transgender

Herizons Magazine (Winter 2011)

beth — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

When I first moved to Canada, Herizons was virtually the only magazine I came across that dealt with feminism and issues concerning women. My understanding of the women’s movement before that point was primarily focused on within the U.S., and it’s not exactly the same. The laws are different in Canada. Thus, they affect women in a different way and Herizons helped me understand that.

There are several things that non-Canadian readers might discover in this issue. To name a few: there are over 500 cases of missing Aboriginal women within the nation; the Ontario Court of Appeal now allows Muslim women who file sexual assault complaints to wear the niqab, if they choose to; Ottawa will hold a global women’s conference this summer; and a Quebec bill proposes that Muslim women be prohibited from receiving or delivering public services while wearing a niqab. These are issues that are addressed articulately in this issue through the contributing writers of Herizons.

The only problem is that these facts aren’t necessarily recent news, not for people living in Canada at least. These are topics that any Canadian resident might know if they follow the national news. Such is the trouble with distributing a quarterly magazine. By the time it’s out on print, the topics feel very backdated. Issues such as Muslim women in Canada having certain rights while wearing the niqab have been out since last year and as someone who regularly follows women’s news in the country, I was already well-read on the various opinions and attitudes that come with it.

However, there were some parts of Herizons' winter issue that educated me. Did you know that a young woman in her twenties recently started the first women’s magazine in Afghanistan? I certainly didn’t. Not until now. It’s called Negah-e-Zan, meaning "A Vision of Women," and is committed to women’s empowerment. There’s also a great, lengthy Q & A piece with Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, and performance artist S. Bear Bergman. Bornstein and Bergman have put together an “anthology of new transgender voices” called Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. In the interview by Mandy Van Deven, they discuss the obliteration of the gender binary and what feminism can learn from trans politics.

Herizons is undoubtedly packed with great content about feminist views. But I would say that this issue works better on the international scale. It would probably be more interesting to a non-Canadian who is interested in learning more about how the women’s movement is perceived and enacted in another country.

Written by: Fadi Gabir, April 24th 2011

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

brittany — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kay Whitlock, Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie

Beacon Press

In their near-exhaustive catalogue of violence, discrimination, and systematic abuse of LGBT people in the United States, Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock outline the specific ways that the criminalization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people has perpetuated inequalities not only based on sexual identity but also within the complex interplay of race, class, and gender. While many leading texts in LGBT studies have argued that the policing of gender leads to toxic consequences for all members of society, this book reveals just how pervasive such policing of gender is and just how complicit we are in maintaining these systems of inequality. Most centrally, Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock argue that decriminalizing queerness has been sidelined by efforts to merely remove legal sanctions—a problem that fails to address the basic assumptions of queer deviance at play in our legal system.

Queer (In)Justice dispenses a legal history of LGBT oppression that spans hundreds of years, beginning with a sweeping review of the history of gender policing—indigenous abuse, constructions of African people as hypersexual, “contaminating” immigrant bodies, and even Biblical ideas about sodomy—and moving through a range of topics that collectively provide the most complete picture of LGBT criminalization I have ever encountered. Addressing queer criminal archetypes (e.g., the queer killer, sexually degraded predator, disease spreader, and queer security threat) early in the book, the authors then move to three stellar chapters on legal policing of gender in clubs and public spaces, courtroom battles about queer identity (where gender bending and violence are discursively linked), and, finally, the queering of prisons. This last chapter on prisons provides a haunting account of prison guards ignoring sexual identity-based violence, refusing care for HIV/AIDS prisoners, and constructing queer inmates as perverse. The authors conclude (in one of only a few hopeful moments of the book) that anti-police-brutality, the building of safe communities, prison solidarity, and community organizing must occur in order to tease apart the conflation of queerness and criminality.

At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities. The authors argue, essentially, that cases like Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena are not isolated incidents of violent, hateful oppression, but rather, engendered by the very system that supposedly protects queer subjects. From senseless police brutality to justifying death penalty sentences based on sexual identity, from the fetishization of “lesbian killer” Aileen Wuornos to prison guards who allow continued sexual assault against “willing” gay men in prison, hatred of queerness exists at the heart of our criminal justice system. The question becomes: What legal, discursive, social, and institutional changes can we enact that more radically and permanently divides queerness from criminality? What stories must we tell (or learn) to communicate and understand the histories of violence lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people have endured? And, finally, what kind of queer justice should we seek?

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 12th 2011

Aarekti Premer Galpo (Just Another Love Story)

mandy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Kaushik Ganguly

Cinemawalla

Rituparno Ghosh completely reinvents himself from director to actor and delivers a gripping performance in this very lyrical film by Kaushik Ganguly. Just Another Love Story (original Bengali title: Aarekti Premer Galpo) is about a filmmaker Abhiroop Sen (played by Ghosh) who makes a documentary about Chapal Bhaduri, the legendary jatra (Bengali folk theatre) actor who spent his entire career playing female roles on stage, primarily as Goddess Shitala. Thus begins a journey where director and subject learn from one another—on the one hand is Bhaduri (playing himself), who was closeted for fear of social ostracism but openly accepted as a cross-dressing actor, and on the other is the modern urban filmmaker who is open about his sexuality, but still negotiating his gender identity.

