CL Minou

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You’ve Come a Long Way. Maybe.

Categories: (un)popular entertainment, politicians have penise (or should), tv (not trans)

I’ll confess to being a person who watches “24”, though if it makes you feel better, I feel dirty inside afterward. The constant nail-biting suspense of the first few seasons has long since been replaced by torture porn–every week the question is how is Jack going to hurt somebody today?

Still I watch it, probably for the fascinating train-wreck of issues it presents more than for any pure entertainment. I’ll say this about Kiefer Sutherland, he has made Jack become tighter and tighter wound–he’s made Jack become more and more unpleasant to be around, which I hope is his commentary on the right-wingism of the series as a whole. But what about that rightism? Is it truly balanced by presenting black and female presidents, by the way it almost always sides against hawkish characters? By the fact that in the show’s mythology, the Nixonian president actually got arrested?

I don’t know; but such questions are the spice to the messy massala this show has become.

This season we were treated to another first in the mythology: having anticipated by eight years the first black president (and who knows? maybe helped that along), we have the first female president, played by the marvelous Cherry Jones. (I saw her in the original production of “Doubt” and she was awesome.) Her President Allison Taylor is the rare example of the show supporting a hawkish foreign-policy choice–she consistently overrules her cabinet and generals to push for an invasion of the mythical African country of “Sangala,” a sort of Senegal-meets-Côte d’Ivroie-with-some-Liberia-sauce. Of course, her hawkishness is of a different kind: she’s motivated by a humanitarian (dare I say liberal) desire to overthrow a vile dictatorship.

I won’t get into the ridiculous plot of the season–it’s filled with the usual multiple McGuffins, twists, turns, and absurdities (an attack on the White House? Really?) Instead, I want to point out how a show with a female president still ends up in Sexistville.

First, there’s Jack’s daughter Kim. She’s long been a target for the show’s critics, and once again she doesn’t disappoint here: her main purpose in the plot is to serve as a way of controlling Jack by stalking and threatening her. And yeah, she gets a token moment where she rescues a valuable laptop, but this isn’t the most empowered character even for this show.

Then there is Olivia Taylor, the President’s daughter. A savvy political operative, she forces out her mother’s chief of staff and organizes a hit on the man who conspired to kill her brother. (Of course, doing that results in a major freakout on her part and sends her crying to the man who arranged the details of the hit.) Not bad, I guess–empowered to do evil is still empowerment.

But wait, there’s more. The kick in the teeth for Olivia also manages to catch our first female president–who has hung tough the whole show, ordering attacks on foreign countries, authorizing black ops against terrorists, reaming out subordinates for their failures. When Olivia’s role in the assassination is discovered, President Taylor decides to prosecute her. Cause, you know, that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re sworn to protect the constitution. (President Obama–I know you’re reading this–take note!) The First Gentleman (gotta love that, actually) then comes down hard on Madame President–noting that the job has now cost them both their children (not to mention his own shooting) and just lays a complete guilt trip on her that has her practically weeping in the arms of her restored chief of staff–her marriage destroyed, one child dead, another soon to be a felon.

Thanks, guys. But to be fair, the message that a woman who pursues power will lose all human contact (most certainly because she is perverting her natural role as a nurturer, provider, and handservant) isn’t something you hear all the time; I must have seen only, oh, ten or twelve examples of it. Today. Before noon.

Finally, there’s one nice little bid of absurdist misogyny: when Tony Almeida, the rogue former government agent and colleague of Jack’s, confronts the slimy leader of the cabal that (unbelievably) has authored almost all the mayhem of the show’s seven seasons, he tells him the reason he is going to kill him: it’s not just because this guy arranged the death of Tony’s wife–it’s because she was pregnant! With his son! (At which point he begins screaming, “you killed my son!”) ‘Cause, you know, it’s kinda gay to be that worked up just over a woman, even if she was the love of your life and helped you escape from the shadow world of counter-terrorism. But an unborn son! Now that’s a manly reason for revenge!

