Your Mission

Hello.
I am sitting in my favorite coffeeshop in LiberalCity, RedState. TP is reading "Genderqueer" sitting next to me, and reading me tidbits occasionally, and I also have a HUGE cafe au lait next to me. This femme hasn't been happier for some time.

If you haven't been following the anti-transwoman stuff happening *all over the place* (but start with brownfemipower). Check it out. Bonus points to reading Winter's post, which deserves a hearty AMEN at the end of it. On Tuesday, there is a discussion on TransFeminism at the local feminist center for thought, and this has all given me plenty to think (and vent) about.

In April I am going to be the "feature" at the QueerOpenMic. This is really exciting, and a little bit terrifying. First I have to have enough stuff to read to fill 15 minutes. Really this won't be that hard, I have pages and pages of things. Honestly, I haven't even really processed what featuring will feel like. But before I even get around to writing more things or editing things I've written I'm faced with THE HARDEST WRITING ASSIGNMENT EVER. So I'm passing the buck.

Here is your mission:
Write my bio. Post it to the comments or email it to me: corinneblogger at gmail dot com

I hate writing this kind of thing, and I know that everyone hates writing this kind of thing. Generally though I wouldn't mind writing other people's bios. So write mine. My mother thinks it should be written with some magical realism. Since few of you actually know me. I'm very curious to see what you come up with.

Greetings from the Outpost

Hello All,

I'm holed up in IdyllicAncestralHome, with my extended family. Today is our "Christmas Eve" because Sister, MD has to work in the hospital on Monday, and Sister Esq. and her partner are leaving to celebrate with her partner's family. Our time together is a little shorter this year as a result, but we are making up for it by making those traditional Christmas cocktails.... Ginger Margaritas and Dark n' Stormies.

Later we will read children's books and go to bed and try hard to fall asleep so that Santa can come. In truth, after the food and booze, we may have no trouble at all falling asleep, and I'm so full of anxiety about the quality and quantity of the presents I'm giving that part of me just wants the whole thing to be over.

I love my family and Christmas, but it does seem like every year it gets just a little bit more stressful. As we all grow up and pull away in our own ways it gets harder to pull it all back together without tension over the holidays. I think that by the time Wednesday rolls around I will be more than happy to leave on a jetplane for the RedState and a much anticipated visit with TP.

Things I will blog about before vacation is over:
1. Exciting QueerOpenMic news.
2. The potential of outing my true identity here
3. Work, maybe.
4. Most likely some more holiday angst.
5. The hardest writing assignment ever... that y'all are going to do for me.

Also, I owe some of you personal emails that I *swear* will be forthcoming. Until then, I hope that each of you are doing whatever makes you happy this weekend. But, really, I hope that you are doing that everyday.

I'm being called into cocktail hour. Wish me luck.

Oh, also. I will be attending at least one Catholic mass between now and Wednesday, and maybe connecting with an old friend from high school.

Queer OpenMic Night Priorities

I've chosen my outfit, put on my makeup, poured myself a drink, and now I'm sitting down to edit the piece I'm reading...

Yes, I have my priorities in the right place.

Butch/Femme -- Continuing Thoughts

A bit I read at QueerOpenMic last month:

You leave shit here all the time, and I never know what is important to you, or what to throw away. I know that you want me to keep your zippo lighter, you don't smoke, but you like the feel of it in your hands, you like the weight in your pocket. Sometimes when you are drunk you smoke, but more because you like to wave a cigarette around as you talk, loose-jointed in your tipsiness and talking a bluestreak of queer theory and flirtation that has had me hooked for two years, solid. What you want is a cigarette holder. The kind used by femmes and faggots in the 30s to make your cigarette longer, your gestures wider, and everything more elegant. I want to find one for you and give it to you with a pack of candy cigarettes, since you berate me for my one cigarette a month habit I feel like yours should be made out of sugar - to cut down on hypocrisy in the world. I know that it would be ok with you if I threw away the gum wrappers and the gum that you leave on the shelf I clear for you in the closet, but I can't bring myself to do it, quite. I do, but first I bunch them in my fingers and think about how they smell like kissing you, especially since they have sat there on the shelf that will always smell like you because of the cologne you spilled there.

You keep the subway tokens in your wallet; I found one when I was down there and almost wanted to tell you to get rid of it since by the time you live here they might be totally useless, and I'm not sure when you'll make it up to HarborCity again. But I know how you like things that are small cool and hard, like your lucky bullet, how you hold them in your slender fingers. Your hands always reminds me of a bird, fast and fluttering, they are awkward as hands, not terrestrial in that way, graceful when given flight in conversation or fucking. and maybe you are like a crow hording shiny things in some nest. But then what am I? a shiny thing? No, I'm matte, on special days maybe eggshell or semi-gloss, but I can wear the clothes you leave behind. the men's jeans and button downs. they fit me better, my shoulders are still a little broader than yours so the seam sits just outside that point of bone. this is when you call me your butch. You are masculine and I am butch, it works, even when I'm femme. I am your butch when my fingers are inside; and I am your femme when my mouth is on your clit. And sometimes I do them both at the same time. I am your femme in public, even when I am being your butch, because they see my long hair and hear the cracking in your voice and think they know something about our lives, and they do. I am your femme when your fist is inside me, when your mouth is on me, when you make me coffee in the morning, and when you call me "baby". I am your butch when I have the answer for your questions. I am your femme when I straighten your tie and adjust my bra. I am your femme when I take care of you when you are sick. I am your butch, holding you as you cry. I am your butch when you say that the curtains have fallen down and you don't know what to do, and I look at them and ask for pliers and a screwdriver and for you not to hover so close when I'm balancing one foot on the chair and one foot on the windowsill. Afterwards you ask me how I knew how to pull the right tools from the box. But there is no theory to explain this skill and you kiss me and call me handy, and pull at the belt that I'm wearing, my belt on your jeans. Then we go and buy you eyeliner and I buy a bright red lipstick. My lips are red and liquid smooth, I smile at you, your eyes are smudgy and dark, but smile back. When you smile at me I am your femme, your butch. Your smile, more than anything else, unzips me from these words and either way I'm blushing. Either way when I look back at you there is no theory for this.

Also: I went out tonight; I wore tight jeans, cowboy boots, and the red lipstick, as I was heading home a new friend of mine, a man, offered to walk me home. I felt guilty, but safer saying yes, and the company was pleasant. Safer because he is bigger than me and passes pretty well and the walk is a little long for late at night. Guilty because there was part of me that felt like I should assert that I *would* be fine walking home alone. This is what I usually do, to show my independence, etc. But what is the point of asserting that to a man who grew up as a girl afraid to walk herself home?

Really? Are You Sure?

Hibernation Mode

Thank you, all, for your comments on the Self-Titled Album.

So, it's getting chilly here in HarborCity and so Sister, MD and I were in hibernation mode today:
-beef stew
-red wine
-ice cream
-television
Yes, I know that the ice cream makes no sense. But it was organic and only cost $1.29 at WholeFoods... do reasonable people say no to that kind of thing?

It was a wonderful and yummy thing. I love having my sister in this city, our conversations are not always easy, and sometimes, like tonight, we barely talked at all, but it is a joy to curl on a couch with someone you know that well, and drink wine and laugh about pop culture and share a common-ness that is *so* hard to find in other places and people.

Midnight Bridges (The Self-Titled Album)

I have never tried to articulate what a midnight bridge is, except once, the day I started this blog, in a poem to TP. I'll give you the first three lines, the next 11 (yes, I write strange sonnets) belong to TP.

"there are midnight bridges i want to build
with you, working in hard rain toward morning,
waking from nightmares for fresh cut flowers"

What is a MidnightBridge? It is the kind of connection made in the middle of the night, the kind of work that takes all night, the connection that people haven't thought about before. The combination that makes people reconsider their assumptions. It the work that we need to do personally to be who we need to be professionally, publicly, personally. It is, and has become, everything that this blog has been for me in the last nine (!) months.

