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The Trip to SC, Pt. 2

What a trip! I haven’t had so much fun without Betty since before I met her, and while I’m sad she wasn’t there to enjoy it all, I also know that she wouldn’t have found the train much fun at all (& so might have ruined it for me, ahem). But I was early for my train, & so hung around the ass-end of Penn Station for a while (that would be the 8th avenue side, of course), talking to guys trying to bum change and cigarettes. I don’t know why I like those guys; I must’ve been a hobo in a past life. But the guy I talked to was originally from New Orleans, and it’s hard not to have a good conversation with an older brother from NOLA, imho. In exchange for a cigarette, he said he’d buy me a drink next time we’re both down that way.

On the way down I was seated next to an older man who carried only his Bible, which was a “welcome to the south” a little early for me. He was a minister from Greenville, SC, it turns out, & his stop was the one after mine, so we were stuck with each other for the duration. He slept mostly, and I got very good at climbing over his napping legs.

But I ate dinner with a man and his 15 year old son on the way down; the guy was originally from the east coast, a professor and scientist, who knew Ben Barres when he was at Stanford, but who’d moved to VA and was traveling back to VA with his son after a short sojourn in NY. They were both really nice, and I had a great chat with them despite getting a little drunk on the half-bottle of wine I had ordered (which I had ordered in order to put myself to sleep). Continue reading “The Trip to SC, Pt. 2”

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Reading Time

Is there ever enough time for reading? I’m reading about four books at once just now:

I didn’t find much time to read anything other than the essays I’d assigned when I was teaching, so I wonder, if after teaching a while, the grading gets easier & you get in more reading time.

The good thing about writing is that you tend to go on overdrive, and read and write and write and read and it’s like you never get tired. The problem is that you really don’t want to deal with the rest of the world, for dinners with friends or class reunions or whatever on your social calendar bids you.

Not that anyone I know should take that personally.

One of the things that’s beckoning me toward Wisconsin is that there isn’t so much to do, and for a writer approaching middle age, that sounds perfectly perfect. (Now I just need to win that lottery, so I can pull a J.D. Salinger. Except I’ll publish what I’m writing, of course.)

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Trans History Timeline

I’ve been putting together a Trans History Timeline for my Transgender Lives class. The idea was to give them an idea of the events that lead up to the modern Transgender Movement (such as it is).

  • 1910 Magnus Hirschfeld coins “transvestite” and “transsexual”
  • 1919 Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research given housing
  • 1930 Lili Elbe undergoes five surgeries, the fifth of which kills her in 1931
  • 1933 Institute for Sexual Research burned by Nazis
  • 1939 – 1945 WWII
  • 1945 Michael Dillon has first FTM surgeries
  • 1951 Roberta Cowell transitions in the UK
  • 1952 Christine Jorgensen headline, “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Bombshell”
  • 1959 Virginia Prince starts Transvestia
  • 1961 VP starts Heels & Hose (12 crossdressers!)
  • 1964 Reed Erickson founds the Erickson Institute
  • 1966 Harry Benjamin publishes The Transsexual Phenomenon
  • 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riots, SF
  • 1969 Ist Gender Symposia (becomes HBIGDA)
  • 1969 Stonewall, NYC
  • 1973 First Introduction of ENDA (US)
  • 1975 Fantasia Fair starts in Provincetown, founded by Ariadne Kane
  • 1976 Tri-Ess formed
  • 1976 Crossdressing becomes legal in SF
  • 1977 HBIGDA becomes an org
  • 1979 Sandy Stone leaves Olivia Records due to attacks in Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire
  • 1980 Crossdressing becomes legal in Houston, TX (due to Phyllis Frye’s efforts)
  • 1986 FTM Int’l started by Lou Sullivan
  • 1987 IFGE formed
  • 1990 AEGIS started by Dallas Denny
  • 1993 Mosaic web browser
  • 1994 Death of Brandon Teena / Netscape web browser
  • 1995 “All FTM Conference of the Americas” organized by Jamison Green & Jason Cromwell (with grant from Dallas Denny)

I was teaching Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man at the time, which is why it ends where it does, but I’ve been adding to it since, & will continue to do so.

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Lawrence Lecture

I’ll be speaking at Lawrence University on Monday, February 18th, at 7PM, in 102 Science. Mark your calendars. Betty will be with me.

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Happy New Year

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… so was 2007 for the trans community, what with ENDA. Jacob Anderson-Minshall did a wrap-up of the year for The San Francisco Bay Times.

I’m looking forward to a long break from being quite so public; book tours are great fun, enabling you to meet tons of people who you wouldn’t normally meet, but they’re also exhausting because of all the travel. I’ll pass the torch to Jennifer Finney Boylan, whose new book I’m Looking Through You, comes out 1/15. (Jenny’s website was created by Betty.)

I’ll be traveling to Wisconsin to teach Gender Studies – and a course in Transgender Lives – at Lawrence University, while Betty stays in Brooklyn. This will be the first time in our decade together that we’ll have been separated for so long, but she is driving me there, probably visiting in February, and then coming to gather me again at the end of March. But I’m sure we’ll manage, but to answer the forthcoming questions: there is no reason for our separation other than employment.

All best to you all in 2008.

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Save the Whales

Today on CNN, they’re talking a lot about the Japanese having responded to protests about their planned whale hunt; that is, for the first time ever, the Japanese government has agreed not to hunt humpback whales. But they’re still planning on hunting more than a 1000 other wales, including Fin Whales, which they’re doing with the bullshit explanation that the hunt is for “scientific purposes.”

On CNN they interview some Joe who says, “Well eating veal could be considered cruel too, so where do you draw the line?”

The line is that whales can’t be raised domestically as a food source. They are only wild, and they are endangered. Veal are not. Would it really be that hard for CNN to find someone who is born a carnivore & a concerned animal lover to make that point?

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Advene Advent

Betty & I regularly have conversations about what’s Christian and what’s specifically Catholic, since neither of us seems to know all the time. That is, I was raised Catholic and I’m never sure if an idea or ritual I was raised with is specifically Catholic or if it’s believed/practiced by other types of Christians, too. & For her it’s similar, since she was raised 7th Day Adventist.

The holiday season tends to bring more points to discuss, of course; this year we were buying a bottle of wine for some folks who put us up when I saw an Advent calendar for sale. I hadn’t had one with the little doors with the chocolates inside since I was a kid, so of course I had to buy one, because I’m just old enough to feel sentimental about kid stuff.

& Since then, Betty & I have been trying to figure out if Advent is a Catholic thing specifically or if it’s something a lot of Christians “do” with the exception of 7th Day types. (I think it’d be pretty damned funny if they don’t mark Advent, considering they call themselves “Adventists,” no?)

We could just look it up but we’re not going to. Instead, we’ll keep bugging each other, as I introduce her to a lovely bit of fun; everyday we’ll take turns opening the doors of the calendar though in all likeliness I’ll eat most of the chocolate (since she has no sweet tooth). That said, everyone can go check out some nifty online Advent calendars. My favorite so far is this neat one of comic book art because I like the tech – only the doors that should open, do – and the art itself.

So, happy Christmas season, all!