So there you have it: torture works, women should rise no higher than the vice-presidency, and only a Y-chromosome can justify a four-year revenge trip. Actually, that last one might be true.

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Me and My Vagina: Part I of an Infinitely Reductive Series

Categories: all about me, my pussy my self, teh tranz

In the first place, it’s not so easy even to find your vagina. Women go weeks, months, sometimes years without looking at it.

–Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues

I suppose that makes me a bit different, because I see my vagina at least three times a day, and usually six, and can look forward to a long future of regularly saying hi to my down there.

My vagina is a bit different than other women’s, as a consequence of my not having been born with one.

One of the things you learn about, if you are transsexual and if you are thinking about having The Surgery (italicization was really unnecessary, wasn’t it? I mean, if I mention surgery I know where your head is going to go) is about the D-Word–dilation. It’s one of the aftercare things they don’t tell you about back when you first realize that you want to be female, not that you’d have told anyone, at least, not if you were me.

The commonplace that nature abhors a vacuum works on my neo-vagina as well: left to its own devices, my body would fill it in gradually, like silt in a canal. (Ick.) So everyday, three times a day right now, I have to–well, dilate it: put something inside to hold the shape and gradually convince my body that it’s supposed to be there.

There’s probably all sorts of ways to accomplish this–my surgeon’s instructions on the subject note that sexual intercourse is the equivalent of “only one dilation”–but the standard equipment is a series of four graduated lucite rods, rounded on one end, about seven inches long each. You start with the relatively small #1, about the diameter of a carrot, and eventually work your way up to the squat #4, which is wider than the handle of the flashlight I keep on my desk. Right now I use the #2 and #3 when I dilate, warming up for ten minutes on the first, and then a half an hour on the second. With time out for changing them, this lasts about as long as an hour-long television drama if you fast-forward through the commercials, so I tend to time-shift shows on my DVR to have something to do while dilating.

Because you can’t do much while dilating; as the dilation isn’t just about girth, but much more about preserving depth, you have to keep a constant pressure up with one hand. So typing is out, and even reading a book can be cumbersome. So, you watch tv, or maybe surf the internet one-handed.

When I first heard about dilation, naturally I feared that it would hurt, that every day I’d have to put myself through some sort of agony. It turns out that dilation doesn’t hurt, isn’t even all that uncomfortable: just a boring, repetitive chore. (You do have to stock up on lubricant, though.) On days when I am visiting a client, the first thing I do when I get home–before even making dinner–is to dilate, because I am overdue, and even then I have to do it again in a few hours. In time I’ll be able to do it less–most of the women I know who are several years out from their surgery dilate about once a week–but for now it’s an onerous duty. I am handmaid to my vagina.

But I do get to see it everyday. This might sound wonderful except of course that familiarity breeds–indifference. I no longer examine myself except to check that nothing looks inflamed, and to make sure I get the dilator in the right place. Maybe there are women who don’t need to use a mirror, but when I try I usually end up bumping something else instead, like my clitoris.

I do remember the first few times I saw it though–red, raw, inflamed, supperating in places and with ugly black sutures running inside it, Frankensteinian. But after the first few times of worrying about the discomfort of dilating, and the shock of this wound I had created, it became something else, a part of me, a long-sought for piece of the life I had always wanted and never had; my beautiful, glistening, gaping self; my other me made corporeal; my genitals, my wish, my pussy, my peace.

The last day I spent in Thailand, as I was getting dressed to go, I looked at myself in the mirror–lessened but made whole, no longer reminded by my reflection of where I had come from but only of where I had arrived. I smiled and happy tears welled up.

Then I lay on the bed and laughed, laughed, laughed.