And I have no idea what it, or this, will become. It would be incredibly pretentious and true to say that someday I want to reveal my real name and promote a newly minted novel from this page. It would be a little sad and true that I expect this page to dwindle as I devote myself more to both work and writing, and try to reconfigure my head so that writing can be considered both work and leisure. It is also true that this space has given me new ways to think about myself. Has made those combinations that have made me reconsider my assumptions, and that has to be a good thing, right?

Options I see before me:
A: Navel-gaze when tired and tipsy to the amusement of others
B: Write dense theory posts.
C: Try to talk about economics in ways that at least inspires me.
D: Share more workshop/journal/open mic writing-stuff.
E: Blend above with panache

Thoughts? Votes?

So what proclamation do I have tonight? What prediction for my future? What exhortation to my (~3) readers?

Go build yourselves a midnight bridge tonight. Let me know if it's a good route to somewhere awesome.

Grief, Souls, Questions

When do children become beings which we can mourn?
Why am I so sure that yesterday's lost one has a soul?
What is a soul and how do we get one again?
How does all of this match up with my politics?
What would it mean to be a person of faith? Am I capable of that series of acts?

I'm grateful to the world this morning, for my friend B. , who lets these questions be unanswered in my heart, while feeding me chocolate and manzanilla te and rubbing my feet. I hope she will do that kind of thing for always, even when she is my minister.

Crazy Week Wrap-Up

1. TP is flying into town tonight... I'm bursting at the seams with excitement, nearly waltzed out of the office tonight, and am now hunkered down with a "Jumping Cow Amber Ale", a pile of dirty laundry, and pop music. Tomorrow we are driving to my father's house in NewEnglandState, and spending a few days with him before heading to my mother's. Hopefully at my father's the sleeping spaces will be first come first serve because then TP and I will get the one with, you know, the *door that closes*. I might be making some coffee soon to be able to stay up.
   
2. GM, this will be of particular interest. Last Saturday my housemates and I hosted 20 people for a Thanksgiving feast. It was *amazing*. I really don't think that any one event that I've hosted has ever made me this happy. It was a fun blend of people, who didn't know each other beforehand. The food was also amazing. Cornbread hazelnut stuffing, and the pumpkin chiffon pie were my personal highlights, though the turkey was also amazing.
   
3. Check out this Apple ad, click on the Better Results TV ad. As we all know, usually I love Apple, and I admit that I find their computers sexy. But this is a little bit too much like "First we will objectify the woman, then we will objectify the fake woman who is a work in progress, and of whom its creator is ashamed." Am I crazy that this is a little screwy?

Things to Know about My Life:

1.I left my computer charger in ELACTown last weekend, my amazing friend is mailing it to me, but for now, I'm living off of carefully rationed battery life. Go MacBook battery, go!

2. I'm writing a story about a coroner in a city that is experiencing a spell of (as yet) unexplained violence. What does this mean in the life of Corinne? I've running a google image search on the word "atrocities" and downloading JPGs for ideas. I've also created a powerpoint slideshow out of them so that I can watch them at my leisure. Is this is a sign of any diagnosable disorder than anyone is aware of? Nevermind, don't answer that.

3. 7 word music review: "Hello Love" - The Be Good Tanyas = **fantastic**

Dear Co-Worker,

It is not that I want to fuck you. It is that when I see you walking down the hall in your janitor's outfit, talking hard with the boys in Spanish, I want to strip you down to your bra and boxers, run my hands through your hair, tilt your head, draw a fine line across the back of your neck, and give you a haircut. You are almost butch, almost sexy, but your hair touches your ears, and spikes in unexpected lengths from the top of your head, and I could fix that. Give me a Sunday night in summer on a backporch, I'll wear a short skirt and brandish a beer, scissors and clippers. I will keep everything symmetrical as I dance around the chair I have sat you in, asking you to hold still while I straddle you to get to the awkward spots. I will not give you a mirror until the end. Just let me strip you down, give me access to the soft curve of your cranium, to the space between ear and hairline, to your girlish neck and I will make other girls' head turn in your direction. Guaranteed.
Love,
A Fascist Femme

Election Version 1.0

F*ck you Rick Santorum. Watching CNN, there is a BlogParty -- teehee. I can't imagine sitting in a room full of bloggers, while blogging.
Official languages suck. Boo Arizona. Go Bernie! All eyes on VA.

Holy Sh*tMonster

Blogging from my new bloggerwidget. This is hotness, as defined by MacBook and Google. I'm such a tech slut.

Blogging at Dinner: An Economics of Race/Culture Post

So, I'm sitting in my favorite burrito place gnoshing on my chicken burrito with mango and hot sauce and sipping on a nutella smoothie, and thinking about my hot brainstorm yesterday. I mean, really people, does it get much better? No.

So, I'm actually going to blog about my work. Radical, I know.
Hmm. How to write about this without writing about it. So, several of the projects that I'm dealing with right now are about race. Actually, they all are. But, that aside, they talk about how people of different races react differently under different situations, and they all talk about it as though the effect were cultural (people with bad eyesight place a high cultural value on carrots) or an in group effect (so, for example, people who have bad eyesight will give more carrots away to people, not because they themselves have ever needed a carrot, but because they can imagine themselves or people like them needing a carrot (thanks, Weezy). But none of them talk about the contexts or different social experiences that different groups have. Maybe Blacks react differently not because they *are* different, but because of, you know, that whole set of experiences with racism in white America that they and their ancestors have had to deal with -- something that's hard to quantify.

The trick: Find two groups of people are the same now, but for one group their ancestors were white when the immigrated to the US and for the other group they were not white. Like cohorts of whiteness. Then you could show that they react differently based on the different "minority experiences" they had instead of some other dimension. Think about the history of immigration and whiteness.

That was my hot brainstorm yesterday.

Writing the Impossible: Three Letters

So, in the last few days I've had to write three fairly impossible letters (two down, one to go).

1. CreativeWritingMentor from HighSchool, who is also a dear friend, the next door neighbor to my mother's house and the woman whose wedding I trespassed to get to in time is just entering second trimester of a difficult pregnancy (and her first): difficult decisions have had to be made, she is physically and emotionally totally exhausted, and the end isn't really anywhere in sight, the likelihood that she will lose the whole pregnancy is still fairly high. I love this woman and she has shown unfailing support for me in all of my endeavors: personal, political, intellectual, and creative. I wish that I had the write words to lift her up and support her from hundreds of miles away, but I'm at a loss. She is also a fairly private person and that makes things trickier especially because I got this update through my mother, who bless her heart, is a pregnancy gossip. On the other hand, I can't NOT write a note.

2. WomenStudiesMentor and mother of children who I babysat and adore was diagnosed with epilepsy this summer and continues to struggle with meds, seizures, and managing life and family with this evolving and changing disorder. I love this woman and she has shown unfailing support for me in all of my endeavors: personal, political, intellectual, and creative. When I go back to ELACtown in a couple of weeks, I'll probably stay with her and her family. It's a funny thing to try to be the friend of a former mentor. I definitely get the vibe that she wants me to be her friend -- but I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants in that friendship more than I do in most. Probably because I hang on to boundaries that aren't there anymore. I just wrote her an email pinning down details of my stay (and checking *one more time* that I'm not imposing).

3. HistoryActivismMentor is applying to a tenure track position at the school where her partner teaches and has asked me to write her a recommendation letter. I love this woman and she has shown unfailing support for me in all of my endeavors: personal, political, intellectual, and creative (are you sensing a theme?). The department that she is applying is has asked me to evaluate her skills as a teacher. HOLY SHIT! I told my sister, who was also HAM's student that I was doing this, she agreed that it was an impossible task and we decided the letter could go something like this:

"When I was a freshman HAM taught me what gender was. Then she taught me what history was. Then she treated me like a fellow scholar. Then she taught me about campus politics, myself, housesitting for her adorable cats, being a bitch to get out of being overcommitted, and gender. I still don't think I'm done thinking about everything that HAM taught me. If you don't give her this position you are damn fools, but I'll be happy because she will still be on the East Coast."