The most striking thing about Just Another Love Story is that it doesn’t make a big exhibition about its very brave subject. It’s not a look-how-path-breaking-this-film-is kind of treatment. Instead, the transgender protagonist is introduced into the story with as much casualness as any other character. Ghosh lends to his character, and the story, such a complexity that you can’t help but empathize with his struggle. The film maintains a mature and sensitive treatment throughout, never resorting to unnecessary gestures to prove its point.

The parallel story arc of Chapal Bhaduri is sensitively told and enlightening. Bhaduri plays himself with vulnerability and Ghosh playing Bhaduri in the reenactment of his younger life does a great job of switching back and forth between his character as the documentary filmmaker and a portrayal of Bhaduri. In this way the film becomes multi-layered with each element building on the other. Sen’s relationship with his bisexual cameraman Basu (Indraneil Sengupta) is also handled with maturity and complexity, especially since the latter’s wife is aware (and oddly accepting) of their relationship.

Speaking about the taboo around trans identities in India, the director Ganguly said, “Trans identities, or the third sex, have been around since the mythological times, so this isn’t a new issue at all. We think it’s new because we’re still recovering from the colonial mindset.” Ganguly’s film is an ode to the traditions of jatra, a powerful yet subtle statement on the intrinsic presence of trans identities in Indian society, and another glowing feather in the cap of the talented Ghosh, who makes a stellar acting debut.

Cross-posted at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, November 8th 2010

Voices of Witness Africa

andrea — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Cynthia Black

Claiming the Blessing

Voices of Witness Africa honors the truth and plight of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Anglicans in Africa, who have often been excommunicated by the Anglican Church. This is an admirable task for the producers of this film, since their target audience is Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of bishops which happens once every ten years. The producers must work not to overly offend the church bishops that they are trying to win over. However, this tension to represent various sides of the issue leaves the film with a sense of having been diluted to be palpable.

Producer/director Cynthia Black, an Episcopal priest herself, conceived of the thirty minute film after a successful response to the first Voices Of Witness film released in 2006, which featured LGBT Episcopalians from the Los Angeles area and was premiered during the General Episcopalian Convention in Columbus, Ohio. A short preview of Voices of Witness Africa was shown twice at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, supposedly to a standing-room-only audience.

Interviews range from LGBT people who are afraid to show their faces and sitting in shadow to retired Anglican Reverends who dare to openly support the cause—all offer an explosive and potentially deeply moving perspective. I saw pain in their eyes—pain from the persecution within their culture, their families, and yes, the church that they love. I kept waiting for the pain to be expressed. It never really was and, in that, the film itself doesn’t feel to match the bravery and courage of the individuals that it is featuring, who are in many cases risking life imprisonment and even death to tell their stories.

This movie feels like a tentative first step into the stormy waters of a growing advocacy for the Church to become more progressive or risk perpetuating the sense that it is living in the dark ages. You can feel in the people interviewed how their love for a God that is lovingly accepting of them and a church that represents that acceptance is what drives them to talk about it.

The film proceeds at a dizzying pace with a frenetic quality that makes it difficult to really be moved by the poignancy of what is being shared in only thirty minutes. More time for the stories to unfold of these fascinating, inspiring, and bright souls and more shots of the individuals in their daily lives would have enlivened the experience. The DVD includes a twenty-seven page study guide with suggested exercises for discussion groups and a full movie transcript—which seems excessive given the short length of the film itself.

Although this is undoubtedly a film made by Anglicans featuring Anglicans for Anglicans, this doesn’t mean that those of us who are not practicing Anglicans (or even Christians) won’t be touched by the experiences and perspectives of the film. Yet, we also may not feel as compelled by the desire to win over a church that has not kept its promises to listen to their suffering and persecuted parishioners. Instead we may wonder—isn’t it time to go beyond just an advocacy for “open listening” from the Church, and to demand sweeping change and progressive reformation that could pressure the political and judiciary systems to end the persecution of LGBT parishioners?

Written by: Jillian Vriend, November 3rd 2010

The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story

andrea — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Tamil by V. Geetha, A. Revathi

Penguin

What is it about the form of the life story—the autobiography—that makes it so seductive and so deeply discomfiting at the same time? I think it’s how the boundaries between private and public, someone else’s life and your own, blur in your reading. The relationship you forge is rich and colorful and insightful, but it’s also dark and violent and difficult to come to terms with.

