Rebecca Drysdale, comedian and performer, created this incredible music video in support of the It Gets Better Project. Warning, the language is definitely not safe for work.
Thank you to Dan Savage for sharing this video and to Rebecca Drysdale & crew for making it! The song will be available on iTunes 1/7/11. Yes, that’s day after tomorrow.
Tagged dan savage, it gets better, lbgt, music video, Rebecca Drysdale, trans, youth
The dust has finally settled in the tightly contested race for Alameda County Superior Court with Victoria Kolakowski declaring victory by a two percent margin. Kolakowski is believed to be the nation’s first transgender judge.
The judge-elect said Monday that the election outcome “speaks well of our ability to look past differences and look to the things that matter: our ability and experience.”
Kolakowski, 49, has 21 years of legal experience, including work as a private attorney, corporate attorney and administrative law judge. She transitioned from male to female in 1989 during her last year in law school and had sex reassignment surgery in 1991.
Read more about the race in the SF Gate story. You can read a good, pre-election interview with Kolakowski here, on Change.org.
Update: The It Gets Better Project now has its own website: www.itgetsbetterproject.com. Check it out & make a donation while you’re there.
Dan Savage is a seemingly tireless dispenser of good advice and proponent of safe, sane, guilt-free sex for all. I am a huge fan of his books, podcast, column, and blog. I appreciate how he reaches outside our community to tweak the noses (or yank the dicks) of the Religious Wrong whenever he can. He speaks out on behalf of lots of other people who don’t have his platform to be heard.
In this past week’s podcast he mourned the suicide of Billy Lucas, a gay Indiana teen plagued, taunted, and bullied by his schoolmates until he took his own life.
Savage’s new It Gets Better Project on YouTube is designed to be a life-raft for teens like Billy Lucas. He is asking members of the LGBT community to reach out with a message of hope, reminding queer teens that their lives will get better but they need to live to see that happen.
This video from San Francisco gave me another reason to be proud to live in the Bay Area:
This sweet note was in my flurry of email this morning, from another lesbian mommy:
Hi friends,
This is something on a personal note that I wanted to share. Today will mark a national youth movement in the LGBT community as a Day of Silence. The idea is to raise awareness about the silence that members of this community have had to face in order to avoid anti-LGBT bullying, name calling, and harassment – and too often leading to death through suicide or murder.
My 12-year-old daughter, Kirsten, found out about this, and – yes, all on her own – decided that she was going to participate. She is doing this at her middle school in Sonoma, California. Today she wore a white T-shirt to school on which she had written, in big bold letters across the front, “BREAK THE SILENCE,” and across the back, “WHAT WILL YOU DO?” She had also prepared a flyer to explain to people, if they ask, why she is not speaking today.
Yesterday, she approached the principal of her school and asked if she can express the constitutional right of freedom of speech in her classes today by not talking. She was told “no”.
So, she is hoping that when she approaches her teachers with her written information at the beginning of class, that they will understand and not expect her to talk. I am hoping that I don’t get a phone call today saying that she is in the principal’s office for being insubordinate to her teachers.
Kirsten had attempted to get support from other students to do this with her, and although many of her friends thought it sounded like a “cool” idea, when it came down to it, they were just a little too afraid to do it too. However, she was able to get one other student to commit to this project. So, a good friend, with whom she grew up, will be doing the same.
I am very proud of her for standing up for what she believes in – even though it may prove to be quite a pivotal moment for her, in the delicate social balance of a middle school environment. I fervently hope that this does what she hopes it will do, and does not end up creating the very thing she is protesting – harassment, name calling, and bullying towards her.
When we talked about that possibility, her response was, “It’s worse not to do anything, because that’s what they want you to do”.
(Yay, brave Kirsten! The world needs more kids like you!)
Tagged day of silence, teenagers, trans, transgender, youth
I’m a fan of Canadian author Ivan Coyote, and I’ve mentioned her in several past posts.
On Saturday afternoon, I had the pleasure of hearing her read at the LGBT Community Center in San Francisco, as part of a writer’s event called “Outspoken,” organized by Center Women Present. The event also included presentations by spoken word artists Kimberly Dark of Hawaii, and Lex, from Santa Cruz.
