Katy Perry?!

Is it not enough that I have to hear your song every morning on the radio?

Katy Perry, headlining Dinah Shore?! Say it isn't so!

What is the world coming to?

Every once and awhile...

 There's some good news for gays. Today is one of those days...for NEW JERSEY!

International Transgender Day of Remembrance

Well I was going to post specifically about the 30 transmen and transwomen who have been murdered this past year. Except my post was too large. I didn't even know that could happen.

It's kind of striking that there were too many transgender people murdered this year for me to be able to fit them all in one entry.

Instead, I urge you all to visit this website, which has a description of every person we are remembering today. Although Bryn Mawr/Philadelphia does not have any specific events planned (that I am aware of?), just take a moment to educate yourself about what's happening in the US and around the world.

Note that the majority of victims are transwomen of color. This is a....huge problem, to say the least. I feel like every few weeks I read that another transwoman of color has gone missing or has been found dead.  And of course their deaths are not widely publicized, which is another huge, huge problem.

These people deserve to be remembered today.

 

Tyra, Our New Ally?

This is for all my ANTM viewers out there. Don't lie. You know you watch it.

Okay. I knew that Tyra liked the gays. She's a model, and as we know, all models have tons of gay, male friends and whatnot. I assumed her GLBTQ friendliness did not go beyond hanging with Mr. and Ms. Jay after the show. While it was a big step for her to take to decide to have Isis, the first transwoman ever to be on ANTM, on the show this cycle, I thought that that would be the end of it. Isis was kicked off relatively early, and all the buzz about a transwoman on the show seemed to have died down.



Yesterday, Isis was on the Tyra Banks show. And so was Clark, another model from this cycle who is...narrowminded...shall we say. (I'll be nice.)

Here's what happened.
"Isis talked about her challenging experience on ANTM, including life with her fellow contestants. One of those contestants, Clark, then joined them on stage and was questioned by Tyra herself about the disparaging remarks (including calling Isis a "he-she") she had made about Isis throughout the competition.

Clark said she"loved" Isis but disagreed with her "choices," and then Tyra and Isis spent the remainder of the show explaining to Clark why her comments were ignorant and hurtful. Clark used the standard "I'm from the south" line of defense, which quickly morphed into the "I'm a Southern Baptist" line of defense, which then led her to say that Isis claiming to be transgender "was a slap in the face to me... because it's kind of like saying God made a mistake..."

Tyra closed the segment by advising Clark to open her mind.

As fun as it was to watch Clark get a long overdue spanking from Tyra for being a bigoted jerk, the high point of the show was when Tyra introduced Isis to Dr. Marcie Bowers, a leading sex reassignment surgeon best known for her show Sex Change Hospital (WEtv). Bowers offered to evaluate Isis and perform the operation, and, according to TVGuide.com, Banks and Bowers will split the cost of the surgery. Isis was ecstatic and grateful, and tearfully told them, "[I feel] like I'm about to wake up.""

(Taken from Afterellen.com)

Who knew? Seriously. You go, Tyra. You've moved up so many points on my list. Tomorrow's episode tackles gay marriage. I can't wait.

What it felt like to be equal...

Judith Warner has this great piece up on the New York Times website:


 In one room, Obama supporters were jubilant. In another, opponents of Proposition 4 — the parental notification initiative -– shouted their glee. In hers, the opponents of Proposition 8 saw their joy at Obama’s election turn quickly to “absolute disbelief and pain” as the results of the ballot initiative came in. “It was such a kick in the stomach. The whole hotel was just rocking with joy. We felt so disconnected from it,” Rizzo recalled when I talked to her on Wednesday.

It wasn’t that she begrudged Obama his victory. It was just that his historic triumph made the insult to her community all the more painful. An awful thought came to her that night: Now we’re the designated cultural outcasts.“It’s almost like we’re the last group you can be openly bigoted about,” she told me.

“You look around and you think more than half of the people in this state voted to take this away from us? At a time when we’re celebrating the election of an African American to the White House? I don’t know how you heal from it,” she said. “It’s hard to get it out of your bones.”

It’s easy, if you’re straight, to file away the gay marriage issue in a little folder in your mind, to render it, essentially, inessential. It can fall into the category of “bones you throw the religious right because things could be so much worse.” Or “things that would be great in a perfect world.” Or “what’s the big deal?” because you don’t actually get what a big deal it is to be able to get married when you’ve never had to consider the alternative.