The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story is the autobiography of Revathi. Revathi’s ‘truth’ is the first of such to be published in English: at once an illuminating, and a scarring read, that leaves you changed. Hijras are a community of people who are born men, but feel they are women, and so live as such. What differentiates them from eunuchs, or other trangendered/transsexual people is their culture: to be a hijra is to live in a community with other hijras, where you have a mother figure (a guru), sisters and daughters, and a tight set of rules within which you relate with them, what work you can do, how you look and behave.

The book is rich in detail and pulls you determinedly into the whirlpool of Revathi’s experiences—sometimes exciting and joyous, but more often sad and violent, physically, and emotionally abusive—a life of alienation and extreme frustration.

In The Truth about Me, Revathi leads us through her discovery of a community, experiences castration (nirvaanam—this makes her a ‘woman’—‘I felt like a flower that had just blossomed’), learns to dance and sing, becomes a beggar, performs sex work, works as an activist for a nonprofit, is stripped naked and tortured in police custody, falls in love, and more.

What is fascinating about Revathi’s way of telling, and almost painfully illuminating for the reader, is how she sets her own life – her familial relationships, her acceptance of her identity, the journey of becoming a hijra – parallel to the structures that she lives within. We see the demands and injustices that patriarchy inflicts, and its discomfort with her transgression; but on the other hand we also see the norms of the hijra community, which must be followed to be accepted into its fold. The sense one gets is of the (marginalised) self constantly struggling with something—both the mainstream and the alternatives available. She says, ‘A man sometimes has to struggle to live; but for people like me, to live was to struggle and fight…The world looks askance at me.’

While the book validates the necessity and power of a distinct hijra culture and community for a people pushed to the margins, as a slightly distanced onlooker, I felt that it falls silent on how unrelenting and inflexible this culture often seems. When Revathi interacts in the world with her hijra identity, but outside of the confines of the community, the fissures between her numerous worlds are too deep to see, the loneliness almost too cruel to read about: ‘Everyday my feelings died only to be reborn and to die again.’

Written by: Disha Mullick, November 2nd 2010

Mangos with Chili (7/11/2010)

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Bluestockings

New York, New York

I was thrilled to be able to attend a special Mangos with Chili show on Sunday night at Bluestockings in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I was thrilled not just because I consider the founders, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Galette, dear amig@s, nor because dear amig@s of mine have performed under the spicy sweet banner, pero because the center is queer, trans, and gender nonconforming artists of color. Sunday night, people packed the bookstore and activist center to bear witness to the words and work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Victor Tobar, Ignacio Rivera, and Jai Dulani.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha opened the floor reading a piece from a memoir she’s working on about her life as a queer femme from Sri Lanka and creating community. Victor Tobar, in a series of stunning spoken word pieces, brought us to the Bronx and Brooklyn, and explored struggling against gentrification in those streets, what those streets demand of of their queer brown children, and how those children grow into adults, not easily, but wrapped in memories that constrain and free.

Brooklyn Black Boricua Ignacio Rivera used words to redefine the body as an answer to negative socialization and abuse and, in doing so, reclaimed kinky sexuality in his own terms. Rivera forced the listeners to confront our histories of violence and our daily interactions with it above and underground.

Jai Dulani closed the circle by presenting a film he has been working on regarding Caster Semenya entitled Caster Semenya: Wrong is Not Her Name. The film, through the use of news clips, looks at the invasive scrutiny Semenya’s gender underwent following her win in the women’s world 800-meter race. Dulani shows how race and gender biases collided and the history of the white, male, heteronormative gaze on the bodies of those who claim “woman.”

The artists in this Mangos with Chili performance reveal a breadth of talent fed by real life experiences rooted in personal struggles and continued survival. Some of their work will make you uncomfortable because of its frankness and raw reality, pero for many it will feel like someone opened the curtains in a dark secret room you were sitting alone in, let the sun in, and then threw a party.

It was all love.

Please follow Mangos with Chili as they decide their next tour and please follow all of the amazing artists. Arte, poesia y imagen can change the world.

Cross-posted at VivirLatino

Video credit: Sins Invalid

Written by: Maegan La Mala Ortiz, July 20th 2010

Voces Zine (Summer 2010, Issue 3)

admin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Edited by Noemi Martinez

The Voices Against Violence Project

Unapologetic. Raw. Honest.

The third issue of Voces Zine is a collection of poetry by artists from different communities—indigenous, people of color, trans, and queer—sharing their experiences as survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Originally inspired by a small community of Latino immigrants, this issue represents a first-time inclusion of contributors from outside of its original roots.

The eclectic air of the compilation reflects this shift. During an interview I asked editor Noemi Martinez about the strengths and weaknesses of such a model; she discussed how the stories could be competing or compatible, but that each needed to be told. I appreciated her insight and find this invites a greater audience, while also revealing the individual ways we experience violence against women. Some stories might resonate with one reader more than others, but each exposes the important variance of dynamics in surviving violence: blaming, loving, mistrusting, self-hating, empowering, forgiving, healing, hiding, ignoring, being vulnerable, being strong, being uncertain, being alone, being supported.

