Julia Serano's Blog, page 18
January 31, 2012
announcing Girl Talk 2012: a Trans & Cis Woman Dialogue
Hey folks, so over the weekend the official Girl Talk 2012: a Trans & Cis Woman Dialogue details were announced! Here is the official Facebook invite. For those of you who hate Facebook, or who are Facebook-challenged, all the details appear below.Please save the date and/or spread the word wide and far!!! -julia
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Girl Talk: A Trans & Cis Woman Dialogue
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
7:00pm - 10:00pm
San Francisco LGBT Community Center - Rainbow Room
1800 Market Street between Octavia & Laguna
Tickets: $12-$20 (no one turned away)
curated by Gina de Vries, Elena Rose and Julia Serano
cast includes: Charlie Anders, Dominika Bednarska, Gina de Vries, DavEnd, Thea Hillman, Nomy Lamm, Emily Manuel, Elena Rose (aka Little Light), Julia Serano, Jos Truitt and Pidge Vera
Queer cisgender women and queer transgender women are allies, friends, support systems, lovers, and partners to each other. Trans and cis women are allies to each other every day — from activism that includes everything from Take Back the Night to Camp Trans; to supporting each other in having "othered" bodies in a world that is obsessed with idealized body types; to loving, having sex, and building family with each other in a world that wants us to disappear.
Girl Talk is an annual spoken word show fostering and promoting dialogue about these relationships. Trans and cis women will read about their relationships of all kinds – sexual and romantic, chosen and blood family, friendships, support networks, activist alliances. Join us for a night of stories about sex, bodies, feminism, activism, challenging exclusion in masculine-centric dyke spaces, dating and breaking up, finding each other, and finding love and family.
performer bios
Charlie Anders hosts and organizes the award-winning Writers With Drinks reading series in San Francisco, which was namechecked in Armistead Maupin's latest Tales of the City novel. She's had stories in Best Lesbian Erotica 2010, Sex For America: Politically Inspired Erotica, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2009 and 2011, and Tor.com. She co-founded other magazine: the magazine for people who defy categories, and currently blogs at io9. She won the 2010 Emperor Norton Award for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason."
Dominika Bednarska is a postdoctoral fellow at U.C. Berkeley, where she completed her PhD in English and Disability Studies. Her writing has appeared in Wordgathering, The Bellevue Literary Review, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life, What I Want From You: An Anthology of East Bay Lesbian Poets, Ghosting Atoms, and Cripping Femme. She is currently working on expanding and revising her solo show, My Body Love Story, that will be performed this spring and summer. For more information, go to dominikabednarskaspeaks.blogspot.com or become a fan on Facebook.
Gina de Vries founded and co-curates "Girl Talk" with Elena Rose and Julia Serano. She's thrilled that the show is still going strong after 4 years. Gina has taught Sex Workers' Writing Workshop since 2008, and you can find her work anthologized all over, from the San Francisco Bay Guardian to Coming & Crying. A graduate of Hampshire College, Gina is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing and Master's in English at San Francisco State University. The Record, her experimental fiction novel about sex, adolescence, music, San Francisco, and growing up queer, should be hitting bookstores in 2013. Find out a whole lot more at ginadevries.com.
DavEnd is a tenderhearted, genderqueer, costume designing, accordion wielding songwriter, performing artist and designer based in San Francisco. Ms. End has released two studio albums (How To Hold Your Own Hand, Fruits Commonly Mistaken For Vegetables) and for the past 5 years, has been touring extensively in the U.S., performing at queer teen centers, festivals, colleges, theatres and backyards. DavEnd's current project, Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!,brings together the worlds of music and radical performance art in a theatrical extravaganza, exploring the effects of heterosexism and street harassment on the development of queer identity.
Thea Hillman is a mother, writer, and performer. Her book of poetry and fiction "Depending on the Light," was published in 2001. Her Lambda award-winning memoir, "Intersex: For Lack of a Better Word" came out in 2008 and is taught at universities around the country.
Nomy Lamm is a writer, musician, performance artist and voice teacher. Her band, nomy lamm & THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, is a flexible platform for collaboration with everyone and everything, including other musicians, artists, poets, puppeteers, spectators, and the moon. She performs regularly with Sins Invalid, creating musical dreamworld performance art about disability, sexuality and social justice. She is currently working on her MFA thesis, a collection of short stories called "515 Clues," and writes an advice column for Make/Shift magazine called "Dear Nomy."
Emily Manuel is a Greek-Australian becoming-Jewish writer, blogger, editor, sometime academic, musician, partner, mother to four cats, and beekeeper. She found a bee and she kept it - that's the first rule of beekeeping. She is editor-in-chief at Global Comment magazine, and her work has also appeared at Questioning Transphobia, Tiger Beatdown, Billboard magazine, Bitch magazine, and many others. She has a PhD in English from Murdoch University in Australia gathering dust in the corner.
Elena Rose, a Filipina-Ashkenazic mixed-class trans dyke mestiza, rode stories out of rural Oregon and hasn't stopped making words since. In her second year co-curating "Girl Talk" and fourth as a performer, she writes online as "Little Light," travels the country as a preacher and poet, and has dedicated herself to the work of radical love, queer theology, and justice for those who live at the edges. Her work has turned up everywhere from college classrooms to bathroom mirrors to protest marches, in magazines including Aorta and Make/Shift, and on the acclaimed spoken-word album It Is Better to Speak! Rose is currently finishing her first book, Mountain of Myrrh, forthcoming from Dinah Press, and attends seminary in Northern California, where she resides with her wife and a small but well-loved pomegranate tree.
Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, performer and activist. She is the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, a collection of personal essays that reveal how misogyny frames popular assumptions about femininity and shapes many of the myths and misconceptions people have about transsexual women. Julia's other writings have appeared in anthologies (including Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Word Warriors: 30 Leaders in the Women's Spoken Word Movement and Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape), in feminist, queer, pop culture and literary magazines and websites (such as Bitch, AlterNet.org, Out, Feministing.com, and make/shift), and have been used as teaching materials in gender studies, queer studies, psychology and human sexuality courses in colleges across North America. juliaserano.com.
Jos Truitt is a Boston native and recent transplant to San Francisco. She joined the team at Feministing.com in July 2009 and became an Editor in August 2011. Jos attended Hampshire College where she coordinated the school's annual national reproductive justice conference. After college she worked in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements in Washington, DC. Jos has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos is currently pursuing an MFA in Printmaking at San Francisco Art Institute.
Pidge Vera is a mixed-race queer femme writer, performer and choreographer, living an awesome and strangely grown up life in Oakland, CA. Her interests and activist work include, but are not limited to: self-care, feminism, sexual assault and interpersonal violence prevention and advocacy, storytelling, dance, queers, femmes, fashion, baking killer peanut-butter cookies, and passionate karaoke performances. She is currently adapting her research thesis on eating disorders, narrative construction, and embodied practice into a book, and will talk about it at length if you let her. Pidge resides with her wife and Cleis, the littlest of pomegranate trees.
January 19, 2012
Upcoming queer trans women & cis women events!
First, SF Bay Area folks, save the date: On Thursday, March 29th, me & my co-curators Gina de Vries and Elena Rose will be presenting the fourth annual Girl Talk, a cis and trans woman dialogue! Rest assured, I will be posting more details in the very near future. (more info about Girl Talk more generally, including video clips from the 2011 show, can be found by following the above link)...
Also, speaking of events that foster dialogue between queer cis and queer trans women, last week I tweeted about the following conference, but for those who missed it:
this Saturday (January 21) in Toronto is an awesome day-long event called: No More Apologies: Queer Trans and Cis Women, Coming/Cumming Together! All the details are available in that link.
Yay, lots of awesome art & community building! more to come! -j.
Also, speaking of events that foster dialogue between queer cis and queer trans women, last week I tweeted about the following conference, but for those who missed it:
this Saturday (January 21) in Toronto is an awesome day-long event called: No More Apologies: Queer Trans and Cis Women, Coming/Cumming Together! All the details are available in that link.
Yay, lots of awesome art & community building! more to come! -j.
Femme conference call for submissions
Hi folks, just figured I would pass this along, as some folks who follow my blog might be interested. It is a press release from the Femme 2012 conference, which will be in Baltimore this August. Not sure if I will be there, given that it is kinda sorta on the other side of the country from me. But if you have an interest in attending or presenting in some capacity, I encourage you to check it out... -j.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National Call for Submissions & SF Event!
Call for Workshops, Papers, Panels, Films, Performance, and Visual Art Femme2012: Pulling the Pieces Together
Baltimore, MD
August 17-19, 2012
www.femmecollective.com
Femme2012: Pulling the Pieces Together is a multi-threaded conference and forum for those who think about, talk about, and create Femme as a queer gender and identity.
Following our Femme2006, 2008, and 2010 conferences in San Francisco, Chicago, and Oakland, where hundreds of femmes and allies gathered for workshops, panels, films, visual art galleries, and performances, we again invite femmes of all kinds and their allies to continue the conversation by participating in Femme 2012 as presenters and participants.We are invested in having Femme2012 continue to reflect the diversity and complexity of femme gender, identity, and contributions. We hope for this conference to be a community-building event, as well as an exploration and celebration of what it means to build and live queer femme identities.
