Marec is een échte man. Hij is de beroemde huistekenaar van Het Nieuwsblad en fleurt zijn krant vandaag op met deze bijzonder mooie cartoon. Hij illustreert er een artikel mee van Elke Mussche, vrouw onder de Vlaamse vrouwen.

Droomt de Vlaamse vrouw van chique spullen? Nee, toch: kijk! Marec weet wat vrouwen willen.

Elke Mussche eindigt haar artikel met een hoopgevend citaat van prof. dr. Ignace Glorieux, tijdssocioloog aan de VUB. De vrouwen moeten niet wanhopen, aldus de professor:

‘Het feit dat die verzuchting [naar quality time voor zichzelf] zo sterk naar voren komt, houdt in dat vrouwen zich heel sterk bewust zijn van het probleem. Ik zie een tegenbeweging op gang komen van vrouwen die zeggen dat het voor hen allemaal niet hoeft en die bewust minder werken, de lat lager legen [sic] in het huishouden en die in hun vrije tijd ook niet zo nodig hoeven te presteren.’

Oef! Pfff … En nu aan de strijk, dan aan de kook, en vanavond later de boodschappen … See You Later.

BTW, vrouwen aller landen, hoe zit dat met jullie schoentje voor Sinterklaas? 

Omission of issue from ministerial statement does not justify neglect
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Thursday, November 26, 2009

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s new Cabinet must not forget its duty to work toward granting Lebanese women nationality rights, despite its apparent omission of the issue in the ministerial statement, gender-equality activists said Wednesday. Over 100 people heeded the call of social justice organization Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTD.A) to demand an overhaul of the current discriminatory legislation, formulated in 1925. 

The law allows men to pass on their nationality to their non-Lebanese wives and children but forbids Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese from doing the same. This injustice is further exacerbated by Lebanon’s reservation on Article 2 of paragraph 9 of the UN Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, pertaining to nationality rights. 

“The Lebanese Constitution lets any Lebanese man who marries a foreigner automatically give her his nationality and even if she has 10 children from a previous marriage, they get the Lebanese nationality,” said one woman who wished not to be identified. “But children who are born in this country and are Lebanese citizens more than some of our politicians cannot get the nationality.” 

There are about 18,000 Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese living in Lebanon and over 80,000 people affected by the current legislation, including children and spouses, according to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) “Toward Reforming the Nationality Law in Lebanon” project. 

CRTD.A launched the regional Nationality Campaign nearly a decade ago to demand reform of discriminatory nationality laws. Since then the campaign has met with considerable success, with Algeria, Morocco and Egypt changing their laws, said CRTD.A executive director Lina Abou-Habib. More recently, Bahrain adopted measures guaranteeing equality for women and Syria has enforced laws stipulating gender equality in education. “We are witnessing progress in the region. There is no excuse for Lebanon not to join in,” Abou-Habib said. Viewed as illegal aliens, those without Lebanese citizenship face myriad difficulties, including obtaining employment or affordable education and health care, are required to go for regular medical check-ups and blood tests, and face the threat of deportation every day. The difficulties faced by those without citizenship was on Wednesday apparent as audience members emotionally recounted painful experiences. 

One Lebanese woman married to a non-Lebanese said she feared for her children’s financial future. “Who is going to in­herit from me after I die? Neither my children nor my husband will benefit from my life’s work.” 

There are also a number of people who, because of a decades-old administrative oversight, continue to be denied their right to Lebanese citizenship. “Men and women are treated the same when it comes to injustice,” said audience member Haider Radi, struggling to hold back tears. “I was born of a Lebanese father. My father was born in Lebanon in 1920 and was registered in 1932 but he was then transferred to the foreign register in 1936. My father suffered from bad governance and now I’m suffering and my daughters are suffering.” 

Abou-Habib reiterated the Nationality Campaign would not accept reform of the nationality law that excludes Palestinians. Those against an amendment of the law have argued that the naturalization of thousands of Palestinian men and children would tip Leba­non’s delicate sectarian balance in favor of Sunni Muslims, the religion of the majority of the country’s 400,000 Palestinian refugees. 

But rights activists have pointed out that less than 2 percent of Lebanese women are married to Palestinians. “Any nationality law that comes with exceptions would be unconstitutional,” Abou-Habib said, referring to the Constitution’s demand for total equality between men and women. 

While nationality rights are important in their own right, Lebanon’s sexist legislation is only one manifestation of gender inequality, activists said. In a statement earlier this month, the Nationality Campaign urged ministers to include “clear statements” in the upcoming Ministerial Statement on how they intended to push forward gender equality. In particular, they de­manded clauses addressing the right for Lebanese women to pass on their nationality, the implementation of a women’s quota for municipal polls next year, and the approval of a proposed family-based violence bill. But the Cabinet has already disappointed them. Abou-Habib said Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud had told members of the Nationality Campaign last Friday that out of 30 ministers, which include two women, only he and Information Minister Tareq Mitri had called for the ministerial statement to include a clause acknowledging the need to reform the nationality law. 

Lebanese politicians’ inaction has only reasserted the determination of activists to persevere with their demands. “We’re going to go through with the na­tionality campaign and we won’t wait for any MPs to take action,” said one audience member.

Onder dit motto organiseerde Transgender Netwerk Nederland zaterdag 21 november 2009 in Utrecht de vijfde Transgender Gedenkdag in Nederland. Travestieten, transseksuelen, (gender)queers, lesbo’s, feministen, ouders, biseksuelen, homo’s, vrienden en sympathisanten uit vele richtingen kwamen bij elkaar om stil te staan bij de gewelddadige dood van 160 transgenders, die het afgelopen jaar wereldwijd het leven lieten vanwege hun anders-zijn. Daarnaast werd aandacht gevraagd voor de positie van transgenders in eigen land, want daaraan valt nog veel te verbeteren.

