Natalie Reed, who often writes about gender politics and social justice,
calls out "born this way" (especially in a gender/trans* context) as its own form of gender essentialism:
“Gender identity” is still gender-essentialism. It’s just a gender-essentialism where we get to continue thinking men are men, and women are women, and these are inherent parts of who you are, but we also get to ignore the uncomfortable demand of DEFINING “man” and “woman” and what we mean by that, and thereby dodge the uncomfortable fact that any such definition within any essentialist framework necessarily invalidates, undermines, insults or excludes at least some trans or intersex people. It’s a way to go right on believing that our womanhood, or our manhood, or whatever “gender identity” we have, is an immutable and intrinsic quality of ourselves, and thereby maintain the comforting belief that it’s concrete and stable and unassailable, but without having to deal with any of the difficult implications of that, without having to interrogate our definitions, without having to worry about what we mean, and without having to really think about gender beyond the generally received notions. It’s a way to be transgender but still think of our genders the way cis people do.
posted by divabat
on Mar 12, 2013 -
87 comments
"Emma Stone was my dream best friend for a number of weeks. We'd see movies together. Get drinks and gossip. I remember one dream where we just texted. She resurfaced as my best friend last fall after I saw The Help. An actual friend of mine once told me a story about meeting Andrew Garfield's best friend, which meant Andrew Garfield and I were dream best friends for the following few nights. Again, there was texting." The Awl asks people:
What Was Your Weirdest Celebrity Sex Dream?
posted by The Whelk
on Nov 15, 2012 -
113 comments
Right now Baltimore, MD plays host to
FemmeCon, a biannual gathering for those who "seek to explore, discuss, dissect, and support
Queer Femme as a transgressive, gender-queer, stand-alone, and empowered identity and provide a space for organizing and activism within Queer communities". Some of the issues faced by queer femme culture include
femme invisibility in larger queer culture, the
lack of non-stereotypical role models,
being classed 'femme' by default, dismissal as
"too much", as well as intersectional issues of femme with
race,
gender, and
disability. In the meantime, femme subcultures such as
tomboy femme,
hard femme, and
FEMME SHARKS as well as
femmes in specific regions come together for
inspiration,
expression,
power,
creativity and support from each other - as well as from
appreciative butches.
posted by divabat
on Aug 18, 2012 -
111 comments
"The world of entertainment still, all too often, values women only as objects of beauty to be placed on screen and ogled. [...] [T]he world is full of other women who have profound, intelligent, often hilarious things to say, and Dunham is very quietly making a space for those voices on TV, in a way that’s revolutionary both in terms of the show’s gender politics and in terms of its presentation. - AVClub critic TodVanDerWerff on
"how [the HBO show] Girls challenges the masculine expectations of 'good TV.'" [more inside]
posted by coraline
on Jun 20, 2012 -
155 comments
We are princesses in a land of machos. "They drink beer, they are part of local governement and they are symbol of good luck for their family: they are Muxes, homosexuals of the “pueblo oaxacaqueno de Juchitan”, more than 3000 homosexuals who enjoy respect and admiration in all the country... they walk proudly in the streets, dressed as women with huipiles and enaguas, typical dress of the Tehuantepec Isthmus." Photo essay by Nicola Okin Frioli.
More at Flickr.
[more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Sep 16, 2010 -
28 comments
"In Loveland, Colorado -- population 61,000, 92 percent white and heavily evangelical Christian -- Michelle didn't know what to expect when she began to work with the school to facilitate her daughter's transition from a boy to a girl. At first, it was difficult. The school 'freaked out when I told them,' Michelle says. 'When we started with M.J.'s transition, I was envisioning riots.' And so Michelle became an advocate for transgender people -- those who identify as a gender different from the one assigned at birth. Michelle organized trainings for the faculty and staff and prepared 'cheat sheets' in case any of their students asked prying questions.
But on the first day of school, nothing happened." -
Trans in the Red States by Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Daniel Redman.
[via Obsidian Wings]
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 13, 2008 -
21 comments
Labor of Love : when a married couple wanted to start a family and the wife was unable to conceive or carry because of previous surgeries, her husband, who is transgendered and legally male, stopped taking his testosterone and was inseminated.
posted by FunkyHelix
on Mar 20, 2008 -
118 comments
[NSFW] Much of contemporary liberal thought rests on the idea of the
Social Contract. In this scheme, we agree to give up a certain amount of freedom in exchange for the protection and opportunity that society provides. Our individual lives mirror this. We defer to others when politeness requires it. We assert ourselves and our needs with pleases and thank yous. Most of daily life has some power dynamic to it, expressed with the subtlety that civilization demands. And what is implicit in daily life is made explicit in the role-playing of
BDSM, based on the idea of a
Power Exchange, where one party explicitly agrees to give up a certain amount of power to another. For most people who are into this, the “scenes” are circumscribed by rules, usually discussed beforehand, such as appropriate safewords, time limits, etc. For a small subset of this group, the typical safeguards are cast aside and the slave
surrenders all aspects of his or her life to the master. The female submissive Polly Peachum has written about this lifestyle in her essay
“Violence in the Garden” about her life as a 24-7 slave and the sexual dimensions of that relationship.
posted by jason's_planet
on Oct 1, 2006 -
219 comments
M. is a girl living as a boy and his school is helping to keep his secret. Is that just asking for trouble? And should a 13 year old be considered for gender-reassignment therapy or is this just an extreme case of tomboy-ism that s/he'll grow out of?
[NYT mefi/mefi]
posted by mdn
on May 26, 2002 -
32 comments
