree with Courtney, who wondered aloud on the MHB forums, as to whether or not Frank will be comfortable sharing a bathroom with him.)
5:20 PM – edited to add that HRC has set up a page so you can thank Senator Smith to standing up for LGBT rights.
Joe.My.God’s reporting that there’s even further acrimony & weirdness coming out of the wrangling that’s been going on in the NY Senate between the “gang of three” anti-gay senators and the rest of the Dems.
For those of you who haven’t read about this before, the brouhaha stems from the Marriage Equality Bill that Gov. Paterson and the Senate Dems back. The three people name – Diaz, Kruger, & Espada – aren’t for the bill.
I always wonder about the embarrassment people are going to feel 20 years from now where the idea of opposing gay marriage seems as lame as being against giving women the vote.
As many of you know, I was at the LGBT Bloggers’ Initiative this past weekend, feeling simultaneously like the new kid on the block and the old whore. Many of my fellow bloggers – I realized during a presentation on media access by Cathy Renna – are bloggers, only. It never occurred to me that being a blogger who was a published book author first was weird, but there I was.
Nevermind that for now. I met a smattering of lovely people who are active in the LGBT blogosphere, some of whom I knew before and some who I didn’t: Dana of Mombian, a whole bunch of the folks at Bilerico, including Bil, Serena, Irene, and Alex; some of the Pam’s House Blend crew, including Pam herself and Autumn Sandeen. Among other I ran into were Allyson Robinson at the HRC cocktail party on Friday night, Mara Keisling of NCTE on Saturday afternoon (at the infamous Mayflower Hotel), as well as Tahlib Disney-Britton of Freedom to Marry, James from gayagenda.com, and Tobias Packer of Equality Florida.
A recent blog post written by someone who attended SCC reminds me, again, that whoever is in charge of partners’ events at SCC isn’t doing their job.
The only thing that I attended that did not live up to my expectations was the Comfort Zone, a group for SOFFA (significant others, friends, family and allies) of MTF trangender women. I qualified for the group as a wife of a MTF. The group was predominately made up of wives of cross dressers with about 4 of us being partners or wives of transgender people. It appears we all left before the meeting was over. The next morning Sarah and met two young women who had not been eligible for the group since their partners were FTM. They were in happy relationships. We exchanged email address and may try to put something on the internet for happy partners and wives of trans people.
This really thrills me. Two years ago a partner of an FTM was told she wasn’t welcome because she identified as lesbian, & this year they just don’t allow partners of FTMs into the partner support group.
It’s not hard to run an inclusive partner group. I’ve done it tons of times. I offer every year. I don’t need to get paid, just to have my costs covered. I would be willing to go down there to train some locals as to how to be inclusive of all partners.
Whoever is doing this workshop needs to be asked not to do it. The isolation most partners experience is quite enough, but isolating them further – at a trans conference! – is entirely unacceptable.
Please, SCC organizers, please. You have no idea what a knife in the heart it is, as a partner, to get to a conference and feel like no one bothered to care that you have a sense of community, too.
Trans folks and partners and allies: you did good with the Trans for Obama campaign, so good, in fact, that the Obama campaign has blogged about our efforts:
Obama Pride is honored by the enthusiastic support of so many in the transgender community and we congratulate all the participants in Trans Blog for Obama day for their huge success!
We’re very proud of us, too, and of Obama Pride for keeping LGBT issues visible for us all.
What’s even more important is that one of my favorite bloggers has written a remarkable piece about Obama from the perspective of someone who is female, African-American, and trans. Monica Roberts is a shining star in this community, and wow is that apparent from this current post of hers. My apologies that she did not hear about Trans for Obama Day until noon on Monday; the event’s organization happened very quickly, and while I tried to get to everyone – and tell them to let everyone else they knew to get on board – Ms. Roberts should have gotten her own invitation.
Sara also has a new post up about why she’ll vote for Obama now instead of voting for Kucinich in protest. & That’s exactly what Monday – and indeed this whole Trans for Obama week – was all about.
Kate Bornstein has her wrap-up post up (thanks, Kate!) and so does our Canadian friend Veronique, and I also wanted to get in a few words from Melissa Sklarz, who is currently the vice chair of National Stonewall Democrats, about NSD and its trans representation:
NSD has had trans representation on its board for almost 10 years. I have been on the Board for 6 years and have been a vice chair of the Board for the last 4. We have had trans representation from the East and the West and now our friends in Colorado are starting an NSD trans group for all of us. The three of us comprise 8% of the Board total and all do service at the Exec level.
Most gay poltical groups have either few or no trans folks on board.
Which is one of the reasons it’s so damn cool that they decided to host the donations for Obama for the trans community. Thank you, Stonewall Democrats, especially Jon Hoadley and John Marble, who spearheaded this project, and thank you Babrbara Casbar (NJ), Melissa Sklarz (NY), and Laura Calvo (OR), for your work within NSD’s state organizations.
Oh, we haven’t quit. We made our goal of 200 yesterday, and today decided to try to oust the next group on ActBlue’s list, too, if we can, and we only need 42 more people to do that. Here are some more incoming Trans for Obama blog posts:
This is so damned impressive, and as Joanne Prinzivalli has poined out: it’s not too late. So do send me more links to more blog posts if and when you put them up. We’re not really done until Election Day, as far as I’m concerned.
In case you didn’t read along all day, here’s what happened: We started the day at 105 donors and $5400. We ended the day (midnight, EST) at 196 donors and $10,746. That’s a net of 91 donors and $5346 for Obama’s campaign. We did good! Bloggers that posted:
I suspect we will make our goal of 200 if we use midnight time (PDT) I’m sure, but I’ve got to go to bed. Our cat Aeneas had an echocardiogram and 6 teeth pulled today, so I’m emotionally exhausted on more than one front.
This being the trans community, I’m sure that there will be criticism of this event, so I’ll tell you why I got so fired up about this idea & spent the day blogging it: because for me, it’s meaningful not just for an historically gay & lesbian organization like Nat’l Stonewall Democrats to set up a page for trans community donations, but that it’s important for the trans community to respond with enthusiasm when we get an org that is willing to work with us. I think that’s at least as important as criticizing orgs that take us for granted.
More than that, I believe in visibility. There was no minimum donation required, so that your “vote” (or your existence) could count very easily, even for $1. Political visibility is important – and this event made us visible not just to LGBT people, but on a national political landscape where we are, sadly, almost completely invisible. Or, as Angie at Dakota Women put it:
This is a great way to increase trans visibility, so when the election is over, we can point to exact dollars that the trans community and its allies brought in. That. Is. Huge. Whether you identify as trans or a trans ally, this is a win-win. You get to help make sure that we’re not all crying in our beers the day after election day, and help demonstrate the power of the trans community and its supporters–all at the same time!
Right on. For me, personally – well, I live in NY which always goes for the Democratic nominee for President, so it was nice to get to do something that had a little more reach.
Oh, now we’re really speeding up:
Annie Rushden – woohoo! another partner! – joins us, as does Jillian Todd Weiss.