At times I felt I could sympathize with each word (“unwrap your bandages/let them wounds breathe/let them scab and itch/and fall/away”), with the uncertainty (“am i better?”), and with the paradox of anger and barren strength (“i aint no fucking weak, limp, helpless, shaking, hiding, trembling, dying, lonely, battered girl. i’m a woman with a black eye.”). Other writings left me unattached or distant, to which I cite Martinez’s foreword, “There is no guarantee how one will react to a particular writing when you are a survivor…as a reader, you might find these writings triggering, not helpful, judgemental [sic], totally off, fucked up, questionable, right on, brutally honest, truthful inspiring.” The point: take from Voces Zine what you can relate to, learn from what you might not, and leave the rest behind.

Voces Zine was created to support survivors and to provide a teaching tool for discussion and understanding of what violence against women means. While the variety of themes provide this type of catalyst, at times the compilation seemed to be more of a therapeutic outlet for each contributor. To this end, I do not fault the project, but commend it for its ability to provide a space in which “victim, survivor, thriver” can share, question, and grow.

I admire each of the contributors for finding the strength to speak up and write out and urge any person questioning, challenged by, or curious about violence against women to take a look through Voces Zine. In the interview, Martinez explained, “I’m not an editor. I’m not professional.” Although I believe she has proven her worth of both titles with this endeavour, the humility of her statement is yet another reflection of the DIY compassion and grassroots foundation of this project. Voces Zine is more than words on paper; it’s a resource of hope, inspiration, and healing.

Written by: Ani Colekessian, July 7th 2010

Body 2 Body: A Malaysian Queer Anthology

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Jerome Kugan, Pang Khee Teik

Matahari Books

Body 2 Body is the product of Malaysia’s young, hip and well-connected who’ve banded together to compile a collection of short stories and essays on living la vida non-normative. Edited by local art scene stalwarts Jerome Kugan and Pang Khee Teik, Body 2 Body is a landmark of sorts, mainly as the first anthology of local LGBT writing and as tangible evidence of Malaysia emerging out of the dark ages. Unfortunately, eclipsing this Book-of-Records significance is the violently uneven standard of writing. At times reasonably good (Brian Gomez and Shahnon Shah) but jaw-droppingly appalling in others (Abirami Durai and Jerome Kugan).

To begin with, Brian Gomez’s "What do gay people eat?" is a cracking tale of parental ignorance transformed into heartwarming acceptance. Gomez brings to life his central characters, a pair of middle aged Indian parents who are about to welcome their son and his boyfriend to home-cooked food for the first time. Agonising about what gay people eat (hint: not traditional Indian food as initially presumed), the dad soon learns that yes, gay people are just like everybody else and are not transported en masse from “the West.” At many turns funny and true to life, Gomez sets a fine example of a well-executed short story, something sadly not followed by others in Body 2 Body.

Don’t let a short story fool you into thinking it’s literary child’s play. The first rule in writing one, however, is simple: a good short story should not betray it’s primary descriptor: “short” (a memo Joyce did not read when he wrote The Dead). And because it is constrained by brevity, a good short story should also effectively evoke a moment in time and not a saga stretched out in six pages.

Overall, all the entries in this anthology do not have a problem with being short and sweet. The quality of storytelling in a few contributions, however, leaves plenty to be desired. Jerome Kugan’s "Alvin" is about an on-and-off relationship between two hard-partying men and is more like a poorly edited film with arty pretensions than an engagingly-written story. The couple, Alvin and Jay, share some relationship highs like tender conversations after sex, and lows like lack of commitment, and soon drift apart without proper goodbyes as moody anti-romantics do. To end his postmodern romance, Kugan’s epilogue for Alvin and Jay reads like a kinky French-Spanish film played on fast-forward:

A year later, Alvin and Jay are a couple, sharing an apartment in Mont Kiara. After a few months of lousy sex, they decide to have an open relationship. Jay meets Gochi, 26yo hottie originally from Singapore but working in KL to be closer to his mature Japanese expat boyfriend. Jay has sex with Gochi and offers threesome [sic] with Alvin. Alvin protests at first but after threesome [sic], confesses that he has fallen in love with Gochi. Jay is devastated, think it’s his fault, goes to Frangipani to get drunk. While drunk, he meets 40yo Hansen and 28yo Maria, a bisexual couple from London. Jay has sex with Maria while Hansen watches and masturbates. Later, Hansen fucks Jay while Maria sucks his cock. Jay is moaning as he is fucked, thinking of Alvin.

Charming.