Submissions of all kinds are welcome, particularly submissions by Femmes. We are committed to having our presenters reflect as many different voices from within our Femme community(ies) as possible. We aim to prioritize and centralize the experiences of historically marginalized groups, including but not limited to people of color, working-class people, fat folks, trans and gender-non-conforming people, elders, youth, previously incarcerated individuals, people without documentation, and people with dis/abilities. Femme2012 will continue the community dialogues from Femme2006, Femme2008, and Femme2010. In particular, we hope that the intersections of femme with race, region, class, access, dis/ability, privilege, oppression, and marginalization will be talked about, given space, meditated upon, constructed, and deconstructed.
In addition, we encourage submissions based on this year's theme: Pulling the Pieces Together.
We began this conference in 2006 out of a desire to see femme explored and discussed from a variety of perspectives. We wanted a conference that held the complexities of Queer Femme as its central focus, while building community. Building on the dialogue and momentum of past conferences, in 2012 we hope to explore how femmes pull the pieces together. Through discussion and performance, we hope to explore both our individual and shared journeys to femme and how we honor femme in ourselves and others. How do we arrive at our femme/inine identities? How do we celebrate the joys and challenges along those journeys? Please join us in 2012 as we share our stories of pulling the pieces together.
We hope to draw participants from across disciplinary, medium, and social boundaries. We encourage submissions from anyone interested, regardless of gender or sexual identity. We are interested in solo submissions, as well as groups, panels, and collaborations. We are looking for well-thought-out, well-planned submissions that recognize and respect the array of Queer Femme experience, and we are interested in work that challenges systems of oppression.
We are soliciting contributions from anyone interested, including (but not limited to):
> workshops
> panel presentations
> performances
> research presentations
> skill shares
> activist & organizational topics
> visual art
> video or film (please see below for the film call for submissions)
The submission deadline is April 15, 2012. For information about specific submissions requirements and to submit your proposal, please visit www.femme2012.com.
To learn more about us, to read our mission, and to contact us with any questions, comments or concerns, please find us at www.femme2012.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/femmec....
2012 FEMME FILM FESTIVAL at FEMME2012
In addition, this year the Femme Collective encourages all femmes (regardless of experience) to consider making and submitting a short film to the 2012 Femme Film Festival that will be taking place at Femme2012. We want to challenge you tell your story from *your* eyes. All you need is a camera (even an iPhone is good enough!) and we'll even help mentor you along the way! It could be narrative-based, documentary, animated or some kind of in-between. How you choose to make it is yours - but the film must be made by a femme (or group of femmes) and about being femme. In order to help you get started, please include one or more of the following prompts in planning your femme-tastic short film:
- What does Femme mean to you?
- How did you come to / learn you were Femme?
- Misconceptions of Femme and how to change them
- Femme Invisibility
- Being Femme because *we* are Femme (and not because our body looks a certain way)
Submissions for the Femme Film Festival must be under 12 minutes in length. The shorter, the better --- so we can fit more films into our final program! All film submissions are due July 15, 2012, to give you ample time to finish your film. Do not let your lack of experience stop you from making a film! We will not be judging films based on fancy equipment - we're looking for honest, brave and real stories about *your* experience of being femme. So break out that iPhone or Flip Camera and start shooting! If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail Ellie (our film chair) at ellieheartbeth@gmail.com.
Attn: Bay Area Femmes & Allies! Special Femme Con Happy Hour at El Rio THIS FRIDAY!
Join us at El Rio this Friday, Jan. 20th, from 4-6pm for a very special Femme 2012 Conference Happy Hour! For every drink ordered at the bar during these two hours, 100% of the proceeds will go directly to funding the conference! Come drink & be merry with friends and loved ones all while supporting the all-volunteer run Femme Collective and the wider Femme community!
Need more incentive? How about free oysters, amazing drink specials, and FREE ADMISSIONS to the Red Hots Burlesque show starting at 7:30pm? Order up your Pink Lady or your Shirley Temple, then watch Dottie Lux, Isis Starr, Ava Lavendar and more shimmy-shake for the Femme Con crowd!
Come on down and support the Femme Conference! It will be the easiest fundraiser you attend all year!
El Rio is located at 3158 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA. - www.elriosf.com
.......................
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National Call for Submissions & SF Event!
Call for Workshops, Papers, Panels, Films, Performance, and Visual Art Femme2012: Pulling the Pieces Together
Baltimore, MD
August 17-19, 2012
www.femmecollective.com
Femme2012: Pulling the Pieces Together is a multi-threaded conference and forum for those who think about, talk about, and create Femme as a queer gender and identity.
Following our Femme2006, 2008, and 2010 conferences in San Francisco, Chicago, and Oakland, where hundreds of femmes and allies gathered for workshops, panels, films, visual art galleries, and performances, we again invite femmes of all kinds and their allies to continue the conversation by participating in Femme 2012 as presenters and participants.We are invested in having Femme2012 continue to reflect the diversity and complexity of femme gender, identity, and contributions. We hope for this conference to be a community-building event, as well as an exploration and celebration of what it means to build and live queer femme identities.
Submissions of all kinds are welcome, particularly submissions by Femmes. We are committed to having our presenters reflect as many different voices from within our Femme community(ies) as possible. We aim to prioritize and centralize the experiences of historically marginalized groups, including but not limited to people of color, working-class people, fat folks, trans and gender-non-conforming people, elders, youth, previously incarcerated individuals, people without documentation, and people with dis/abilities. Femme2012 will continue the community dialogues from Femme2006, Femme2008, and Femme2010. In particular, we hope that the intersections of femme with race, region, class, access, dis/ability, privilege, oppression, and marginalization will be talked about, given space, meditated upon, constructed, and deconstructed.
In addition, we encourage submissions based on this year's theme: Pulling the Pieces Together.
We began this conference in 2006 out of a desire to see femme explored and discussed from a variety of perspectives. We wanted a conference that held the complexities of Queer Femme as its central focus, while building community. Building on the dialogue and momentum of past conferences, in 2012 we hope to explore how femmes pull the pieces together. Through discussion and performance, we hope to explore both our individual and shared journeys to femme and how we honor femme in ourselves and others. How do we arrive at our femme/inine identities? How do we celebrate the joys and challenges along those journeys? Please join us in 2012 as we share our stories of pulling the pieces together.
We hope to draw participants from across disciplinary, medium, and social boundaries. We encourage submissions from anyone interested, regardless of gender or sexual identity. We are interested in solo submissions, as well as groups, panels, and collaborations. We are looking for well-thought-out, well-planned submissions that recognize and respect the array of Queer Femme experience, and we are interested in work that challenges systems of oppression.
We are soliciting contributions from anyone interested, including (but not limited to):
> workshops
> panel presentations
> performances
> research presentations
> skill shares
> activist & organizational topics
> visual art
> video or film (please see below for the film call for submissions)
The submission deadline is April 15, 2012. For information about specific submissions requirements and to submit your proposal, please visit www.femme2012.com.
To learn more about us, to read our mission, and to contact us with any questions, comments or concerns, please find us at www.femme2012.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/femmec....
2012 FEMME FILM FESTIVAL at FEMME2012
In addition, this year the Femme Collective encourages all femmes (regardless of experience) to consider making and submitting a short film to the 2012 Femme Film Festival that will be taking place at Femme2012. We want to challenge you tell your story from *your* eyes. All you need is a camera (even an iPhone is good enough!) and we'll even help mentor you along the way! It could be narrative-based, documentary, animated or some kind of in-between. How you choose to make it is yours - but the film must be made by a femme (or group of femmes) and about being femme. In order to help you get started, please include one or more of the following prompts in planning your femme-tastic short film:
- What does Femme mean to you?
- How did you come to / learn you were Femme?
- Misconceptions of Femme and how to change them
- Femme Invisibility
- Being Femme because *we* are Femme (and not because our body looks a certain way)
Submissions for the Femme Film Festival must be under 12 minutes in length. The shorter, the better --- so we can fit more films into our final program! All film submissions are due July 15, 2012, to give you ample time to finish your film. Do not let your lack of experience stop you from making a film! We will not be judging films based on fancy equipment - we're looking for honest, brave and real stories about *your* experience of being femme. So break out that iPhone or Flip Camera and start shooting! If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail Ellie (our film chair) at ellieheartbeth@gmail.com.
Attn: Bay Area Femmes & Allies! Special Femme Con Happy Hour at El Rio THIS FRIDAY!
Join us at El Rio this Friday, Jan. 20th, from 4-6pm for a very special Femme 2012 Conference Happy Hour! For every drink ordered at the bar during these two hours, 100% of the proceeds will go directly to funding the conference! Come drink & be merry with friends and loved ones all while supporting the all-volunteer run Femme Collective and the wider Femme community!
Need more incentive? How about free oysters, amazing drink specials, and FREE ADMISSIONS to the Red Hots Burlesque show starting at 7:30pm? Order up your Pink Lady or your Shirley Temple, then watch Dottie Lux, Isis Starr, Ava Lavendar and more shimmy-shake for the Femme Con crowd!
Come on down and support the Femme Conference! It will be the easiest fundraiser you attend all year!
El Rio is located at 3158 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA. - www.elriosf.com
January 2, 2012
Adjustments (a 2011 personal retrospective)
Happy new year everyone!
