Marlene says:

A couple of weeks ago, the National Queer Arts Festival hosted an event called “Girl Talk: A Cis & Trans Woman Dialogue.” Several queer cis and trans women spoke about their interactions, shared community, relationships, commonalities and conflicts.

I’ve been to plenty of queer speaking events and this one stands out both in its consistently high quality and its subject matter. I’ve been to events where trans women have spoken and some spoke of their sometimes difficult relationships with the larger queer women’s community. The most famous conflict between trans women and the larger queer women’s community is the issue of trans exclusion from many “women only” spaces.

As far as I know (and I think I would) this is the first time a group of queer cis and trans women have gotten together for the express purpose of speaking about our shared experience publicly. Listening to the show, I was struck by how obvious and straightforward much of it seemed. I don’t mean that in a belittling way, but rather I think it is a testament to the brilliance of the women speaking. For those of you with little context for this, it might seem like you’re hearing just another group of women tell what they have to tell about themselves and the world around them. That’s exactly right, but at the same time, until this night these thoughts had very little public airing. These things were mostly spoken softly between friends.

Gina and Julia (details below) gave the world something very special by curating this show. The .mp3 of the whole event is here.

The second to last speaker is Dorian Katz, my girlfriend. I am the Marlene she is talking about. While she is speaking, she is showing slides of her paintings. Here is a gallery of the images she showed while speaking.

Any one of these women’s opinions or work would be enough to be impressed by. Having them all in one place is shockingly good. This event is what originally sparked my recent post about holding back.

The speakers:

Ryka Aoki de la Cruz is all over the place doing everything. I’d swear she never sat down if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. She was recently honored by the California State Senate for her “extraordinary commitment to free speech and artistic expression, as well as the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.”

Tina D’Elia makes movies, writes plays, and makes the world a better place working at CUAV.

Gina de Vries curates events, blogs here, and here, teaches writing workshops for sex workers, and I hope that she doesn’t mind me declaring publicly that she’s a total sweetheart.

Dorian Katz makes me smile a lot and paints and draws and writes and makes mischief. Her artwork appears in The Human Pony and she will have illustrations and an essay in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, which will be out in October.

Nomy Lamm is a total badass who does tons of stuff, including Sins Invalid, Homo-a-go-go, Make/Shift magazine, and Fist of the Spider Woman.

Julia Serano is the kind of smart that just makes you say “Damn!” If I say more nice things about her on this blog, I’m going to start sounding like she’s paying me.

Rose Sims writes online here as “little light,” serves on the advisory board of the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, and is a charter member of the Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Collective. Her writing makes me teary on a regular basis.

Lauren Steely knows hella stuff about rocks and sneaks up on you with how funny she is.

Debbie says:

I was in the back listening to this event (apparently quietly enough so that Marlene and Dorian didn’t even know I was there). I want to second Marlene’s recommendation of the whole thing, and especially to say that Ryka Aoki de la Cruz and Rose Sims, neither of whose work I was aware of before that night, blew me completely away. So did Gina, Julia, Nomy, and Dorian, but I expected those to be fantastic. Not to mention the other people whose work I didn’t know, who were also extraordinary. My only disappointment was that I wished the curators hadn’t called it a “dialogue,” because that left me expecting more interaction. What I got instead was wonderful, however.

Laurie and Debbie say:

Liz from Badgerbag wrote us (and many other people) about the erotic photographer Michael Rosen’s abusive sexual behavior towards her, when she modeled for him years ago. And that she was not the only young model who had this experience. She spoke to her anger and concern that in spite of her public blogging about it, and her discussions with people in the sex positive community, that he remains an accepted a member in the community. We admire and support Liz’s courage and persistence in speaking out.

Liz said:

I am perturbed that despite years of my having spoken out in private and in public spaces about the photographer Michael Rosen’s continued actions, he has a show coming up at Femina Potens, a queer and feminist space in SF.

Breaking silence about abusive behavior is always crucial. Keeping silent even in any close and embattled communities, while understandable, is ultimately destructive to the community rather than supportive.

We know only good about the Femina Potens Gallery, and are hopeful that they will heed Liz’s words.

Pantryslut wrote this in response in an open letter to Femina Potens on Live Journal:

… It has come to my attention from multiple sources that Mr. Rosen has a history of inappropriate conduct with solo women he photographs in his studio. It is also my understanding that he has never publicly acknowledged or addressed the concerns of his former models.

