From the NCTE:

Today, January 6, Members of Congress raise their right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution as they begin the new legislative session.

Let’s make sure the first thing they hear about is the importance of an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that protects all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224 3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them: “I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I strongly support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

Then, call back and leave messages with your two Senators too!

Request an in-person meeting for you and other community members with your two Senators and your Representative (or their staffs) in their home district offices. You can call the district offices to request these meetings but they often want you to fax a meeting request. To find contact info for district offices, go to to www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.

Sample meeting request letters, and other talking points and resources for your meetings, are available in the following toolkits:

• ENDA Grassroots Toolkit
• National Center for Transgender Equality’s Making Your Voice Heard
• PFLAG’s Bringing the Message Home

Sorry for this boring post, but today was the 1st day of classes, which means tomorrow is the first day of Trans Lives, and it’s 2 hours at a time, which means I need to be well-rested because they won’t have read anything yet & I’ve got to talk the whole time!

There is a diarist at Daily Kos who has written about the high incidence of murder of African American trans women.

Queerty (tongue in cheerk) predicts Memphis will reach out to the trans community as a result. I doubt it. They’re 2nd in homicides in the country, which means everyone - not just trans people - have been victims of violence (via Grand Divisions).

What a way to start a new year.

A slight altercation in the partners’ group got me thinking: what is the difference between (1) changing your expectations of what your partner is actually able to bring to the table and (2) simply lowering your standards?

The mHB message boards are back up.

Here’s Jacob Anderson-Minshall’s now annual “Trans Year in Review” article, which covers a lot of interesting people and events and media in the trans commmunity for 2008.

The mHB message boards are down for now, & will probably go back up sometime this weekend. There was a bit too much acrimony going on for us to manage with very limited internet access and we needed to talk amongst ourselves about their future.

So hold tight, & they’ll be back.

A very happy New Year!

I still have very limited internet access here in snowy Wisconsin, but should be up & running at home by Saturday. Hopefully, fingers crossed. If you’re trying to get a hold of me, for whatever reason, please be patient.

For your amusement, while we’re driving:

(h/t to Sandy for this one!)

and here’s one for the dog folks (h/t to Lena):

Not only are we in Kenosha again, but we’re staying at the same hotel (which was planned) *and* in the exact same room (which was not planned). The boys have been fantastic, mostly sleeping for the trip. & I’m glad to say this is the last overnight before we end up in our home-for-six-months. Betty of course has been an amazing driver.

I, on the other hand, am sick as a dog. I got my flu shot, so I’m assuming it’s just a bad cold. I hope so, anyway. Drinking a lot of tea, sucking on Ricolas, sleeping on Nyquil. It’s not a real pleasure to travel like this but as someone who is allergic to everything I am way too used to being congested a lot. I’m sure it’ll be over in the next day or so. Hopefully. Classes start 1/5 so I have a little time to get well, at least.

& In the meantime, a very happy 10th anniversary to my sister and brother in law! 10 years ago I was newly married and in Vegas for their wedding, and if you’d told me then that in 10 years I’d be in a hotel room in Kenosha… okay, I might’ve believed you. I’d done enough inexplicable, unexpected things in my life by then that Wisconsin wouldn’t have been *that* surprising, but now I’m trying to think of what woudl have been.

Thanks all for your good wishes. We do the short drive (2+ hours) to Appleton tomorrow.

So how many of you will be humming that song the rest of the day now?

We’re leaving today for Appleton, Wisconsin, where I’ll be living for the next six months. It’s so odd that I have never lived anywhere other than the NYC area my entire life, only to end up living in Wisconsin for months at at time, to teach. It’s surprised me, in a good way.

We do an overnight near Akron, OH, & then another in Kenosha, WI.

I am really looking forward not just to teaching but to being back in Appleton. I really enjoyed my last stay there, & I really loved the area around Lawrence. What is weird is that I remember feeling sad when I left, but pleased to get back to Brooklyn, and now I’m doing all those feelings in reverse: feeling sad to be leaving my much-loved Brooklyn, but excited to be going back. I have decided that I have to figure out a way not to miss things so much, or to be as sad about leaving, and focus more on the going to than the coming from, but then I’ve always been a little bit this way: melancholy & maybe a little sentimental.