There's a country-wide prop 8 protest going on tomorrow, Saturday the 15th at 1:30. I urge you all to check out the closest one to where you are and go and support us. Support yourselves. Support your fellow Americans and your country. Tell the United States that in this time of victory there is no room for hate.

I'll be in Philadelphia.

Find out more here. 

Keith Olberman's Special Comment on Gay Marriage

What a bittersweet night...

Right now I can hear all of the Obama supporters still cheering from my window (which pretty much means all of Bryn Mawr's campus). I was extremely excited that Barack Obama will be our next president. Yet, I can't sit here and pretend that I'm not disappointed.

While I listened tonight to Barack Obama's speech for change and for taking the first step, I cried. This is the change our country needs. To see a man who inspires so many people and who so genuinely believes in the hopeful future of our country is ... beyond words.

Yet the fact remains that for many of us, the first step was not taken. In fact, we took several steps back.

We lost in Arkansas, Arizona and Florida tonight. And we probably lost in California. And it worries me that people who overwhelmingly wanted “change” - i.e., voted for Obama - don’t think that this change should include full civil rights for gays and lesbians.

I am trying to remain hopeful. And I am hopeful in the future of the United States with Barack Obama as president. I am happy that the abortion ban failed in South Dakota. I do believe we are headed in the right direction.

But it's hard to remain optimistic when you were just blatantly told by your country that your rights don't matter.

SO FUCKING COOL

The first performance of the Laramie Project was tonight. It went rather well. We had a really good turnout. And despite us having only rehearsed for two and a half weeks, we managed to put on a show. It was bumpy at times..but hey..it worked.

The Tectonic Theater Project went back to Laramie this year..ten years after Matt was murdered. And they have a blog.

http://laramieblog.blogspot.com/

SO fucking cool. But weird. I just feel like I know all of them so well now...It's so weird to think that they're real people...they're still going on. They've moved on, but we're just a still frame of where they once were. I can't believe Greg wrote that .. you know? I feel like I know Greg. I am Greg.

Crazy. They're probably thinking the same thing about us.

Victories and Losses

I have so much to write about.

First of all, can we discuss how Ellen is the new face of Covergirl? When I first found out, I was pretty excited. Choosing an out lesbian, not to mention not stereotypically beautiful, fifty year old woman as a spokesperson for a makeup company is a pretty big deal. But as someone who has a problem with the makeup industry in general (that women have to look a certain way in order to be considered beautiful...take the WNBA makeovers or Rachel Maddow's recent makeover, for example), this whole thing seems kind of twisted.

I just hope that they don't make her over too much. I know that she wears makeup on her show because you have to wear makeup on television and whatnot... so I'm hoping they play from that angle. It is still great for her though. Hopefully the ads can work with her to reform traditional beauty ideals for women.

Next, according to feministing.com, "For the first time in the history of Title VII, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, a federal trial court has ruled that a woman-born-man, Diane Schroer, can recover for discrimination, because discrimination against a man transitioning to being a woman is discrimination "based on . . . sex."

Ummmmmmmmmmmm AWESOME. I am seriously very surprised and excited. When I first heard about the case I didn't think there would be this drastic of a response. Extending the definition of what gender-based discrimination is ... just amazing. Because women aren't the only gender-minorities anymore.

Of course, you have some good news, and you have some bad news. In our own Philadelphia, a transwoman is having problems using SEPTA because there is a required "M or F" sticker for a bus pass. She has been using an "F" sticker, but recently has been told she cannot ride the bus without an "M" sticker because she was born a man. Ridiculous.

Read more about it here

GLBTQ-Related Hate Crimes on the Rise in DC

Tony Randolph Hunter was beaten outside of a gay bar in DC last week. He died today.

It just fucking sucks.

I guess it's just getting to me because I'm really stressed out and I'm in the middle of rehearsing for the Laramie Project...and it's just like sometimes to get through it you have to think that it's all getting better, you know? And it's like here's a guy who was walking out of a bar and now he's dead and for no reason...and it's not getting better.

I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of being in my own bubble and forgetting what it's like out there for me because every time I get pulled back into it it just makes it harder.

Every GLBTQ person who I hear about is another Matthew to me now. A person with a soul and a family and friends and people who love them. They were all a part of my community...

And I want to feel something...I want to feel this. I don't want their deaths to be meaningless. I want people to feel sad. I want people to feel responsible. I want people to feel things so that they want to change things.

ugh I don't know what else to say.

I'm disgusted with the world.