Al vroeg in de middag waren vrijwilligers in touw op de Stadhuisbrug om daar een informatiepunt op te bouwen. Een fraai aangeklede marktkraam en drie gracieuze bamboe infozuilen brachten de diversiteit binnen de wereld van transgenders dichter bij de mensen. Het winkelend publiek leek vaak gehaast (nog maar twee weken tot Sinterklaas!), maar stond toch regelmatig stil bij de infozuilen en zo nu en dan kwam iemand voorzichtig dichterbij de kraam vol boeken en brochures van o.a. Transvisie, centrum voor genderdiversiteit. Een aankomende transman was zichtbaar gelaafd door alles wat hij te zien kreeg.

Na drieën begon het middagprogramma in politiek cultureel centrum ACU. Een vijftigtal geïnteresseerden kon getuige zijn van een discussie via Skype met transgender activisten in andere delen van de wereld. Judith Verkerke en Bastiaan Franse van Transgender Netwerk Nederland sprak ondermeer met Revathi in Bengaluru, Zuid-India. Zij werkt voor Sangama, een grass-roots organisatie die zich inzet voor de mensenrechten van een heel scala aan seksuele minderheden: “hijras, kothis, doubledeckers, jogappas, lesbians, bisexuals, homosexuals, gays, female-to-male and male-to-female transsexuals, and other transgenders”.

Rond etenstijd stroomde de bar van ACU langzaam vol. Het rumoer van de muziek en van de gesprekken die daar nog bovenuit probeerden te komen nam gestaag toe. Communicatie verliep veel via lichaamstaal: het was goed te zien dat deze gelegenheid voor velen vooral belangrijk was om vriendschapsbanden te versterken. Als er mededelingen van algemeen belang werden gedaan vertolkte gebarentolk Eveline Kars die in de Nederlandse gebarentaal. Zij was er ook om de toespraken tijdens de herdenking later op de avond te vertalen.

Op een signaal van de organisatie begaf iedereen zich naar buiten. Ballonnen en fakkels werden uitgedeeld en de naar schatting 120 deelnemers begonnen een stille tocht door het centrum van Utrecht naar het Domplein. Deze plek was niet een toevallige keuze: vlak bij de plek waar de herdenking plaatsvond ligt in het plaveisel een steen, die herinnert aan hoe er nog niet eens zo heel lang geleden ook bij ons gehandeld werd met mensen die afweken van de heersende normen rond gender en seksualiteit:

18e eeuw
Sodomie
Barend Blomsaet
en 17 andere mannen werden in
Utrecht veroordeeld en gewurgd
hun daden verzwegen

Die werkelijkheid kennen wij hier niet meer en gelukkig waren er dit jaar geen Nederlandse transgenders te betreuren. Toch lag in de eerste toespraken de nadruk sterk op de zwaarte van het leven van mensen die ‘anders’ zijn. Marka Spit, wethouder diversiteitsbeleid van Utrecht, memoreerde aan een lesbisch stel dat uit hun buurt was weggepest en ook aan de transvrouw in Zuilen, van wie het leven in haar huis door buurtschoffies onmogelijk werd gemaakt.

Monica, bestuurslid van TNN, benadrukte het effect van discriminatie en pesterijen op andere transgenders: uit angst houden velen hun gevoelens voor zichzelf. Zij kunnen zich niet in vrijheid laten zien zoals zijn en komen hierdoor vaak in een beklemmend sociaal isolement terecht. Monica deed een beroep op de politiek om discriminatie tegen te gaan, maar riep ook op tot onderlinge solidariteit.

In het teken van solidariteit stond ook de toespraak van Sophie Schers, vrijwilliger bij Transvisie. In een bijna poëtisch betoog schetste zij vooral de kracht die zij ervaart in het onuitroeibare verlangen om zichzelf te kunnen zijn in deze wereld.

“Waar we van op aan kunnen is elkaar, dat is misschien geen voldongen feit, zoveel verschillen als er zijn. Maar wegkijken wanneer jonge vrouwen als Ebru, Paulina en Juliana uit het leven gerukt worden is als het ontkennen van je eigen wil om te leven en daarbij jezelf te zijn.

Dat maakt geen wapen van mijn lichaam, dat maakt geen wapen van mijn historie. Dat maakt wel een wapen van mijn onverbeten wil om mijzelf te zijn en die wilskracht te delen met zoveel mensen rond deze wereld.”

Ondertussen is het stormachtig en donker. Als de namen van hen die dit jaar zijn omgekomen worden voorgelezen en de ballonnen het luchtruim kiezen of in de takken van de bomen blijven hangen, kijken allen omhoog. Het wit van de ballonnen tekent zich af tegen de inktzwarte lucht. Ik stel mij voor dat die ballonnen naar beneden kunnen kijken, en daar een kring van mensen zien staan, in alle kleuren van de regenboog.

“Hier zijn wij en wij zijn er in vele kleuren!“

De foto’s zijn gemaakt door Daphne Channa Horn

De hele reportage is hier te zien.

Transgender Gedenkdag werd georganiseerd door Transgender Netwerk Nederland

I’m walking innocently along–TO THE LIBRARY–when I pass this middle-aged man.  He says hello,  so I do as well.  Then…this happens.

Middle-aged Man:  Woo!  You gotta fat ass!

Me:  …

MaM: No, no that’s a compliment!  You don’t lose any of that, you hear!

Me: Um…thanks?

Shit, I need to get that ipod fixed…

This subject is raised time and again, yet progress is virtually non-existent.

As a woman whose final weeks in Jordan were marred by a similar incident, I cannot support such a call for action enough:

Despite the ratification of CEDAW, it is evident that the Jordanian government continues to fail to take this convention seriously.