Either way, the boys are coming with me, and I’ll be incredibly busy, and that is an excellent combination for me.

By the time you’re reading this, we will have started the long Westward Ho that is the state of Pennsylvania. We’ll end the day just on the other side of Ohio’s state line.

Okay, then.

I am packed for six months for me & the boys: six pieces of luggage, three boxes, two crates, two backpacks, and one laundry thingy. Plus Betty’s stuff, the cats in one carrier, & some other odds & ends (litterbox, cat food). Good thing we rented an SUV, no?

We also cleaned the apt for the catsitter.

The worst thing about being Helen Boyd just now is knowing I have to bring a ton of my books because no one else will have copies - like Esther Newton’s Camp & Rottnek’s Tomboys & Sissies. The books are one crate, and one of the boxes is photocopies of handouts of other chapters & essays on gender.

But other than that, I’m ready. Just have to pack the computer & the cats tomorrow. We leave at 10am.

Here’s my nomination for weirdest product of the year, but the best part of the website isn’t the godawful promo videos, which are hilarioius, but the * on the Instructions page that actually says:

* Bumpits are not edible.

Yours?

One of the partners on our MHB boards mentioned recently that she’d never apply for an LGBT scholarship, because she doesn’t identify as LGBT, and it reminded me that I never told the story about me & the LGBT Blogger Initiative Conference I went to.

It seems I am perplexing to people, & I felt a little bit like an odd duck while I was there. It came up because at some point, someone announced that grants might become available for LGBT bloggers, and a few people told me that they hoped I would get one. But someone also mentioned that they could see others have an issue with the fact that I’m not LGB or T. My standard response these days is - “I’m the Q that gets left off a lot.”

But still it’s an issue that has come up, & may come up even moreso that I’m thinking about going back to grad school. Will I choose, like the partner above, not to apply for any LGBT scholarships? As a sort of liminal queer, probably I wouldn’t, except that then there’s the whole issue of what I do & what I’d want to study - which is all about the LGBT, and the T in particular.

The other question I was asked, which I’ve been asked before, is why? Why the trans community? & To be honest, I just don’t know. I was charmed by my very first meetings with trans people, & continue to have a deep love for the trans community & for trans people. Aside from my Debsian sense of social justice, that is.

Tim McFeeley did a wonderful “short history of the LGBT movement” (which I was pleased to note I knew cold!) as a workhop that Sunday morning, and he closed with a quote by Frederick Douglass:

When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.

That’s my answer & I’m sticking to it.

A very Merry Christmas to all! (Not safe for work!)

As a little Christmas present to my lovely wife, and to all of you lovely femmes out there, I thought I’d post this lovely piece I found about a month ago & have been meaning to link to.

= and =

Does anyone else find it odd that Valkyrie comes out tomorrow? I mean, a movie about Hitler on the same day that all the Jewish folks go to the movies? Okay, it’s about killing Hitler, but still.

= and =

Merry Christmas Eve!

One of my Christmas presents to myself is the news that this journal picked up a piece of mine that will show up in their Spring issue. It’s called “Cat of Nine Tale” — and yes, it is about DO & Aurora.

Working on this piece was one of the very many things I was doing this fall that kept me busy.

From an article in the December 2008 Atlantic Monthly about why teen girls love vampires:

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life - one that she slips inot during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice pasat her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs - to be undisturbed while she works out the big quetions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others - are met precisely by the act of reading.

I don’t agree with the gendered conclusion she comes to, but I thought it was a nice description of reading, especially of reading novels, especially when you’re a child or young teenager. At least it described me somewhat, right down to the passé composé (which I did manage to pick up, eventually).

I remember reading a theory once that young female readers figure out how to masturbate sooner than their peers, exactly because they’re used to & look forward to time alone.

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah: peace to all of my Jewish friends who will light that first meaningful candle tonight. Chanukah lasts 8 nights, which means this year it will last past the 12 days of Christmas, up until the 29th. (That’s for those of you who aren’t Jewish/don’t live in New York.)

Tune in tonight to TransFM for the special “12 Days of Christmas” greeting from us!