I’m at the University of Vermont, attending the 7th Annual Translating Identities Conference. Highest ever attendance: 700 queers and allies. The school was also hosting a day for prospective students and their families on the same day, in the same building. We were all treated to this signage. What joy!
UVM isn’t the only school to have instituted gender neutral bathrooms. Far from it. But this sign is the most out loud and proud reflection I’ve seen of the progress we’re making. Queer students, staff, faculty and administrators around the USA have been working together to make life easier for the in increasingly large campus population of transfolk.
If you’ve got a picture of gender neutral signage on your campus or in your company, please post a link in the comments section, or let me know you’ve got one and I’ll post it here. Yay UVM queers and allies!!
Quick post. This is me in Minneapolis, delivering a talk called “Dangerous Dreams & Damned Desires” at a benefit masquerade ball for the Minnesota Trans Health Coalition. It was the end of the evening, and I’d taken off the cap and collar. But the PVC sure is shiny! La, la, la. (You can click on the pic to get it FULL size. Wheeee!)
More to post on that visit, but I’m home and wiped out just now.
I’m on tour in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. It’s one of my favorite places in the USA: sweet people, great politics, strong human rights movements, and stellar academia. I’ve been having a great time here, meeting wonderful folks and connecting on many levels of mind, body, spirit, and theory. But yesterday, I ran headlong into an old buried obsession of mine: my obsessive need to be recognized as a peer within PhD circles—something I’ve not experienced in the 20 years I’ve been writing postmodern gender theory with my lowly BA degree in Theater Arts.
Here’s what happened… I was invited to a luncheon at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The IAS is based on a great idea: when anyone in any discipline needs to do high level research with anyone from another discipline, the IAS plays matchmaker, provides some grant money, and the research actually gets done. Voila! Coalition building at the level of higher education. The theme of this year’s Institute is “Body and Knowing.” I was thrilled to have been invited, because I felt I had a great deal to offer and a great deal to learn from the multidisciplinary scholars.
I arrived early with two undergrad students who were my driver and companions for the day. We were met at the door by Angie, the gracious woman who manages the day-to-day workings of the Institute. She showed us to the luncheon room, gave us vouchers for our lunch in the cafeteria, and accompanied us as we bought lunch and returned to the room just before noon, when the luncheon was scheduled.
Thirty minutes later, it was still just the four of us in the room. Not a single one of the Institute’s scholars had come to attend the luncheon to which they’d invited me. At the insistence of the IAS, no one else from the U of M campus was invited to this lunch. It was a closed door affair for members only, and me. Well, I took off, leaving the gift of a “Get Out of Hell Free” card for each of the absent scholars. I asked Angie to please phone me when she had any word as to why this had happened.
Hello. Wanted to let you know it just LOOKS like I’m outta touch. I’m on the road–Twin Cities, MN–no time to blog big, but I’m twittering daily from my phone. You can keep up if you’re not already by clicking the li’l “Follow me” button to the left.
Four more days here in the land of my birth, then home to NYC before the next tour. So, no longish posts–but I do my best to keep my tweets fun!
In his editorial, Jonathan Freedland makes clear the high global stakes in the upcoming election. Most of the world is cheering for Obama, says Freedland. Despite the fact that we allowed a mean-spirited fool take office in this country in two elections, Freedland makes the point that until now, most anti-American sentiment has not been aimed at the average American. Rather, anti-American sentiment has been framed as anti-Bush sentiment.
Generously enough, it seems that the world has given the American people the benefit of the doubt. But according to Freedland if we allow the ridiculous ticket of McCain/Palin to sail into office, our already shaky credibility in the world as Americans will be shot to hell. Sure, Senator Obama has a good lead in the polls, but this isn’t the time to sit back and relax. The Republican campaign is fighting dirty to win. Our response has got to be an active drive for unity on the Left.
Race has been plunked down on the table in the hopes of turning the tide to McCain. The Conservative Right is dragging the old radical socialist bogey man out of their old kit bag, further silencing the genuinely compassionate goals of the radical left. The solution seems clear to me. Even if race isn’t our issue, even if we’re not ourselves radical lefties, we’ve got to do the old Sixties thing and come together. We’ve got to embrace the Obama/Biden ticket as the clear choice of the American people. And we can’t afford to drop the drive for unity once Obama has won the presidency. That would be really stupid of us.