Filmmaker Arielle Elizabeth posted this video of Ivan’s reading on YouTube to share. Enjoy…
Posted in Butch/Femme, Culture, LGBT
Tagged Ivan Coyote, poetry, spoken word, trans, writing
Thanks to Emily Horne and Joey Comeau at A Softer World for this.
Back at the end of August, I wrote about my experiences as a femme ally at the Butch Voices conference held in Oakland. That first post, and the ones that came after, engendered a few comments. (You can read the posts here.)
This month, on Canada’s queer website, Xtra.ca, the site’s monthly columnist, author Ivan Coyote talks about her experiences at the conference. This is well worth reading.
The room smelled like hair wax and Old Spice deodorant and cigarette smoke caught in clothes.
There was the clunk of shitkicker boots and the creak of leather jackets and talking. Always there was talking.
I was in the conference room of a hotel in downtown Oakland, at the first-ever Butch Voices conference.
Posted in Butch/Femme, Culture, LGBT, Opinion
Tagged butch, femme, Ivan Coyote, trans
I guess music by trans musicians is my theme today.
Here’s another video featuring a trans artist – “A Guy Named Joe,” with Joe Stevens and Ingrid Elizabeth of the hot young duo Coyote Grace.
The video is the directorial debut of the multi-talented Joshua Klipp, another trans musician well worth checking out.
I’m having a little end of summer blast this weekend, seeing Coyote Grace at a backyard concert in Oakland. Lucky me!
And, if you’d like to give these guys a boost, head over to the Logo Online Clicklist and vote for “A Guy Named Joe”. The top vote-getters get airtime on Logo television. You’ll find them about nine spots down in the right-hand column.
Read my other posts about Coyote Grace.
Posted in Culture, LGBT, Uncategorized
Tagged coyote grace, folk, gender, ingrid elizabeth, joe stevens, joshua klipp, music, trans, transsexual
We heard so many powerful words spoken during the Butch Voices conference.
I thought I would share these with you.
Keynote speaker Jeanne Cordova gave a keynote address “Keeping Our Feminism, While Exploring our Masculinities”.
A self-described “classic butch,” (that’s “classic” as in “classic coke,” not coke-light, or no-caffeine, or coke-zero – make no mistake) Cordova is an activist, social pioneer, and writer. She is the author of Sexism: It’s A Nasty Affair! A collection of columns printed in the Los Angeles Free Press (New World Enterprises, 1976); Kicking the Habit – A Lesbian Nun Story (Multiple Dimensions,1990), and the forthcoming When We Were Outlaws: In Love & Revolution, memoir from a political activist. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and publications.
She spoke about what it has meant to her to be butch and how that identity has meshed with feminism:
So I want to appeal to my fellow butches to take “this feminism thing” seriously. I want to appeal to you in the most basic, crude and self-centered way. By telling you – if you ever plan on keeping a woman past the hot-sex days of the first year of your relationship, if you ever plan on getting married, if you want a femme to stay with you, if you ever want to have a happy, long-term relationship with a woman today – you’d better learn your feminism!
You can read the rest of Cordova’s keynote address on her website.
……..
Sunday at the conference featured a Spoken Word Brunch featuring poets and authors, and other spoken word artists reading their work. I think I speak for everyone in the room when I say the performances rocked us to the roots of our souls.
Hosted by author and comic Kelli Dunham, the brunch was a mixture of young and old, the political and the erotic, the folksy and the oratory. We heard poetry and an a’cappella song by Shams Cohen, a full-time grad student preparing for Unitarian Universalist ministry; a story by author Elana Dykewomon, and a hot story celebrating a queer femme sex worker by Jeff Stroker.
Canadian author Ivan Coyote read an essay about packing in front of her mom and brought the room to tears with a not-so-simple story about a simple haircut. On Saturday night at the Butch Nation performance event, Ivan shared words from these two essays: A Butch Roadmap and Hats Off to Beautiful Femmes.
……..
Lex, a young transgender activist and spoken word artist brought the house down with three dynamic and intense pieces. If you visit Lex’s MySpace page, you can hear at least two of these pieces, “Intention,” and “Dearly Beloved,” a poem about California’s recent struggle with Proposition 8, which had the audience hooting and cheering with these lines:
For what God has joined together
Let no man put asunder
With the power invested in me
by God herself and the state
of courageous hearts and unshattered commitments
I now pronounce you sacred
……..