In closing:
GAH. Does anyone know how to write this kind of letter?

A List of Five

1. Right now, I'm doing that classic Friday night thing -- drinking beer, watching television, and blogging. Okay, well, at least the beer and television are classic.
2. I've been writing and thinking a lot about butch/femme. I know that that line alone has made some of your ears perk up. I'll get back to you. Yes, this is in part been prompted by my illusions of grandeur and Maria Angeline's call for submissions. Truth of the matter is that I've been writing more, which is part of why I've been seeming a bit scarce around these parts. But the files are piling up, in my Documents\writing folder and someday the better ones may see the light of day.
3. I went for a run on Wednesday morning, and I've only weighed myself once this week. Both of these are good things.
4. I agreed to take on five more hours a week of research time. In some ways it's great. Doing more research, more, always more is the key to the game. It means that some of time that I spend working on PotentialCoAuthorship Project will be paid. I need to broach the "taking work home" subject. Because while I think that I'm happy to take on five more hours a week in front of a computer thinking about economics, I'm not sure that I want to spend more time in front of *that* particular computer. The work I do is pretty portable, and I don't really think that my boss will mind but I'm still nervous about bringing it up. (By the way, it's really funny to refer to a professor as a boss, because he doesn't have any of that boss vibe to him).
5. My dear, dear friend B. played her guitar and sang songs that she had written and we were all there sitting in a coffeeshop while she *featured* at our local OpenMic and clapped like mad. It was a good night.
   

Sunday Afternoon Meme; Narratives about Unpleasant/Naked/Trespassing Pasts

1. Dated outside your race? Yes.
2. Singing in the shower? Almost always.
3. Spit in someone’s drink? No.
4. Played with Barbies? Like once, maybe.
5. Made someone cry? Far too often.
6. Opened your Christmas presents early? Never, some things are sacred.
7. Lied to a friend? Yes, not proud of it.
8. Watched and cried while watching a soap opera? Nooo.
9. Played a computer game for more than 5 hours? Yes. Myst. I was 11.
10. Ran through the sprinklers naked? Yes.
11. Ate food that fell on the floor? Almost daily.
12. Went outside naked? Yes. (Has anyone ever heard of an indoor sprinkler?)
13. Been on stage? Yes.
14. Been on stage naked or close to it? No. My apparent love of nudity has its limits.
15. Been in a parade? No, I don't think I have.
16. Been in a school play? Yes, sadly.
17. Drank beer? Yes, indeedy.
18. Gotten detention? Yes, twice. Once for being loud in study hall, flirting with the girl next to you has its price. And once for attempting to strangle a boy who told that girls couldn't play with boys, he also called me a "blonde bimbo"; I called him a "brunette bastard", chased him down, and tried to strangle him.
19. Been on a cruise? No.
20. Broken into a house? Yes. I forgot the directions to my friend's wedding and so I broke into a house in the middle of nowhere, said hello to the dog, and looked up the phone number for her parent's house and got directions. Got there just in time.
21. Gotten a tattoo? No.
22. Gotten piercings? Ears, and a nose stud.
23. Gotten into a fist fight? Unless you count the wrestling matches with my older sister or the "brunette bastard" incident, no.
24. Gotten into a shouting match? Yes, with my older sister, and AbusiveCollegeGirlfriend. Both periods of my life I want to move beyond.
25. Swallowed sea/pool water? Yes.
26. Spun yourself in circles to get dizzy on purpose? Yes.
27. Laughed so hard it hurt? Yes, including last night.
28. Tripped on your own feet? Sure.
29. Cried yourself to sleep? Yes.
30. Cried in public? Yes.
31. Thrown up in public? No.
32. Lied to your parents? Yes, being in the closet for a while will do that to you.
33. Skipped class? Yes.
34. Cried so hard you threw up? Yes, see shouting matches, crying to sleep, and AbusiveCollege Girlfriend.
35. Had a one night stand? Yes.
36. Left restaurant without paying tab? No.
37. Been fired from a job? No.
38. Wanted to make out with your massage therapist, therapist OR hairdresser? I have an active imagination, so that is a yes.
39. Had a drink "sent" to a stranger at a bar? No, wish I had the balls for that. Or that someone would do that to me someday.
40. Been winked at and loved it? YES.

Evidence of La Femme (Identity)

So, I bought myself these two colors of lipstick this weekend along with some other markers of femininity that are highlighted later in the post. It was wonderful. I was shopping with TP and hir roommate B. -- so, essentially, for the purposes of makeup consumption -- two gay men. They bought eyeliner, I bought the above shades of red. (Mouths look so weird without faces, btw). Then we went home and played. I don't think I have ever *played* with makeup before in my entire life -- it has always been a tooth and nail struggle to the bitter end with haphazard results. Last night, it was so much FUN. Why don't most women give themselves permission to do that kind of thing?

Also, I got these at a thrift store -- there combined price was $55, but I was freaking out about being a capitalist, so I only bought the cowboy boots, and then after much conversation and
consternation. I went back and got the heels. Two things to know about these pairs of shoes:
1. They are both comfortable. I have big and wide feet, comfortable shoes are basically the holy grail.
2. The heels are a much more amazing deep plum color in person, and yes those heels are HUGE by my standards.

In Defense of Data: Long, Meaty, and Raw

Background: I have a major in Economics, a research job, and an interest in Sociology, Demography. I spent about twenty hours this week doing data programming. Also, if this were a working paper in my field it would read in big block letters:

PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE: COMMENTS WELCOME.

A while ago EL of My Amusement Park posted about the New York City's board of health allowing transfolk to get new sex-corrected birth certificates, and asked an important question about why we feel to need to ask that question there. I posted a response. And so did Jenn. You can take a look at the whole exchange here. Though I will also quote below.

Jenn wrote:

I know demographics are supposed to be terribly helpful. Like, they're supposed to help the medical establishment deliver better health care... to those tragic white men who can't get their peckers up. I know demographics help the government figure out what "minority" groups really need, so they can withhold it until they get enough vote service. It helps teachers know which kids to attend to and which are destined to fall through the cracks anyway and aren't worth wasting time on. And don't forget how it helps businesses determine that yes, Virginia, only the needs of white male consumers matter.
Without demographics, we'd have to go back to plain old KKK style bigotry. It's so much nicer to be able to couch it all in lots of scientific-sounding numbers (that we've manipulated to support our pre-existing POV).
Bigotry is dead! Long live Bigotry!
What does knowing someone's gender really tell the govt that it needs to know? I can't think of anything except whether the person deserves first-class treatment or second.

And I understand her point. Demographics can be **terribly** helpful. They are a lynchpin in the bio-political power that the modern nation state has had in the last one hundred and fifty years. Now, some theory:

Bio-power is one of the many technologies of power that was elucidated by Michel Foucault. In History of Sexuality, Vol. I. he describes “the emergence in the field of political practices and economic observation, of the problems of birthrate, longevity, public health, housing and migration. Hence there was an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations” (Foucault, 140). It is closely linked to bio-politics, which David Hoy defines as “the strategies that are to be pursued in implementing bio-power”; these two are so linked that at points one of them will be used to signify both (Hoy, 74). This “management of life” permeates into people’s private lives through the techniques of bio-politics that govern people’s sexuality and other aspects of their biological existence (147). Sexuality is more intensely regularized in this framework because it is at “the juncture of the ‘body’ and the ‘population’” which are the main targets of disciplinary and regulatory power respectively (HOS 147). He describes the place of sexuality in a bio-political framework thus, “Through the themes of health, progeny, race, the future of the species, the vitality of the social body, power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality; the latter was not a mark or a symbol it was an object and a target. Moreover, its importance was due less to its rarity or its precariousness than to its insistence, its insidious presence” (147-8).