After President Obama is sworn into office as a result of lefty unity, we may very well have found the key to establishing an honest-to-goodness coalition that fights for safety, empowerment, health, and well-being on behalf of all world citizens—regardless of race, age, gender, class, citizenship, sexuality, looks, ability, religion, or ecological stance. Wouldn’t that be something? There’s never been a coalition like that in the history of humanity.
Senator Barack Obama has been talking about hope. Well, that’s what I hope for. I hope you do, too.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a serious opportunity to start up a successful business booking queer talent. For those interested in the history of LGBT booking agencies, a footnote follows the job qualifications at the end of this post.
There’s a stable of over 70 LGBT and Q artists searching for a booking agent who’s got experience booking speakers and performers onto college, university, and high school campuses. More of us are also interested in corporate bookings. Since 2007, there has been no booking agency dedicated to booking exclusively LGBTQ talent.
I’ve spoken with a number of queer touring artists who agree with me. We’re interested in serious inquiries only please, from experienced professional sales people with the following qualifications.
As a male to female trans person, I’ve had the opportunity to more or less pick the kind of girl I wanted to become—or at least navigate my life in that direction. And just look at Sarah Palin! She’s a corn-fed, gosh-and-golly perky, petite, pretty, and feisty girl from heartland America. I grew up as a chubby, egghead, clumsy Jewish boy on the Jersey shore. Of course I’ve navigated my life in the direction of something funner—like Sally Field, or Julia Roberts… and Sarah Palin.
The moose killing, not so much. I kill the occasional mosquito, that’s about it. The woman-hating, not so much. My journey to girl was guided by some swell feminists,and that’s how I see the world now. And the religious fundamentalism? No. I’m a fan of separation of church and state. Besides, people like Sarah Palin think that people like me are sinners in the hands of an angry god. And I don’t want anyone’s angry hands on me, or on any of my tribe.
A friend of mine sent me this video by Eve Ensler. Eve’s someone else I’ve modeled my girlhood on.
So, sure… I wanna be a girl like Sarah Palin, all pert and aw shucks and flirty. But I’d wanna be a woman like Eve Ensler, for her political smarts, artistic talent, and the energy she’s got for her tireless pursuit of equity for women. For the full text of the video, just navigate your life over to Eve Ensler’s post on The Huffington Post.
One of the terrible things about life inside a closet is you never get to speak out loud as the person you know yourself to be. When you’re living in the closet, no one who loves you ever gets to call you the name you’ve always wanted to hear. For over two decades, Trans activists, artists, educators, and bloggers across the USA and around the world have worked to open closet doors for trannies. That’s over 20 years of hard work on local, regional, national and global levels. And now it looks like our combined work has brought us to a tipping point in the history of Transgender politics.
Yesterday, I read the news on Helen Boyd’s En|Gender website. The presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama has publicly thanked the Trans Community for our support. I’m dizzy with joy that we’ve come so far in my lifetime, and this is a great opportunity to come together as a real community. There’s no monolithic transgender community in the world, and I hope there never will be. There are many Transgender communities, and all I want is for us to work more closely together with one another. We need to heal the divisions in our Trans world in the same way that we want Senator Obama to heal the terrible divisions resulting from eight years of government sanctioned and government sponsored oppression. So, how do we take a step from here on what’s going to be a long road toward Transgender unity? First, I think, we need to understand what it is that’s been keeping us apart for so long.
All this talk about Trans for Obama has got me wondering: what is it that trannies can offer a guy who believes he’s fully qualified to lead the free world? He says he wants to give us change we can believe in. Well, both Senators Obama and McCain are promising they’ll change things for the better. They both say they’re going to change this world into a better place for all of us. Change, change, change. Every other word in this furshlugginer campaign is change.
It’s my opinion that neither Senator should fiddle around with any change until they learn a lot more about the mechanics of change… and precisely what it is about our culture that needs changing—like the either/or bully tactics of junior high that are playing themselves out in the US presidential campaign. It’s time Americans change the way we see ourselves, far beyond Red or Blue. Trannies just may hold the key to accomplishing that. We know the principles of profound, complex change.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a serious opportunity to start up a successful business booking queer talent. For those interested in the history of LGBT booking agencies, a footnote follows the job qualifications at the end of this post.