Belinda Carroll is a Texas-based comic, and an outspoken femme. She took a serious turn and shared her poem, “An Ode to the Masculine”:
At night I dream about a person of ambiguous gender,
aggressive as well as gentle.
A person that gets my love of shoes but won’t take any of my shit.
A person that is tough, steadfast, and quick,
can admit when they are wrong, but mostly when I am right.
Has a soft shoulder for me at night.
Someone who fights, wrestles, and screams
for a place in the world, and to be seen
as a person loving, whole –
not to be seen as other,
but as a soul.
It’s not, are you he?
Or, are you her?
Or what?
because it really matters not.
As long as you are in full body contact with
your humanity,
you are free to be
with me.
……..
Many of these artists have books, essays, and poems in publications as well as FaceBook and/or MySpace pages, websites, and Twitter accounts and you should get to know their work!
Posted in Culture, LGBT, News Items, Uncategorized
Tagged butch, elana dykewomon, essay, femme, Ivan Coyote, jeanne cordova, jeff stroker, kelli hunham, Lex, poetry, shams cohen, spoken word, trans
I spent the weekend at the Butch Voices conference in Oakland. It was an amazing weekend, with many insightful and joyful moments. (More about the conference here.)
I realized today that I was really happy I wasn’t PMS-ing during the conference. There were so many touching moments, and I found myself tearing up so many times, that I’m sure if I was on the downside of a progesterone spike, I could have cried all the way through the weekend.
But there was a moment during the conference that left me thinking my ears had deceived me and I want to talk about it.
I was in a workshop discussion between Jack Halberstam and Kim Peirce. Jack (Judith) is an English professor and director of The Center for Feminist Research at USC. Kim is the director of Boys Don’t Cry.
The discussion was about moving beyond Boys Don’t Cry into a next generation of butch/trans/genderqueer representation in the media. Jack and Kim are friends. In fact, Kim pointed out that Jack set her up on her only blind date, resulting in her current engagement.
At some point during the conversation, when comments and questions were moving quickly, Kim said something to the effect that butches have superior qualities to men and “that’s why femmes are with us and not men”.
Uh, no.
(Jack, why the hell didn’t you call her on this?)
I almost jumped out of my chair, but the moment to comment without rewinding the whole conversation had passed. Instead, I got distracted mulling it over and soon left the discussion and retired to my hotel room to rant a little.
There are many ways I think butches have it hands down over men. (And don’t write and call me a man-hater. Preferring one doesn’t mean hating the other.)
But that’s not why I’m with a butch woman and not a man. I’m with a butch woman because I’m a lesbian who loves butch women (and what butch/genderqueer author Ivan Coyote called “largely estrogen-based lifeforms” that fall anywhere on the masculine spectrum).
I came out later in life, after having been in heterosexual marriage, and I keenly feel the results of my coming out process and my “choices”. (Which, let’s face it, weren’t exactly choices, but internal imperatives.)
Femmes aren’t straight girls who have been won over by butches. Ask any butch who tried such a conversion and lived though the pain of watching her beloved return to a life with men. Admittedly a few of these projects work, but the vast majority don’t seem to.
I dated one woman who experienced this so many times, we joked about her being the “back door” lesbian – the last thing a straight girl saw on her way back to heterosexuality.
Femmes are lesbians, no less than butches. We are dykes, queers, and homos. We are your counterparts, the yin to your yang. We grow more feminine in your reflection, as you become butcher in our glow. We exist in tandem.
But make no mistake, our sexual agency is only as great as your own. We don’t choose you over men and you didn’t win us as prizes in some sort of competition.
We chose you because you’re not men.
Posted in Butch/Femme, LGBT, Opinion
Tagged butch, femme, Ivan Coyote, Jack Halberstam, Judith Halberstam, Kim Peirce, stud, trans
I’m suffering from a sort of culture shock. I noticed it as soon as I left the hotel yesterday.
You see, I’ve long known this about myself: My head turns when I see certain men on the street. Maybe it’s the cut and hang of a leather jacket, the perfect fit of a pair of well-faded jeans, or the shine of a polished shoe or boot. I watch their stride, long and certain, and the way their hips move. I admire the trim of their hair. And then I think, “Damn. If only you were a woman.”