Until the day comes that Mr. Rosen does, indeed, engage with the larger sex-positive community about these concerns, I, as a member of that community, am unable to continue to support his work. Indeed, I am compelled to speak out against others supporting his work or extending him our collective community goodwill. …

We agree.

Laurie says:

This portrait of Civil War black soldiers really struck me in its powerful portraiture.

It’s from a blog by Ta-Nehisi Coates, In Every Black Man’s Eyes–Death To The Rebel, about the history of black soldiers in the Civil war, reflected back and forth through his personal history of blacks and guns. He also reflects on those black soldiers and the history of racism and the South. The blog is well worth reading but it was the portrait that stopped me cold.

Ta-Nehisi:

This weekend I started in on Drew Faust’s This Republic Of Suffering and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard. I was reading Faust’s meditation on how soldiers prepared themselves to kill, and I came across this incredible passage about the reaction of black soldiers to the Fort Pillow massacre perpetrated by Nathan Forrest. It’s written by one Cordellia Harvey, sent South from Wisconsin to help with the Union wounded:

“Since the Fort Pillow tragedy, our colored troops and their officers are awaiting in breathless anxiety the action of the government…Our officers of Negro regiments declare they will take no more prisoners, and there is death to the rebel in every black man’s eyes. They are still but terrible. They will fight…The Negroes know what they are doing.”

There’s another passage in which an enslaved black woman comes upon her mistress weeping uncontrollably over the latest news–she’s lost her only son. “Missus,” says the slave woman. “We is even now.” The “Missus” had, over the years, sold every one of this woman’s children into slavery in the deep south–all ten of them.

Debbie says:

I was thunderstruck to find this quotation from the late, brilliant James Baldwin’s essay “Here Be Dragons” (originally titled “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood”). The whole essay is in The Price of the Ticket:

The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael.

All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair–to all of which may now be added the bitter need to find a head on which to place the crown of Miss America.

Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated–in the main, abominably–because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

Thanks to whittles for posting it first.

Lynne Murray says

Macbeth was talking to the ghost of the man he murdered when he said, “Take any shape but that and my firm nerves shall never tremble.”

Briony Kidd’s short film , Starring Xavier, about an Australian fat man on welfare playing Macbeth, was inspired by a “trashy TV report” presenting a real fat man’s mobility problems as if he were a bizarre creature, despite the man’s obvious charisma and intelligence. Kidd writes,

In film (and in life) people who are different are often dismissed as unheroic or comical… Why shouldn’t a fat man play Macbeth? [I]t seemed to me that someone like Xavier would understand the themes of ambition and desire better than most.

She sets her scene in what she calls the “harassment under the guise of assistance” setting of Australia’s compulsory make-work projects. These so-called “Mutual Obligation” programs are also known as “Do what we tell you or we’ll cut off your payments!” Rather than learning job skills, those forced to participate can actually be branded with a stigma that damages future job opportunities.

Kidd’s hero, Xavier, beautifully played by actor, Jason Seperic, finds himself an object of ridicule in an amateur theatrical for “unemployed losers.” Gradually, he begins to understand Macbeth’s dark ambitions and finds ways to dig himself out of his depression and fight for what he wants. By the end of the film, he discovers a voice he did not know he had..

Starring Xavier is a 15-minute film and, due to my elderly TV/DVD player, I had to watch on my computer, but it was an uplifting experience. In an email, Kidd mentioned that a small film like this can take years to put together. My admiration for independent filmmakers increases the more I learn about this kind of devotion. Watching this film got me searching the internet for “fat men on film.”

The first thing I found was a luminous 1999 essay by Dana Gioia, “Warner Brothers’ Fat Men.”

Nowadays no one is safe. Even Godzilla had to lose his trademark beer-belly for the 1998 remake. How sad to watch movies where even the heavies are skinnies.

In the Hollywood I love best, fat men filled the Silver Screen, innocent and unabashed. Few of these oversize talents played leads, though some managed top-billing, but they all knew there were no small parts, only small actors.

Gioia’s piece contains such wonderful insights that I’m tempted to quote it all–okay, just one more–his appreciation of Sidney Greenstreet, whom most remember best as Kaspar Gutman, a.k.a. “the fat man” in The Maltese Falcon:

Greenstreet never tried to act around his weight. He made it so intrinsic to his identity that it seemed not only stylish but handsome. Beauty, he understood, is not mere prettiness. It is the truth finding expression in its perfect form. Greenstreet’s rich bass voice and perfect diction also drew its distinction from his enormous physique. No small man could have ever spoken with such supernal authority.