To:

Tony Randolph Hunter
Ebony Whitaker
Saneshia Stewart
Simmie Williams

others who I am forgetting who have been killed this year

rest in peace

Invisibility

A friend of mine asked what my thoughts were on queer femme invisibility. This is what I wrote:

I think that people often mistake queer femmes who "look straight" as a positive thing for them...that they can blend into the straight world and have the opportunity to not have to come out to coworkers or at job interviews or whatever, which is true. But at the same time they face criticism from the lesbian community...because they "look straight"...and they don't have to deal with the same kinds of discrimination that butcher women have to deal with because they're "passing".

The same is true for more masculine gay men.

I was at a workshop yesterday by a group called Translate who came to talk to BMC dorm leaders about trans students on campus. One of the things that one of them was talking about was that the way that people express their gender identity can often cause alienation from a specific group. This guy's name was Hadley, and he thought of himself as gender-queer, and chose to express his gender identity as neither completely feminine or completely masculine. He said that when he went out with his female, lesbian friend, they both dressed very similarly, and so his friends often assumed that since she was hanging out with him, that she was trans too. That upset her, because she has just always thought of herself as a butch lesbian and wanted people to view her as such.

So I guess my point is that the way people choose to express their gender identity can lead to invisibility within certain groups...and that it's often very confusing and hurtful....especially for queer femmes because they have to deal with coming out over and over again to people in the dominant society who (usually) don't have as much understanding of queer culture.

I know that personally I've gone through wanting to change my personal appearance. Sometimes I really want to look feminine to kind of prove to straight society that lesbians can look feminine too. That we're not just all bulldykes riding motorcycles and wearing flannel shirts. Because that's what people think lesbians are. I came home right after I had come out and a friend asked me, "Oh, so you're not dressing gay yet?"

What is dressing gay?

Like...seriously.

And I know it wasn't meant to be offensive...but it kind of was. I didn't really know what to say so I just made it into a joke. I could've gone off on a tangent about how gender expression is something totally different from sexual orientation but I was too tired. Sometimes when I'm not at Bryn Mawr and I'm not around a group of people who I know will understand and appreciate what I'm saying then I just don't say it.



But other times, I want to embrace my "gayness", I guess. I want to look like a lesbian. I want people to recognize my identity. I don't want to be invisible. But something I'm constantly struggling with is how I want to express my gender identity. I don't really know what I want to look like. And that's okay for now.

So what was my point? I guess that this issue is very complicated. And that just because you "dress like a straight woman" (whatever that means) doesn't mean you won't face discrimination as a queer woman. It might mean that you face less discrimination on a day to day basis. Society is certainly harder on butch women. But because queer femmes are always accepted without question into the straight world, it can be really alienating. You can always feel like people don't know the "real" you. You constantly have to decide whether or not to come out. For the rest of your life. And without a peer group of other queer femmes, I imagine you'd be extremely lonely.

Butches and femmes in Disneyland

I had to post about this. The internet is abuzz with Kate Bornstein's post about WALL E and gender in film.

It begins like this:

I’m completely smitten with WALL•E, this summer’s Pixar/Disney offering. But the last thing I expected to see in my friendly, heterosexual upper east side Manhattan neighborhood movie theater was a feature length cartoon about a pair of lesbian robots who fall madly in love with each other. WALL•E is nothing short of hot, dyke Sci Fi action romance, some seven hundred years in the future! Woo-hoo!



Bornstein goes on to describe the reasons why WALL E and EVE don't have a gender. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, WALL E and EVE are clearly gender-less robots. They obviously don't have genitalia or xy/xx chromosomes. Why do we see WALL E and EVE as male and female? Simply because they are portraying the traditional male and female "roles" that our society has created? Who's to say that those robots aren't butch and femme lesbians or gay men?

Bornstein explains, "I think the answer is that we shift our mind’s criteria for gender when we watch a film or listen to a love song or read a novel. We all blithely switch genders in our minds, the better to identify with the vocalist or character. Reading novels, listening to music, or watching films, we consciously or unconsciously switch the gender mix to that which delights us the most."

So true. While I was trapped into thinking WALL-E and EVE were male and female robots, I had a different experience while watching Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There. For those of you who haven't seen this movie, Cate dons full drag (including a mustache for one brief scene) and morphs into Bob Dylan. She does an excellent job. And while I thought she was the most believable, most Bob-like Bob Dylan, I still found myself wanting to think of her as Cate Blanchett in drag. Because that is hot.