Well, I’ve just returned from three days in heaven, from a place where the cut, the stride, the polish, and the trim belonged to butches of every shape and size. Whether trans-masculine, genderqueer, female-identified, old-school, or new, they were all represented.
My quivering femme heart will take a long time to still.
But, make no mistake, I wasn’t at the Butch Voices conference, held this past weekend at the Oakland Marriott, simply to ogle the participants. I was there as an ally, to lend my support. I was there to learn. I was there because I love butch women. Butch women are my friends, my confidants, and my lovers. I was there to say “thanks”.
Thanks for all the time you’ve offered me an arm. Thanks for making the bar runs at crowded parties. Thanks for loaning me your jacket, leading when we dance, cooking for me, wrapping me up in big authentic hugs, and letting me cry on your shoulder.
Thank you for the reverence and respect with which you’ve touched my body – sometimes with more regard than I was feeling for it myself.
I was there to say thanks for being the most visual icons of our lesbian sub-culture. Thank you for taking the public heat for all of us. In your roles as outlaws and gender-benders, you are our front-men.
From the moment we arrived, I was conscious of my role as a non-butch participant. I’m a buzz-cut, sort of low-maintenance femme, and I had anticipated this and didn’t want to spend days explaining my gender orientation. So I packed a dress, strappy sandals, and got a fresh pedicure in preparation. I wanted to be clear about my position, and not appear to be teetering on top of the fence.
Femmes were definitely in the minority and I chose my workshops carefully, not wanting to encroach on others’ opportunities for butch bonding. The public visibility of butch women led to such workshops as “Non-conforming Gender Presentation and Job Searching,” “Politics of Passing,” and “Butch in the Streets: Techniques for Increasing Safety in Public”. I did not attend these. I attended S. Bear Bergman’s workshop on chivalry, and Ivan Coyote’s workshop on beating writing procrastination. I did not attend the workshop called “An Exploration of Dick,” even though I have more than a passing acquaintance with the topic. Strap-ons and toys, are just that for me – toys. They’re not My Dick. (And that’s only one of the things that marks me as femme.) This was a conversation the butches needed to have amongst themselves. But to be clear, as a femme ally, I was never made to feel unwelcome. The places I didn’t go were by my own choice.
In response, I suppose, to the bonding and visibility of the assembled butches, I heard several young femme women express how they feel invisible to their own community – that they’re not immediately recognized as lesbian and have to work to be noticed by the very women they want to attract.
To some degree I understand this because my usual fashion accessory is a 12-year-old son, which identifies me as a mommy above all else. I think in liberal places and among my peers, I’m often read as a gay woman, but in many environments, I’m just an older orchestra mom with an edgy haircut and funky glasses.
And, I hear women over 40, lesbian and straight alike, complain about their invisibility to the world as a whole. They say younger people don’t look them in the eye, and until we become senior citizens, don’t extend us the courtesies they jump to extend to younger women. I suppose that’s a valid complaint in a society that places a high value on feminine youth and beauty. I think I circumvent this by going out of my way to make eye contact with strangers, and I am more likely to extend my courtesies to others – male or female – as to expect them extended to me. As a result, I don’t feel invisible so much as capable, if by necessity. I’ve worked in lots of environments where I was expected to lift, tote, and carry, and have set-up and stacked more folding tables and chairs than I would ever like to count. My egalitarianism makes my life run smoothly but doesn’t make me feel special.
Maybe that’s why I came home from Butch Voices feeling like a queen.
Yes, I felt conspicuous in my femininity among all the butch bodies. Yes, I was in the minority.
But I felt seen, valued, and cared for. I felt nurtured. It never occurred to me to move a folding chair. I’m pretty certain it would have been an insult to try, and I’m not bothered by that one iota. I do my share in other environments and had nothing to prove in this one. Everyone I met was warm in their greetings, gracious in their communications, conscious of their impact on the space around them. I heard one femme woman say that at the Saturday night Butch Nation entertainment review – which was jam-packed – she had never had so many people apologize for bumping into her.