So back in the early fall of 2010, I set a goal for myself: I promised myself that I would finish writing my (currently untitled) second book by the end of 2011. It was a new years resolution of sorts, albeit made several months in advance of Janurary 1st. However, sometimes in life, things do not go quite as planned.
When I made that commitment, what I did not know was that the minor "scalp problem" I was dealing with would eventually blossom into my first major full-on psoriasis flare up. At the time, I was unaware that I had the condition. In fact, I did not even know what psoriasis was, although later I would find out that it was the condition that was responsible for all the scabs that covered my grandmother's legs, which I remember from back when I was a kid. And I would later find out that several other relatives on that side of my family had it too, although they covered it up by always wearing long sleeves and long pants. Even though it ran in the family, no one ever really talked about it (or at least they did not talk about it around me).
In early November 2010, after one of the most restless nights of my life (and I've had quite a few of those along the way), as my scalp literally felt like it was on fire, I made an emergency appointment to see my dermatologist. She told me that it was psoriasis. She prescribed me really hardcore topical meds for it, which helped ease the burning, but it did not make my psoriasis go away. In fact, as that month progressed, I noticed that P patches were appearing on other parts of my body.
This time last year (around new years 2011), I was absolutely miserable. Miserable, because my scalp still itched and burned—it was so red, that on Christmas day, my nieces kept asking me how I got sunburned on the top of my head. Miserable, because the scalp psoriasis, in combination with the plaque removal treatments I was prescribed, led to me losing almost half of the hair on my head (I am honestly not exaggerating). Miserable, because the cold and dry winter weather in Philadelphia (where my family lives) exacerbated my condition, and by the time it was over, I had patches (symmetrically, on both sides of the body) on my neck, chest, belly button, knees, shins, and fingers. I was miserable, because the P on my fingers made them so sensitive, I could not type for more than 5 minutes at a time. Miserable, because while paging through a Time Magazine at my Dad's house, I saw an ad for Enbrel, the immunosuppressant my dermatologist suggested as the next potential step if my topical meds weren't doing the trick (and they seemingly weren't). The Enbrel ad was three pages long: One page for all the benefits of the drug, followed by two pages (in small print, of course) for all of the nasty side effects.
So this time last year, upon returning from my family Christmas visit, I decided I was going to take things into my own hands. I joined a psoriasis message board and began to consume all the posts. I did exhaustive internet and PubMed searches (a bonus of being a biologist at a university is that I have access to, and am familiar enough with the bio/medical jargon to understand, all the scientific literature on the subject). I sought out, and followed up on, every clue that I could find that might possibly lead to some way to send my P back into remission.
Over the last year, I cannot tell you how many articles I've read about psoriasis and auto-immune conditions; about how the immune system functions, and how it is affected by diet, stress and sleep; about the complex back-and-forth communication that goes on between the brain, the skin, the gut, and its microbial flora. Over the course of the last year, I tried all sorts of potential psoriasis remedies, both scientific and anecdotal: I changed my diet in various ways, took supplements of various sorts, exercised, slept more, took up meditation, took baths in Dead Sea salts and lemon Joy (seriously, some people swear by the lemon Joy), spent time in the sun, tried applying glycerol, oils and various sorts of lotions onto my skin, and so on.
Eventually, I found the right combination that seemed to improve my situation.* By March and April 2011, all of my P patches disappeared except for my scalp, which still persists, but it is not nearly as bad as it was. All my hair grew back. I am still reading, and still experimenting, in the hopes that I can drive my P completely into remission. But for now, it seems that we (aka, my will, my skin, and my immune system) have reached a status quo with regards to the whole P-thing.
So 2011 was a very different year than I initially planned it to be. I made very little progress on book #2. But on the other hand, I did learn more than I ever could have imagined about psoriasis, the immune system, diet, and related topics. And as a bonus, all the extra sleep I got in the first half of 2011 allowed me to really become well-versed at lucid dreaming! But most important of all, I learned a crucial life lesson in 2011, one that led to the title of this post: Adjustments.
So to explain what I mean by "adjustments," I am going to have to briefly digress into a discussion of baseball (sorry sports haters! but I promise, this will be relatively painless, and well worth your patience).
So baseball happens to be my favorite sport—in fact, it is the only sport that I follow these days. When people ask me (sometimes incredulously!) why I like baseball, I often bring up how nostalgic it is for me. When I was a young child, I wanted to grow up to be a Major League Baseball player (who knows, under different circumstances, I may have turned out to be the first MLB trans woman middle infielder!). I also first decided to change my sex at a little league game, and writing and publicly singing a song about that experience became one of the very first somewhat "out-as-trans" moments in my life.
Aside from nostalgia and the intersection with my trans experiences, there are other things that I like about baseball. I like the strategy, and how there is time between each play to consider what the next best move would be. I like the long history of the game, and how it has become the most diverse sport with regard to ethnicity and the size/shape/ability of players' bodies. And it is one of the only sports where, no matter how badly you are losing, no matter how late in the game, you can always come back and win (because there are no time limits). All these aspects make the game enjoyable for me. But the thing that I find most amazing about baseball is (as baseball pundits often say) it is "a game of adjustments."
What does that mean? Well, in pretty much every other sport, if you are a great athlete at your position, and if you have talent, and if you stay healthy, it is almost guaranteed that you will be great every year. But in baseball, you can come into the majors and have one or two great years. However, because it is a game where pitchers face batters one-on-one, over time, people will eventually figure out your vulnerabilities. They will realize that you can't hit a certain pitch, or they will figure out how to hit your curve ball, or they will notice that you are prone to making some particular mistake, etc. And when they do find out your vulnerability, they will exploit it. Unless, of course, you compensate.
Many players have one or two good years, and then fade away. But the great players (as they say) make adjustments. Once other teams start figuring them out, and once they start slumping, they change their routine. Their batting stance. The way they throw the ball. Perhaps even their entire approach to the game. These are athletes who have played baseball their entire lives, and yet, sometimes they have to start all over from scratch, and learn how to do things in an entirely new way, all in order to compensate for their new situation. Making adjustments is what a baseball player needs to do in order to persevere.
So as I was saying, this time last year, I was in a bad place. I was miserable, not only because of my physical pain, but because at that time I was only able to view my situation in terms of loss—how having P interfered with my life, interfered with my writing, made it difficult for me to do some of the things that I like to do, and so on. But shortly thereafter, it struck me that life (to borrow the baseball saying) "is a game of adjustments." So instead of seeing P in wholly negative terms, I began viewing it as simply a new life situation that I now needed to adapt to.
Today, as I contemplate the beginning of a new year, a couple thoughts spring into my mind. First, I am grateful for my relatively good health at this moment. But I know that this is something that I cannot take for granted. My P is in remission, but of course, remission means that it could come back at any time. I am at peace with that, because I know that if that does happen, I will simply make the adjustments I need to make.
But in addition to that, when I think about the upcoming year, I realize that I am viewing it in a somewhat novel way, at least for me. I always used to think of my future in a rather linear way. I'd make goals for myself. I would think about where I wanted to be one year from now, in my career, writing, performance, relationships, family, etc. I would think about all the places that I wanted to go, and the things that I wanted to do during that time frame.
But this year, in the wake of what has been a very transformative year for me, when I think about where I will be this time next year, and what all I will accomplish between now and then, I honestly do not know what to expect. I am not making any assumptions about where I will be or what I will be doing. I expect that my life will be somewhat similar to what it is now, but I also expect that a number of unexpected things will enter into my life. Hopefully most of them will be good. But some of them may be bad. And when they happen, rather than viewing them as potential obstacles or obstructions, I will instead see them as new life situations, and I will make the appropriate adjustments. And upon making those adjustments, my life will become different than what it is now. And I am OK with that.
I used to see my life as a linear path, and that perspective led me to view unexpected circumstances as detours or potential dead ends. But now, I see my life as having the potential to veer off in all sorts of directions. And if my life takes an unexpected turn, no worries, that will simply be the new path that I am on.
Having said all that, I am not completely without goals or direction. I am working hard to finish writing book #2 before the end of this year (hopefully sooner!). I suppose you could say that this is my new year's resolution, in that I am working hard toward that goal. But unlike the previous year, this year, I am well aware that I may have to adjust that plan if my life situation requires it.
-julia
p.s., I promise that book # 2 will not have any baseball in it!
*So some people who read this may have psoriasis or some other auto-immune condition, and may be curious/interested in what precisely helped send my P mostly into remission. At some point, I plan to write about my self-care regime in more detail. But in short, most of the positive changes I made are described in Jack Challem's book The Inflammation Syndrome. Basically, the book discusses the ways in which the modern Western diet exacerbates inflammation, and based on it, I decided to cut out/cut down certain foods, plus take certain supplements (especially those that adjust the omega 3/6 ratio (btw, GLA is the bomb!)). Also, my P flare up occurred not too long after I was on antibiotics for a month, and disturbances in gut microflora are known to send the immune system into a tizzy. So I've found that taking probiotics and other IBS-related remedies have been helpful for me as well.
So back in the early fall of 2010, I set a goal for myself: I promised myself that I would finish writing my (currently untitled) second book by the end of 2011. It was a new years resolution of sorts, albeit made several months in advance of Janurary 1st. However, sometimes in life, things do not go quite as planned.