Researchers should focus on analyzing: the notion of GBV and the dynamics of acts of SV in the Jordanian society, with the aim of providing feedback for a comprehensive action program on this issue.

Also, they should refine the concept of SV through workshops, which would prepare the ground for qualitative field research in Jordan that could help examine the link between cultural norms of gender, ethnicity, and age. [Source]

CEDAW is not just a box to tick – it requires action on the ground.

How many more women must endure the degradation and trauma?

How many more must be afraid to walk to the kiosk under the cover of darkness, just because a man cannot control his lusty urges?

And for how much longer can such men pray on a Friday before committing the same act the very next night?

As with honor killings, it seems the safety of women is of scant importance to the authorities.

How far does this have to go before it is deemed unacceptable?

Henry Ford, perhaps the first businessman to market driving and automobiles to the world, famously wrote in his 1922 book “My Life and Work” that:

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”

Armed with ambition and determination, Ford did exactly that. From Detroit, the Model T was introduced into the marketplace circa 1908, quickly becoming the commodity of the new century. It was affordable, easy to learn and repair. And with a network of local distributors, the car rapidly flooded onto American streets and into American homes, much like Miley Cyrus and Robert Pattinson have broken into the hearts of teenage girls everywhere.

‘heeeeey, it’s a party in the USA!’

Such was the gusto of Ford’s marketing that in 1931, Aldous Huxley depicted Ford as the Christ of AD 2540 London, and his systems of mass production as the bedrock of a homogeneous, mass-produced society in “Brave New World”. Little did Ford know that even today, his vision would become so ingrained in the American psyche.

In the quote above, we can see a logic emerging. “No man” “will be unable to own one”, or “enjoy with his family”, the “blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces”.  Engineering, machinery, motoring. This is the realm of men.

Akin to the Futurist Manifesto by F. T. Marinetti (written just 1 year after the introduction of the model T), Ford sees a world in which, through the car, man is able to be the king of his family and the ruler of his world. He loves his home and he loves his country. By embracing the car, he is able to drive closer to God. After all, we all know driving is a spiritual activity – it’s a form of meditation through which manliness can be achieved. Manhood is defined by what’s under the hood.

However, there’s no logical reason for masculinity and motoring to be linked so strongly, but even today we can see this belief, this mythology is repeated wherever we look.

Deep within Ford’s mainstreaming of automobiles and automotive culture in general, somewhere along the way, this mythology was attached to it, and carried forth even to the current day. Throughout 20th century American popular culture, the idea that ‘car is man’ was repeated in every conceivable way that today, we accept it as truth. Motoring is synonymous with masculinity.

‘hmm, which to pick? The car, the girl, or the cougar….?’

That’s the myth. Over the next few weeks (or however long it takes), we’ll be looking at how Ford’s vision has dug and entrenched itself into the logic of a nation and the ego of a people. From NASCAR to Nightrider, bikers to Barbie dolls, we’ll look at specific examples from US pop culture over the past 100 years, looking at how driving has been driven by gender.

Maybe then, we can debunk this myth. We live in different times to Henry Ford. With the collapse of the US car industry, perhaps now’s the time to rethink how we approach motoring and driving, or atleast the ways that it’s marketed to the masses. Let’s re-examine the mythology of the American automobile…

Next post: The driving nation

Happy drivin’!
Mark

I’m not into commercialisation, I really don’t like most of the kids shows and groups or at least the way they’re marketed.  However we have managed to amass an extremely extensive Dora the Explorer collection and I’m actually pretty impressed at how she stacks up as something I’m happy for my daughter to watch.  So here are 13 Reasons I Like Dora.

1. She’s child shaped, not some distorted miniature model.
2. She’s a girl doing all sorts of active, non-traditional things.
3. She’s adventurous and goes all over the place, including the jungle and fantasy lands.
4. She goes outside and gets lots of exercise, but it’s not just organised sport.
5. She’s independent, confident and a problem solver.
6. She’s dark skinned, not a cute little white angel.
7. She’s imaginative and creative with a rich fantasy life.
8. She has all sorts of friends, male, female, cows, monkeys, trolls, …
9. Swiper isn’t purely evil, sometimes he’s good and sometimes he’s bad, which is realistic.
10. They celebrate and acknowledge good things.
11. I like iguanas, I just have a thing for reptiles.
12. Her mother is an archaeologist, professional, female, scientist, how many great role models in one.
13. She interacts with adults, it’s not just a Neverland full of children.

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun!

Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

http://www.archive.org/details/Legalease-Ckut90.3Montreal-November2009-CommunityAndRights

This month’s LEGALEASE show draws on the work of three contributors and one great host. First, Phil Duguay interviews Kevin Matthews, Executive Director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association, on the future of community radio in Canada. This is in light of recent hearings by the Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission on the subject.

Next, Mae Nam offers a glimpse into a gender sensitivity training session for the Philippine Judiciary. In conclusion, we turn to Canadian Dimension’s Alert Radio. Their piece looks at the Gitxsan proposal to give up their status under the Indian Act. Check out more from LegalEase at http://legaleaseckut.wordpress.com/ or contact the collective at legalease[at]ckut.ca

Um, if Rajon Rondo isn’t a tranny, I’m not Black.

I began the previous post with a parenthetical slur on Americans (of which I am half-one), propping myself up on two creaky stereotypes:

1. that Americans can’t (really) speak English, and
2. that political correctness is in part to blame.