Maybe this is because of the special pride so many butch women take in their manners. Maybe this is because we have all been socialized as female to some degree, and therefore have a special understanding of the value of warmth and courtesy.
In the past, I have told my son that if he wants to learn good manners and treat women with respect, he only has to look to his butch “uncles” for advice. And after this weekend, I stand by that now, more than ever.
My heartfelt thanks to Joe LeBlanc, the conference chair and Butch Voices board president, and the incredible group that put the conference together.
Here are all of the posts I made following the Butch Voices 2009 conference.
Posted in Butch/Femme, LGBT, Opinion, Uncategorized
Tagged butch, femme, manners, Oakland, stud, trans, trans-masculine
Bare Breast Alert: As you scroll down, be aware that not all the photos below are safe for viewing at work.
The pre-march crowd filled Delores Park.
San Francisco’s Dyke March was once again a walk in the park… or at least a day in the park, followed by a leisurely stroll. The misnomer “march” barely begins to describe the lesbian extravaganza that is the Dyke March, the largest lesbian event of its kind in the world.
Women gathered Saturday in SF’s Delores Park for an afternoon of picnicing and entertaining. Music and entertainment emanated from the stage after the event’s annual opening ceremonies which were followed by another annual favorite – the mass breast self-exam led by a local physician and a nurse/midwife. Actress Sharon Glasser addressed the crowd before the march assembled.
Like “march,” “assembled” is a loose term. The event begins when the Dykes on Bikes roar down the parade route in a show of female bravado that always brings tears to my eyes. There are women amongst them who look like they’ve ridden every parade since we all got publically proud, and I can’t help but think of these leather-wrapped women as the warriors of our tribe.
Dykes on Bikes kick it off in a roar of thunder
The actual march is casually formed, as walkers fall in behind the bikers. It’s a big, colorful show of unity and identity that emphasizes the range of the dyke community as the throng moves slowly through the streets. The young, the old, the edgy, and the soccer moms all find queer space here.
Early estimates put the Dyke March crowd, independent of other Pride Weekend activities, at well upwards of 50,000.
A little rock-a-billy love in the park.
After the Dykes on Bikes, there were more dykes on bikes...
A sign of support along the route and props to this house for the dance music that had a little party going on the corner below.
Fleet Week never looks this good!
Although many men offered support from the sidelines, the single biggest complaint I heard was about cis-men marching in the event, which is supposed to be women-only.
Everyone gets to express their fashion sense.
A touch of history came to the march on a t-shirt.
A little rainbow body paint offers the creative answer to "show us your tits!"
Just an "awww" moment with this very sweet and proud couple.
This has to be one of the wildest, most imaginative viral marketing campaigns ever.
Zack16 is an incredibly well-produced series of spots, backed up with a nifty and entertaining website conceived by Chicago-based ad agency Leo Burnett Worldwide about a 16-year-old boy who wakes up one morning with a vagina where his penis used to be.
The advertiser is Tampax.
I was blown away when I saw it. There was nothing like this when I was a crampy Girl Scout.
I’m still not certain why feminine hygiene products need viral marketing. The need for them is certainly not spread by a virus, electronic or protein-based. The need isn’t going away. But the campaign is still funny and clever. We get to watch sort of a “James at 16″ except with girly bits and a period. And, while I’m sure the light-hearted treatment of Zach’s suprise genital swap will offend some people, I feel like it’s handled in a way that’s sort of sweet and inoffensive. There was the potential here for cheap jokes that would piss off the trans and intersex communities and I somehow think this won’t.
Here are the first four episodes in one short “film”. This is the introduction from the website, in Zack’s words:
This is it. The first four episodes of my weird transformation together in one easy-to-watch package. Man, I hate that word. Package. Reminds me of what I no longer have. Anyway, I hope you like the film and hopefully there’s more to come. In the meantime, I’ll keep blogging and tweeting. Oh, and if you happen to see my missing guy parts anywhere, please drop me a line.
You can see the entire Zack16 website here.
For the (very) adult version, check out Buck Angel, the “Man with a Pussy”. I’ve got to wonder if someone over at LBW is a fan of Buck’s.
Posted in Body
Tagged feminine hygiene, funny, gender issues, girls, guy with a vagina, health, leo burnett worldwide, pms, tampax, teen, trans, women's health, Zack16
For the past couple of weeks, the media have been abuzz with reports of Chastity/Chaz Bono’s transition from female to male.
