Mass Resistance Made Me Mad Enough To Vomit

In the spirit of spring training, I am apparently having an Away week, as all most posts so far have originated elsewhere!

Today's offering appears at Shakesville:

First Event is an annual conference held in January by the Tiffany Club of New England, a transgender support group. Like any conference, it consists of workshops, cocktail parties, and banquets with awards ceremonies and occasionally pompous keynote addresses. About the only difference between it and, say, a Linux convention is that there will be slightly more trans people at First Event. (There may also be more computer engineers, for that matter.)

But that's not all. According to Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group Mass Resistance, First Event is what America will look like in the horrifying post-Homosexual Agenda^™ world soon to be imposed upon the honest, godfearing citizens of These United.

And to prove their point, they made a video....

 Fight the power!

And Now In GaGa Studies...

Hey, I have a post up at Tiger Beatdown about Lady GaGa! It's about the 11 things I learned from watching the "Telephone" video...many of which weren't all that useful, actually.

In Reality

Oh, yeah, you know what time it is...time for REALITY TELEVISION:

OK, I'm dense: but "I Want to Work For Diddy" wasn't on my radar two years ago, and anyway, having a trans person on a reality show isn't that big a deal anymore; we're like the gay folks in the "Real World" reruns from the '90s, only with a lot less flannel shirts and Hole albums in the background.

So I don't know much about Ms. Cox, except I admire her for her success and for turning her 15 minutes of fame into a full half-hour. Kudos, ma'am, kudos.

But: is it good for teh Tranz?

You go, person of any gender!

Is YOUR Muffin Bluffin'

What's that? Yes, ducks, we are still a going concern, though lately that seems to be...going away!

(Thank you, I'll be here all week.)

The truth is that the day job from hell--currently consuming 50+ hours of my week every week--while allowing me to do useful stuff like eat and pay off both my credit cards in a year, is Not Conducive for the whole writing thing, especially when I don't get any sleep.

That said, I still do try and do stuff, and I'm hoping to pick up the pace at Tiger Beatdown, at least, where Sady and I have been talking about stuff of late! Some of it will even be cool!

Anyway, if it's Wednesday Thurday, it must be Below The Belt! This week, I write about one "Lady GaGa," whom, I hear, is all the rage with the kids these days!

I am almost terminally unhip when it comes to popular music. It's not that I have snobbish pretensions, or at least I try not to--I'm a firm believer in Duke Ellington's maxim, "if it sounds good, it is good," and there's room for both Mozart and Garbage on my iPod, Radiohead and John Coltrane, Bjork and Kanye "I'm going to interrupt this playlist" West. But the fact is, I don't watch MTV--not that they have much to do with music nowadays, but I'm dinosaur enough to remember when they did--or listen to much top 40 radio, so I almost never have any idea of what those kids, thesadays, are listening to. (And they need to get off my lawn, too.)

It's so bad that about the only way I hear popular songs is when they're background music for a TV show. (When my ex made me watch "Smallville" or "The O.C." with her, I used to parody the way that they would have a constant churn of hot bands: "Hey, I hear {BAND_OF_THE_WEEK} is playing at the club tonight! I love {BAND_OF_THE_WEEK}." Of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is immune from my scorn, since a) it's awesome and b) all of those bands are safely a decade behind us.)

But even a pathetic stick in the mud like transfeminist has heard of every queer's new best friend, The Lady Gaga. 

 Ba-ba Lo Lo Lo Bel Bel Below the Belt!

Songs of Love and Hate, and Mascara

Sady at Tiger Beatdown has been running guest posts on breakup songs in honor of Valentines Day, and was kind enough to ask me to write one. So I did, and it's over here. I wrote it on Leonard Cohen, who you might have guessed is my favorite songwriter, but of course I touched on other stuff. Trans stuff! (I know, I know, jeez lady can't you ever not talk about that?) But it was an interesting assignment and I ended up getting personal in a way I don't always do even over here, so you might find it good reading. Meanwhile I'll hang out here muttering the "Dress Rehearsal Rag" to myself.

In Unexpected Delights

Hey, the takedown of that London Times article I did over at Tiger Beatdown got included in the 13th Carnival of Feminists! Drop by to read the other stuff, you know it's good!

And in other unexpected pleasures, I haven't been flayed to pieces in the comments section at the Guardian. And Julie Bindel replied to me! And I replied back! Wow!

C.L. vs Julie Bindel

Where in the world is C.L. today?
Over on the Guardian's CIFA!

I don't much care for Julie Bindel, unlike Beatrix Campbell, who defended her on this site yesterday. That does not mean I don't admire her. As a feminist whose radicalism would probably surprise her, I appreciate Ms Bindel's advocacy and the genuine good that has come for her work against violence directed at women. Yet in her long, lonely crusade against transsexuals she contradicts three of her own three feminist principles:

 Yes, I get to take on Julie Bindel and her belief that I have not been, and never will be, a woman! Comments should be fun!