Specifically, the issue was which of these two words was correct in the specific context:

• Sex, or
• Gender

Well, I thought I might regale you once again with the opinion of Johnny Grimond, our (The Economist’s) doyen of usage and author of our official Style Guide, in which style quite often becomes a window into a very British, ironic and sophisticated worldview. Here is Johnny on the matter:

Gender is nowadays used in several ways. One is common in feminist writing, where the term has a technical meaning. “One is not born a woman, one becomes one,” argued Simone de Beauvoir: in other words, one chooses one’s gender. In such a context it would be absurd to use the word sex; the term must be gender. But, in using it thus, try to explain what you mean by it. Even feminists do not agree on a definition.

The primary use of gender, though, is in grammar, where it applies to words, not people. If someone is female, that is her sex, not her gender. (The gender of Mädchen, the German word for girl, is neuter, as is Weib, a wife or woman.) So do not use gender as a synonym for sex. Gender studies probably means feminism.

See also Political correctness

That said, I seem to remember reading somewhere–and I wish I knew where–that Sandra Day O’Connor started using gender instead of sex when she got to the Supreme Court, because she was worried that the word sex would conjure up all the wrong images in her (male) colleagues’ minds during deliberations.

‘Tis the season for A Doll’s House, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s classic portrait of nineteenth century marriage and gender roles that unfolds on Christmas Eve and Christmas day in 1879, also the year in which it was written and first staged. The title’s significance, broached by Nora herself in the third and final act, refers to the identical ways her father and husband perceived and treated her–like a child in an arrested state of development, a p(r)etty play thing for life.

Often identified as Ibsen’s “feminist play,” A Doll’s House was so controversial when it premiered  that it was banned in Germany and Britain until Ibsen wrote an alternate “happy ending.”  The irony, of course, lies in the fact that the original ending (and the one that gets staged almost without exception) is what most now would consider the “happy ending” because in this version, Nora leaves her oppressive husband, boldly vowing to honor her duty to herself, to her own human rights, even if it means casting off her socially prescribed marital and maternal duties.  Nora’s dramatic exit from the stage and her marriage has come to be viewed as a historic social moment because of its metaphoric resonance–she had also slammed the door on Bourgeois patriarchy.  Watching the play today reminds us of how far we have come and how far we still have to go to fully achieve gender equality.

In the revival currently running at Palm Beach Dramaworks, directed by William Hayes, Nora Helmer appears not childlike and helpless but constrained and crafty, even if complicit in her own subordination.  This Nora kneels in subjection–sometimes genuine, sometimes feigned–at least five times throughout the performance.  Early on, Hayes takes every opportunity to emphasize what may appear to those unfamiliar with the play as Nora’s self-serving money obsession, by having her count her kroner like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.  This choice adds greater impact later on when Nora reveals to Mrs. Linde that she is not, in fact, a spendthrift, but that she is repaying a loan she secretly obtained years ago to finance a doctor-prescribed trip to Italy for her ailing husband.  A petite-bodied, vocally gifted Margery Lowe seamlessly and flawlessly embodies the role of Nora, subtly revealing the complexity of a character that is vain but selfless, confident but cautious.  I overheard some audience members discussing Nora’s constant birdlike singing and her transfixion during the tarantella dance, and they actually bought the great Victorian lie that she is “hysterical.” Sorry folks, she is subjugated, shackled, disenfranchised, not mentally ill.  Michael St. Pierre portrays Torvald Helmer  as  a formidable patriarch, though one not completely unlikeable or altogether devoid of tenderness. Thankfully, for example, he does not chastise Nora by pulling her  by the ear in the opening scene as the original stage directions indicate, and the two share several kisses and embraces, suggesting their marriage is not completely loveless.  Michael Amico’s red and gold hued set and Brian O’Keefe’s beautiful period costumes are perfect complements that effectively transport us to a bygone era.  It is no wonder this production has regularly been selling out–the show is well done on all counts. Catch it before it closes this coming Sunday, November 29.

In my last post, I talked about some issues that stopped me from investigating trans identity in the past. Now I’m going to talk about why I come back to this same idea again and again, still looking for some way to fit it to myself.

Feeling fundamentally uncomfortable with female identity

I have never understood women.  One of the things I loved about feminism was that it laid out, in print, basic concepts of feminine socialization I had never picked up on.

Reading the Feminine Mystique when I was 18 gave me a window into the world of my sisters. For the first time I began to understand all the behaviour that was always so maddening to me. I finally got why girls and women around me consistently undervalued themselves, sold themselves short, didn’t try something that might be hard and pretended they were stupid when I could tell they were not.

Not to say that I picked up none of this socialization, the more I learn about the world and myself, the more I can see it in me too. But I think that I picked it up to a lesser extent than most other females, and to a certain extent much later.

But a lot of this stuff, I learned intentionally from a book. I didn’t pick it up from school and the media and the culture.  Rejecting the tethers of femininity, but also not affiliating myself too strongly to men has done well for me, I have often felt as I am existing between genders, picking from the best of both worlds.

Always feeling like a gay man

I don’t know much what to say about this, but it’s true. For about a decade now I have felt like a gay man in a woman’s body. Not trapped, but existing. I always feel much closer affinity to gay men than to straight women or lesbians. I certainly have never felt straight.  I wonder if it’s cause some part of me thinks that it’s way cooler to be queer, and it’s a kind of cool I strongly desire.

This feeling of affinity is something I’m not quite able to explain very well.  Like when I meet a gay man I feel like I share something with him, more than a basic cock love. I feel like, we are the same. I wonder if this comes off to gays as a misguided sexual interest.

I came across a word recently that I think I will use to define myself from now on: androphile. Love of men. Or maybe even, Love of manliness?  It’s true, while I respect women and like them, I do love men. I like this word because it is not relative to one’s own gender. To be a homosexual or a straight, you have to have two pieces of information: your gender and the gender of your partners. How complicated for me.