The fact that bio-politics creates a poor population that is inherently “lazy, indigent, and undeserving” blinds those with who have privilege from interrogating the structures of poverty in their society. As Foucault notes the divisions in society take on a biological rather than political level. This allows those with privilege to be politically complacent and ignorant. They are permitted to think about poverty as the problem of a population rendered as other through appeal to unchangeable characteristics. Because this is the dominant view, mobilization does not occur in resistance to the techniques of bio-power. This complacency breeds more privilege and the perpetuity of those ‘unchangeable’ characteristics. This social blindness and abdication of responsibility is one of the most pernicious effects of the bio-politics that surround welfare policy and poverty in the United States.

And I get all of that, heck I wrote that above "block-quote-bigger-than-something-big-in-your-vicinity". But I also think that data has some advantages that I break into two main sections (for now).

1. The Master's Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House
And yet, they are what we have. They are like props for some grand improv theater game, and while I think that other tools will be created, imagined and will become powerful, I also am not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I also think that the "Master" probably doesn't exist anymore: what we have is whole cadres of people who are trained to think like him who may or may not agree with him really -- but only know how to talk about things that the way that they were taught. I want to talk to them. A lot of scholarship in Sociology and Feminist Economics is using these tools, and using them to ask the questions in different ways. [examples will be included in full version~]

2. Narrative is Also a Trap: Pixillating the Narrative Trope
The only opposition in the world is not: Data v. Narrative. But let's pretend for a moment that it is:

The discourse of confession and truth-telling has made the creation of a personal, individual narrative an imperative. Often this personal narrative follows a pattern that is edging on trope whether it is a story of birth, death, or coming of age. Because of this patterning, the narrative may not be liberating or reflective of much, as was noted by Eve Sedgewick in The Epistemology of the Closet. In this way the individual, in a true sense, is lost in what the current age rabidly declares is an expression of that very individualism. Part of this mythic belief in the personal narrative is the idea that any method of truth gathering that denies the individual the opportunity to tell their own story is inherently oppressive, veiling, and authoritarian. These methods, typified by data collection, reduce the ‘individual’ to a mere number, masking the nuances of their experiences.

In this scenario the individual was lost to the collective, and individual lives were created and ended on the basis of the desires of a racist state with police powers. This power dynamic can have significant pernicious effects on populations, as evidenced by institutions like public assistance programs and AIDS funding policies in the United States.

Generally the very methods of data collection feed into the power of the state, limiting the ways in which people can identify and describe themselves and their families. I faced this in a very tangible way when I realized that the data set that I was using for my thesis did not allow respondents to label themselves as either more than one race or as Latino/Hispanic (decidedly, and happily, NOT the case with census data). Another example is the way in which sex and gender identification are constantly regulated through data collection that only allows people to identify as “male” or “female”. These racist and hetero-normative assumptions about the ways in which respondents will identify and respond clearly truncate the potential for liberating truth gathering. However there is no requirement that questionnaires be constructed in this manner, they could allow for a much broader range of responses with only minimal inconvenience to the statisticians who analyze the data. While there is major institutional foot-dragging to prevent this from happening, it is possible. Ultimately more accurate and precise measurements are always in the interest of the researcher because it means that they can state with more confidence that their findings actually mean something.

If we return to the problem of the narrative as oppressive because of the way in which it compels subjects to follow a preset trajectory, what are the possibilities associated with looking toward data collection? Data collection has many problems, yet it is very effective at breaking up the stories that people tell about their lives. Instead of asking people if they are healthy, there is a series of questions that ask about specific behaviors that a healthy person can do in a day, such as climbing a flight of stairs, and then codes them along a preset scale. While these scales, particularly of health and fitness, may be very subjective and problematic there is a value to the way in which people’s experiences are pixilated – broken, disintegrated, and potentially distilled. The conscientious researcher could rearrange these pixels, creating them into an aggregate picture that was used not to oppress or regulate, but describe the lives that people are living in ways that they may not be able to articulate. Once these new articulations are provided, the possibilities for uses for the new information abound. This is particularly true where the stories that people tell about themselves serve as barriers to the building of coalitions and communities. If there were data explaining the common problems between various populations with the state policing their family structures it is possible that a coalition would be more forthcoming. Whereas without that data, strong narratives of gender, sexuality, race, and class might prevent those coalitions from being built.

Further, often the narratives are not personal, but rather are cultural. I think probably the best example that I can give of this (without revealing where and for whom I work, and what I'm working on) is the narrative about the middle class. The middle class in America is constantly thriving - everything is constantly getting better. This is the story that is told and that we tell ourselves and often believe. However, in the last few years this has broken down -- crumbled even - why? Data. Data that says that homeownership is a trap that is just as likely to put you in debtor's prison as deliver you to a white picket fence. Data that says that the rich are, in fact, getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and everyone else is just scrapping by. And folks are starting to not believe quite as much anymore Do you need to know people's gender to know that this is happening? No, you don't, but you do need it to talk about the ways that elderly women are more likely to be poor than elderly men because pension benefits screw them over (if you have access to JSTOR or other academic loveliness - do yourself a tiny lil' lit search, if not take my privileged word for it).

Ok. I'm done. I'm sitting in a coffeeshop in LiberalCity, RedState, with TP. And I have some work that I brought "home" with me over the weekend, not to mention a novel to read, and a person to kiss. Congratulations for making it this far.
___________________________________
Dork-out further here:

*Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. Random House, Inc., New York, 1978.
*Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975- 1976.Translated by David Macey. Ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Picador, New York, 2003.
*Hoy, David. Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post- Critique. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

~Said version may never be written.

26.6 Miles Later: Another Random Ten List

1. I have a big meaty post in the editing stage about how data can fight racism, sexism, classism, etc. I talk about Foucault, and my work and it makes me smile. But it does not cohere, so it is not posted.
2. Backpacking was fabulous -- the most technically challenging stuff I've ever done, and one 11.8 mile day, so today is the first day that I'm not sore, but good God, was it gorgeous!
3. Today work was insane, maybe because it started out with me learning about improper integrals (you know the type, who show too much leg as they take the limit to infinity), and then I gave a pint of blood, and then, then, I actually started to deal with two data projects, a finance SNAFU, a new job assignment, and a new data project (with co-authorship potential!). Whew!
4. I'm performing at the QueerOpenMic tomorrow - an updated version of the piece about landscape/sex/home/transitioning that I posted here about a month ago. Someday, maybe I'll gain legitimacy in that space without being the partner of a transthing, maybe someday I'll stop worrying about my own legitimacy enough to live my life. Maybe, someday, my concerns about legitimacy will focus themselves on something other than what I should wear.
5. Friday I fly to RedState to visit TP. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I have wings.
6. Planning trip to ELAC-Town for Veteran's Day weekend, but HistoryMentor has a house guest that weekend so I can't stay with her. She just asked me for a letter of reference ::BLUSH:: and is one of my favorite people in the whole world, and sent me back an email with the houseguest news and the words "are your dates firm?" Well, I thought they were until I got that email.
7. It's National Coming Out Day. I'm living in a gray space with this at work right now. I know that some people assume that I'm with a man, and I know that some people must see my little sticker saying "Transsexual Women are Our Sisters", and I know that I hate not knowing who knows about my queerness.
8. I love working my body hard, depending on it to get me through the day -- why wasn't I called to be a construction worker or a farmer instead of a sedentary, data-crunching, academic. I would be just as useful to the world if my brain were hardwired to a keyboard.
9. I'm totally open to advice on any of the above 8 bits of life drivel.
10. Did you see the part in #3 about potential co-authorship? OMG.