BTB: P.O.'d

If it's Wednesday, then it must be Belgium. Wait! No! Below the Belt:

Something interesting happened recently in the Michigan Secretary of State election race.

Now, before you tell me that the word "interesting" and the phrase "Michigan Secretary of State" syntactically can't be in the same sentence together, bear with me, and let me introduce you to Representative Paul Scott:

Seems a charming enough fellow! Step right up, sir, and let us know what you're planning to do for the people of the great Wolverine State! Let's see, I have his website right here...

  Jāie!

The Secret Lives of Married Men--Now With Bingo Cards

Where am I again? Why, Tiger Beatdown:

I have not, temporally speaking, been doing this here ladybusiness for all that long. (Some would draw a facetious comparison, in fact, to the amount of time I have in fact been a lady, but as that number would vary between never and 37 years depending on whether you asked Germaine Greer or Kate Bornstein, I’ll just move on.)
Yet even that short time, the depressing amount of material that exists out in the lady-hating or lady-indifferent or just lady, get me a beer world can drag you down. Why, you say to yourself as you labor over your blog in a hot kitchen (well, I’m baking cookies, see…) should I address another MRA apologia, tear apart another straw-feminist, or deal with this week’s Exciting Variation on the Tone Argument. (I solve those by getting louder.)
But then, as Sady herself discovered, you come across something absolutely stunning in its bold sweep, all-encompassing douchery, and just plain ol’ damnfoolishness.

 Yosh!

A Purloined Girlhood Part 1a: Wild at Heart

Hey, where am I today? Over at Tiger Beatdown!

I saw “Where the Wild Things Are” this weekend, ducks. (One of the advantages of living in the Great American Metropolis is that movies tend to hang around a surprising length of time.)

I saw it because of Spike Jonze, and because I am just old enough to have grown up in the Golden Age of Maurice Sendak — that hazy, golden late afternoon in America when Sesame Street had become established, the children raised by Dr. Spock were raising their own children, and Sendak and Shel Silverstein dominated the bookcases of every “with it” parent. (I was too young to say things like “with it,” of course, but I had teenaged cousins, and was vaguely aware of things like The Disco… we are talking about that point in history when The Captain and Teneille had their own TV show, people.) It was an age brought to you by CTW.

 Vamanos!

Coming Out, Staying In

New Below the Belt content!

I recently had an encounter with our mental health system. (I'm fine. Now.) I don't have to tell you that almost any encounter with our health system is embarrassing; that seems to be the state of American healthcare. But what do you think the frosting on my mortification cake--the little extra bit of humiliation to go with the spongy cake of being put in a room with no sharp corners and the delectable pudding filling of despair that having them take my belt away proved to be?

Having to out myself. Three times--once to the triage nurse, once to the nurse who took my vitals, and once to the doctor.

 Avanti!

When Allies Attack

Hey! I have a new post up at Below the Belt!

So did you hear about how the Bilerico Project ran a piece from their brand-new contributor Ron Gold last week and the internet caught fire and burned down because it was so smugly transphobic? (No? Then you should be reading my blog. Seriously, people, I have a life outside of here you know.)

Now, Bil Browning ultimately did the right thing and took down the offending post and rescinded Gold's contributor status. I'm not going to rehash the particular reasons why this post was incredibly wrongheaded and stunningly insulting. I'm more interested in a phenomenon illustrated by this fracas: what happens when allies do something you find profoundly hurtful.

On y va!

A Purloined Girlhood

I have a new post up at Tiger Beatdown!

It's the first post in a series I'm calling "A Purloined Girlhood" where I look at the ways that watching movies about growing up female have a completely different resonance for me nowadays. The first post is about Say Anything:

You have an odd relationship to the past when you’ve transitioned.

There’s barriers, thresholds, hesitations. Things Not Wanted To Be Said. Occasionally, misdirection and dodging. It can get…complicated.

You see, I am a woman in her thirties Without A Past–or at least, Without An Adolescence.

There are times I don’t regret not having had a girlhood; from what I’ve observed, and from what I’ve heard from my friends, it can definitely be one of those things that is Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be.

But at the same time, I feel, sometimes…a loss? A lack? A missing connection between me and other women? Adolescence is such a key experience for so many of the women I know, so my lack of a girlhood sometimes leaves me feeling–still–like I’m on the outside, looking in. It’s difficult to pin down, exactly, especially because doing so sometimes brings back all the pain I felt during my childhood: the pain of having a boyhood I never wanted thrust upon me, the pain of watching others have the life I wanted and not being able to figure out what to do about it.

The next one will be on Heathers.

BTB: The Wages of Transness

Yanno, these days I guess I'm lucky to be able to even write these damn things, let alone tell anyone about them: but I have a post up at Below the Belt about the tragic death of Mike Penner, and transition in general:

Transition, as you may have heard, is really hard.

There is the actual physical nature of it: the hormones, the changes to your body, the surgeries (if you want them), the hair removal (if you want or need that too), the way you look in the mirror, the way people look at you. There is the long period when you may look like you could be either gender, or neither, when passing as your birth gender is as hard or harder than passing as your new gender.