When I made that commitment, what I did not know was that the minor "scalp problem" I was dealing with would eventually blossom into my first major full-on psoriasis flare up. At the time, I was unaware that I had the condition. In fact, I did not even know what psoriasis was, although later I would find out that it was the condition that was responsible for all the scabs that covered my grandmother's legs, which I remember from back when I was a kid. And I would later find out that several other relatives on that side of my family had it too, although they covered it up by always wearing long sleeves and long pants. Even though it ran in the family, no one ever really talked about it (or at least they did not talk about it around me).
In early November 2010, after one of the most restless nights of my life (and I've had quite a few of those along the way), as my scalp literally felt like it was on fire, I made an emergency appointment to see my dermatologist. She told me that it was psoriasis. She prescribed me really hardcore topical meds for it, which helped ease the burning, but it did not make my psoriasis go away. In fact, as that month progressed, I noticed that P patches were appearing on other parts of my body.
This time last year (around new years 2011), I was absolutely miserable. Miserable, because my scalp still itched and burned—it was so red, that on Christmas day, my nieces kept asking me how I got sunburned on the top of my head. Miserable, because the scalp psoriasis, in combination with the plaque removal treatments I was prescribed, led to me losing almost half of the hair on my head (I am honestly not exaggerating). Miserable, because the cold and dry winter weather in Philadelphia (where my family lives) exacerbated my condition, and by the time it was over, I had patches (symmetrically, on both sides of the body) on my neck, chest, belly button, knees, shins, and fingers. I was miserable, because the P on my fingers made them so sensitive, I could not type for more than 5 minutes at a time. Miserable, because while paging through a Time Magazine at my Dad's house, I saw an ad for Enbrel, the immunosuppressant my dermatologist suggested as the next potential step if my topical meds weren't doing the trick (and they seemingly weren't). The Enbrel ad was three pages long: One page for all the benefits of the drug, followed by two pages (in small print, of course) for all of the nasty side effects.
So this time last year, upon returning from my family Christmas visit, I decided I was going to take things into my own hands. I joined a psoriasis message board and began to consume all the posts. I did exhaustive internet and PubMed searches (a bonus of being a biologist at a university is that I have access to, and am familiar enough with the bio/medical jargon to understand, all the scientific literature on the subject). I sought out, and followed up on, every clue that I could find that might possibly lead to some way to send my P back into remission.
Over the last year, I cannot tell you how many articles I've read about psoriasis and auto-immune conditions; about how the immune system functions, and how it is affected by diet, stress and sleep; about the complex back-and-forth communication that goes on between the brain, the skin, the gut, and its microbial flora. Over the course of the last year, I tried all sorts of potential psoriasis remedies, both scientific and anecdotal: I changed my diet in various ways, took supplements of various sorts, exercised, slept more, took up meditation, took baths in Dead Sea salts and lemon Joy (seriously, some people swear by the lemon Joy), spent time in the sun, tried applying glycerol, oils and various sorts of lotions onto my skin, and so on.
Eventually, I found the right combination that seemed to improve my situation.* By March and April 2011, all of my P patches disappeared except for my scalp, which still persists, but it is not nearly as bad as it was. All my hair grew back. I am still reading, and still experimenting, in the hopes that I can drive my P completely into remission. But for now, it seems that we (aka, my will, my skin, and my immune system) have reached a status quo with regards to the whole P-thing.
So 2011 was a very different year than I initially planned it to be. I made very little progress on book #2. But on the other hand, I did learn more than I ever could have imagined about psoriasis, the immune system, diet, and related topics. And as a bonus, all the extra sleep I got in the first half of 2011 allowed me to really become well-versed at lucid dreaming! But most important of all, I learned a crucial life lesson in 2011, one that led to the title of this post: Adjustments.
So to explain what I mean by "adjustments," I am going to have to briefly digress into a discussion of baseball (sorry sports haters! but I promise, this will be relatively painless, and well worth your patience).
So baseball happens to be my favorite sport—in fact, it is the only sport that I follow these days. When people ask me (sometimes incredulously!) why I like baseball, I often bring up how nostalgic it is for me. When I was a young child, I wanted to grow up to be a Major League Baseball player (who knows, under different circumstances, I may have turned out to be the first MLB trans woman middle infielder!). I also first decided to change my sex at a little league game, and writing and publicly singing a song about that experience became one of the very first somewhat "out-as-trans" moments in my life.
Aside from nostalgia and the intersection with my trans experiences, there are other things that I like about baseball. I like the strategy, and how there is time between each play to consider what the next best move would be. I like the long history of the game, and how it has become the most diverse sport with regard to ethnicity and the size/shape/ability of players' bodies. And it is one of the only sports where, no matter how badly you are losing, no matter how late in the game, you can always come back and win (because there are no time limits). All these aspects make the game enjoyable for me. But the thing that I find most amazing about baseball is (as baseball pundits often say) it is "a game of adjustments."
What does that mean? Well, in pretty much every other sport, if you are a great athlete at your position, and if you have talent, and if you stay healthy, it is almost guaranteed that you will be great every year. But in baseball, you can come into the majors and have one or two great years. However, because it is a game where pitchers face batters one-on-one, over time, people will eventually figure out your vulnerabilities. They will realize that you can't hit a certain pitch, or they will figure out how to hit your curve ball, or they will notice that you are prone to making some particular mistake, etc. And when they do find out your vulnerability, they will exploit it. Unless, of course, you compensate.
Many players have one or two good years, and then fade away. But the great players (as they say) make adjustments. Once other teams start figuring them out, and once they start slumping, they change their routine. Their batting stance. The way they throw the ball. Perhaps even their entire approach to the game. These are athletes who have played baseball their entire lives, and yet, sometimes they have to start all over from scratch, and learn how to do things in an entirely new way, all in order to compensate for their new situation. Making adjustments is what a baseball player needs to do in order to persevere.
So as I was saying, this time last year, I was in a bad place. I was miserable, not only because of my physical pain, but because at that time I was only able to view my situation in terms of loss—how having P interfered with my life, interfered with my writing, made it difficult for me to do some of the things that I like to do, and so on. But shortly thereafter, it struck me that life (to borrow the baseball saying) "is a game of adjustments." So instead of seeing P in wholly negative terms, I began viewing it as simply a new life situation that I now needed to adapt to.
Today, as I contemplate the beginning of a new year, a couple thoughts spring into my mind. First, I am grateful for my relatively good health at this moment. But I know that this is something that I cannot take for granted. My P is in remission, but of course, remission means that it could come back at any time. I am at peace with that, because I know that if that does happen, I will simply make the adjustments I need to make.
But in addition to that, when I think about the upcoming year, I realize that I am viewing it in a somewhat novel way, at least for me. I always used to think of my future in a rather linear way. I'd make goals for myself. I would think about where I wanted to be one year from now, in my career, writing, performance, relationships, family, etc. I would think about all the places that I wanted to go, and the things that I wanted to do during that time frame.
But this year, in the wake of what has been a very transformative year for me, when I think about where I will be this time next year, and what all I will accomplish between now and then, I honestly do not know what to expect. I am not making any assumptions about where I will be or what I will be doing. I expect that my life will be somewhat similar to what it is now, but I also expect that a number of unexpected things will enter into my life. Hopefully most of them will be good. But some of them may be bad. And when they happen, rather than viewing them as potential obstacles or obstructions, I will instead see them as new life situations, and I will make the appropriate adjustments. And upon making those adjustments, my life will become different than what it is now. And I am OK with that.
I used to see my life as a linear path, and that perspective led me to view unexpected circumstances as detours or potential dead ends. But now, I see my life as having the potential to veer off in all sorts of directions. And if my life takes an unexpected turn, no worries, that will simply be the new path that I am on.
Having said all that, I am not completely without goals or direction. I am working hard to finish writing book #2 before the end of this year (hopefully sooner!). I suppose you could say that this is my new year's resolution, in that I am working hard toward that goal. But unlike the previous year, this year, I am well aware that I may have to adjust that plan if my life situation requires it.
-julia
p.s., I promise that book # 2 will not have any baseball in it!
*So some people who read this may have psoriasis or some other auto-immune condition, and may be curious/interested in what precisely helped send my P mostly into remission. At some point, I plan to write about my self-care regime in more detail. But in short, most of the positive changes I made are described in Jack Challem's book The Inflammation Syndrome. Basically, the book discusses the ways in which the modern Western diet exacerbates inflammation, and based on it, I decided to cut out/cut down certain foods, plus take certain supplements (especially those that adjust the omega 3/6 ratio (btw, GLA is the bomb!)). Also, my P flare up occurred not too long after I was on antibiotics for a month, and disturbances in gut microflora are known to send the immune system into a tizzy. So I've found that taking probiotics and other IBS-related remedies have been helpful for me as well.
December 6, 2011
Ten years ago today...
So I have been a bit lax with regards to blogging lately. After a bunch of September and October posts, I became swamped with a number of out-of-town university presentations and local panels & book readings. I have also been trying to focus in earnest on book number two. It had been going rather slowly, in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. So I have committed myself to waking up extra early (5 or 6am) each day to get a solid 2 or 3 hours of writing in before heading off to work (that is how I managed to write Whipping Girl). On the bright side, I have been making good progress! The downside has been less sleep and less time for blogging...