And why shouldn't I? According to Bornstein, it's perfectly normal, especially when a film suspends the bounds of gender itself. It's up to me to decide because I am the interpreter of the movie.

How refreshing.

You can read the post in its entirety here:
http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2008/07/walle-a-butchfe.html

Congratulations, Ellen and Portia!

I just finished reading Stone Butch Blues, so this wedding could not have come at a better time for me. For those of you who haven't read it, go out and buy it. Now. No joke. It's an extremely depressing but inspiring story of Jess, a stone butch turned FTM turned back to butch. The story is one that mirrors history. In wartime, butch women (and all women!) were accepted into the workforce. Jess found a niche of working class butches and femmes in the 60s as well as job availability in various factories, but when the feminist movement geared up and the war ended, she found herself jobless and reassessing her identity. In the 70s, Lesbianism was linked to the feminist movement. These "new" feminist-lesbians didn't need any men, and they certainly didn't agree with the "old" butch/femme lesbians, because they thought that was just reiterating and copying patriarchal society. So butches stuck in the middle of all this found themselves having to leave the only communities they've ever known and trying to make it by themselves, and with technology on the rise, some of them transitioned from female to male.

I knew about all of this before. Because I've read my lesbian herstory. But what I never thought about were those butches stuck in between. All you really learn about is how lesbianism used to be about butches and femmes, but then the feminist movement changed all that. But what about those butches and femmes? That's why you should read this book, yo.

So long story short, that sucks. I hope that we've reached a point in our community today (although I know we haven't) where we can accept the way anyone wants to live or love. To quote Athens Boys Choir "LGBTQILMNOP, Hell apples and oranges - they're all fruits to me."

Now watch this Team Gina video:





Anyway, I don't want to label anyone, because labels are something that people decide for themselves. I don't think that we should label all women who express a more masculine gender identity as "butch" unless they identify as butch. However, I think that Ellen and Portia are a lot more butch/femme than most high-profile lesbian couples. Portia wore a pink dress to the wedding, Ellen wore a pantsuit, Ellen got Portia an engagement ring, you catch my drift. They aren't butch/femme but they do express their gender identity differently. So while Ellen certainly isn't a bulldyke by any means, I'm glad that lesbian-feminists around the world don't just accept her, we LOVE her.



Congratulations, you two lovebirds!

Gender Shmender

I was always a girly girl. In fourth grade my wardrobe consisted of two dresses. One was polka-dotted blue and the other was pink and white striped. I didn't like wearing jeans. I wanted to wear my hair in braids. I wanted to stay home with my sister and play school in the basement and barbies on the porch.

I used to want long, black hair. When I drew pictures of myself as a "grown up", I would always have long, long wavy black hair and a rainbow dress.

At least I got the rainbow part right?

When I was a kid I was extremely quiet and well behaved. Like a lady should be, I'm sure, but I was just a shy kid. When my father used to take me out for ice cream we always went to the same place. I must have been three or four. And every time I would hide behind his legs and make him order for me.

In elementary school, I used to hate being the line leader. It's the job everyone wanted. Everyone except for me, I guess. I just didn't like being in the spotlight, being in the front. I was content to be one in the crowd. I didn't want anyone to notice me. I didn't want to be responsible for anyone else.

I was that girl for awhile. In high school I wore makeup and straightened my hair. I wore skirts and high heels. But something changed. I started over, I found my voice, I became louder and more opinionated. In college I stopped wearing makeup. I became more self-confident than ever. Everyone thought I had always been loud, always been opinionated, always been self-assured, always been..a dyke.

Well how did that happen?

I'm gay. I'm very, very gay. No one is denying that. But when did people start to realize it? I remember things. Bits and pieces. Wanting to pick up Michelle Kwan while she was skating. Wanting to kiss a girl on the bus. But I don't think my family and friends realized until I wasn't interested in boys. I don't think I realized until I realized I wasn't interested in boys. It wasn't that I had always wanted to date girls, it was that I knew I didn't want to date boys.

Now I don't know how I want to express my gender identity. Sometimes I want to "look gay." I want to be recognized as a queer lady. But I don't know if that's me. Other times, especially when I'm around straight people, I want to look feminine. I want to prove to them that not all lesbians wear flannel shirts and ride motorcycles. But are either of those really who I am?

Sigh. Such are the angsty rants of a twenty year-old not-quite-feminine-not-quite-masculine lesbian.

MJ