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Pending Hatefulness

Legislators in Nigeria are trying to make homosexuality illegal:

This bill, titled the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill, includes penalties of five years imprisonment for any individual possessing or purchasing gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT) literature or film, subscribing or donating to a GLBT organization, attending GLBT events, or expressing any form of same-sex desire.

I expect that if AIDS is still stigmatized as a “homosexual disease” – as it still is here in the US, depending on who you talk to – this will make treating the disease that much harder, too. & That’s of course in addition to the arrests & harassment LGBT people would expect under a prohibitive ban like that. Imagine, owning my books would be grounds for five years in jail.

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Rah Rah, They Suck

Cheerleaders in upstate New York quit the cheerleading team in droves when they were told the laws in the state made them do something they didn’t want to do.

The thing they didn’t want to do?…. cheer! But the catch was that they had to cheer for the girls’ teams in addition to cheering on the boys’ teams.

I can’t figure out if women are their own worst enemies or if this is about homophobia or if (frankly) they’re just being princesses and don’t want to cheer for less-well-attended events. But no matter what it is, it’s a pretty sucky attitude for a cheerleader to have, no?

(Thanks to Dana at BlogHer for the clever title to this post.)

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Why Women Can’t Jump:

In a nutshell, because the International Olympic Committee won’t let them. They ruled on 12/5 not to allow the Women’s Ski Jumping Event from the 2010 Winter Olympics. They’ve cited the paucity of competitors, but other events, with even fewer competitors, have not been cut.

“The recent IOC decision to block women ski jumpers from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is blatant discrimination and a stunning move that harkens back to the Dark Ages,” according to Deedee Corradini, the former Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah and President of Women’s Ski Jumping USA.

You can can more information at the Women’s Ski Jumping USA site:http://www.wsjusa.com.

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Confirmed Events

I will have the extreme pleasure and honor of introducing Leslie Feinberg at the State Museum of New York in Albany, this coming February 3rd.

Betty and I will also be attending IFGE 2007, in Philly, where I’ll be presenting both my Trans Sex & Identity workshop (on Friday) and doing an additional workshop on She’s Not the Man I Married (on Saturday).

& That is in addition to my being the keynote speaker for First Event this year and doing an erotic memoir reading for Rachel Kramer Bussel here in NYC.
More to come, no doubt!

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First Event Keynote: Me

Well, the news is out: I’m going to be the keynote speaker for TCNE’s First Event next year. The event will be from January 17th – 21st, and in addition to the keynote I will be doing a reading from the new book and (I think) doing a workshop for partners.

We have never otherwise been to First Event and are very much looking forward to it.

There’s a thread about this on our boards where you can check in with others who might be going, too – so do come!

Read the press release below the break.
Continue reading “First Event Keynote: Me”

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Jennifer Finney Boylan's Southern Comfort Speech

Thanks to Ms. Boylan for allowing me to reproduce it here; this is the complete & unedited version.
Hi everybody. Gosh, look at you all. You all look fantastic from up here. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room before with so many large women.
(improvised joke #1)
(improvised joke #2)
I notice that some of you look a little tired today. Which is not to say, you don’t look fabulous, I’m just saying that some of you seem like you were up kind of late last night. Did you check out the parties last night? You know the one I mean, the theme party—Come as Your Favorite Nude Author?
(beat)
First time in my life I’ve ever been in a room full of a hundred and fifty nude Kate Bornsteins.
(improvise joke #3)
I have to be honest and say I feel a little bit like a fraud up here today, because I know that there are so many of you who are so much more articulate about these issues than I am. I am an English teacher from Maine, a storyteller— what I’m not is a therapist, or scholar of gender studies, or for that matter, much of an activist. I’ve tried doing some of those things sometimes, because I want to do my part, but I have to say I just so lame at them. I’m grateful that there are people doing all the work around the country that’s being done on behalf of people like us, including the organizers of this conference—our fabulous chairwoman, Kristen, as well as heather O’malley and Cat Turner, and Lola Fleck. I’m just as grateful for all the people who came before me, who blazed the trail that has made my life easier.. I know I would not be here without them, quite literally.
There is an old saying that I find true for me this afternoon—one reason I am able to see so far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
Continue reading “Jennifer Finney Boylan's Southern Comfort Speech”