Also, I want to thanks everyone for all the quotes from queer women who partner with trans women and/or cis men. I plan to compile them this month - as soon as I do, I will put them up on my blog, I promise! (and for those still interested, I'd be happy to accept more submissions until then). So those who follow my blog, you have that to look forward to. Plus I will likely be posting some small excerpts of book #2 along the way...
But in the meantime, I really wanted to make a point to post today because it is a very special anniversary for me. Exactly ten years ago today, I began living as a woman. Granted, it is a somewhat arbitrary date, as I was female-identified well before then, and people were reading/treating me as female before then. But basically, it was the day that I officially stopped using my old male name and presenting myself as male.
It is soooooooo hard to believe that it's been ten years! I remember being on a trans email list when I was first looking into transitioning, and sharing an exchange with a trans woman who said that she had been living "full time" for a year and a half. And I remember being in awe of that. I was so anxious to transition, and the idea of being a whopping year and a half post-transition seemed absolutely mind-blowing. Now here I am ten years post-transition. Who'd a thunk it?
This whole late November/early December time period is chock full of trans related anniversaries (tranniversaries?) for me. November 27, 2000 was the day when I kinda sorta made the decision to transition. And two years ago tomorrow (December 7th) was the date of my bottom surgery. I feel the desire to commemorate all of these anniversaries by saying something really really profound. But despite all my efforts to be poignant, only two simple thoughts come to mind:
I am truly grateful to be where I am now.
And time flies like the wind. (But fruit flies like bananas.)...
Also, I want to thanks everyone for all the quotes from queer women who partner with trans women and/or cis men. I plan to compile them this month - as soon as I do, I will put them up on my blog, I promise! (and for those still interested, I'd be happy to accept more submissions until then). So those who follow my blog, you have that to look forward to. Plus I will likely be posting some small excerpts of book #2 along the way...
But in the meantime, I really wanted to make a point to post today because it is a very special anniversary for me. Exactly ten years ago today, I began living as a woman. Granted, it is a somewhat arbitrary date, as I was female-identified well before then, and people were reading/treating me as female before then. But basically, it was the day that I officially stopped using my old male name and presenting myself as male.
It is soooooooo hard to believe that it's been ten years! I remember being on a trans email list when I was first looking into transitioning, and sharing an exchange with a trans woman who said that she had been living "full time" for a year and a half. And I remember being in awe of that. I was so anxious to transition, and the idea of being a whopping year and a half post-transition seemed absolutely mind-blowing. Now here I am ten years post-transition. Who'd a thunk it?
This whole late November/early December time period is chock full of trans related anniversaries (tranniversaries?) for me. November 27, 2000 was the day when I kinda sorta made the decision to transition. And two years ago tomorrow (December 7th) was the date of my bottom surgery. I feel the desire to commemorate all of these anniversaries by saying something really really profound. But despite all my efforts to be poignant, only two simple thoughts come to mind:
I am truly grateful to be where I am now.
And time flies like the wind. (But fruit flies like bananas.)...
November 2, 2011
julia events update november 2011
Hi folks, I hope this update finds you well!
So like I said in my last update, I have a veritable slew of events (both SF Bay Area & out of town) this November! here they are:
1) Out of town
On Monday, November 7, I will be at Amherst College, MA giving a presentation called "Putting the Feminine Back Into Feminism". It will take place on campus at the Paino Lecture Hall, Beneski Earth Sciences Building from 8:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m. More info can be found here:
http://events.amherst.edu/2011/11/07/4442/
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=105631346213920
Directions: For a map of the Amherst College campus, visit https://www.amherst.edu/map/ Questions? e-mail pridealliance@amherst.edu
then the very next day - Tuesday November 8th - I will be at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA giving a presentation called "I'll See It When I Believe It: On Experience, Perception and Gender Entitlement". It will be at Miller Learning Center & Adinkra Hall (Memorial Hall) at 6:30pm.
2) local Bay Area events
it has been a while since I have read or performed locally in the San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley Bay Area. Well, as a wise man once said: "when it rains it snows!" Here are the five (count 'em, 5!) local events I'll be at in November:
--Thursday, November 10 · 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Location: Books Inc. in the Castro (2275 MARKET ST)
book release for the new anthology:
TRANS/LOVE: RADICAL SEX, LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY
Writers who will be reading (besides me) include: Morty Diamond, Shawna Virago, Vera Sepulveda, Taylor Xavier, and perhaps a surprise guest!
plus Morty will print some of my HELLA TRANS t shirtS to sell (for just the cost of the shirt: $4.00!!!)
--Friday, November 11, from 8:00pm - 9:30pm
Ceremonial Room, LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco
TRANS/GENDERING THE VOICE: JULIA SERANO IN CONVERSATION WITH STEPHAN PENNINGTON
sponsored by the AMS-LGBTQ STUDY GROUP MEETING
The program will consist of roughly one hour of conversation (about my music, writing and performance) followed by a half hour of questions.
more details can be found here:
http://events.sfgate.com/san-francisco-ca/events/show/208588466-transgendering-the-voice-julia-serano-in-conversation-with-stephan-pennington
--Thursday, November 17, 5:00-7:00
Location: UC Berkeley campus, Gender Equity Resource Center (202 Chavez)
"Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary"
so this is another Trans/Love book reading, but just Morty and me this time, so there will likely be a longer Q&A.
more details here: http://geneq.berkeley.edu/transgender
--November 28, 7:00 pm
Books Inc. Alameda
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica book reading
Readers will include editor Tristan Taormino, plus Dean Scarborough, Evan Swafford, Shawna Virago and myself.
Location: Books Inc. 1344 Park Street, Alameda, CA 510-522-2226 (Twitter: @BooksIncEvents)
Admission: Free and open to all.
--November 29, 7:30 pm
Books Inc. (Castro/SF)
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica book reading
Readers will include editor Tristan Taormino, plus Gina deVries, Shawna Virago, Michael Hernandez, Dean Scarborough, Evan Swafford and myself.
Location: Books Inc., 2257 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 415-864-6777 (Twitter: @BooksIncEvents)
Admission: Free and open to all.
..............
oh, and btw, if you are interested in either or both of these anthologies, but cannot make those events, here's what you need to know:
"Trans/Love" (edited by Morty Diamond) includes pieces by Shawna Virago, Sassafras Lowery, Max Valerio, Silas Howard, Joelle Ruby Ryan, Ashley Altadonna, Cooper Lee Bombardier and others. My contribution, entitled "Cherry Picking," is about my many experiences with "virginity" over the course of my life.
for a preview, here is the amazon site for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Love-Radical-Relationships-Beyond/dp/1933149566
but be sure to buy it at a local, independent bookstore if you can!
also, there will be YouTube videos for many of the pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xVvRc-Fg_Y
here is the link to a short excerpt of my piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwT_Ruufqxk
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica (edited by Tristan Taormino) includes pieces by Kate Bornstein, Patrick Califia, S. Bear Bergman, Ivan Coyote, Laura Antoniou, Helen Boyd, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Toni Amato, Alicia E. Goranson, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Gina de Vries and others. My contribution happens to be about my long ago brief experimentation with a recreational drug that begins with a V...
for a preview, here is the amazon site for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Take-Me-There-Genderqueer-Erotica/dp/157344720X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314479942&sr=8-1
but be sure to buy it at a local, independent bookstore if you can!
also, here is a post from Tristian's blog about the anthology:
http://tristantaormino.tumblr.com/post/6556984945/take-me-there-trans-and-genderqueer-erotica-is-my
...............
there it is. I obviously have a lot on my plate this month, hope to see y'all somewhere along the way!
Best wishes, -julia
website: http://www.juliaserano.com
blog: http://juliaserano.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Juliaserano
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Serano/277728205577201?ref=ts
So like I said in my last update, I have a veritable slew of events (both SF Bay Area & out of town) this November! here they are:
1) Out of town
On Monday, November 7, I will be at Amherst College, MA giving a presentation called "Putting the Feminine Back Into Feminism". It will take place on campus at the Paino Lecture Hall, Beneski Earth Sciences Building from 8:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m. More info can be found here:
http://events.amherst.edu/2011/11/07/4442/
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=105631346213920
Directions: For a map of the Amherst College campus, visit https://www.amherst.edu/map/ Questions? e-mail pridealliance@amherst.edu
then the very next day - Tuesday November 8th - I will be at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA giving a presentation called "I'll See It When I Believe It: On Experience, Perception and Gender Entitlement". It will be at Miller Learning Center & Adinkra Hall (Memorial Hall) at 6:30pm.
2) local Bay Area events
it has been a while since I have read or performed locally in the San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley Bay Area. Well, as a wise man once said: "when it rains it snows!" Here are the five (count 'em, 5!) local events I'll be at in November:
--Thursday, November 10 · 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Location: Books Inc. in the Castro (2275 MARKET ST)
book release for the new anthology:
TRANS/LOVE: RADICAL SEX, LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY
Writers who will be reading (besides me) include: Morty Diamond, Shawna Virago, Vera Sepulveda, Taylor Xavier, and perhaps a surprise guest!
plus Morty will print some of my HELLA TRANS t shirtS to sell (for just the cost of the shirt: $4.00!!!)