Everyone from the major news agencies to the LGBT press to entertainment shows and blogs have gotten in on the action:
Chaz’s mom, Cher, the entertainer and actress known infamously by her singular name, says she respects the courage of the planned surgical transition. In a statement to US Magazine she said:
“Chaz is embarking on a difficult journey, but one that I will support. I respect the courage it takes to go through this transition in the glare of public scrutiny, and although I may not understand, I will strive to be understanding. The one thing that will never change is my abiding love for my child.”
In my opinion, this is one of those statement that damns with faint support: “… although I may not understand, I will strive… I’ll love you no matter what you do… because I hold judgment but will rise above it…”. Of course, I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s what her statement reeks of.
For crap’s sake, Cher. You’ve lived an absolutely outrageous life filled with men, plastic surgery, tattoos, bare-assed videos, skimpy costumes, and wigs. Chaz’s gender identity and sexual orientation isn’t a wig or a Bob Mackie dress that comes off and on at will. This is the kid you thrust into the public eye, who is now struggling to make the best of it. Chaz’s internal work will be public – not only by choice – and primarily because of you.
After all you’re the one who once told ABC about your plastic surgeries and body modifications:
“If I want to put my tits on my back, it’s nobody’s business but my own.”
And yet, your child’s personal business belongs to the world because you set those wheels in motion years ago.
And most remarkably, while Cher has been celebrated for her style and outrageousness, and for her music and acting career, none of it may equal the societal contributions of her daughter, now her son.
Chaz Bono has been marked in the media as a “celebrity child,” and indeed, his early life was a creation of his parents and their publicity machine. He came out to his parents at 18, and in 1990 was publically outed without permission by Star, and then by choice on the cover of The Advocate. He went on to author two books, Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families (1998) tells the story of his own coming out, and also the stories of other gay and lesbian people, and The End of Innocence: A Memoir which discusses his outing, music career, and late partner Joan’s death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
He created a band and had a brief musical career with the band “Ceremony”.
Born into the spotlight, Chaz has made the best of it, using that platform to work for the rights of LGBT people everywhere. He has written for The Advocate, been a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), campaigned for Democratic candidates, worked against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and has worked for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
In 1996, speaking at an HRC event:
I can’t begin to imagine Chaz’s life. His dad, Sonny Bono, was a entertainer-turned-Republican congressman, who died in a ski accident.
His mother may be the femme-fatale most often imitated by drag queens around the world.
Can you imagine coming out in a community where everywhere you turned you heard your mother’s voice, or saw men dressed like her, doing campy imitations of her gestures? It’s a nightmare of mythic proportions.
And, yet Chaz Bono has survived all of this and more. He’s been determined to carve out his own path – authentically – raising the visibility of the LGBT community along the way. And for that we owe him a debt of gratitude.
A friend was telling me about the transistor radio that was her prized childhood possession.
“It was bright blue plastic,” she said, “and this big.” As she told me, her hand was holding the memory of the radio.
She said she listened to it under the covers after her family had gone to bed. In her bed tent, in the dark, the radio gave her some privacy that was hard won in a family with four children in a small house.
“I remember that I stayed up until midnight one New Year’s eve, listening to the countdown of the year’s top songs. I was so disappointed when an Elton John song won. I couldn’t believe I had stayed up that late for Elton John.” Although she says her appreciation of Elton John increased as she got older, her voice still holds the echo of bewilderment.
Her story piqued my own memories of my first real radio. It was a Panasonic Toot-a-Loop. Now a 1970′s icon, at the time it was cool beyond belief.
I was a child of the Wonder Years and grew up in a true Wonder Years town. By the time I was – like my own son is now – stumbling into puberty, I was cruising around on a Schwinn 10-speed bike that I earned babysitting, with the Toot-a-Loop on my handlebars. The bike was a bright, flat orange, which is still my favorite color. We roamed with the illusion of freedom, often out of the sight of our parents, and without the “stranger-danger” concerns of my son’s childhood.