The only other discussions on fat men in film I could find online were two documentaries.

Some of the issues of shyness and living on the fringe that Kidd examines in Starring Xavier appear in Jeff McKay’s 1994 award-winning documentary, Fat Chance about Canadian music therapy teacher, Rick Zakowich, learning to live a size positive life at 400 pounds.

I also came across Do I Look Fat?, a 2005 feature length documentary on eating disorders and body image in gay men. That’s only tangential to what I started searching for, but I’m including the link. As the filmmaker puts it: “fat is the little word with big meaning.”

A recent article suggests that Bollywood heroes are allowed more size, not to mention age and baldness, although the quotes from the actors make the acceptance sound a bit conditional. To the extent that there is a wider scope for larger actors: Go Bollywood!

I have to close with something downright silly, but too much fun to omit. As a long-time fan of big guys, I cannot resist sharing my new favorite YouTube video.

The song captivated me a few weeks ago when I heard it enlivening a chase scene on ABC’s sadly canceled unique cop show The Unusuals. At first I thought it was belly dancing music–well, not exactly. When I found the YouTube video, I discovered that the artist is big, charming guy. Although the singer/dancer is more stocky than really fat, who could resist his dancing seductively with clones of himself? A little searching revealed more about Daler Mehndi, a major star of Bhangra pop music.

Wikipedia explains the video:

The “strange” dancing and presence of only the singer in this video was a response to criticism from the world of Bhangra pop. Many critics at the time complained that his music was popular due to his videos which featured beautiful women dancing; his response was to create a video that featured only himself. As he predicted, the song was still a huge success, but the phenomenon of foreign language and unusual dancing made the video a cult hit in other countries as well.

I think of it as Bhangra caffeine. It certainly gets me dancing. My cats are quite scandalized.

Marlene says:

A few months ago now, Laurie and Debbie asked me to write here. I was flattered and excited. When they asked, one of the things they mentioned was that they thought my voice would be a good addition to theirs; that I would write things different than what was already here.

I have found myself in an odd position. While I have not been shy about the fact that I am a trans woman and that I am queer as the day is long, I have made a point of not letting all of my posts be about trans and queer related issues. To be honest, I have not wanted to be heard solely in those terms. I have more to say about the world than that. I have been afraid that some of you would think to your selves something like, “Marlene always writes about trans stuff and I’m not interested in / don’t have lots of background in / can’t relate to that stuff.” I have found myself saying “The next thing I write about should not be trans / queer stuff.”

I believe that some of the most interesting and important things going on in feminism these days are happening in the area of trans feminism. This is a relatively new branch of feminism where things are still being defined and the balance of various multi-faceted issues has not yet been established. Trans feminism is a branch of feminism that is still in lively flux. I am fortunate enough to be close to what I feel are some of the most important discussions going on anywhere in feminism. I regret that I have hesitated to bring some of those discussions here.

My personal perspective on body image issues and body politics is shaped by my experience as a trans woman. My understanding of intersectional oppressions is similarly rooted. I believe that my perspectives on these things were part of what Laurie and Debbie were asking for when they asked me to write here.

One of the possible risks in writing about trans and queer issues is that people might not have the necessary background to fully understand or participate in those conversations. It is not uncommon on mainstream feminist blogs for complex conversations of trans issues to be derailed by 101 level questions and comments. Because of that, I am setting aside the comment thread of this post for 101 level discussion and questions. I may not answer every question; I will likely point some people towards the information they need rather than writing it here myself.

If I have underestimated you, please accept my apology. I have hesitated to bring the best I have to offer to this blog because of my own anxieties. Having come to the point of this decision, it seems obvious and I almost wonder what I was thinking.

Thanks.

Debbie says:

I’ll spare you the excuses for why it took me a month to get to this particular conversation with the comments, this time with my friend Lisa Hirsch.

In mid-May, I wrote this post, which starts with the story of a woman who had plastic surgery so she could look like her daughter. In the context of my critique of her choices, I said,

“I can’t fault an individual for making a choice that gives her self-esteem and satisfaction.”

Lisa’s first comment was:

I can, at least in this case. I’m pretty creeped out by the mother who had plastic surgery to look like her daughter. It feels like a kind of appropriation to me. Whatever is going on in her head, it is far, far beyond “looking at my daughter made me feel good at a difficult time.” If that were the case, all she had to do was…spend time with her daughter. Or look at photos of the daughter on a regular basis. Instead, she adopted her daughter’s appearance.