Abirami Durai’s "Have you seen my son?" shows great promise of being about trans-acceptance but is impeded by a flimsy sequence of improbable events and cliches: Alex is returning home from studying abroad and as friends and family do, they welcome the return of the prodigal son with bated breath at the airport. But it’s Anna who returns, not Alex. The shock and surprise of a transgender homecoming is severely offset by Anna’s entire family and friends not recognising her at all save for our narrator, Anna’s best friend. The two return to Anna’s home separately after her family and friends shuffle quietly back into the cardboard cut-out where they come from. There, we see Anna packing her old stuff to leave the family home for good because being literally invisible to her parents is much too unpleasant. As old friends do, the narrator and Anna reminisce about old flames until the dad suddenly walks in and asks Anna about Alex’s whereabouts. This leads to Durai’s ambiguous message on pseudo trans-accceptance; Anna’s dad is still clueless (or in denial or just visually impaired?) that she’s really his son, but compliments on how pretty she looks instead. At least he thinks she’s pretty! That’s gotta be good, right? Right?

Perhaps quirkiness verging on the surreal is a new and uniquely Malaysian writing style that I’ve yet to come to grips with. And maybe the schlock of the new will eventually herald substance and maturity. A bumpy road of a read made up of an uneven mix of good and substandard writing may one day smoothen out by work that are published not because they were the only ones lying around the editors’ desk. Body 2 Body is nonetheless a praiseworthy effort in putting non-normative genders and sexualities on the local literary map, but the schoolteacher critic in me cannot refrain from saying, “Can do better!”

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, June 3rd 2010

The Danish Girl

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By David Ebershoff

Penguin Books

The Danish Girl is like a multilayered Flemish painting or tapestry. On the surface, it’s the story of the marriage of two painters, Clara and Einar. However, Einar Wegener was the first male to undergo successful gender affirming surgery. And The Danish Girl is also the story of a search for one’s true identity, and how one navigates that struggle within the boundaries of a relationship.

The novel opens in Copenhagen in the 1920s and the author has painted a rich landscape of the country and culture at the time, which I found almost as interesting as the storyline. We meet Clara and Einar after they have settled into a domestic routine, of sorts: two painters living in Copenhagen trying to make a living through their art. Known for his landscapes, Einar is the more acclaimed and successful of the two, while Clara finds herself painting portraits of well-known businessmen and society types. Clara is a young, willful, and wealthy California heiress who fell in love with Einar while enrolled in art classes at the Royal Academy, where he is a teacher. Despite being six years her senior, Einer was shy and awkward, and Clara pursued him somewhat relentlessly.

As the novel progresses, we discover that Einar has been encouraged by Clara to occasionally dress in women’s clothes when her female subjects are delayed or unable to make their sitting appointments. Einar is a slender, pretty man who is described as "beautiful" in the novel. Clara senses that Einar has a love of all things feminine, and starts to encourage him to dress as a woman, who they start introducing as Einar's distant cousin Lili to their friends. At first, this is a secret game between the pair, but as Einar needs to dress as Lili more and more, the dynamic in the marriage changes, making Clara increasingly uncomfortable. Clara believes that part of loving someone is doing whatever you can do to make them happy, and although she is ambivalent about Einar’s need to dress as Lili, her paintings of Lili start to garner her praise and acclaim in the art world.

The subject matter of The Danish Girl could have been treated as a spectacle, or voyeuristic experience, but it is treated sensitively by the author. The author sensitively renders Einar’s sometimes painful experiences with his changing identity, and we experience the distinct worlds of these two separate individuals. I was surprised to discover that this novel was first published in 2000. The story is especially topical given that transgender experiences are now being discussed on shows like Oprah, which signifies that the issue has become mainstream, or at least an acknowledged part of our cultural dialogue.

The Danish Girl is being made into a movie that is scheduled for release in the United States in 2011. Nicole Kidman will star as Lili. If reading is supposed to take you on a journey of the mind and expand your understanding of the world, The Danish Girl is certainly deserving of high praise.

Written by: Gita Tewari, May 25th 2010

Briarpatch Magazine (Jan/Feb 2010)

admin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Dave Mitchell

Turning through the pages of Briarpatch Magazine, I was offered a glimpse into Canada's progressive social movements. Reading the Responsibility to Protest issue, which is also available online, gave me a crash course in several progressive ideologies I wasn't familiar with, and I was able to explore some familiar issues that are close to my heart as well.

Briarpatch covers a lot of ground. The headline story, "Mass Protests & The Future of Convergence Activism" by Jane Kirby, gave me a crash course in what's happening on the streets of social activism while "From Invisibility to Stability: Transgender Organizing for the Masses" by Mandy Van Deven introduced me to the interplay between transgender issues and poverty. I work for a nonprofit that addresses the global water crisis, so "Water Fight: First Nations' Water Rights in the Thompson Okanagan" by Hannah Askew provided me with fresh insight into Canada's own water struggles.