Being surprised that straight boys want to date me

For a long time I thought of myself as someone who mainly dated bi boys. That made more sense to me. The kind of men who are attracted to me are the kind of men who are attracted to others of their gender. But then after I had enough lovers to make up a reasonable sample size (I’m a big slut if you didn’t guess) I looked at it and found that many of them had been hetro-identified. This was definitely a shocking thought, and tends to leave me with the feeling that I am somehow tricking my boyfriends and lovers.

“I’m not a man in a woman’s body: I’m a feminist.”

That was my resolution to this whole problem in the past. I want to be treated equally to a man, not as a man.  I read and read enough to convince me that my gender issues in the past were based more around gender roles than gender presentation.

While I have certainly encountered external resistance in my quest to be the person I am, regardless of gender, and while that resistance has often had a patriarchal flavour to it, the things I am imagining when I imagine being a man are not the trappings of power I have missed.  The one thing I would really, really love, is to be among men and for them to understand me as a brother, as an insider.  I’m sure that’s a silly idea, perhaps something not experienced by all (most?) men, and probably not as fun in real life as it is in my head.

I hope it’s not a similar experience to being an insider with regards to whiteness (or more occasionally passing as middle class) which can be entirely unpleasant situations where others feel safe to expose the bigotries they are too polite to show in “mixed company”. But it probably is.

My body changing recently

I have heard and read transmen talk about their discomfort with female puberty. Breasts, hips, menses… And no penis.  I do not have any recollection of experiencing these feelings, even to the extent that I was told again and again, that every teenager does. I really do not recall any sense of alienation from my body in any way.

I think a lot of this is due to the fact that my body didn’t really change that much during puberty and adolescence.  I got AA breasts that didn’t need a bra and a bit of body hair that I eventually liked because it make me look more mature. I had always had big thighs so while in retrospect they probably did grow, I didn’t really notice at the time.

But now as I come into my mid-20s I have started to round off a little more: I can fit a B cup bra, my thighs and ass have been getting even bigger, I got a little bit of belly fat.  The overall effect is that I am less boyish and more womanly.

At first I felt strong that I ought to be happy about this becoming more pear-shaped and womanly and beautiful. But I couldn’t shake a creeping sense of unease.  I thought maybe I was worried about getting fat, and ugly, and old, and unattractive, and all those kinds of fears that are drilled into women.  I thought of the social power I gain through being hot (I told you I’m confident about my body, didn’t I?), and I thought of that slipping away and tried to process these feelings.

But eventually I realized there was something more at play here: not that I was getting fatter and softer, but that the fat was collecting in places which emphasized my sex, which marked me much more as female that I had felt before, and that this was deeply troubling to me.

Silly as it sounds, I think this point is the one which got me back on the gender-questioning train.  This was the (small) thing that changed in my life that made me re-look at myself and want to make decisions about myself and my presentation.

Izz a troo evidence of male's wurld domination: penis rulez!

Ini merupakan salah satu bukti nyata dominasi kaum pria: setiap lelaki dan banci adalah seorang jenius. Wahai para gadis, cewek, perempuan, wanita, ahwat, makcik, tante, nyonya…maaf…enggak peduli berapapun skor IQ yang kalian miliki tetap saja kalian tidak kompeten untuk dibilang sebagai jenius. BWAHAHAHAA….

On page 262 of The Discipling of Mytra, I paraphrase some material from John Piper’s What’s the Difference?

Before publication I kept wondering how to acknowledge the wording I had borrowed from Piper. Novels don’t have footnotes, after all. Then I forgot about the issue entirely. Only after publication did I remember that I had never found a solution. So unfortunately in the current edition there is no attribution given to Piper for his very helpful teaching on gender. This blog will have to do for now.

I want to fix this in the next printing. My question is how? Do I mention Piper’s work in the introduction? On the acknowledgements page? Somewhere else? Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.

Laura Hope describes the ‘hounds’ in her life:

I can hear the hounds in the distance

In the last 2+ weeks i have had more thrills out and about that i could have imagined, while doing almost nothing remarkable – just living.

But since I went into this essentially full time mode, the pressure at home has been dialed up to 11. Whether it’s well meaning relatives telling me to “put my pants on” (she’s a sweetheart, but she thinks she’s thinking of what’s best for my family)…

or in-laws who stand a 24 hour watch waiting for her call to be rescued from “this mess”…

or her repeating the same discussion every night that veers wildly from “I don’t see how we can make it” to “it’ll all work out” and from “I didn’t marry you for a sister” to “if we’re going to be roommates we can take the rings off” (which is to say, a lot of conflicting and contradictory statements and signals within the same conversation)…

or the most recent tactic of saying “I ask the kids how they felt and they don’t like it either” (they won’t talk to me about it) and “they need a daddy, you are taking their daddy away from them”…

it all makes me think of myself as an escapee who’s not really and truely free because the bloodhounds can be heard in the distance.

It’s like being a runaway slave – even though I’m “free”…I keep thinking the bounty hunter is just around the next corner, ready to put the chains back on.

What’s worse, I can feel myself tiring of the pursuit….my knees getting weak. Feeling the temptation to just lie down in the ditch and let them find me. Drag me back to the cell. Worse, throw me in “the hole” for even attempting escape (i.e. go through life knowing everyone not only knows what’s inside, but knows I’m so weak i can’t even follow through on such a blatant coming out)

the main argument I’m making to her now is that even if she thinks i broke it, the peices don;t go together anymore – I might have been able to muddle through the next 20 years never knowing how good this feels – but now i know.

she and the rest of them would certainly have gone on thinking I was a rather drab and unremarkable little man of no accomplishment – but now they know I’m a “freak” (in their view) and they can’t “unknow” that. The only thing worse is to see me give up and quit because it’s too hard (all the while telling me what a noble deed it was to “put my family first”)

I don’t fear anything that this coming out brings my way, whether it’s being killed by a hater or rejected by everyone I know – except one thing. I fear discrediting everything I’ve accomplished so far by accepting defeat and de-transitioning.

