Author: grvsmth

Ten Favorite Singers

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I felt like writing about singers, since singing is a good way to practice your voice. I also was listening to some great women singers recently and figured I’d share. Here are ten women that I like; I’ve picked five that I feel are fairly traditionally “femme,” and five that are less traditional. Most of them have sent shivers up my spine at some point or another. Here are the less traditional ones.

  1. Kate Pierson (The B-52’s). She’s got an amazingly powerful voice (“Roam”) and works well with Fred Schneider (“Good Stuff”) and Michael Stipe (“Me and Honey”). She also loves wild clothes and has settled in my hometown. See also Lady Miss Kier (Deee-Lite).
  2. Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders). I was a bit put off by her worldliness (“Middle of the Road”) when I was younger, but she has a good feel for the poignant (“My City was Gone”, “Back on the Chain Gang”). See also Terri Nunn (Berlin).
  3. Natalie Merchant (10,000 Maniacs). “Like the Weather” was the first song I heard her on, and it’s an odd song because her voice is so much higher and cheerier-sounding than most of her other work, as she’s singing about being so depressed she can’t get out of bed. Her “Unplugged” cover of Roxy Music’s “More than This” is a classic. See also Dolores O’Riordan (Cranberries).
  4. Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde). Napolitano has seen it all and knows how fucked up it all is (“Free”). But she can still be romantic (“The Ship Song”) and tragic (“Tomorrow, Wendy”). See also Amy Ray (“Indigo Girls”).
  5. Janis Joplin (Big Brother and the Holding Company). My parents were big fans of Joplin when they were together, but by the time I was old enough to remember music, they’d both gotten rid of all their albums. Too bad, she was amazing. At first I thought all she did was scream, but now I really hear her emotional range (“Piece of My Heart”, “Me and Bobby McGee”). I also believed all that bullshit about her being ugly. In the past few years I’ve seen photos and videos of her, and I honestly think she’s one of the most beautiful women from the Sixties.

Honorable mention: Aretha Franklin, Maria Bethânia, Monique Powell (Save Ferris), Edith Piaf, Linda Perry (4 Non Blondes), Shirley Bassey, Claire Torry (Pink Floyd), Macy Gray. Now for the more traditional singers. Continue reading “Ten Favorite Singers”

The Abbé de Choisy, first pass

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I’ve been doing a lot of reading of the history of France, and occasionally I encounter a famous French transgender person (in the umbrella sense of “transgender”). Today I came across mention of the Abbé François-Timoléon de Choisy. This is the first I’ve heard of him (I use the male pronouns because he lived as a man for the later part of his life), but I’ll peruse his Aventures de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme at my leisure and report back here. Sadly, his later memoirs are not on line, but they may be worth buying to get an idea of what non-transitioning transgender people can do when they get old.

One thing that really galls me is that when I searched for reference to Choisy with the word “transgender,” I came up with a bunch of links that read (emphasis mine):

1676 MTF transsexual Abbe Francois Timoleon de Choisy attended Papal inaugural ball in female dress. His memoirs, published postmortem, offer the first written testimony of cross-dressing.

It turns out that these are all copied from a publication by Lambda Legal called “Bending the Mold: An Action Kit for Transgender Youth,” with this note at the end: “Special thanks for assistance and source materials goes to James Hoagland, T. Aaron Hans, Pauline Park, Kay Brown and Leslie Feinberg.” On a cursory reading, the information and recommendations in “Bending the Mold” seem fairly straightforward and unproblematic. But it really steams me up that someone would claim as a “MTF transsexual” someone who lived over two hundred years before the word was invented, lived as his birth gender for the last two thirds of his life, and never had any permanent body modifications. Maybe something in his memoirs will provide some support for an argument that he was a “true transsexual” (blech) on some level, but come on. Way to put the screws on those trans youth, eh?

Anyway, rant’s over. I’ll update you on our friend the abbot once I’ve had a chance to read more.

So confident

grvsmth

Here’s a topic that deserves thoughtful, in-depth treatment. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that now, so consider this a placeholder.

Today Metafilter had a post linking to a front-page Washington Post article about people who hear voices. Here are some notable highlights, starting with the first sentence:

IF HARLAN GIRARD IS CRAZY, HE DOESN’T ACT THE PART.

Continue reading “So confident”

Banned, huh?

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Apparently I’ve been banned from the My Husband Betty message boards.  As far as I can tell, I didn’t violate any rules, and I haven’t received any explanation other than the mention of a particular comment that I made.  Well, I’m angry about it, but I know that things said in anger can come back to haunt people, so all I’ll say is that I expected a lot more maturity.  And that I haven’t felt like I was treated fairly there for a while, so I’d rather be banned than be a second-class citizen.

What a pain in the ass.  Oh well, life goes on.

My Story

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Guest article by Jean-François de Lafayette

This page tells a little about me. I’m Jean-François de Lafayette, and I’m transnational. Transnational people are people who are assigned citizenship in one country at birth, but who later discover that they belong in another country. There are millions of transnational people living in the United States alone. There have been many famous transnational people in the past, including Ernest Hemingway and the Chevalier d’Eon. I was born in the United States and have American citizenship, but I feel most at home in France.