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Show Us Your Hooves

Categories: beating them at their own game, the male ogle

In honor of Rachel Alexandra, the first filly in 85 years to win the Preakness Stakes, some stories from the world of sports:

New Woman’s Soccer League: After the WUSA discovered that Mia Hamm and the 1999 World Cup weren’t enough to sustain insane management mistakes, it looked like there wasn’t room for a woman’s professional soccer league (and given the generally parlous state of the WNBA, women’s professional sports in general are threatened.) Today, though, the New York Daily News had an article about the WPS, a new women’s soccer league.

Teams travel on commercial airlines, in coach seats; they take buses for shorter trips. They carry their own bags, and stay in reasonably priced hotels. And at every stop, the players completely embrace their core fans – the legions of pony-tailed, soccer-playing girls whose clubs and leagues WPS officials are relentlessly courting.

“I think we have to be very smart in making these connections to the community,” says Chastain, whose FC Gold Pride visited New Jersey recently, tying Sky Blue, 1-1. “Not in a lip-service way, but in a very tangible, very hands-on way.”

Starting up a new sports league is an investment idea of comparable wisdom to hiring Bernie Madoff to do your books, but I hope they succeed, and they seem to have some modest goals.

Besides, you just want them to succeed, if for no other reason than because of this:

When Yael Averbuch was a fifth-grader at Hillside Elementary in Montclair, her teacher went around the class one day and asked each child what he or she wanted to be when they grew up. When it was her turn, Yael stood up at her desk. She didn’t have to stop and think.

“I want to be a professional soccer player,” she said. The teacher looked back at her, with some exasperation.

“No, you need to pick a real profession,” the teacher said.

Rock on, Yael.

Of course, it can’t all be good:

Let us introduce you to the New York Majesty of the Lingerie Football League!

“Let’s be honest, sex sells,” quarterback and captain Krystal Gray said. We couldn’t have said it any better.

The League will kick off this fall, with the Majesty playing its home games at Nassau Coliseum. Last week in Freeport, a band of lovelys stripped down to their bare necessities for a chance to make the team, each sprinting, primping and strutting their way to the top. The Majesty will play seven-on-seven, tackle football wearing sports bras and volleyball shorts -in addition to helmets, shoulder pads and knee pads.

Way to move the goalposts, ladies. Wait….

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QFT

Categories: tiger beatdown rocks, vive le feminisme, why i blog

From Sady of the incredible Tiger Beatdown:

Tiger Beatdown: Who Takes Responsibility for the Responsibility-Takers? Hint: Not Linda Hirshman

Because feminists – whether or not they have been victims of crimes – are engaged in continual acts of strength. To be a feminist is to be, on one level or another, an activist: actively engaged in confronting the problems of the world and seeking to change them. They confront injustices. They speak up. They refuse to shut up. They cause trouble. They take responsibility, not just for their own happiness, but for the betterment of the world around them. They also (especially if they are lady feminists) continually make the point that they are not weak, they are not passive, and they are not incapable of independence or self-determination. They are, in short, about as far from being victims as possible.

That will work as the mission statement of this blog.

And this has been another episode of What Sady Said.

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A Bit of a Slice of Life

Categories: all about me, douchebaggery, rhetorical devices, teh tranz

Sorry for the lacuna, ducks–things got busy, there was the Lost season finale, and I’ve been working on a long piece that is taking a while in editing.

I suppose some of you reading here–if there is anyone reading here–might well wonder, “C. L., you’ve been nicely theoretical and wonderfully outraged, but can you give us a real sense of what it is like to be a trans woman? Is there any easy anecdote that can sum up your life in a neat, immediately understandable package? Am I wrong to want this?”

Ah! Well, my ducks, answering the last question first: Yes. Yes you are. But that doesn’t mean I won’t answer! Because while in real life doing Trans 101 can be a nasty chore, this blog isn’t real life! That’s why I’m writing it.