If it were a stranger having surgery to look like the daughter, it would look like a kind of stalking. What is it when the mother does it?

Good question.

Lisa and I had a bit of exchange in the comments section, which you can see here.

Now I absolutely understand where Lisa is coming from. I couldn’t write my share of this blog if I didn’t have strong (sometimes hyperdeveloped) opinions about things that are and are not good for both individuals and the community or society. I believe that body hatred kills. I believe that weight loss surgery is extremely dangerous. I believe that trying to live up to an impossible ideal of beauty is self-destructive. I believe that aging is part of living, and that trying to disguise or significantly slow down the process is both unhealthy and disturbing.

I also believe, with Pema Chodron, that we all “start where we are.” It’s taken both a lot of privilege and a lot of work to get to where I am about body image. I have the option of expecting everyone else to be more or less where I am, or accepting that people are all over the spectrum, and the ones who don’t see things the way I do are under enormous social pressure not to change in my direction.

I certainly don’t know everything about how I make my own choices. How likely is it that I can know everything, or even a lot, about how someone else makes her own choices? How likely is it that one news story will tell me anything of importance about how a complete stranger makes her choices? And if I did know everything, would that make it more reasonable for me to be the judge of what “the right choice” is?

When I was 21, I was an anti-war draft counselor. A good friend came to me for advice on how to circumvent the medical regulations to get into the Army, despite some health conditions. He had his reasons. I thought they were crazy and I told him that. I knew the (Vietnam) war was wrong, and I told him that. I also sat down with him and the medical regulations, and helped him figure out what would work. Now, coming up on forty years later, I might very well say, “You go ahead and do that if it’s what you want, but I won’t help you.” What I wouldn’t say, then or now, is “That’s the wrong choice for you.”

It’s actually much easier to identify wrong choices for the world, or the culture, or the society, or the community than it is to be confident of what are right or wrong choices for individuals. And yet, all social choices are made up of multiple individual choices.

I have friends who’ve had weight loss surgery and friends who are seriously considering it. The last time the issue came up, I said, “Do you want to hear my reservations about your decision?” She said, no, thanks, she thought she’d done adequate research. I shut up, except for wishing her luck and making sure there are things she can eat when she comes to my house. (She’s doing fine.) I get to have my opinions about weight loss surgery. I get to feel as strongly about them as I want to. I get to do as much research as I can and have facts and figures at my fingertips. And then I get to keep my opinions to myself unless they’re welcome.

I’m not about to stop crusading for all of us to love our bodies, appreciate how they change, accept ourselves exactly as we are. And it doesn’t feel like a contradiction to me that someone who doesn’t do that, for whatever reason or complex of reasons, also needs–and deserves–support.

Laurie says:

I saw Nisi Shawl get the Tiptree at the award ceremonies at WisCon. It was one of the high points of the convention for me. The Tiptree is “an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender.” She won for her short story collection Filter House (I just started reading it this week).

Publishers Weekly, which selected Filter House as one of the best books of 2008, described it as an “exquisitely rendered debut collection” that “ranges into the past and future to explore identity and belief in a dazzling variety of settings.” Tiptree jurors spotlight Shawl’s willingness to challenge the reader with her exploration of gender roles.”

We were talking at WisCon because I make the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship award pendant. Nisi is one of the core people involved with the scholarship.

Octavia Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. (Wikipedia)

The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship [was created] to enable writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops, where Octavia got her start. It is meant to cement Octavia’s legacy by providing the same experience/opportunity that Octavia had to future generations of new writers of color.

Octavia Butler’s totem was the owl. Many years ago I made an owl pendant for her with the understanding that I could keep the design. When the scholarship was created, I volunteered to make her owl pendant for the winners. They are presented at the scholarship ceremony. From what Nisi told me, they have been very much appreciated and that makes me really happy.

I have Nisi in mind tonight because I’ve been thinking about anger and it’s meanings a lot lately, and her post “Smile and Nod” really struck me. She crossposted it on Alas, A Blog from The Angry Black Woman.

“Some people have said they liked my introduction yesterday. Good! Stay with me now. You love me when I’m angry.

“Or anyway, you should. Especially if you’re white, because the fact that I let you know I am angry, well, that’s me being nice to you. It’s a sign of trust on my part, a measure of the strength of our relationship. If I didn’t like you, if I didn’t feel comfortable letting you know I was angry, I would treat you the way I did the woman on the bus this morning.”

Read the rest of it.