Enjoy.

Female Imponderablization

Hey! It's time for another Below the Belt post......this time, on DRAG!

Nowadays, Halloween isn't much of a holiday for me; I rarely make special plans for it or bother to get a costume--and considering the average woman's costume--Sexy Ninja! Sexy Vacuum Cleaner Salesperson! Sexy First Lady!--that's maybe for the best. (I may not be a radical feminist--they won't take me--but come on, people--Amanda Hess at the Sexist has done yeowoman's duty on this subject.)

This Halloween, however, I was out in San Francisco and went to see a friend's performance in a drag show. So I donned my homemade ironic vampire disguise--fangs, pvc duster and dress, boots, and my "...And Then Buffy Staked Edward. The End." tee shirt--and caught some decidedly non-vintage drag.

 You know the drill!

Yet Another Below The Belt Post

That time of the month again:

The first person I knew who told me they weren't transgendered was a crossdresser I'll call Gene. He (and he did later come to insist on male pronouns, and stopped calling himself Gina on the message board we met on), decided that he really was in it for the clothes, and didn't find himself aligned with the other crossdressers on the board, who all thought of themselves as transgendered.

It was a little jarring to me at first; I had naively assumed that crossdressing=transgendered, so having someone overturn that conviction was surprising. But as I reflected on it, I could see his point. And since that time, I've met other people like Gene, some crossdressers, some genderqueer, and even some transsexuals who identify completely as their post-transition gender and have no desire to continue with any kind of transgender identity.

There exists, however, a group of trans women--at least, they seem to be exclusively trans women--who resist being placed under the transgender umbrella. Some refuse to even call themselves transsexuals, preferring the term Harry Benjamin Syndrome instead. They claim that transsexualism is a case of being "neurologically nteresexed" by which they mean that they have a "female brain," and therefore a medical, not a psychological condition.

Finish up over here.

Below The Belt: The Umbrellas of Transburg

My latest post for Below The Belt is now up:

I invariably use trans as short for transgendered, and transgendered in its so-called "umbrella sense": embracing anyone with a variance with the gender assigned to them because of their biological sex. (When referring to a transsexual's gender, however, I use trans as an adjective modifying that gender: trans man, trans woman. Although this is slightly confusing, I agree with Julia Serano and helen boyd that the space is vital in avoiding "othering" or invalidating a transsexual's gender--something that transwoman doesn't do, since it implies that transsexual women aren't women but something else entirely).

You can read the rest here.

If it's Wednesday, it must be Below The Belt

My bimonthly post for Below The Belt is up!

One of the things about being part of a maginalized population that is the most fun--if for fun, you read "uncomfortable, occasionally stomach-churningly so"--is that many pleasures cannot simply remain unmixed: messages, tropes, and cultural references that can be overlooked, disregarded or just plain unseen by the dominant group hit home with you in unmistakable and unignorable ways.

Even worse is when you make the, ahem, transition from dominant to marginalized groups. Things that once gave you easy enjoyment now leave a bad taste in your mouth, and when you complain, people tell you you've become humorless or a radical.

And that's just when you talk about popular entertainment.

Which leads me to Adult Swim...

You can read the rest here.

Edit: Links Now Work--Sorry!

Looks Like Trouble

My second post for Below the Belt is up!

When I practice aikido, I always wear lipstick.

That probably seems odd. I mean, getting thrown around the floor has nothing to do with my cosmetics--despite advertising claims to the contrary, lipstick won't improve my performance or even distract my partner with my feminine wiles.

Still, I always make sure to wear some lipstick when I practice. Because I want to have something about me that looks feminine.

Normally I don't need to worry about such things. I am a bit of a femme by nature and wear skirts about as often as pants. I've developed sufficient curves over the course of my transition that I don't worry too much about the remaining somewhat-masculine features I possess.

But when I am practicing at the dojo, I find myself much more insecure about my appearance. Squashed into a sports bra and muffled under the heavy layers of my uniform top, my breasts are much less noticeable. Ditto my hips. With my hair pulled back for comfort and convenience, my face reveals a masculine cast. I suddenly become very conscious of how much taller, heavier, and broader I am than most ofthe other female students

You can read the rest here! And yes, new posts to the Blog Itself are coming, ducks!

I Get Around (and Around and Around...)

Howdy, ducks! Sorry no posts recently...I plead being busy writing this bit about Caster Semenya for the Guardian's Comment Is Free section!

And while a sex test sounds benign enough, it won't be anything as simple as a DNA test – as Meloncye McAfee points out, there are a variety of conditions that can lead to a man having two X chromosomes, or a woman having a Y chromosome. No: Semenya will not only have her DNA checked, her urine and blood sampled and her genitals examined, but will even be required to have an interview with a psychologist – hopefully to help her get over the trauma of having all these tests done in a media fishbowl.

The irony is that had she not been born female, she could compete perfectly legally.

The rest of the article can be found here.