Songs In My Head

So, I've been remiss in my blogging efforts the past few days because I've been getting ready for my backpacking trip this weekend. On the other hand -- I'm going to be hiking up there for the next three days, and 25 miles. Ok, except tomorrow because I have to go to work and play with data.

But before I leave, a meme (my first!) from the lovely GreyMatters over at LobalWarming.

Seven songs in my head *right now* (in no particular order):
1. Thea Gilmore, Call Me Your Darling
I love the term of endearment darlin', especially coming from TP, and this song is happy and upbeat and yet yearning at the same time.
2. Indigo Girls, Lay My Head Down
Sometimes I feel this tired, and this in need of someone to hold me tight.
3. Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song
Always a fav.
4. Old Crow Medicine Show, Down Home Girl
"Every time you move like I've got to go to Sunday class ... your perfume is made out of turnip greens, every time I kiss you, girl, it tastes like pork n' beans" It is just so inexplicably sexy.
5. Black Cadillac, Roseanne Cash
I spend too much time thinking about death, this album helps me do it to a tune, with good rhythm.
6. Ordinary Town, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
Thinking about home, where I'm happy and find my peace -- very ordinary.
7. Not Pretty Enough, Kasey Chambers
"Is my heart too broken?" Good question, my lady, good question.

If I were a flirt, I would flirt with Sly, Jack, and Prof. Weezy.

Trig Function

Trig functions make me want to gouge my eyes out with my mechanical pencil.
In other news: I made yummy cranberry almond chocolate chip granola bars for my backpacking trip this weekend.

Good Morning

So, below are pictures of the quilt that I am making for Sister, Esq. and her partner. Keep in mind that these pictures were taken with my new computer -- so their quality is a little sub-par. But hey, you try taking a picture of your bed with your laptop.

This morning I got up early and scrubbed the kitchen floor and later on I will make K's birthday cake -- sourcream yellow cake, buttercream frosting, homemade lemon curd and homemade rasberry filling. I don't know why I feel the need to mention that everything will be homemade -- you folks already know this about me.

So, it's me the sunshine, the domestic arts, and the classical music station -- does life get better?


(Also, at some point, someone will need to explain to me why Blogger won't let you move pictures around in a post).

Tipsy Thursday

So, have I mentioned that I'm auditing a calculus class?

I'm auditing a calculus class. Sure, I'm in over my head, but I've been there before, after all, I did take Macroeconomic Theory in Spanish -- which means I can explain policies in response to inflation - but only in espanol. I came home from work and did math homework for too long, and then L. came home and made dinner and then we talked (briefly) about backpacking next weekend and then we went out to the new *lounge*. Complete with boring quintet and sexy bartender -- I had a tequila, cassis, ginger ale concoction and then a Johnny Walker black on the rocks. Because a girl who drinks whisky is a girl indeed. If you know what I mean.

Now, I'm tipsy and blogging. Life could be worse.

Thursday is sleepy identity crisis day. I stay up late Wednesdays because of workshop and the high that follows and then Thursday morning I go to a "work in progress" research seminar that inspires me to be a social policy analyst -- and then I play with data all day wondering whether to unravel racism and classism for the rest of my life or just leave and write a novel.

Tomorrow:
9am: Integrals with pretentious undergrads
10-12:30: Data, hopefully meeting with Boss #2
12:30: Lunch with EconMentor
1:30-5:Editing for Boss #1
6-whenevah: Dinner with friend and roomies, carrot soup, baked apple thing, and maybe a bottle of wine.

Sounds like an okay day. Except for the integrals. Grrr.



P.S. What do the beginning stages of alcoholism look like?

Rhett Butler, Indigo Girls, and My Studio

So, Roomie L. and I went to the coast this weekend and sat by a picture window and watched the fog move in and out, swam in the waves, made delicious food and watched "Gone with the Wind". Now, keep in mind that this is the first time **ever** that I've watched the whole thing all the way through. Now, there are many questions that it raised for me, many points were I rolled my eyes, dropped by jaw, and generally yelled at the thing -- but there is one, enduring question:

Why do I find Rhett Butler sexy?

No, really, why? Is it his dandy/butch tendency, is it his ability to cut through bullshit, do I love him because he's so fucken patronizing? Because really, deep down, he respects Scarlett? Please tell me it's not about the mustache...

[As a side note, the new Indigo Girls CD, "Despite our Differences", really is excellent. Check it out if you're the type. ]

The weekend on the coast was wonderful. L. and I had a chance to do the sort of conversing and hanging out that we need, and sustains our friendship. Frankly, I've been too busy this past month or so to really devote the time to that kind of thing, and because of that there has been tension and because of that I've been dreaming about moving into a studio closer to NewJob and workshop next summer.

Part of this is that I really want to live by myself at some point in my life. I want to have space where I find my own habits and patterns and can be by myself whenever I want to. I crave a big room with big windows and hardwood floors -- and I can't afford it anytime soon.

TP will probably be moving to HarborCity next summer, and doesn't want to live together then/yet, which I think, and let me stress this: I think that that is a wise and mature decision. But I also feel a little bit like someone is suggesting that I have an extra helping of brussel sprouts when I want a piece of dark chocolate. And even though I like brussel sprouts... Anyway, that and heading into month four of commuting forty-five minutes in each direction is starting to make me dream about living in a studio -- maybe with a writing desk? [Make any Woolf references you so desire here].

The other thing about the weekend on the coast was that it made me realize how sexy it is to spend a weekend in a cottage on the coast and made me think that, despite my present company, surely there was a place in the world for good queer coastal erotica, no?

I'll just leave you with those images for the evening. :)

Random Ten

1. I have a three month evaluation at NewJob (nee DreamJob) tomorrow. It should be interesting, to say the least.
2. I made sweet potato burrito filling to make burritos to bring for lunches to try to save money.
3. TP was meeting with a dean a few weeks ago who referred hir as "Dick" for the first five minutes of the meeting -- is someone revealing their underlying anxieties?
4. Chocolate and red wine are the only two foods to be confirmed in multiple studies to be beneficial to your health -- I might be okay after all.
5. I LOVE my new computer. It's so fast, and has wireless, and the loooongest battery life known to man (maybe not, but longest known to me).
6. I have an ice cream date with a friend from workshop tonight -- I'm really excited. Making friends is my new hobby.
7. I spent last weekend spending time with my mother and Sister, MD which was a mixed blessing. I love them both - but neither of them nourish my body image -- for different reasons.
8. Is anyone else in the world as attached to Sarah Waters' novels as I am? Also, does anyone else see the similarities between Affinity and Alias Grace?
9. I get to vote tomorrow, which is awesome. I'm actually excited to vote, how often does that happen to the likes of me?
10. How much did posting pictures compromise my anonymity? It's not like anyone really knows what I look like.
    

Limited Time Only -- My new Computer has a camera and my new name is Narcissa

Sorry, too late.

Fresh From Workshop

The places we call home do not stay the same. They roll and change, the road commissioner comes and says more here, less there, a little bit of grading, and there is a pile of dirt in the middle of the road and we’re driving on the wrong side to pick up flowers for the wedding, trapped behind a flock of wild turkeys.

The places we call home twist and bend, navigating new curves. They slow at construction zones, deconstruction zones – following orange cones and blinkers. A curve straightened, a mountain shorn off. This past weekend, your body was my home-scape. Never before has your body felt so new and your love felt so familiar.