Especially illuminating were the pages devoted to suggestions of how better to spend the $6.1 billion price tag of the recent Vancouver Olympic Games. "Boosters' Millions" by Dawn Paley and Isaac Oommen, offered solutions in education, transportation, and housing that could take British Columbia well beyond the entertainment value of the two-week games if the Canadian government would spend the public money on more sustainable initiatives. "Selling the Olympics in the Schools: Government & Anti-Olympics Groups Take Their Messages to the Classroom" by Jenn Hardy offered timely and relevant insight into another side of the Olympic Games. Needless to say, I got a lot out of this issue.

My favorite article, though, was about my favorite social issue: feminism. I could readily relate to "When We Were Feminists" because, as someone just entering her thirties, I often observe my own feminist ideas fading, changing, and even burning brighter as I move through different phases of my life. Author Penelope Hutchison looks back at her progression from a founding member of the Radical Obnoxious Fucking Feminists (ROFF) in her undergraduate days to a forty-something professional who recently reunited with ROFF's other members. Hutchison reveals that the once radical change-makers have mostly tucked their feminist ideologies away to pursue careers, relationships, and families.

The article made me question my belief that if I support the feminist issues I care about, and if I work hard to allow my feminism to be exemplified in my actions, then I will always be a feminist no matter what work I'm doing or what lifestyle I'm leading. It's difficult for me, at thirty-one years old, to imagine dampening my desire to improve the lives of women because I've recently gotten married or plan to have kids within the next couple of years. In ten years, I don't want to look back and wonder where my former feminist self has gone. I hope my role as a feminist activist can co-exist with my roles as nonprofit professional, wife, M.B.A., and mother.

_Briarpatch Magazine__ _did exactly what I was hoping it would. It gave me fresh perspective on issues I'm already familiar with, and it introduced me to new lines of thought and new ways to apply my social activism.

Written by: Meg Rayford, April 16th 2010

Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana: Politics, Identity and Faith in New Immigrant Communities

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Edited by Lois Ann Larentzen, Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III, Kevin M. Chun, Hien Duc Do

Duke University Press

Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana, a collection of essays on the religious activities and identity formation of immigrants to the United States, is the fruit of a four-year study conducted by researchers from the Religion and Immigration Project (TRIP) at the University of San Francisco. Very ambitious in their scope, the essays explore the multiple and complex ways that religion plays both in integration and resistance to it in the second-generation immigrant youth and adults from Mexico, China, Vietnam, El Salvador, and Taiwan.

Two of the essays reflect on marginalized groups in their own countries: amongst them gay, lesbian, and transgender people. Immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador keep in touch with their communities across the border, frequently visiting their family and friends to maintain trans-national connections. Researchers focused on social justice by giving voice to immigrants’ concerns, especially on matters of gender and sexuality.

Transgender sex workers from Mexico often bring their religious icons and pendants (for example, the Virgen de Guadalupe) to San Francisco. Some of them also bring their prayer booklet for the Holy Death. These relics signify their own culture, origins and religion left behind in Mexico.

There are many low working class immigrants from Latin America who attend a mass conducted in Spanish in the Pentecostal churches. They are encouraged to be exemplary citizens in their new country, to ask questions, to give testimonials and to pray for surviving their daily life struggles. Even though the church music is similar to cumbia, merengue and samba the members believe that this ‘culture’ is secondary to the culture of Christianity. Through social movements, the Pentecostal churches help immigrants to adopt a more tolerant and progressive attitude towards gender roles or childbearing duty.

Filipinos are mostly Christians, following the rituals and dogmas of the Catholic church, brought to their country by Spanish friars or religious orders such as the Order of Saint Augustine in 1564, the Jesuits in 1581 and the Dominicans in 1587. With the American occupation of 1898 the Protestant church was founded in the Philippines. Yet the faithful there created their own Global Church of Christ where reading the Gospels was of main importance. In San Francisco, Filipinos are mostly associated with the Catholic churches in the area known as “Happy Valley.”

Bi-national same-sex couples, illustrated by the case of two men from China and Singapore, can easily find the gay church in San Francisco. It is much more than the centre of a religious community; it advocates human rights for new lesbian, gay, and transgender immigrants.

The Presbyterian Mission Program targeted low-income, first generation Chinese youth residing in San Francisco’s Chinatown and Bay Area suburbs whose families originate in Taiwan and mainland China. There is also a Buddhist temple that serves as a network for the monasteries, schools and Buddhist book publications. Vietnamese American migrants have a Buddhist temple in San José, California, home to the second-largest concentration of immigrants from Vietnam in the United States.

Chinese-American venerated a goddess from the vast Chinese folk pantheon. She is known by her imperial title of Tianhou although her more familiar name is Mazu/Mazupo. The cult of Tianhou is based on the worship of a maiden named Lin Moniang who is said to have lived from 960 to 987. She had magical powers and was transformed from a mortal girl to the Empress of Heaven. In 1986 Taiwanese-Chinese immigrants established a temple to Tianhoe/Mazu that symbolically marks the collective identity of Asian immigrants.