So, yes, ducks–and by the way, call me Cat, everyone does–as it turns out I do have a fresh-off-the-streets anecdote that can give you insight into what it means to be me! Even though I’ve chosen anonymity here! Life is wonderful that way, yes?

Yesterday after I got home from work I had to go to the post office to pick up a registered letter, something that always fills me with dread, or at least has every since that day two years ago when I got a registered letter threatening to sue me. Which did not happen! So it turned out okay, but I still get a twinge in my stomach.

I set out to walk down to the post office, first feeding Schwa and the Gray Mouser and changing out of the dress and suit jacket I had worn to the office today. That may be important. You see, as I was walking up the steps to my building, just a few minutes before, a man walking behind me had said, just loud enough for me to hear him, “Good night, pretty lady.”

Compliments like that always give me mixed feelings. Like any woman, I really don’t care to have my looks publicly commented upon all the time by random men on street corners. But on the other hand, he said it nicely, the sentiment was nice, and–well, let’s face facts; I went through a lot of things to be considered a pretty lady. So while I wasn’t happy that he felt like he had the absolute right to say such a thing…I did smile a little when I heard it. Just not at him.

So I changed into a tee and a jeans skirt; I only wore the skirt instead of jeans because I had just gotten it a few weeks ago, after looking for a long time for a jeans skirt. Now you know more about my wardrobe than is probably comfortable for either of us, but I will persist.

As I was crossing the street, a car came tearing around the corner, and I heard a guy in the car call out, in what can only be described as a fratboy-douchebaggy tone, “You look like a dude!” As you can guess, that wasn’t fun.

But here’s the thing, and the reason why this is supposed to be an exemplar in response to your question, ducks: he said, “like.” Like a dude.

In other words, he saw me as a mannish woman. Not a man.

It took me 35 years to get that like. But it was exactly what I needed.

And that’s what it feels….like.

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We’ve Moved!

Categories: literary allusions kate chopin: superstar, relaunching

Welcome, ducks, to the blog relaunch! For those of you who followed this blog while it was (briefly) Cherchez La Chatte, what do you think of the new digs?

I decided to change the title of the blog because, while I adore French puns, the old name didn’t really speak much about the subject of this blog. (Feminism and transness, and where they intersect, ducks.)

I spent the weekend wracking my brain for a new title–for a while, I thought about finding something that punned on “Cat on a hot tin roof” (since my nickname is Cat), but ultimately decided I liked neither that play nor Tennessee Williams in general enough to go with that name. (Plus, using a Tennessee Williams play for a blog about feminism? Um, no.)

That’s when I got to thinking about The Awakening, Kate Chopin’s 1899 proto-feminist novel. And while it’s not everything I want–I mean, Edna ends up killing herself after her attempts to break society’s constraints–it still captures something important for me.

Like Edna, I had a middle-of-life revelation about who I am and what I want; and if my feminist conversion in the days before my transition was my first awakening, then this is my Second–my transformation from gender ally to gender guerrilla.

I’ve woken up again.

Eager, this time, for the fight.

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Happy Mother’s Day

Categories: Uncategorized

At least there’s one day a year we’re supposed to commemorate how wonderful the first woman in our lives are! Happy Mother’s Day to the woman who is my inspiration, counselor, friend, and support: have the happiest of days, Mom!

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Preggers and Old Uns: Hit the Bricks!

Categories: don't get your panties in a bunch, media tool kit

Mustachio’d libertarian mouthpiece John Stossel showed up on The View today. (Yes, ducks, I was watching–I overslept today.)

I’ve long held that libertarianism is a luxury only the privileged can afford; if you’re a victim of institutionalized prejudice, you tend not to be so sanguine about the idea of folks just doing what they want to do–like, say, issue literacy tests before you can vote, or decide that a penis was the most important instrument in a symphony orchestra.