I’m not sure how long I could keep getting up n the mornings if I did that.

But….I can hear them…and my legs are getting very tired.

Laura Hope

]]> http://princessstomper.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/stompers-soapbox-is-twilight-really-so-bad/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:22:16 +0000 princessstomper http://princessstomper.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/stompers-soapbox-is-twilight-really-so-bad/

:edit:

OK, so I’ve been thinking this over since yesterday, and I think I worked out what the problem is.

I think the issue is that the gaming industry is an Old Boy’s Club. Traditionally, games have been made by Oxbridge and Ivy League graduates who are, by their very nature, deeply weird. Think of the first games and the people who made them. They come from closeted, pampered backgrounds where they basically don’t have to fend for themselves in the Real World and only ever have to deal with people like themselves who they already know. Because they’re so very smart and have tended to go to all-boys private schools, they grow up Scared Of Girls. It’s like they know girls exist, but they don’t know what to do with them, so they pretty much try to avoid them.

Of course, even from “normal” backgrounds, you get nerd-boys who are Scared of Girls, and they tend to be technically brilliant because they focus all the time and attention other boys put into pulling into learning how to code.

So fast forward to now: you’ve got a much wider selection of game-makers who more tend to be from the New Ivies than Cambridge or Harvard, but they still all know each other and have only each other as frames of reference. You have the geeky boys who’ve always been there, and then the women as the first girls let into the gentlemen’s club who regard the boys as sexist when what they really are, are f*cking terrified. So you end up with endless rants about how terrible men are from the women who seem offended by so many things, and then apologetic rants from the men on behalf of the women. Honestly, I have never encountered a group of people who live in such abject terror of the opposite gender.

Sure, there are plenty of very well-adjusted people making games and writing about games (and I tend to regard my friends as being on the “normal” side of nerdy – high-functioning geeks, if you will, like me), but there’s always this undercurrent – almost everywhere you go – of this friction and fear between two genders of people who if they’d stop being so angsty about what sex they are would probably find out they’re thinking the same things almost all the time.

It makes the Real World seem like an ocean of harmony, where people just regard each other as people. I mean, I think about sex maybe once every 8 seconds, but I hardly ever think about my gender. I never really thought about it at all until I started reading gaming blogs, and it annoys me because it’s so weird and unnecessary. Most of all, I do not need to be told what to be offended by as a woman by a man. I’ve been quite capable of determining my own mind and making my opinions abundantly clear since I’ve been old enough to speak.

Honestly, guys – at first it was cute and funny but now it’s creeping me out.

[original article]

I’ve already made my feelings on “gender politics” clear, but we seem to be back there again, albeit with a different twist, following The Escapist’s rant about Twilight.

Yeah, it’s not a game (last I checked – though there probably is some utter bobbins movie tie-in game that people have politely been overlooking), but we’ll get there in a minute.

Bob Chipman thinks that Twilight is popular because it is the first thing to come along that openly panders to teen female sexuality, so that starved of anything to set those young hearts a-flutter, girls are flocking to these unintentionally hilarious films so that they can lust after Jacob and Edward. All this is, of course, highly disturbing.

I did watch New Moon, and I indeed found it disturbing. Not because of Bella’s suicidal dependence on the simpering Edward, nor because he was both creepy and dull. I found it disturbing because I found out, after spending over two hours watching very gratuitous, slow-motion shots of Jacob running around with his shirt off, that he’s only 17 years old.

I feel dirty. And not in a good way. I mean, all joking aside, whenever some teen actress cavorts around in next to nothing in a manner that suggests she is solely there for the titillation of male audiences, there’s normally an outcry. You know, all that crap about Miley Cyrus poledancing or whatever – I don’t know – I don’t take much interest in these things. Anyway, this is that, but for girls. Doesn’t make it right.

My problem with Twilight, such as it is (actually, I rather enjoyed the film in a so-bad-it’s-good way), is that all of these horrendous characters have no redeeming qualities whatsoever other than their good looks. As far as sending out messages to an already vacuous, overindulged generation, I can think of better.

Chipman dismisses Buffy as “male fantasy” (wait, what now?) when actually it’s human fantasy. Girls want to be Buffy. They want to be fancied by Xander and get with Angel. And they don’t need your permission.

Yes, before Edward there was the similarly brooding Angel, but at least Angel could be funny, instead of the absurdly po-faced Cullen boy. Sexy Spike was outright hilarious. Then there was cute Oz, gorgeous-but-dull Riley, and probably a few other recurring characters I’ve long forgotten about.

Back a few years before then, and we had Interview With The Vampire – a veritable cornucopia of lust objects for angsty goth girls. “I’m so misunderstood” “stay away from me, I’m dangerous” “I can’t live without you *sob*”

Other hot geek boys? Well, I had a bit of a thing for Commander Chakotay – and though she might have been wearing a fetish uniform, Seven of Nine was as much wanna-be-her female fantasy as she was a pin-up girl. You’re not going to tell me that Hercules was not cast purely because of how he looked? Or that Xena was anything other than wish-fulfillment fantasy for female audiences? Before then, I fancied Commander Riker, and I’m pretty sure I was crushing on Wesley Crusher in my early teens. Even further back, I had pre-teen crushes on Val Kilmer in Willow and Michael Praed in Robin of Sherwood – and that’s before even considering Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone (a film not primarily designed for boys).

That’s not forgetting the whole “Hold me!” “I can’t!” BS in Edward Scissorhands. Forget Pride & Prejudice, if Twilight rips off anything, it’s Johnny Depp’s pallid, reclusive and woefully impotent character.