In the summer months, my friends and I spent huge amounts of time hanging out around the community pool. The wide expanse of over-chlorinated water and rough concrete was bordered by lawns, and it here that we set up our day camp in the same location every summer. We’d ride our bikes to the pool and spend the hottest parts of the day acting out our teen dramas. Relationships budded and ended. We got sunburns and scuffed hearts. I learned to play a wicked game of pool in the rec room, and nine-ball became the one summer love that followed me into my adult life.
We established the boundaries of our camp with beach towels and music. There was always one, sometimes two or more, bright-colored plastic radios tuned into the Bay Area’s 6.10 KFRC AM, then a pop station lorded over by D.J. Dr. Don Rose. The pool’s management and parents were always asking us to turn our radios down, under threat of having them confiscated, and we would, only to creep the volume back up again.
In my memory, it seems like each summer had an anthem. In the early 70s, it was the peace anthem “One Tin Soldier,” by the folk-pop group Original Caste. As we got older, the songs grew in sophistication, including Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and songs by Peter Frampton, and (yes) Elton John. But the sappy song that ruled the top-40 countdown for at least two summers – to the disgust of some of us and the delight of others – was “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks. I found this video on YouTube and the moment I heard it I could smell chlorine, freshly mowed grass, and Johnson’s Baby Oil:
In my adult life, there are still summer anthems.
Anthems are the songs you listen to over and over again on long road trips. These are the songs that worm their way into your brain with either a catchy melody, or a phrase that hits home.
Sometimes they’re improbable – like my summer-long attachment to the Kentucky Headhunter’s bouncy, addictive “Dumas Walker,” and sometimes political, like the 1998 Catie Curtis song that became a coming-out anthem for me, “What’s the Matter?,” with its question:
What if I am Black or Jew
Straight or queer mother of two
Run around in a hippie dress
Ride my bike in a leather vest
What’s the matter?
The first time I heard this song, Catie Curtis sang it in the sun at a hot, dusty folk festival in the hills of Northern California. I’d never heard her music before, but the hippie liberal audience seemed to know what was coming, and when she sang these words, it collectively roared to its feet and cheered. And, of course, my budding lesbian heart swelled.
I’m a fan of the fantastically talented folk duo Coyote Grace. I’ve played their first cd Boxes & Bags until it’s worn smooth, but it’s on their latest release Ear to the Ground, that I found this summer’s anthem, “Girls Like Me (Summertime)”. A flip on the vocal pairing of their first album, this song is written and sung by the lovely Ingrid Elizabeth, backed up by Joe Stevens. (The cd features three songs written by Ingrid.) And, when she busts outs this tribute to queer love, the audience stands up, cheers, and sings right along.
And thank god that boys like her, like girls like me.
Here’s a performance video, but you should really play the song on their MySpace page, so you can catch all the lyrics and their sweet sound:
Tagged coyote grace, folk, ingrid elizabeth, joe stevens, music, singer, songwriter, trans
Native sons of the Golden State who have become daughters – and native daughters who have become sons – can now have their birth certificates changed to match their gender, regardless of where they currently live.
Until the recent First District Court of Appeals ruling, California law only allowed people to obtain a birth certificate with the proper gender if they lived in the same county of their birth, or if their current county of residence allowed them to request one.
However, many counties around the country will not recognize this right, an obstacle that this ruling now removes
Posted in News Items, Uncategorized
Tagged California, civil rights, law, trans, transgender
Today kids across America are participating in a National Day of Silence today as a way of bringing attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.
Each year this event has grown, now with hundreds of thousands of students coming together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.
(Read Jason Mannino’s essay about the Day of Silence on the Huffington Post.)
I know there will be lots of discussion today about horrific acts of violence that have been committed against LGBT youth. However, I think it’s important, on memorial days like today, to step back and take a look at the broader picture.
When talking about homophobia, it’s important to keep in mind that homophobia effects everybody, including straight people.
In fact, homophobia can be thought of as the “silent hate” because it’s not based on skin color, ethnicity, accent, religion, country or origin, or any other identifying marker. The enormous underlying discomfort with homosexuality lies in the fact anyone can be gay, out or not, and this makes people squeamish
Because of this, I think it’s not enough to call attention to the hatred perpetrated on individuals in our community. We need to continue to look at the impact homophobia has on our society as a whole.
I firmly believe that the more we work for LGBT equality in every area of life, the less impact homophobia has on everyone.
