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Mara Keisling Comes to Appleton

She’ll be coming here to Lawrence University in 8 days, that is, & I’m very please that LU’s Gender Studies program and Government department, as well as the Fox Valley INCLUDE initiative AND the LU student group GLOW are all helping co-sponsor.

Mara is one of my favorite people, an amazing speaker, funny, wonky, and deeply compassionate.

Here’s the FB event page, and more info:

Thursday, April 11th
7PM

Changing Minds, Changing Policy: Lessons from a DC Activist – NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling will discuss creating alliances in order to achieve policy and legislative changes that benefit marginalized communities.

This event is free and open to the public, so please, invite anyone who may be interested.

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NYC: Katz @ CUNY Grad Center on Hide/Seek 1/12

On Wednesday, January 12th, Jonanthan D. Katz, author of Hide/Seek, will be speaking about the recent Smithsonian exhibit.

Where & When:
The Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, Rm 9204
6pm-8pm

Jonathan D. Katz and the Omission and Censorship of Queer Art

Despite 30 years of scholarship from him and other experts, Katz says that most major institutions gloss over gay and lesbian sexuality in their collections – which is why Hide/Seek is such an important show. “Punishing the one institution that broke the blacklist will enable all the other institutions to sit on their hands,” says Katz. “My goal in doing the show was not simply to do the show, but also to make it safe for other institutions to do the show. We have been falsifying art history for decades.”

Here’s an interview with Katz, where he talks about the decision by the Smithsonian to pull the exhibit, & about the artists who have pulled their art and/or funding in response.

Exhibit Link

From the Smithsonian Newsdesk

I’d go if I were in NYC, that’s for damn sure.

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On a Landing

Not too long ago I went to what’s called “the Big Gay Conference” which is a conference for LGBTQIA ETC students who are attending colleges in the midwest. On Friday night, after we’d checked in and gotten Miss Bornstein checked in, I went down to register. As it turned out, there was a wedding going on the same weekend as the conference, so I found myself, name tag and schedule in hand, standing on a landing.

To my left, a cocktail party of the heteronormative variety: men in suits, women in cocktail dresses, hose and heels.
To my right, blue haired, pierced kids; boys in cigarette leg jeans; girls in ties, starched button-downs; trans people of many types.

I stood there for a while, hoping I had Moses’ staff, or at least his gumption, to ask for a parting of the waters that would provide a third, middle path. My life has been spent on that landing, really, popping back and forth between groups, hanging out in one because it’s where I feel more comfortable, but hanging out in the other because it’s the way I desire. Like Superman, I had to change clothes pretty often, and often with my clothes, my gender; I still long for a heterosexual space where I could be a het woman in a suit & tie, or for a queer space where I could be a woman who loves sex with men.

Sometimes, in rare moments, that third space appears: in the music scenes of the late 80s in NYC was one. Fetish clubs are sometimes another. But mostly I have had to decide between being with my people as a queer woman or pretending to be more gender normative than I actually am when I’ve had boyfriends.

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CO: 4th Annual Transforming Gender Symposium

Fourth Annual Transforming Gender: Transgender Symposium to be Held at CU March 5 and 6, 2010

The Transgender Symposium will offer an array of talks, performances, art, film, and a workshop to increase visibility and education about transgender identities and experiences, and to bring together the local transgender and ally community.

Boulder, CO February 16, 2010 — The University of Colorado at Boulder’s GLBT Resource Center will be presenting its fourth annual Transforming Gender: Transgender Symposium March 5 and 6 at the CU Boulder campus. Offering an array of formats – including talks, performances, art, film screening, and a workshop – the Transgender Symposium seeks to increase visibility and education about transgender identities and experiences as well as to bring together the local transgender and ally community.

Presenters at this year’s Symposium include local transgender Reverend Malcolm Himschoot, local transgender award-winning artist and author Dylan Scholinski, and Tristan Taormino, an award-winning author and sex educator. Among the various topics that will be addressed at the Symposium are the intersections of gender identity and race, transgender sexuality, and the ways people respond to different expressions of gender. There will also be an art show featuring local transgender and ally artists.

Continue reading “CO: 4th Annual Transforming Gender Symposium”

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So, This March

Since Kate Bornstein has just identified me as a curmudgeon, and I woke up with a stiff back, I feel the need to finally say something about this whole Equality March that’s happening in DC this weekend.

I suppose I don’t need to mention that I didn’t go.

I hate marches. I hate rallies and protests. Hate ’em. I’ve taken part in plenty of them – against CUNY funding cuts, against the RNC occupation of NYC, & I’ve even been to big gay marches on Washington, too (& a very long time ago, now).

But what bothered me about this one is the whole issue of putting pressure on Obama, who I think is under quite enough pressure, if you consider having to defend, again, social spending and The New Deal 80 years later enough pressure. He’s got – rather, we’ve got – two wars, a global leadership that refuses to believe homosexuality exists (see Iran), and the biggest bunch of dumbass right wing morons who prefer an electorate that doesn’t know medicare is a government program. It’s sheer stupidity he’s/we’re up against.

And now that I’m in the so-called heartland (which I say because Brooklyn is, as well, the heartland, but not seen that way by the majority), what I see is a lot of sophisticated LGBT people hanging out in the big coastal cities.

I am curious to hear what people thought might come out of this march, and whether or not it did. I did not, I’d like to point out, say a damn word for or against the march before it happened, because I don’t believe in raining on people’s parades, and if a groundswell did indeed happen – I don’t think it did – it’s because we are still out of touch. What we got was Obama delivering the message, to HRC of all groups, that we already know: this shit’s going to take time. If he doesn’t have our support on the umpteen other progressive issues – like, say, a public opion for health insurance – his own power will be muted and our goals will be impossible to reach.

Okay, done now. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will talk about the term “bio girl” and how much I hate it.

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Brooklyn, Oct 7: Trans Hate Crimes Forum

Special Event – Transgender Hate Crimes: Victims, Their Families & Advocates Speak Out

Transgender people face pervasive discrimination, harassment and violence. Leslie Mora and Carmella Etienne—victims of hate crimes in two separate incidents in Queens—are witnesses to the violence that is perpetrated against people because of their gender identity or expression. In its most extreme form, such violence can turn deadly, as it did in the case of Lateisha Green, a young African American woman who was shot and killed, and whose death lead to New York State’s first hate crime trial and conviction stemming from the death of a transgender person. Continue reading “Brooklyn, Oct 7: Trans Hate Crimes Forum”

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DC: Candlelight Vigil on 8/28, 6:30PM, for 2 Women Stabbed

Transgender Health Empowerment is calling for a candlelight vigil at the corner where two trans women were stabbed last night. One of the people who was stabbed died last night.

Please gather on Friday, August 28th, at 209 Q ST NW, 6:30PM.

Please forward, re-post, and Tweet this info.