So most of these things aren’t “exclusively female fantasy”, though some are. Seriously, who cares? I mean, I have enough chick flicks lining my DVD shelf, but frankly I have to be in the right mood to watch Moulin Rouge, whereas I’ll watch Milla kick ass in Resident Evil any day. New Moon wasn’t even directed by a woman, and neither was Resident Evil – but that latter certainly ticks my fantasy boxes: a tough, capable heroine backed up by a decent cast of gun-toting girls and hot heroic men.

If Twilight is the first thing to feature men being used for female sexual gratification, I shall just have to assume this photo was just a candid shot and completely unplanned.

So back to games. Where did we get this rule from that for something to be appealing to women it couldn’t be appealing to men? I’m pretty certain – not that I know much about it – that the rule of porn was that the guy would be pretty average, so as to represent the everyman, but the girl had to be impossible-without-major-surgery?

C’mon now, lads, are you really that naive? This. Is. Eyecandy. They designed this character so that female players (and gay men – hey, we’re equal opps here) would want to f*ck his little pixels out.

So Bella is horrible to her friends. I quite willingly sacrificed Ashley to get with Kaidan Alenko.

You know what? He did the whole stroppy “I’m so complicated! Nobody gets me!” spiel, too. I seem to recall just pressing the buttons in the hope that he’d press mine.

Yadda yadda KOTOR … you get the point. Girls like boys. They like geek boys. They like looking at geek boys. They don’t necessarily want to be weak and submissive, just because the girl on the TV is rather useless, any more than guys all want to be dumb macho jocks. They don’t necessarily want their boys to have concrete abs and an empty head any more than most guys want to date Pammy in Baywatch. Twilight’s just Showgirls for goth girls.

]]> http://willowrs.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/gender-ambiguity/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:11:29 +0000 willowrs http://willowrs.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/gender-ambiguity/

This is not a treatise on gender roles, which is something for another time and wholly irrelevant in this instance. Nor am I talking about sexual orientation, though that will come up over the course of thought.

It has come to my attention, over the passage of time and experience, within my own experiences and observations and conversations with others that the binary gender designations, simply don’t cover enough ground, or ‘all the bases’ whichever analogy you choose to use.

A geek joke that I was once told, strikes me as slightly pertinent in this instance, though perhaps it won’t be apparent why this early on,  people are unto binary as they are unto gender, is the general gist I suppose.

“There are 10 types of people who understand binary. Those who do and those who don’t”

I have had discussions with a couple of people on this subject, some understand, some really don’t, but that is no matter, all are coming to the conversations with different starting positions and viewpoints, which makes it all the more interesting. Generally the ones who understand agree with the inadequacy of a binary gender system of definition.

I’m not going to preach a particular viewpoint, though I am sure my own opinion will be fairly clear. Nor am I looking at any form of biological logistics, these are just my thoughts and opinions on the matter and as such, are open to extension of clarification since I don’t think I am coming to it with entirely ordered thoughts or a foolproof definition on my part nor an ‘end’ to my thoughts. So saying, it may very well be that I revisit this topic at a later date.

In my opinion it starts with two basic viewpoints about a person’s gender.

a)      the gender which ‘society’ assigns you

b)      the gender you ‘identify’ with or assign to yourself

Now, for most people I figure life is pretty straightforward and nicely black and white. They are what they appear to be. Their appearance is male, they see themselves as male and the same with females. Nice and simple, they and society are happy with the appropriate designations.

Then there are those who aren’t and they come under a variety of subheadings but the basic realisation is that their gender identity is just not that straightforward.

You have the folk who know they are in the wrong body; everything about it is opposite to what they feel. They are one thing, but their physical body is saying something else (so is ‘society’). I cannot begin to imagine anything as horrifying as coming to the realisation that your body, your physical self is wrong and is thus something other than what it should be.

Having come to this conclusion of ‘self’, do you then opt to be true to yourself or true to your self? Which is the more important and honest choice? Of course I am being naïve enough to suggest that there is a choice. For many in this situation, I don’t think there is a choice, it’s like choosing whether to live or die. One option is pure suffocating torture and the other is hard because of other people.

I am not transgendered, but I am still gender-queer, as far as my understanding of the definition goes. For all intents and purposes I am female, but that’s not especially how I see myself. I say I am not transgender because I don’t feel strongly enough about it to say ‘my body is wrong, I am a boy’, I don’t necessarily like or appreciate a lot of the things that make me a ‘girl’ but I don’t think I am wrong. I am who I am.

So, let me clarify this a little, my picture (avatar) is fairly obvious in the way I identify… I do often get mistaken for a boy, a fact that bothers me not in the least, barring the one occasion when a child asked his… I’ll say Guardian, as I have no idea as to there actual relationship, Is that a boy or a girl? Very loudly on the train, and the chap was equally rude in his response. The question itself didn’t bother me, it was the inherent rudeness, lack of consideration for the fact that I was sitting right there and the use of the term ‘that’.

I hear the question about my gender identity asked a lot, at work by students, in the street… a lot of people who actually know me, seem flummoxed by this inability to be able to tell, but the important factor they seem to be omitting is that they know me. Most people are just going by what they see and what they then equate with what they ‘see’, if they expect to see a specific thing then they do, at least that’s what I think happens. People seem to have quite set ideas about what relates to what gender and then project those expectations on the world around them. I wish they’d just ask to be quite honest. I like the teenage kids who have no such compunctions about keeping their mouths shut when a question occurs to them. Though I don’t think my answer is ever especially helpful ‘I’ll be whatever you want to be’ or ‘both, either, neither’, depends on my mood.

The most straightforward way I can think of to explain is that, I have a female body but I reference myself in the masculine. This admittedly depends on who I am around; I don’t tend to do it at work unless it’s with friends. Most people at work haven’t even twigged that I’m gay… unless they are being desperately polite about it. It feels right to talk about myself in the masculine and it feels…odd to reference myself in a way that society can understand.