I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating:
Last year, I attended a fundraiser for GroundSpark Productions, an educational documentary film company that produced the groundbreaking 1999 film It’s Elementary, and the sequel It’s Still Elementary, re-interviewing the original participants.
One of the film clips shown that day was from a new film called Straightlaced, that’s being shown around the country right now. (Here’s a list of screenings.)
This trailer features a powerful segment about Latino boys shopping for clothes. The kids didn’t choose their clothes based on their personal taste preference, instead they intentionally chose clothes that were baggy, that hid the outlines of their bodies, and were in somber colors. Why? Because they didn’t want to look gay or be perceived as gay. The realization that societal homophobia was driving the actions of a group of straight teens was a powerful eye-opener about how hate and prejudice affect everyone, not just the targeted group.
Everytime a straight person changes their behavior in some way – a man doesn’t hug a grieving friend, a woman denies the opportunity for a close, intimate friendship, a boy worries about being taunted for taking a dance class, or a girl changes her major to something less “masculine” – they’re affected by homophobia.
Please check out GroundSpark’s work here and read more about these films and how you can bring copies to a school or community near you. I think the work they’re doing is really important.
While I appreciate the idea of focusing on LGBT issues, we need to continue working toward making them non-issues. That’s when society as a whole will benefit.
Tagged documentary, educational, film, groundspark, homo, homoph, homophobia, homosexuality, Straightlaced, trans, transexuality
In a groundbreaking move to recognize the experiences of transgendered Jews, the Reform movement has published several prayers for sanctifying the sex-change process.
The Union for Reform Judaism this week released the second edition of Kulanu, the union’s 500-page resource manual for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion.
The issue of transgendered Jews was first addressed in 1978 when the Central Conference of American Rabbis deemed it permissible for one who had undergone a sex-change operation to be married according to Jewish tradition. In 1990, the CCAR allowed such individuals to be converted. And in 2003, the union retroactively applied its policy on gays and lesbians to the transgender and bisexual communities.
“It’s a logical next step in this process,” said one of the Kulanu editors.
Read the entire story on The Jewish Daily Forward website.
Posted in News Items, Uncategorized
Tagged Faith, jews, judiasm, prayer, reform, reform jews, religion, spirituality, trans, transgender, transsexual, TS
One of the things I’m really enjoying these days is dropping in on Queer Eye Candy, an on-line photo album for the queer community.
QEC is a project of Sinclair Sexsmith who writes the site Sugar Butch Chronicles.
The project was founded on the premise that people are afraid of what they don’t know, and that therefore, it’s especially important for the world to see the faces of queer people.
I think this is also important if people already know some queer women and think that armed with that knowledge, they know what we’re all like.
There’s this popular media image of lesbians being two girls in high heels who like to tangle up their long hair and mash up their lipgloss, but the queer community is so much more diverse and complicated.
From the site’s “about”:
We’re hot, we’re fierce, we’re vulnerable, we’re beautiful, we’re in love, we’re horribly ugly, we’re scared, we’re tender-hearted, we’re dog mommies and daddies, we’re parents, we’re children, we’re neices and nephews, we’re married, we’re bachelors, we’re rednecks, we’re blue-collar, we’re construction workers, we’re political pundits, we’re musicians, we’re drag performers, we’re community organizers, we’re angry, we’re activists, we’re just us.
Within driving distance of San Francisco, I live in a relatively gay-friendly area. As a fundraiser for an AIDS service organization, I work in a very gay-friendly environment. And yet, I know there are times when I’ve felt isolated, when I felt like the only woman on the planet like me (this usually happens after big parent gatherings at my son’s school!). Times like these, the antidote is finding other gay women. It really helps to have community.
I can only imagine how lonely it could feel to be a queer female in Salt Lake City, or a small mid-western town, or a Catholic High School.
When you’re homesick, sometimes it helps to flip through the family photo album. Check it out.
Posted in LGBT
Tagged photos, queer eye candy, sinclair sexsmith, sugar butch, trans, transgender, transsexual
 | Lyn on Protected: Bridging the G… |
| Lyn on By the Numbers |
| Lyn on Steam |
 | tammy b on Steam |
 | single lesbian on Butch-throb! |