--Friday, November 11, from 8:00pm - 9:30pm
Ceremonial Room, LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco
TRANS/GENDERING THE VOICE: JULIA SERANO IN CONVERSATION WITH STEPHAN PENNINGTON
sponsored by the AMS-LGBTQ STUDY GROUP MEETING
The program will consist of roughly one hour of conversation (about my music, writing and performance) followed by a half hour of questions.
more details can be found here:
http://events.sfgate.com/san-francisco-ca/events/show/208588466-transgendering-the-voice-julia-serano-in-conversation-with-stephan-pennington
--Thursday, November 17, 5:00-7:00
Location: UC Berkeley campus, Gender Equity Resource Center (202 Chavez)
"Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary"
so this is another Trans/Love book reading, but just Morty and me this time, so there will likely be a longer Q&A.
more details here: http://geneq.berkeley.edu/transgender
--November 28, 7:00 pm
Books Inc. Alameda
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica book reading
Readers will include editor Tristan Taormino, plus Dean Scarborough, Evan Swafford, Shawna Virago and myself.
Location: Books Inc. 1344 Park Street, Alameda, CA 510-522-2226 (Twitter: @BooksIncEvents)
Admission: Free and open to all.
--November 29, 7:30 pm
Books Inc. (Castro/SF)
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica book reading
Readers will include editor Tristan Taormino, plus Gina deVries, Shawna Virago, Michael Hernandez, Dean Scarborough, Evan Swafford and myself.
Location: Books Inc., 2257 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 415-864-6777 (Twitter: @BooksIncEvents)
Admission: Free and open to all.
..............
oh, and btw, if you are interested in either or both of these anthologies, but cannot make those events, here's what you need to know:
"Trans/Love" (edited by Morty Diamond) includes pieces by Shawna Virago, Sassafras Lowery, Max Valerio, Silas Howard, Joelle Ruby Ryan, Ashley Altadonna, Cooper Lee Bombardier and others. My contribution, entitled "Cherry Picking," is about my many experiences with "virginity" over the course of my life.
for a preview, here is the amazon site for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Love-Radical-Relationships-Beyond/dp/1933149566
but be sure to buy it at a local, independent bookstore if you can!
also, there will be YouTube videos for many of the pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xVvRc-Fg_Y
here is the link to a short excerpt of my piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwT_Ruufqxk
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica (edited by Tristan Taormino) includes pieces by Kate Bornstein, Patrick Califia, S. Bear Bergman, Ivan Coyote, Laura Antoniou, Helen Boyd, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Toni Amato, Alicia E. Goranson, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Gina de Vries and others. My contribution happens to be about my long ago brief experimentation with a recreational drug that begins with a V...
for a preview, here is the amazon site for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Take-Me-There-Genderqueer-Erotica/dp/157344720X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314479942&sr=8-1
but be sure to buy it at a local, independent bookstore if you can!
also, here is a post from Tristian's blog about the anthology:
http://tristantaormino.tumblr.com/post/6556984945/take-me-there-trans-and-genderqueer-erotica-is-my
...............
there it is. I obviously have a lot on my plate this month, hope to see y'all somewhere along the way!
Best wishes, -julia
website: http://www.juliaserano.com
blog: http://juliaserano.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Juliaserano
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Serano/277728205577201?ref=ts
October 17, 2011
two upcoming events!
hi all, for those interested in catching my readings, performances and/or presentations, you may be in luck, as I have two out-of-town college presentations this month, and a slew of events (both out of town & local Bay Area) in November. here are links to the two October events. In the next week or so, I will post a second update that will list all the November events...
Next Saturday, October 22nd, I will be giving a keynote talk at the Translating Identity Conference at University of Vermont (Burlington, VT). For more details, check out their website at: http://www.uvm.edu/~tic/
Following that, on Monday October 24th, I will be at Stetson University in Florida giving a presentation entitled Trans Feminism: A Performance and Discussion. More details can be found here: https://www.stetson.edu/secure/programs/calendar/view.php?id=19784
OK, that's it for now. Like I said, more details to come... -j.
Next Saturday, October 22nd, I will be giving a keynote talk at the Translating Identity Conference at University of Vermont (Burlington, VT). For more details, check out their website at: http://www.uvm.edu/~tic/
Following that, on Monday October 24th, I will be at Stetson University in Florida giving a presentation entitled Trans Feminism: A Performance and Discussion. More details can be found here: https://www.stetson.edu/secure/programs/calendar/view.php?id=19784
OK, that's it for now. Like I said, more details to come... -j.
October 11, 2011
Seeking quotes from queer women who partner with trans women and/or cis men
As a bisexual femme-identified trans woman, I have long been interested in (and concerned by) how the borders of queer women's communities are policed - where certain people, actions and ways of being are seen as legitimately queer while others are not.
In my own community, I have found two different recurring complaints along these lines that I wish to chronicle for an essay I am working on:
1) despite the fact that T is supposedly included in LGBT, many queer women find that when they are dating/partnered to a trans woman, their queer credentials suddenly become questioned or are seen as suspect in a way that is not the case when queer women date/partner with trans men.
2) despite the fact that B is supposedly included in LGBT, many queer women find that when they are dating/partnered to a cis man, their queer credentials suddenly become questioned or are seen as suspect in a way that is not the case when queer women date/partner with trans men.
(*see further notes of clarification below)
If you have any personal anecdotes/experiences/stories that speak to either of these two scenarios, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share your quotes with me.
For each scenario that you wish to share, please write a brief paragraph or two describing your experiences (btw, you may submit more than one scenario/paragraph). Depending on how many quotes I receive, I hope to 1) compile all the quotes into a single blog post that will appear on my blog (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com), and 2) potentially excerpt your quote in my future writings (e.g., in my next my book and/or articles that appear elsewhere).
For those interested, please send your quotes to me at: hi at juliaserano dot com. I can assure you that YOUR NAME AND CONTACT INFO WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED OR SHARED WITH ANYONE. Please paste the text into the body of the email (no attachments please). In the email, please also include a statement along the following lines: "I certify that all of the provided information is true to the best of my knowledge, and I give Julia Serano permission to post these quotes on her website and to allow her to excerpt them in her future writings."
Feel free to include any other contextual information that you feel is necessary to accurately convey what happened. Also, keep in mind that other people may eventually be reading these quotes, so be sure to omit any unimportant info that you feel might place your (or anyone else's) anonymity in jeopardy (e.g., where you live or work, people's names, etc.). Also, I will not be editing these quotes at all (except possibly for length), so you might want to double-check for spelling mistakes and typos.
For the record, this work is not the part of any kind of "research project." I am approaching this subject as both a queer/bi/trans activist and as a journalist who wants to chronicle what is deemed "queer" (or "not queer") within contemporary queer women's communities.
Feel free to cross-post this request on any LGBTQ-focused websites/blogs/email lists at your discretion. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at the email address mentioned above.
Thanks in advance!
-julia
P.S., for the record, I am *not* claiming or insinuating that queer women who date/partner with trans men do not receive any flak within queer women's communities for their partner choices. I am merely saying that their partner choices tend to be significantly more accepted in queer women's circles than queer women who partner with trans women or cis men.
P.S.S., I also want to clarify that I am certainly *not* by any means insinuating that dating a trans woman = dating a cis man. Trans women are women, and cis men are men. I am interested in both of these cases, not because they are equivalent, but because they reveal ways in which B and T inclusion in queer women's communities is highly conditional.
P.S.S.S., finally, I want to stress that when I say "queer women," I am talking about people who navigate their way through the world as women (whether cis or trans), and who are queer-identified in some way (e.g., lesbian, bisexual, dyke, pansexual, queer, polysexual, and potentially many other queer identities not explicitly listed here).
In my own community, I have found two different recurring complaints along these lines that I wish to chronicle for an essay I am working on:
1) despite the fact that T is supposedly included in LGBT, many queer women find that when they are dating/partnered to a trans woman, their queer credentials suddenly become questioned or are seen as suspect in a way that is not the case when queer women date/partner with trans men.
2) despite the fact that B is supposedly included in LGBT, many queer women find that when they are dating/partnered to a cis man, their queer credentials suddenly become questioned or are seen as suspect in a way that is not the case when queer women date/partner with trans men.
(*see further notes of clarification below)
If you have any personal anecdotes/experiences/stories that speak to either of these two scenarios, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share your quotes with me.
For each scenario that you wish to share, please write a brief paragraph or two describing your experiences (btw, you may submit more than one scenario/paragraph). Depending on how many quotes I receive, I hope to 1) compile all the quotes into a single blog post that will appear on my blog (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com), and 2) potentially excerpt your quote in my future writings (e.g., in my next my book and/or articles that appear elsewhere).
For those interested, please send your quotes to me at: hi at juliaserano dot com. I can assure you that YOUR NAME AND CONTACT INFO WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED OR SHARED WITH ANYONE. Please paste the text into the body of the email (no attachments please). In the email, please also include a statement along the following lines: "I certify that all of the provided information is true to the best of my knowledge, and I give Julia Serano permission to post these quotes on her website and to allow her to excerpt them in her future writings."