Last Saturday, after the wedding, it was almost like the first time we fucked except that I looked into your eyes for the longest time. It was almost like the first time, but I knew your body differently and your body was different, four months on T, and your body is my home landscape returned to and returning. It was almost like the first time, but we weren’t drunk, and we were in love. Your curves are straightening, without orange cones. Your landscape still fits -- fits you more. You still fit inside me, like you always have, but differently now that I look into your eyes. You still fit inside my mouth, but more because of this change and more because I’ve loved you in this changing. Like an old landscape in a new season. Roadwork sucks, a renumbering of exits, a repaving of roads can throw a whole population for months, the bumps and turns have changed, but the light still hangs the same on the trees in the fall, and the light still hangs the same behind your eyes. Your breath on my neck still has the warmth of a spring day.

We slipped into bed, after flirting and dancing and a day so perfect that now it feels like a dream. I cried through the ceremony, and you danced with my mom, and met my dad. I sat at dinner with an old family friend and you offered me your jacket and went to get some wine and she said, “TP seems great, but I’m not sure about pronouns”.
“Either, both, it’s a mixed bag” which is the honest answer. She nodded and said, "It looks like a good decision. " You were wearing the suit that you and your mother had picked out together – gray for weddings, and it hangs perfectly, the pants hang perfectly. I love a woman’s hips in men’s pants, and a triple Windsor knot in your tie to make it the right length. I can’t imagine your mom and you in a Salvation Army store in northern Mississippi trolling for a perfect gray suit until she found one that you looked handsome in, maybe this is her way of blessing you through her faithful fear of all you are – with her thrift store skills. It is a good decision.

You don’t remember the first time, you were too drunk, and you rely on my recollections. I remember that we fucked and dozed and fucked and I remember that you didn’t want to lean into me after we were done because you were afraid that you would hurt me. It was almost like the first time, we fucked and dozed and fucked again – much more quietly than the first time because my mother was in the very next room in an old house with thin walls. Afterwards you curled into the spaces, I lay on top of you, and we held each other close until morning. And this time you will never forget the way I screwed you. That is the difference.

People always ask me how transitioning has changed me, how it is to be with someone as their body changes and I don’t have the metaphors down yet. It’s like watching a child grow up – without the pedophilia reference. It’s like watching someone you love become more and more themselves, and that is liberating for both of us. It is like riding a rollercoaster and falling out of a window. It is like coming home to a season I’ve never known.

The first time we fucked I didn’t know your body, and you didn’t know your body. Now it is something we both explore and they always worry that the sex will be bad, or that I won’t continue to find my desire in your skin. But they don’t know the difference it makes to make love to someone who is comfortable in their body, to watch as their body is tailored to fit them, like your gray suit, picked up at salvation army, like the road commissioner looking down a stretch of highway and saying “more here, less there”.

In a month I will travel to your landscape and it will be different, it will be Texas in October and I will look through the crowd to find your profile, a button down and triple Windsor, and a slightly straightened hip, waiting for my hand, and tongue to show you the way home.

Mission Accomplished. Period.

Update from la Casa del Matrimonio

• It's Thursday morning at 7:15. I woke up about an hour ago, but just rolled downstairs to have some coffee because I decided that you 'can't argue with awake'. My mother is doing some intense calculations about surface area and volume -- and creamcheese butttercream frosting for the wedding cake. We are the only two people awake and that is pretty nice.
  
• Yesterday I had the totally bizarre experience of being a tourist in my own state -- scenic factories, scenic scenes, heck, even scenic fried food. We also worked in the garden some. All of this with an entourage of 16 people, three of them under the age of four. I got to be a fun auntish person - which is awesome, once these kids are married they better get to some procreating. (That IS what marriage is for, right?)
  
• On the docket for today: the tent, my uncle, Sister M.D., my father, and the port-a-potty all have scheduled arrival times.
• Biggest Joy: Seeing so many people who love Sister, Esq. and her partner gathering in one place and truly celebrating them.
• Biggest Fear: That I'm just too f*cked up to ever do this, I may just not be the marrying type. Not sure what to do with that.
• Up Next: Apparently there is a half-and-half shortage that needs to be addressed before the brides want coffee.
  

If You Thought You Have Everything You Need

You're dead wrong. You want some of this stuff.

Daydream Drivin'

Do you have an enduring daydream? One that gets you to sleep on the hardest nights, that fills the longest lines at the bank, through the ride on the crowded train, that pulls at your heart every time?

I want a red pick-up truck -- small, Toyota, standard transmission. I want it to grumble to life every morning after I crawl out of the back, where I keep my bedroll and my stash of books. I want to cradle a mug of coffee between my hands in a backwater diner, be asked where I'm headed and answer "Where the road leads me." I want to drive out of the closed New England valleys of my childhood to where the mountains are big and the sky is bigger. Where everything looks like this out my rearview mirror. I want to drive across the country by myself. I want to do by coming to each intersection and flipping a coin. I want to avoid highways and metropolitan areas, revel in the rural.

I lie down, trying to sleep, searching for something to soothe my crazy mind, and I come to this picture above all others. It's the freedom and the aloneness I crave, and also the exploration. It's my East-Coast-Manifest-Destiny-Neurosis. I first had it while I was still in high school and wanted out of that gray closed valley, and gray closed high school, more than I could describe to anyone, least of all my mother. Since then whenever my life feels like more than I can handle -- when commitments, relationships, and deadlines crowd my brain -- this is what I escape too. Someday I might actually get the balls to pick up and go -- but for now it's what gets me to sleep.

Ok, How does everyone feel about "Gertrude"?

Sisters, Quilts, and Self-Induced Angst

Tonight I finished the sqares for my sister's wedding quilt -- they are imperfect, beautiful, and done; there are still major design pieces that need to be worked out, but the squares are pieced and tomorrow I can start to size them and put them together, and have something to actually give the lovely women on their wedding day. If I can borrow my mother's digital camera you all might be able to see them, because really, I'm pretty proud.

But, of course, being me, I combined this process with a fair dose of emotional turmoil by watching Little Women while quilting. Other than the fact that we are only three sisters, and not four; that our mother was a single parent; no one has died of scarlet fever; and that it isn't the late nineteenth century -- I grew up in this book.

And it just *resonated* a little too fucking much tonight. Me and my handful of chocolate chips are going to bed!

Countdown to matrimony: 13 days (after midnight, damn, I need to go to bed)

New Name Contest

So, I'm going to get a new computer. I will probably order it this week, and the weekend of my sister's wedding my mother, who in this context can be referred to as TechGoddess, will transfer all the stuff from my old computer to my new computer.

My old computer is an Apple iBook that came out in the summer of 2001, and she served me well through my undergraduate days. But in this new day of dual platforms and wireless, and the possibility that at some point in the near future I will want to play with data on my computer -- it's time for an upgrade (with help from the last of my money from my maternal grandmother).

So, I'm taking suggestions for names for the new computer. Suggest things in the comments, at some point I might let people vote.

Some background and ground rules: My current computer is named Miriam, my flashdrive is Esperanza, and my iPod is named Stella (yes, I know this makes me sound *totally* nuts). It's important that the name not belong to anyone in my immediate aquaintance and not be a name that I would think about giving to a potential child or pet (I do give priority to things that *actually* emote -- they get different names). I don't have a gender preference. Also if it matters in your name considerations, I'm getting the new mid-grade white MacBook. Take a peek here.

Have at it!

Thursday if For Lists -- According to the Rules I've Just Made Up

1. You wouldn't think that adding five hours to your work week would make it that much longer -- but this week has been long, and I'm so ready for the weekend.
2. Sister Esq. is getting married in 16 days. That is two times eight. Four less than twenty, and two days and two weeks from now. HOLY SHIT. Let me be clear -- I love her partner and think she's fantastic, and the wedding itself will be fun and incredibly stressful, but the whole **idea** of it makes me.... I can't even describe the emotion - sad, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed... I just don't know.
   
3. I love going to workshop, right now writing there is the most exciting part of my life, and I have to admit that I don't know what to do with that, except feel vaguely guilty and relish it every week when I get to go.
4. Blueberry sorbet, walnuts, and a gingersnap = perfection.
5. Tonight a good friend of mine played me some of her songs on her guitar and I read her some of poems, and it was a swap that we were both nervous about, and had planned for months, and it was wonderful. We need to do that again sometime.
   