Yet I still don’t think I am transgender.

Inside my head I am of neither gender, I am androgynous of mind, and, I also feel, of body, though I have a tendency towards male out of comfort. To which end, it always shocks me when people talk about me as a girl, call me ‘miss’ or ‘lady’ (with little kids), I mean shocks me… it sometimes takes me ages to work out who they are talking to. I like watching the kids faces turn into that ‘what the heck are you talking about’ look they get towards there parents when given information they really don’t seem certain that there parents have understood. I can never understand why people can’t just see me as i quite ‘evidentally’ am. Generally children are more open to the idea of being neither, or, either, I guess that could be because a lot of them don’t have that strong inclination of gender yet.

My great uncle visited from Canada last year, bear in mind this is achap who has only seen me a handful of times and knows my mother has a son and a daughter, but he also has Alzheimer’s so if he doesn’t know you very well, everytime he meets you is like the first time. The entire time he was here he called me ‘young man’ which my family tried valiantly to correct and bothered me not in the slightest, though I felt bad for him, since I was kind of taking advantage by not correcting him. It might help to explain that when he first met me during that visit, I was up a ladder helping my stepfather build a carport, wearing jeans, boots a button down shirt and a tank top sweater, with short hair. Poor chap didn’t really stand a chance I suppose.

What surprised me the most about this, and is the crux of my longwinded rendition of this event, was my families complete and utter surprise that I ever got mistaken for a boy in my day to day existence. I pointed out the fact that it happens pretty much daily to my mother, who had had no idea that this was the case and seemed genuinely surprised (which, quite frankly surprised me somewhat). I never have talked to her about the way I identify etc, I mean she knows I’m gay, no big deal, this reticence is more due to my inability to articulate the way I feel in a way that will make her truly understand… how can I when I don’t?

Is any of what I have said making sense?

My youngest cousin, recently turned 8, is often asking me ‘why?’ Why do I have a boy’s haircut? Why do I wear boy’s clothes? Why don’t I like pink? Why don’t I like girly things? (and has been doing so on a regular basis since she was about 4) It’s a fascinating subject to broach with someone of her age, trying to explain, whilst not getting embroiled in the minutiae and details that she couldn’t possibly comprehend at her age. In the end my message to her and her siblings has always been ‘you can be whatever and whoever you want to be, there is nothing that you can’t do whether you are a boy or as a girl’. So yes, this is a rather simplistic view admittedly, but I would rather they started thinking that they can do anything than starting out feeling constrained. Now her twin can be a little sexist thing when he wants to be, because that is what he is learning in the playground… he certainly isn’t learning it from home. We have had some words, of a not too strenuous nature, I mostly pooh poohed his entire theory that some things were for girls and some for boys and never the twain shall meet. He seems to have taken that in his stride.

Anyway, that is straying entirely off topic and I feel that I haven’t really set out to think about what I had initially thought I would.

Ultimately it comes down to this; you are who you are and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You can do anything and be anything you set your mind to. Accept no limitations…or imitations for that matter, and you’ll get through life just fine.

Alternatively, if that’s not turning your crank, you can take Thursday Next’s mothers world view from Jasper Fforde’s novels;

“My mother tried to get through life with the minimum of fuss and bother and the maximum of tea and battenberg”

- Jasper Fforde First among sequels

Which is an equally valid, if somewhat non-economical or nutritionally viable, way to get through life.

]]> http://tffu.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/londyn-odzyskuje-noc/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:17:43 +0000 Marcelina http://tffu.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/londyn-odzyskuje-noc/

Nocą 21 listopada około 2000 kobiet wybrało się na spacer po Londynie w celu Odzyskania Nocy. Jak twierdzą organizatorki, według ostatniego sondażu opinii publicznej zorganizowanego przez magazyn More skierowany głównie do młodych kobiet, 95% kobiet nie czuje się bezpiecznie w nocy na ulicy i aż 65% czuje ten sam lęk w ciągu dnia, 73% badanych boi się gwałtu i prawie połowa respondentek z tego właśnie powodu czasami decyduje się pozostać w domu.

Głównym żądaniem organizatorek jest prawo do użytkowania publicznej przestrzeni bez strachu o bycie pobitą, molestowaną czy zgwałconą oraz podkreślenie że kobieta nigdy nie jest winna męskiej agresji seksualnej. Jest to dla nich szczególnie ważne, gdyż według badania opinii publicznej Międzynarodowej Komisji Wykonawczej zleconego przez Amnesty International w 2005 roku ponad jedna trzecia społeczeństwa brytyjskiego uważała, że w jakiejś części wina za bycie zgwałconą leży po stronie kobiety (np. ponieważ była pijana, ponieważ była ubrana wyzywająco).

Marsze w celu Odzyskania Nocy są organizowane w Wielkiej Brytanii od lat 70tych. Pierwszy z nich zorganizowano 12 listopada 1977 roku w między innymi Leeds, Manchesterze, Bristolu i Londynie. Co roku kilka tysięcy kobiet spotyka się w nocy i spaceruje wspólnie by zaznaczyć, że istnieje problem, z którym się nie walczy, a który tak dotkliwie dotyka nas wszystkie.

Więcej na stronie http://www.reclaimthenight.org/index.html

Jak bardzo aktualne są postulaty kobiet, można się przekonać czytając relację NS (link poniżej), która spotkała się z molestowaniem seksualnym podczas marszu.

Relacje: The F-Word | Noble Savage

Na podobny temat: W nowojorskim metrze kobiety są molestowane

http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,80277,7276898,W_nowojorskim_metrze_kobiety_sa_molestowane.html

]]>