Among the views Iron John elucidated:

There should be no laws to protect pregnant women in the workplace, because of the “unintended consequences.” You might not hire a woman! Because of the Babies! Even Elizabeth Hasselbeck–Elizabeth Hasselbeck!–had a problem with that. “If you don’t protect these women, aren’t they more at risk?” she asked. Whoopi asked why the laws should be chucked instead of “tweaked.” “Because tweaking never works,” huffed John. I could swear I saw him twirling the ends of his mustache, but that might just have been me being blinded by outrage.

We protect seniors waaay too much because we spend 6-1 on the elders versus the young. Oh, and Ponzi scheme! Medicaid-paid for Viagra! The elderly have a higher net worth than the rest of the population! (Well, yeah, John, and if Bill Gates and I are in the same room together, our average net worth is higher than yours; most seniors I know are very worried about making ends meet nowadays.) Joy asked if he would income test Social Security at this point; when John said he would, she told him he was taking a very “liberal” position. “I’m a classical liberal,” he smirked.

Sherri then wondered “If the government isn’t taking care of seniors, then who is?” John’s reply was that we should take care of ourselves, by saving. Let me tell you, ducks: my parents worked very hard in their lifetime; they each had made a major change in vocation in their thirties, and so had to make up a lot of time. In addition to the full-time jobs they both held, they taught college part-time, and for years had their own test prep side business. Because of that, when they retired they had a tidy little sum to carry them through their old age–my dad was even able to retire early.

Of course, the two Bush stock market crashes caused their net worth to drop pretty precipitously each time; both of them now work part-time. And they’re the kind of success story Stossel wants everyone to have! Oh and Free Markets! Yeah!

Poverty is the natural state of all human beings. This came towards the end of the segment; the discussion of social security naturally blended into general social policy. Stossel gave the classic libertarian answer as to the purpose of government: it should do what only it can do: keep us safe, keep people from stealing things. (I’ve noticed that American libertarians always make national defense a priority, even though it would seem to be a logical inconsistency: shouldn’t we all be able to defend ourselves? Certainly the Founding Fathers thought a standing army was the greatest instrument of tyranny known. Oh well.) In any case, Joy wondered about the Great Depression, and asked John about that, leading to the quote above, plus: “free markets!” (Ah, history blindness is another great privilege of the privileged; a lot of people at the time of the Depression saw it as proof of the failure of capitalism–and it certainly wasn’t free markets that lifted us out of it, but massive government spending, first from the New Deal, then from World War II.) Oh, and private charities. (Whoopi: “are there no workhouses? are there no orphanages?”)

Professional atheletes should be allowed to use steroids, oh and by the way the link to heart disease and cancer hasn’t been proven. Right. Whatever.

The way to save endangered species is to eat them, since there’s no shortage of chicken, and by the way when we allowed people to raise bison for food, didn’t that bring them back from extinction? Of course, the great cause of extinction nowadays is habitat destruction–I wonder how you’re supposed to build a rainforest to keep your valuable, edible frog herds alive?

I first encountered Stossel way back when I was in high school. I think I thought he made sense, until he did a piece on why giving to charity was counter-productive. (He told Ted Turner, who has given millions to the UN, this theory in an interview, and Turner nearly decked him; I’m aware that it doesn’t take much to do that, but still.) He’s been dishing out his libertarianism-light for years now, and getting praised for being a maverick and “telling uncomfortable truths.” And yet, there’s not a similar position from somebody on the far left: 20/20 doesn’t have any segments where a socialist talks about the evils of government non-intervention. But I’m assured that the media has a liberal bias.

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Won’t Somebody Think Of The Menz!

Categories: oh no not teh menz, supremely sexist

My goodness, duckies! President Obama might nominate another woman to the Supreme Court, and the media gasbags are all in a dither that he might not pick the most qualified candidate because of that! Since, obviously, the most qualified candidate by definition could not be a woman, queer, or a person of color.

I guess I can understand that: I mean, if he appoints another woman, the Supreme Court will tie its previous high for number of women on the Court. With two.

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