I am at the beginning of a big transition in my life. In a few months I will get my name legally changed to reflect the Frenchman inside, but unfortunately New York State does not allow me to change my birth certificate, so people will still be able to see my Scottish-American birth identification. However, I’m currently saving up money and some day soon I will buy a house in France and get French citizenship. Then I will be French on the outside, just like I am on the inside. Continue reading “My Story”

Remembering M. M. Smith

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Thank you for your thoughtful piece on Michael Madison Smith, the eunuch politician and statesman. Over the course of her long life, Smith made so many changes that have improved all our lives today. As the first transgender senator of the United States of America, Smith showed us all that we can succeed without shame. As a key member of the Cherished Leader’s Forward Action Team, he convinced the Leader (MHSRIP) to cancel Jenna Bush’s proposed Great Purge and saved the lives of millions of gay, lesbian and bisexual Citizens. In her private life, he and her spouse, Nicole Stephen Kleinbort, reclaimed the term “eunuch” and founded the Two Spirit Lodge, which continues to protect and enrich the lives of eunuchs throughout the Domain. Truly a remarkable life.

Sincerely,

ROBERTO JUANITA MACLAWHORN

Grand Bullock, Two Spirit Lodge
Raleigh del Mar, Carolina del Norte

Madison Smith dead at 122

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To the Editor:

Thank you for your moving tribute to Madison Smith, the last transgender person in America. It is indeed a whole way of life that passed with her. Nowadays no one born male has any desire to wear women’s clothes, or to live as a woman, and vice versa with women. As expected, rates of depression, suicide and prostitution have all dropped significantly.

Most of your readership is too young to remember this, but growing up in lower Park Slope, Brooklyn (now sadly underwater), I saw a number of older transgender and genderqueer people around. It was fascinating for a young child to see people who had a combination of male and female characteristics. You can get a bit of this flavor from watching old movies, but it was even more interesting in person. We have lost a bit of color in our lives, but at least we can be assured that through the discovery of hormone balancing, no one will ever again have to suffer the way that transgender people suffered.

I commend the Central Executive for their continuing success in these matters.

Sincerely,

JENNIFER X. LIU

The Palms at Baffin Island

Bathrooms: A Masculine-Spectrum Perspective

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Masculine-identified, female-bodied comedian Ian Harvie and his friend, comedian Margaret Cho, were harassed and assaulted (can you think of a better word for a private citizen grabbing your breasts without permission?) in the women’s room at a Halloween fundraising party in the Waldorf-Astoria.

Read Cho’s telling of the story first for the quick introduction.

Then read Harvie’s telling for some priceless details.

This was a bit of an eye-opener for me.  I’d heard that masculine-spectrum genderqueer people got questioned in women’s rooms, but I didn’t know the extent of it.  I really appreciate now the extent of their predicament: use the women’s room and get harassed like Harvie, or use the men’s room and get arrested like Dean Spade.  Yeesh.

The Power of Fathers (and Siblings)

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I re-read my last post and was kicking myself for focusing on mothers and spouses, and not mentioning fathers and siblings. As a father myself, I always get annoyed when I read “parenting” magazines that assume that the parents are all female, so I feel I owe it to all the other fathers out there to set the record straight. I should also put in a word for siblings. Krystal Heskin’s sister has been very vocal in supporting her memory. Siblings can do a lot for each other.

A mother’s concern makes a bigger splash in the news. I could come up with a dozen examples of high-profile mothers in the news right off the top of my head, but it’s hard to think of fathers. Two that come to mind are controversial: Michael Berg and Juan Miguel Gonzalez. Of course, their sons weren’t trans as far as we know, and I can’t think of any well-known fathers of transgender people, let alone of murdered transgender people. I have no information on the fathers of Gwen Araujo or Krystal Heskin. I imagine that many of the transgender prostitutes who are murdered would not need to work in such a dangerous field if they had more support from their fathers.

Continue reading “The Power of Fathers (and Siblings)”

Whose Dead? Whose Day?

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The subject of unity and the Transgender Day of Remembrance leads me to an unpleasant issue. Helen Boyd had a relatively innocuous post about the Day, and then a transwoman named Arlene Starr attacked her for presuming to use the phrase “our dead.” You see, Helen is not trans herself (although she has described having transgender feelings), she’s “only” married to a transwoman. Kind of the way I’m “just a cross-dresser.”

The problem is, God forbid I’m ever killed, who would suffer the most? My wife, my son and the rest of my family. Who worries the most about me getting attacked? My wife and my mother. The same is true, by and large, for Helen’s husband Betty. Think about Sylvia Guerrero (PDF), mother of Gwen Araujo, and Jennie Heskin, mother of Krystal Heskin.

Think, also, about the impact that spouses and mothers have had on public policy when their children’s lives are at stake. No one wants to be against motherhood, and very few people want to be seen as coming between a mother and her children. (The less said the better about those who are against marriage for transpeople, or who would come between a transperson and their partner.) I’m very proud that my own mother has been active in this area, and I think it’s made a difference. Our loved ones are natural allies in this.

Most importantly, as Marlena Dahlstrom wrote in the comments on Starr’s blog, partners and other loved ones can be targets too. Private first class Barry Winchell was brutally murdered in 1999 for dating a transwoman, Calpernia Addams, who has since become a nationwide community leader.

(Interestingly, as the article I linked discusses, people downplayed Addams’s identification as a woman and Winchell’s identification as heterosexual in order to construe his murder as a gay murder and fit it into a wider debate about gays in the military. While it is certainly related to those issues, it is not the same. I think this raises similar issues about claiming the dead and demanding reforms based on them as I mentioned in my last post.)