Feel free to include any other contextual information that you feel is necessary to accurately convey what happened. Also, keep in mind that other people may eventually be reading these quotes, so be sure to omit any unimportant info that you feel might place your (or anyone else's) anonymity in jeopardy (e.g., where you live or work, people's names, etc.). Also, I will not be editing these quotes at all (except possibly for length), so you might want to double-check for spelling mistakes and typos.
For the record, this work is not the part of any kind of "research project." I am approaching this subject as both a queer/bi/trans activist and as a journalist who wants to chronicle what is deemed "queer" (or "not queer") within contemporary queer women's communities.
Feel free to cross-post this request on any LGBTQ-focused websites/blogs/email lists at your discretion. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at the email address mentioned above.
Thanks in advance!
-julia
P.S., for the record, I am *not* claiming or insinuating that queer women who date/partner with trans men do not receive any flak within queer women's communities for their partner choices. I am merely saying that their partner choices tend to be significantly more accepted in queer women's circles than queer women who partner with trans women or cis men.
P.S.S., I also want to clarify that I am certainly *not* by any means insinuating that dating a trans woman = dating a cis man. Trans women are women, and cis men are men. I am interested in both of these cases, not because they are equivalent, but because they reveal ways in which B and T inclusion in queer women's communities is highly conditional.
P.S.S.S., finally, I want to stress that when I say "queer women," I am talking about people who navigate their way through the world as women (whether cis or trans), and who are queer-identified in some way (e.g., lesbian, bisexual, dyke, pansexual, queer, polysexual, and potentially many other queer identities not explicitly listed here).
October 5, 2011
My adventures in sexology (plus a Call for Submissions!)
My life has taken a number of interesting turns over the last ten years. And I am not talking about my transition here - if you would have told me 20 years ago that I would eventually transition to female, I would not have been especially surprised. However, if you would have told me back then that I would someday spend a great deal of my free time writing about feminism, and that some of those writings would be taught in gender studies classes, I never would have believed you in a million years.
The same holds true with regards to me being taken seriously in (some) sexology circles. I first became interested in the field as I was beginning to work on Whipping Girl (WG). Specifically, I saw a connection between how trans women and others on the trans female/feminine spectrum were sexualized in the media and how we were similarly sexualized in certain sexology & psychology theories. So, I did a lot of research on those theories and critiqued them in WG (specifically in Chapters 7, 14 & 17). At that point, I felt like I said what needed to be said, and I was ready to move on.
But after WG came out, I had a Michael Corleone-like moment: "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." Specifically, two things happened that lead to me re-immersing myself in sexological theories about trans folks. The first was Alice Dreger's high profile exoneration of J. Michael Bailey (who wrote the super-highly-problematic book The Man Who Would Be Queen). After writing briefly about this matter on Feministing, I decided to write a comment on Dreger's article (called A Matter of Perspective: A Transsexual Woman-Centric Critique of Alice Dreger's "Scholarly History" of the Bailey Controversy), which was eventually published in Archives of Sexual Behavior. For those especially interested in the minutia of this debate, I also recorded a podcast of sorts called Even More Dreger Critiquing.
Then there was the 2008 announcement that Ken Zucker & Ray Blanchard (among others) were to play lead roles in creating the trans-specific diagnoses that would appear in the next DSM. Now lots of trans & LGBT activists are familiar with Zucker's "reparative therapy" for gender-non-conforming children. But most people outside of trans women's circles are unfamiliar with Blanchard, who is responsible for creating what I feel is the most sexualizing and stigmatizing of all sexology theories regarding trans people: autogynephilia.
I won't go into the details regarding autogynephilia here (too much to say in too little space), but for those interested, I explain why the theory is so problematic (as well as why certain sexological & psychological theories & diagnoses of trans people are so harmful) in my 2009 Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference keynote talk "Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations" and on my web page Debunking Psychological Depictions of Transsexuality and Transgenderism. Anyway, when Blanchard was selected to chair the Paraphilia section of the DSM, my biggest fear as a trans woman was that he would try to make autogynephilia an official diagnosis. I felt that the only thing that might potentially help thwart that effort was if the theory was critiqued in a peer-reviewed sexological journal (as academic/peer-reviewed publications are the only ones that carry any weight in that field).
After much work, my review article entitled "The Case Against Autogynephilia" was finally published in the International Journal of Transgenderism last fall. Right around the same time, Charles Moser published his review article "Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique" in the Journal of Homosexuality. His article is excellent and makes similar points as mine, although unlike Moser, I believe that the term "autogynephilia" should be rejected for reasons explained in my article. [For those interested, a PDF of my article is currently up on the LearningTrans.org website. If that link does not work, I am allowed to share this article with a limited number of interested colleagues. So if any of you in the fields of trans health, psychology, advocacy and/or activism are interested in obtaining a copy of this article, please email me and I'd be happy to send you a copy.]
So anyway, that leads me to my very latest unexpected sexological endeavor: I was recently invited to be a guest reviewer for a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality focusing on "Trans Sexualities." While I do not know *all* of the guest reviewers, the ones that I am familiar with carry out research that positively benefits trans folks, and there are other trans voices on the review board in addition to myself (e.g., Susan Stryker and Aaron Devor). I am pasting the call for submissions below. So if you know any academic/research/sexology/gender & queer studies folks out there who may be interested, please feel free to forward this call for submissions onto them...
-julia
p.s., a point of clarification: The journal is called "The Journal of Homosexuality" for historical reasons. Despite the apparent narrowness of the name, it is a sexuality-focused journal that discusses sexuality-related issues for a variety of sexual & gender minorities.
.....................
CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY: "Trans Sexualities"
GUEST EDITOR:
CARLA A. PFEFFER, SOCIOLOGY, PURDUE UNIVERSITY NORTH CENTRAL
SPECIAL EDITORIAL BOARD:
WALTER O. BOCKTING, PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA NICOLA BROWN, PSYCHOLOGY, PRIV A TE PRACTICE IN ONTARIO, CANADA AARON H. DEVOR, SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA MARCIA OCHOA, ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ TAM SANGER, SOCIOLOGY, ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY JULIA SERANO, BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY SUSAN STRYKER, HISTORY AND GENDER STUDIES, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY SALV ADOR VIDAL-ORTIZ, SOCIOLOGY, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
The Journal of Homosexuality invites the submission of extended abstracts for a special issue expected to publish in Fall 2012.
In this volume, we seek to not only conceptually disentangle gender and sexual identities, but to reveal the myriad ways in which their intersections can be both illuminating and perplexing. To date, in academic scholarship on LGBTQ sexualities, "transgender" too often remains present in acronym only, with very real consequences for inclusion and exclusion both in terms of transgender and transsexual personhood as well as to moving studies of gender and sexual identities, and sexual practices (including sexual labor) forward. In this special issue, we seek proposals for papers that focus critically on sexual identities and practices among transgender and transsexual individuals and their partners to begin to fill the existing lacuna in scholarship and theorizing around transgender and transsexual sexualities. To this end, we seek papers that address (but are not limited to) the following issues and topics:
• Trans identities complicating binary notions of "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" sexualities (e.g., the experiences of gay trans men and lesbian trans women, making meaning of the term and concept of "hetero/homo/bi/sexuality" in the context of trans identity, how trans sexualities contribute to the "queering" of sexualities in general)
• "Doing" masculinity, femininity, and androgyny as a trans person in the context of sexual identity and how sexual identities of trans people and their partners are often (mis)"read" and (mis)understood
• Fluidity (or not) of sexual identities and/or practices in the lives of those who are trans and/or their sexual partners
• The role of language in shaping sexual identities and/or practices among trans people and/or their sexual partners• Trans persons' engagement with sex work and sexualized labor
• International representations, understandings, and depictions of trans sexualities
• Fetishization and commodification of trans sexualities—including the phenomenon, impacts, and effects of trans (in/hyper)visibility in the media (e.g., trans sexual voyeurism)
• Intersections between trans bodies and trans sexualities
• Trans sex, sexualities, and partnerships (and the challenges of conducting ethical scholarship around these issues considering the history of exploitive representations of transgender and transsexual lives)
• Inclusion and exclusion of trans people within sexual rights movements and potentials for coalition building across social movements focusing on sexualities
• Sexual safety and wellbeing of trans persons (and consideration of safer sex practices, sexual marginalization, sexual harassment, sexual assault, access to healthcare)
• "Counting" trans people (to ensure that trans people count)—demographic studies of trans sexualities
• Reviews of institutions, services, and programs that provide services and programs that include (or don't) focus on trans sexualities
• Methods for studying trans sexual identities, sexual practices, and sexual partnerships (and, further, identity and standpoint of the "researcher" and "researched"—how identity matters, considerations of cissexual and cisgender privilege)
We currently seek 1,200-1,500 word extended abstracts for proposed papers that provide a title, brief summary of your central arguments and evidence used to support these arguments, methods to investigate the topic under study (if applicable), and how your proposed paper contributes to, challenges, and/or extends existing scholarship on trans sexualities. Please be clear about the current status of the proposed paper in terms of whether it is at an incipient or advanced stage and provide a brief statement on how you intend to complete the final paper by March 2012. We seek proposals for both theoretical and empirical papers. International work and work by trans scholars is particularly encouraged. All abstracts and papers will undergo blinded peer review by a Special Editorial Board of interdisciplinary trans and non-trans scholars conversant with ethical scholarship on trans issues. To facilitate blind review, please prepare a cover page with your name, contact information, and proposal title, but do not include your name or other identifying information on subsequent pages—do include your proposal title at the top of each page. Send inquiries and extended abstracts to the Guest Editor of this Special Issue, Carla A. Pfeffer, at cpfeffer@purdue.edu by November 1, 2011. Final manuscripts should be approximately 7,500 words (about 25 pages) and will be due in March 2012.
