Categories: (un)popular entertainment, cis-o-rama, gender oh eff me, i get around, kyriarchy, let's hear it for the ladies, teh tranz
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!
Categories: i get around, transphobia: now in blog format
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!
Categories: below the belt, i get around
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…
Categories: i get around, privilege stories, the male ogle, the patriarchy: you can't live with it....that is all, tiger beatdown rocks
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.
Categories: all about me, i get around, tiger beatdown rocks
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.
Categories: below the belt, i get around
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.
Categories: below the belt, i get around
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.
Categories: i get around, tiger beatdown rocks
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.
Categories: below the belt, i get around
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.
Categories: below the belt, i get around
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.