6. Today I was walking home from said friends house, enjoying the fact that I was wearing a cardigan, carrying produce fresh from her mother's garden, humming along to a song I'd just heard for the first time, and wishing that TP was going to be home when I got there. It's funny, but sometimes it's when we wouldn't be spending time together that I miss hir the most -- when I long for the ways that we would find independence and be each other's touchstones in a shared life.
7. This weekend I'm going to the beach which will give me an opportunity to wear my Wonder Woman bikini -- with it's bright red top and blue bottoms with white stars and red trim -- Yup, it makes me pretty happy.
   
8. I need to make sourdough this weekend to remind my starter that I love her.
9. I'm thinking about buying a new computer -- which means getting rid of my computer that I've had for six years. This makes me really excited and also a little nostalgic. This will mean needing to name a new computer -- this will be a big event.
10. It's midnight, I've only accomplished half of the tasks I set out for myself to do this evening, and I'm sleepy and I still definitely need to shower before bed.
    

back roads*

you kick up dust on the rutted road of my body.
i let you run over me, fast, like a kid in a pickup
music blaring. and i like it, your wheels rolling
hard, pushing me against the mattress, letting you
ride over me, but i will make you bottom out
'til your undercarriage shakes and trembles
for my top, my touch, 'til i flip your pickup, your wheels
spinning and the dust of this road licks
and curls around your screaming engine.


*because who doesn't need a (racy) poem on a Tuesday evening?


Also if you haven't read any good news lately, click on over to any of these places.
I also rescind MWMF related snarkiness, but am too lazy to edit, besides the sun is filtering through green, green leaves, and I might die if I don't go run around the pond RIGHT now.

That NYT Article that Everyone Keeps Talking About

So, there has been much hubbub in the last 24 hours about the NYTimes article [not linked because of that whole pesky TimesSelect thing] about transmen, that was in the Sunday Style section [because queerness is the new black], and how the lesbian and queer communities respond to their existence, both in intimate relationships and as a political issue. There has been hubbub in the blogosphere and there has been SO much hubbub on the "partners of transmen listserv" that I'm on.

My thoughts on the issue are as follows, first the things that were good about the article:

• That guy is hot. Shane -- the lawyer -- he's a hottie. Sure the pictures fetishize him a lot, but who could resist?
  
• It is good that these articles exist -- it isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it does get people thinking and I'm glad that they talked about the fact that the Census doesn't try to count transfolk, because people need to realize the ways that these statistical gaps affect people (but this is a side-point).
• Feministe has a very good write-up on this. Take a look, she says many things that I would say if I had time.

Here are my problems with it, from my citadel of privileged knowledge that I come across by loving and staking my life on a wonderful person who isn't a woman or a man and on a bi-weekly basis sticks hirself with a needle and shoots a powerful hormone into hir body.

• They conflate. I'm anti-conflation. Issue #1: the challenges faced by lesbians who are partnered with transmen before they transition and have to reconcile themselves with the transition or leave the relationship. Issue #2: the bizarre nationalistic concerns that lesbians have that their category is "emptying out"* and the ways in which they allow that to tear a community apart [see Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and, oh right, any other place they get their panties in a knot]. Nationalism and balkanization don't work -- particularly when they are this petty and allow organizations to cut people off from the communities that nurture them and allow them to feel empowered enough to transition
• Issue#1 = Issue #2? -- Um, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can be a lesbian who is not transphobic and still not be able to be with someone through a transition. I know that they didn't exactly, explicitly say these were the same -- but something about the rhetoric of it all got under my skin.
  
• 'Young women who call themselves "gender queer"' -- um, TP is genderqueer, and not a woman, many of the genderqueers I know are men, some are women, some are neither -- Please use terms with some subtlety and idea of what you are saying.
• Also, once and for all, sex IS NOT gender IS NOT sexual orientation!

Ok. I'm done.
*I think that Halberstam may have been taken out of context here, but I think that the phrase encapsulates many of the concerns.

[I apologize if this is snarky and off the cuff, all snarkiness is directed toward the NY Times Style section of the Sunday paper. No actual lesbians were harmed in the writing of this post]

Femme-and-inity

So, I've been meaning to write a post for a long time about femininity and femme identity. Tonight is the night for things that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I drove back from CoastalNewEngland today in the rain and gloom, in stop and go traffic. It is just so sad to be in first gear on the highway. I was up there for a wedding party, which was fun. I got home, and after about ten minutes tore my room apart because I realized that tonight was the night to polyurethane my bed, a task I've been putting off for six months. Then I got polyurethane all over my hands, and have spent the last two hours going to buy paint thinner (which meant getting back in my car which smells like dead cheese) and worrying about the toxicity of the things on my hands.

Finally, my roommate, B., told me to stop freaking out and to come eat her experimental stir-fry -- which was a good call since the last and only thing I'd had to eat was a v. good and bucolic diner breakfast with LOTS of coffee.

Ok. Down to business.

I think that one reason I've been putting off writing this series of posts on femme is that I think that so much of gender and gender identity is about performance and when I talk about this with people in my life it is in the context of my own performances, which you don't have access to, and so I worry that you'll get some warped view of me. Weirdness of the blogosphere.

So all of this started with Jackadandy's post and me saying that it got me thinking and also reading Katia's interview with Elizabeth Stark. So, if you want background reading for this start there.

In high school I would wear a skirt one day and three piece suit the next. I loved the double takes that I got from people. I still really enjoy the ways in which my gender performance counters expectations -- no one expects me to be smart and sexy, or butch and an economist, and I like being able to push back against people's expectations of me, or of women in general. My sisters are both fairly feminine -- Sister Esq. is pretty urban hipster, funky attorney feminine, and Sister M.D. is more posh and put together. Both of them put significant pressure on me in my teens to be more femme, and it's a blessing that I've never tried to compete with them on the femme-front, because for the most part it still feels like a tune I'm supposed to be dancing to, and find kind of catchy, but can only sort of hum along to when I'm not too distracted.
It's a role that I enjoy, and yet, in part because I don't really commit to it -- I always feel vaguely like a failure, or like a small child wearing her mother's makeup. I don't (and have never) shaved my legs, I invariably screw up my makeup or laugh too hard or my hair is crazy or something, something is wrong with my femme performance.

Which is why I found the following Stark quote so fascinating (stolen from Jackadandy):

"Femmes know how to make love to other women, to butches, to transmen. In my opinion, this is an art and should not be overlooked. Femmes know how to fail and succeed at femininity at the same time. We use our flaws, our fat, our hairiness, our loud mouths, our oversized brains and our excessive accessorizing to celebrate ourselves and those we love and to foment revolution."

To know how to "fail and succeed" at something simultaneously. This sounds like fun. I think it is also the failures and fractures within femme that lend it some of its queerness and I think that this is particularly attractive to me. One of my main problems with being mainstream feminine is that I end up feeling like my queerness is not recognized by the outside world and I want people to have to reconcile me with the me they think they see.

I also love the powerful sexual imagery of femme. The way that she has power over her lover and with her lover and the acknowledgement within queer communities of the art of femme lovemaking. When I wear a dress and walk around with TP, it is this power that I'm tapping into and bathing in. To identify as femme is also one of the only ways to identify oneself as desiring butches and transmen and to extent that gender identity/performance is all about performing desire, well it's in my best interests to be femme. I also love the ways I'm desired, the particular escutcheons and performances of desire, when I'm femme and the person desiring me is playing with some version of masculinity.