The same holds true with regards to me being taken seriously in (some) sexology circles. I first became interested in the field as I was beginning to work on Whipping Girl (WG). Specifically, I saw a connection between how trans women and others on the trans female/feminine spectrum were sexualized in the media and how we were similarly sexualized in certain sexology & psychology theories. So, I did a lot of research on those theories and critiqued them in WG (specifically in Chapters 7, 14 & 17). At that point, I felt like I said what needed to be said, and I was ready to move on.
But after WG came out, I had a Michael Corleone-like moment: "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." Specifically, two things happened that lead to me re-immersing myself in sexological theories about trans folks. The first was Alice Dreger's high profile exoneration of J. Michael Bailey (who wrote the super-highly-problematic book The Man Who Would Be Queen). After writing briefly about this matter on Feministing, I decided to write a comment on Dreger's article (called A Matter of Perspective: A Transsexual Woman-Centric Critique of Alice Dreger's "Scholarly History" of the Bailey Controversy), which was eventually published in Archives of Sexual Behavior. For those especially interested in the minutia of this debate, I also recorded a podcast of sorts called Even More Dreger Critiquing.
Then there was the 2008 announcement that Ken Zucker & Ray Blanchard (among others) were to play lead roles in creating the trans-specific diagnoses that would appear in the next DSM. Now lots of trans & LGBT activists are familiar with Zucker's "reparative therapy" for gender-non-conforming children. But most people outside of trans women's circles are unfamiliar with Blanchard, who is responsible for creating what I feel is the most sexualizing and stigmatizing of all sexology theories regarding trans people: autogynephilia.
I won't go into the details regarding autogynephilia here (too much to say in too little space), but for those interested, I explain why the theory is so problematic (as well as why certain sexological & psychological theories & diagnoses of trans people are so harmful) in my 2009 Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference keynote talk "Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations" and on my web page Debunking Psychological Depictions of Transsexuality and Transgenderism. Anyway, when Blanchard was selected to chair the Paraphilia section of the DSM, my biggest fear as a trans woman was that he would try to make autogynephilia an official diagnosis. I felt that the only thing that might potentially help thwart that effort was if the theory was critiqued in a peer-reviewed sexological journal (as academic/peer-reviewed publications are the only ones that carry any weight in that field).
After much work, my review article entitled "The Case Against Autogynephilia" was finally published in the International Journal of Transgenderism last fall. Right around the same time, Charles Moser published his review article "Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique" in the Journal of Homosexuality. His article is excellent and makes similar points as mine, although unlike Moser, I believe that the term "autogynephilia" should be rejected for reasons explained in my article. [For those interested, a PDF of my article is currently up on the LearningTrans.org website. If that link does not work, I am allowed to share this article with a limited number of interested colleagues. So if any of you in the fields of trans health, psychology, advocacy and/or activism are interested in obtaining a copy of this article, please email me and I'd be happy to send you a copy.]
So anyway, that leads me to my very latest unexpected sexological endeavor: I was recently invited to be a guest reviewer for a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality focusing on "Trans Sexualities." While I do not know *all* of the guest reviewers, the ones that I am familiar with carry out research that positively benefits trans folks, and there are other trans voices on the review board in addition to myself (e.g., Susan Stryker and Aaron Devor). I am pasting the call for submissions below. So if you know any academic/research/sexology/gender & queer studies folks out there who may be interested, please feel free to forward this call for submissions onto them...
-julia
p.s., a point of clarification: The journal is called "The Journal of Homosexuality" for historical reasons. Despite the apparent narrowness of the name, it is a sexuality-focused journal that discusses sexuality-related issues for a variety of sexual & gender minorities.
.....................
CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY: "Trans Sexualities"
GUEST EDITOR:
CARLA A. PFEFFER, SOCIOLOGY, PURDUE UNIVERSITY NORTH CENTRAL
SPECIAL EDITORIAL BOARD:
WALTER O. BOCKTING, PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA NICOLA BROWN, PSYCHOLOGY, PRIV A TE PRACTICE IN ONTARIO, CANADA AARON H. DEVOR, SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA MARCIA OCHOA, ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ TAM SANGER, SOCIOLOGY, ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY JULIA SERANO, BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY SUSAN STRYKER, HISTORY AND GENDER STUDIES, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY SALV ADOR VIDAL-ORTIZ, SOCIOLOGY, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
The Journal of Homosexuality invites the submission of extended abstracts for a special issue expected to publish in Fall 2012.
In this volume, we seek to not only conceptually disentangle gender and sexual identities, but to reveal the myriad ways in which their intersections can be both illuminating and perplexing. To date, in academic scholarship on LGBTQ sexualities, "transgender" too often remains present in acronym only, with very real consequences for inclusion and exclusion both in terms of transgender and transsexual personhood as well as to moving studies of gender and sexual identities, and sexual practices (including sexual labor) forward. In this special issue, we seek proposals for papers that focus critically on sexual identities and practices among transgender and transsexual individuals and their partners to begin to fill the existing lacuna in scholarship and theorizing around transgender and transsexual sexualities. To this end, we seek papers that address (but are not limited to) the following issues and topics:
• Trans identities complicating binary notions of "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" sexualities (e.g., the experiences of gay trans men and lesbian trans women, making meaning of the term and concept of "hetero/homo/bi/sexuality" in the context of trans identity, how trans sexualities contribute to the "queering" of sexualities in general)
• "Doing" masculinity, femininity, and androgyny as a trans person in the context of sexual identity and how sexual identities of trans people and their partners are often (mis)"read" and (mis)understood
• Fluidity (or not) of sexual identities and/or practices in the lives of those who are trans and/or their sexual partners
• The role of language in shaping sexual identities and/or practices among trans people and/or their sexual partners• Trans persons' engagement with sex work and sexualized labor
• International representations, understandings, and depictions of trans sexualities
• Fetishization and commodification of trans sexualities—including the phenomenon, impacts, and effects of trans (in/hyper)visibility in the media (e.g., trans sexual voyeurism)
• Intersections between trans bodies and trans sexualities
• Trans sex, sexualities, and partnerships (and the challenges of conducting ethical scholarship around these issues considering the history of exploitive representations of transgender and transsexual lives)
• Inclusion and exclusion of trans people within sexual rights movements and potentials for coalition building across social movements focusing on sexualities
• Sexual safety and wellbeing of trans persons (and consideration of safer sex practices, sexual marginalization, sexual harassment, sexual assault, access to healthcare)
• "Counting" trans people (to ensure that trans people count)—demographic studies of trans sexualities
• Reviews of institutions, services, and programs that provide services and programs that include (or don't) focus on trans sexualities
• Methods for studying trans sexual identities, sexual practices, and sexual partnerships (and, further, identity and standpoint of the "researcher" and "researched"—how identity matters, considerations of cissexual and cisgender privilege)
We currently seek 1,200-1,500 word extended abstracts for proposed papers that provide a title, brief summary of your central arguments and evidence used to support these arguments, methods to investigate the topic under study (if applicable), and how your proposed paper contributes to, challenges, and/or extends existing scholarship on trans sexualities. Please be clear about the current status of the proposed paper in terms of whether it is at an incipient or advanced stage and provide a brief statement on how you intend to complete the final paper by March 2012. We seek proposals for both theoretical and empirical papers. International work and work by trans scholars is particularly encouraged. All abstracts and papers will undergo blinded peer review by a Special Editorial Board of interdisciplinary trans and non-trans scholars conversant with ethical scholarship on trans issues. To facilitate blind review, please prepare a cover page with your name, contact information, and proposal title, but do not include your name or other identifying information on subsequent pages—do include your proposal title at the top of each page. Send inquiries and extended abstracts to the Guest Editor of this Special Issue, Carla A. Pfeffer, at cpfeffer@purdue.edu by November 1, 2011. Final manuscripts should be approximately 7,500 words (about 25 pages) and will be due in March 2012.
September 26, 2011
WPATH releases new Standards of Care
Over the weekend I received an email from the group TransActive that announced the WPATH (aka, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) just released the latest Standards of Care. For those not in the know, basically these are guidelines for healthcare providers to consider/follow to address the needs of trans clients, particularly in situations where social/physical/legal transition is involved.
For those interested in perusing them, they can be downloaded at this link:
http://ugcs.net/~irene/drop/soc.pdf
I am too busy the next few weeks to thoroughly go through them, but I will certainly be interested in hearing other people's thoughts in the days/weeks that follow...
For those interested in perusing them, they can be downloaded at this link:
http://ugcs.net/~irene/drop/soc.pdf
I am too busy the next few weeks to thoroughly go through them, but I will certainly be interested in hearing other people's thoughts in the days/weeks that follow...