The current study is very well researched and employs up to date theoretical frameworks. The immigrant acculturation theory explores the multiple religions, cultural and national identities in a language accessible to both academics and non-academics.

In spite of its tremendous and ambitious goal, Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana is not difficult to follow its daunting 372 pages. The writers did a fantastic job by reflecting on the different religious practices of the wide variety of immigrants in San Francisco. I was pleasantly surprised that such a difficult and complex theme kept me absorbed at all times.

Written by: Anna Hamling, March 14th 2010

The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By S. Bear Bergman

Arsenal Pulp Press

Gender, sex, and queer theory aren’t exactly what come to mind when I think of an easy read. I remember being duped into reading one of Anne Fausto-Sterling’s books, Sexing the Body, which begins with the story of a female athlete, Maria Patino, stripped of her medals when it was determined by doctors that she had been born with a condition known as androgen insensitivity. She was biologically male, but her body did not respond accordingly.

After this first anecdotal queer foray, Fausto-Sterling dives head first into the theory and science of it all. Although wildly interesting, theory is something that I can only take in small doses, and Sexing the Body took me some time to read. This is where S. Bear Bergman’s book enters at a seemingly oppositional point in style. The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You is a collection of essays on queer and transgender issues that begins like the story of Maria, and continues in this vein for the duration of the book while still getting the important, theoretical points across and engaging the reader in a way that almost no queer theory book has before.

This is not to say that Bergman’s book isn’t smart. It is. It’s full of big words and heady concepts, but ze delivers them in a way that is thoughtful to the reader, a kind of fireside chat of topics that are usually spoken about in academic settings. Bergman’s gift of storytelling illuminates the evolving nuances of queer and trans life, and one of the greatest elements of hir book is that ze has a way of making the personal not only political, but public and shared as well.

Most essays begin with a story from Bergman’s life, and then weave the details of the stories, which deal with queer life in practice, into queer life in theory. Some essays are on the cutting edge, like “Passing,” which deals with the use, or misuse, of a word that inflicts responsibility of understanding onto the person in question. Not only does Bergman discuss the problematic use of this word, ze offers a solution-reading-that assigns responsibility to the observer. Other essays, like “The Velveteen Tranny,” is an honest and heartfelt look at Bergman’s dissatisfaction with the sexes and genders that are culturally provided–even the non-normative ones-and ache that surrounds the desire to feel real.

The essays in The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You are at times hilarious, thought provoking, sad, and even painful. Few books discuss queer and trans topics in such a personal way, and this book does a great service to contributing to the growing canon of queer literature. By making hir experiences visible, Bergman provides yet another narrative within the LGBTQ discourse, and lengthens the spectrum of possibility even further, one essay at a time.

Written by: Krista Ciminera, January 14th 2010

Who's Your Daddy?

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:07:00 +0000

Edited by Rachel Epstein

Sumach Press

Postmodern indeed. As a single Black lesbian mother, I assumed that a resource like this wouldn’t yet exist. On searching, I discovered a literary road map to queer parenting and family that is current, diverse and mini-encyclopedic in its breadth. Reading this work made me feel as though I had added to my family of choice. Who’s Your Daddy? documents the adventures and challenges of queer parents, including the parenting experiences of single, partnered, co-parenting and polyamorous parents. Essays from more than thirty contributors detail recent aspects of queer parenting history, including legal victories and challenges in the United States and Canada, the experiences of queer spawn (look it up) as well as the personal parenting experiences of single and partnered individuals including transgender women and men, lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer mothers, parents, and fathers.

Who’s Your Daddy? is not only broad in terms of the contributors and the subject matter covered in the book, but in tone as well. An accessible quality is maintained in the majority of the writing in the book. Sections on the various routes to parenthood, family composition, history and social change, parenting challenges and the legacy of queer families are made even more engaging due to the personal experiences candidly communicated by young queer parents, queer children from transracial adoptive families, one lesbian’s experience of infertility, and dispatches from queer-identified straight children, involved donors and blended families. Contributions in the form of email exchanges, interviews and letters tell stories that are laced with humor, highlight injustices, and relay grave personal loss.

One generation ago, some queer individuals would not have considered parenthood feasible. However, this book shows the many creative ways families have been built and children have been nurtured outside of the nuclear, heteronormative ideal. Open adoption, the experience of queer spawn in schools, the ways in which queer parents challenge gender stereotypes in raising their children and the experiences of involved donors are discussed alongside a transgender man’s experience of being treated at a fertility clinic. A letter to an unborn child lists a mother’s intentions to parent equitably, regardless of the child’s gender, while another piece discusses the importance placed upon biological ties within lesbian-led families.