Debbie says:

It shouldn’t surprise any regular (or even occasional readers) that here at Body Impolitic we support gay marriage and we fought against California’s Proposition 8. We didn’t blog about it much, though, because we don’t generally write about electoral politics.

However, this article by Deacon Keith Fournier in Catholic Online draws a connection worth examining. Fournier, like many (but certainly not all) believing Catholics, starts from the position that gay marriage is against the will of God, quoting Pope Benedict XI from before his papacy: “To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator’s sexual design.”

Therefore, Fournier argues, accusations like homophobia and intolerance are smokescreens. Those who support equal rights and safety for GLBT people (such as President Obama) are heading down a bad path. “Efforts of some within the homosexual movement to equate how one engages in non-marital sexual acts with a member of the same sex with being a member of a particular race, or gender and thereby a ‘protected class’ for civil rights purposes is legally and socially dangerous. One is a status; the other involves behavior, a chosen behavior and a lifestyle.”

From here, it probably isn’t hard to guess how size acceptance enters the picture. It’s so easy to imagine that last sentence as a differentiator between, say, having a disabling neuromuscular disease and being fat: one is “a status” and the other “involves a chosen behavior.”

Fournier, as you may have already gathered, isn’t a very original thinker, and he follows that line to the letter.

“A very good argument can be made that obesity also has a genetic predisposition. However, I will fight it my whole life because it is unhealthy. It is a disordered appetite. Should we as a Nation decide that fat people have a civil right to be fat? Should those who insist that they resist that “genetic predisposition” to overeat be called Fata-phobic?”

First of all, he clearly doesn’t know how to use Google. He thinks he’s being sarcastic. Many of the Google hits on “fataphobic” link to Fournier’s column (including this excellent response by A Sarah at Shapely Prose), but the first line is “did you mean ‘fatphobic’?” So it would have taken him thirty seconds to find out that he was not making up an out-of-bounds concept to make fun of.

It might have taken him 90 seconds to find out that obesity is not the same as “disordered eating.” In fact, the most common usages of that phrase are anorexia, bulimia, and milder indicator versions of those behaviors. Or he might have spent that 90 seconds learning that his flat conviction that obesity is unhealthy is not a universal belief.

Worst of all, he can’t think about his own statements. Tucked between his little diatribe about obesity and a return to his rant about gay marriage, he says, “Our bodies do not lie, they speak the language written within their constitution and confirmed in the Natural Law which binds us all. ”

Sarah at Shapely Prose picked up on that sentence and very usefully went in a different direction than I did:

Specifically, you seem very worried about that “special” right — which I’m sure you have never enjoyed yourself — NOT to have your identity judged legally and bindingly “disordered,” according to one particular religious account of “the language written within [its] constitution and confirmed in the Natural Law which binds us all.”

She is, of course, right. He thinks he knows what “Natural Law” is, and his job is to tell us.

I really wish that, instead of using that comment about bodies not lying to shore up his positions, he’d thought about what it means. It’s the one point in the article where I agree with him.

My body is my body, and when I react erotically to someone of my gender, that’s not a lie. My body is my body and when I find myself hungry after what the book or website tells me should be a full meal, that’s not a lie. My body is my body, and if I am healthy and on no blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar medications at 260 (or so) pounds and 57 years, that’s not a lie. My body is my body, and when it shakes with fear or rage because its reactions, or size, or preferences make it unsafe, that’s not a lie.

Deacon Fournier has a little inkling of the truth buried in his knee-jerk beliefs. I hope he listens to his body.

Thanks to Joe Decker for the pointer.

Laurie says:

I just discovered photographer Charlie White’s teen and transgender photos for Andrew Sullivan’s recent Faces of the Day blog. They were part of a show at the Hammer in LA which unfortunately closed on May 31st.

The portraits are distanced and deliberately constructed, with serious artifice and commercial quality polish. They’re also striking, and effectively make both their aesthetic and social change points. It’s powerful work that I’m not completely comfortable with, and definitely need to think more about.

Central to this new work is a group of five photographs titled Teen and Transgender Comparative Study, which parallels two puberties: one biological, the other chemical/surgical. Over the course of a year, White worked to identify teen and male-to-female transsexual subjects who, when viewed together, would create a visual bridge between female adolescence and male-to-female sexual transformation.

In the images in White’s series, both figures are blossoming into womanhood, though each along a different path. As observers, however, we have been taught to view the subjects in much the same way: with sheer terror. (Andrew Womak, The Morning News)

I love the concept of both of them blossoming into womanhood.