As stated by Epstein, Who’s Your Daddy? does not attempt to prove that LGBTQ led families are the same or “as good as” straight or nuclear families. The joys, challenges and experiences captured in this anthology display the richness of queer cultures and relationships, values we should treasure, validate, analyze critically and pass on to our children.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, December 12th 2009

make/shift: feminisms in motion (Issue 6)

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:34:00 +0000

Edited by Jessica Hoffmann, Daria Yudacufski

Make/Shift aims to thrust the ignored populations into the greater recognition. Native Americans living in urban settings rather than rural reservations tend to be invisible in our nation’s consciousness. Society shies away from the combination of disability and sexuality, and when it comes to women’s prisons, many question the validity of empowerment through peer education health programs. The Fall/Winter edition of Make/Shift explores these and a wide variety of other social issues. It highlights individuals working to improve the world on personal, local, international, and virtual levels through social action or artistic ventures.

A letter from the editors tells readers that the theme of the issue is movement, but some of the articles that follow move more efficiently than others. A few of the more personal pieces struck this reader at a trifle tedious. A piece about losing one’s ethnic identity by using a certain hair product makes about as much sense to me as the belief that using spray-on tanner would force me to concede my Whiteness. An article entitled “Vocabulary Lesson” questions the queer world’s borrowing of the word wife from mainstream society when that word has many negative historical connotations attached to it, but the execution came off condescending, and seemed to push for the continued separation of the two groups.

Many stories move quite fluidly, however. A tale about a formerly battered woman’s journey into professorship hits the mark, as does a story about a Haitian lesbian’s encounter with a skinhead on a train. A collage piece on kitchens examines how this politically charged space changes depending on the occupants and attitudes. A series of segments on health focus on specific issues concerning women’s health, such as environmental hazards connected with work traditionally performed by females.

Another focuses on the push to provide health care for transpeople. As a health care provider featured in the article puts it, “If someone has a cervix, they need gynecological care,” yet many trans people harbor fears of discrimination and simply discomfort with entering a clinic. A piece on immigration explores how the nation’s policies affect those in the queer community.

The magazine doesn’t focus long on any one issue or demographic. Make/Shift strives to reach out to all who identify as female, no matter what their origin or back story, and there is a tidbit for everyone—hopefully more, if you’re willing to learn something.

The design would benefit from more art and photographs to further connect readers to the subjects of the articles. This shouldn’t be difficult, considering that this is a magazine that celebrates artists. I don’t know if the lack of image distribution is a reflection of the magazine’s relative newness, a lack of resources, or failure to see the need, but either way, the need is evident.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, December 2nd 2009

You’ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Edited by Laurie J. Shrage

Oxford University Press

Each essay in Laurie J. Shrage’s collection, You've Changed, takes on the challenge of analyzing the philosophical, cultural, and psychological dimensions of the—for lack of a better or more acute concept—umbrella category of “trans” identity. This same challenge, which underlines the collection’s creation, is the same challenge that often times handicaps its clarity and ultimate success. The breadth of scope of the volume on “trans” identities is awe-inspiring, but simultaneously hinders the conceptual clarity of many of the concepts discussed within the essays: “trans,” used primarily as an identity prefix, is applied indiscriminately, and, frequently inconsistently, to gender, sex, and sexuality throughout the essays. The difficulty, from the reader’s perspective, is the inability to grasp exactly, with precision, what—philosophical, phenomenological, or physical—concept the author is referring to in their his/her essay. Each author attempts to map out the concepts that they he/she engages with in their his/her essay, but the lack of conceptual consistency and coherence within each essay, and among the essays collectively, creates readerly confusion (for even the most adept of gender studies scholars!).

Take, for instance, the first essay of the volume, Christine Overall’s “Sex/Gender Transitions and Life-Changing Aspirations.” Overall logically begins the essay by laying out the terms of her discussion of transitioning. She writes, “I use the general term ‘trans’ to refer to individuals who go through changes from man to woman or woman to man, deliberately glossing over the differences among transgendered and transsexual individuals.” She then goes on to explain, that “gender is the presentation or identification (or both) of self as being a woman or a man or some permutation thereof. By ‘sex’, [she] mean[s] (human) female and male, as well as (human) femaleness and (human) maleness,” and delimits “femaleness” and “maleness” by “the presence of the genitalia standardly associated with each.” The first “gloss” is logically productive in that it allows Overall to employ “trans” to refer to any form of “transitioning” that an individual may experience in her life. However, the following clause, which seems an attempt at specification, only problematizes the concepts of gender and sex, which clouds the productive function of the “trans” prefix, and which is apparent by the author’s continual untangling of “gender” and “sex” throughout the essay.

Overall’s essay, like all essays in the volume, is praiseworthy for its sophisticated and serious effort. Gayle Salamon’s essay, “The Sexual Schema: Transposition and Transgender in Phenomenology of Perception,” is particularly brilliant for its appraisal of Merleau-Ponty’s text and how it manages to illustrate how Merleau-Ponty’s work in general—once shunned for being too “airy-fairy,” poetical, or qualitative—proves quite useful to discussions of trans identities.

Written by: Marcie Bianco, October 2nd 2009