Chris (of Jackadandy, who I sometimes, probably incorrectly, call Jack) in hys post also noted however, the differences between role, identity, and label. In general, I agree with hys analysis. I would add however that the slippage between identity and label is very significant and happens quickly. It is far to easy for things that one identifies with to become "citadels of limitation", and I'm anti-that so I've also been reluctant to take on the identity of femme. On the other hand, I recognize that it is an identity and don't want to trivialize it by calling it a "role" that I take on from time to time. I'm also not entirely ready to never be able to able to identify as butch. Here are some ways that I am butch:

• I can and like to fix things.
  
• I love men's clothes, on me, and on others.
  
• I can open jars that are hard to open.
• I have broad shoulders, lift weights, and love my body best when it's jacked.
  
• I am a sometimes top, with a desire to unlock the pleasures and desires of my sexual partners.
  

So, I have no idea where this leaves me. Except that maybe I should go back to my high school ways, where I was either femme or butch and stayed away from middle ground. Of course the middle ground is also a pretty comfortable place at this point. In the end, I don't know what I'm wearing when I'm not in drag. The problem with this scenario is that it runs me smack dab into that "role" problem. My gender performance is, for me, a series of roles, but it also plays with other people's identities, and I don't want to "play butch" or "play femme" because that seems to undermine folks who identify with that. I think I mainly undermine that by being able to avoid the hard parts of butchness or femme identity because it's not what I'm doing full time.

I know that this is long and I've rambled horribly, and if you've read this far I'm impressed. Now, I'm tired and this might be the first in a series and I'll be able to hash this out some more - hopefully with questions/thoughts from y'all so I don't get lost in my own head.

Queer Books For Queer Kids

Ok, kids. Here's the deal. There is a homeless shelter for LGBTQI [henceforth queer] youth in HarborCity, thing is they don't have a library that reflects this at all. So, in response, some folks from QueerOpenMic and the Workshop are collecting books to donate to their library (and potentially donate to other like-minded shelters nationwide).

Growing up queer is hard enough, growing up queer and homeless -- well, I can't write about that, I'm too blessed to be able to imagine it fully. But if you have any books, 'zines, movies, chapbooks ETC. that are lying around your abode that you aren't still reading/watching-- please consider sending them.

How do you send them?

Well, first you email me at corinneblogger@gmail.com. Then I perform some test wherein I determine whether you are an ax murderer and in which I ask you to protect my pseudonymity (sp?) -- then I email you my snail mail address and you mail them to me. I know that postage is expensive, but hey, they created media mail for a reason.

Think about it.

Oh, and the only guideline is that you can't send anything that is explicitly and solely erotica.

(Now, if you want to just send that to me, I'm not saying I wouldn't be grateful).

Life in the Passing Lane

For some reason, for the last month, life has been swamping me. I would say that it's been life in the fast lane, but really it's been more like trying to drive a car you've never driven before in rush hour traffic where everyone is going somewhere in a huge hurry, but moving pretty slowly, and you have to keep looking around into mirrors and blind spots to make sure that you aren't fucking up royally, or denting anyone's fender.

Tonight I have a reprieve: Sister, M.D. called to cancel our dinner date; Roomie L. is at her family's house on the gorgeous New England Coast; and Roomie B. is playing frisbee. So, I'm home -- drinking a beer, listening to Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, doing laundry, treating the **new** wooden countertop, and blogging for the first time in an age.

NewJob is going well. I like the people I'm working for and even more I like having work that I like. I spend a lot of time thinking about graduate school, where I'll go and what I'll do. But really, I'm not applying until next fall (so matriculating in Fall 2008) and so for now I can enjoy having a job that I want to go to about 90% of the time. And for a 45 minute commute that's a pretty good percentage.

One of the major positive externalities to me of the job is that I'm thinking again -- thinking about future projects I want to do, thinking about things I want to explore, critiquing other people's work, etc, etc.. In this vein, I had coffee with my former thesis advisor and friend this afternoon. She just moved to HarborCity, and I'm overjoyed that she's here -- she's smart and supportive, and knows my econ-academic brain better than anyone else in the whole wide world.

I wrote a hard piece about AbusiveCollegeGirlfriend (henceforth ACG) in writing workshop a couple of weeks ago and last week at Queer OpenMic I performed it. I don't think that I was fully aware of the impact that that would have on me. I felt like I was bearing witness to my own pain and anger in ways that I never had before and telling the truth in very basic ways that also felt like I hadn't before. As I was nervously gearing up to read, I talked to the guy who runs the workshop A., and he was saying that I just needed to be prepared for people
to be sympathetic, and said that I could always say that it was a work of fiction, and I realized in that moment how much it *wasn't* and *couldn't* be a work of fiction in their eyes. Also, for the first time, I had friends at the Queer Open Mic and went out with them afterwards, and hung out with a different set of them beforehand. It was awesome, and new and felt so right and so queer I can't even describe it.

In the past ten days I've also cut about 8 inches of hair off my ponytail and "revised" my bangs several times.

That is the update from my life. I'll blog more soon, maybe, no promises, I swear I'm more reliable in real life than I am here.

Workshop Piece I

So, Sly has a post up about rings, since he is now wearing one that used to belong to the boy. I commented over there, and it got me thinking about rings, weddings, and the like. So I thought I would post a piece from the writing workshop. Just so you know, the prompt was a slinky. Generally things are good on the homefront, though this week is a little insane, a party to celebrate a dear friend being in town tomorrow -- complete with planned sleepover (I'm packing my PretentiousToteBag when I'm finished with this), and then the the writing workshop on Wednesday, and oh, yeah, work and the gym and stuff too.

****************

I remember this, this slip of synchronized metal between my fingers, from hand to hand, one big enough to flop-glide down the stairs in the old house. Inevitably tangling, and I would spend so much time trying to untangle it, make it perfect and smooth again. The twisted wires were permanently scarred they remembered each fall and gyration, and forevermore had unsteady hips. That old house was never finished and was born scarred. It’s funny that I call it the old house since technically it was really quite young, built the year before my sister was born, my mother laying stone for the fireplace while pregnant. Those warm stones were for children and cats, both not yet made. What an act of faith to build a home together, in truly the middle of nowhere. What the hell was she thinking? But she must have been thinking, the slinky of her brain tracing down all the steps without tangling. and what does twelve years from now mean? Twelve years from that fireplace we were all sitting around a cold empty pizza box, drinking cranberry juice and wondering what was next, leaving the old house. Her plan inevitably tangled, incredibly tangled. We are all, each of us, incredibly tangled. Our desire to flop-glide through life means nothing. We walk with unsteady hips, or lie curled and still. Slinkies extend and fall – that is where the tangling happens at the tipping point where the world collapses down on itself until I’m standing alone at the door on a warm day with a cup of hot coffee watching you leave. Just for a while, just for school, no comment on me or cats and children not yet made.

Since then my mother has laid down other stones, pregnant with a vision. Her garden falls gently to the brook, or grows up to the house. Either way there is less of a plan. Those steps are the ones we’ll use in September, guiding a cadre of unsteady hips and heads through a wedding. What a strange and novel idea. When was the last time we did one of those? The 70s.

I talked to my sister today about her wedding, my planned time off, the role she will want for me to play in that week. Going for long walks, keeping her calm, serving as the all important buffer zone between her and my mother. Helping everyone navigate tricky waters, hold the unsteady hearts close and help them slide-glide over steps. Your job will be to hold my own unsteady hips in the night.

Beep-Beep-Ba-Beep

We interrupt our normal broadcast to bring you: Racism Today in HarborCity (and the US)

First, you have to understand that I ride the train to work every day for 45 minutes in each direction, in this time I eavesdrop, read, read newspapers over people's shoulders, drink my coffee, and sleep. Over this past week, I've been keen on the reading over people's shoulders.

In the little newspaper that they hand out for free they have this column called "The Debate" where they ask three people off the street their opinion on something and write it up with cute little pictures of the poor fools. On Wednesday the question was: "How do you feel about violence in the city?" This is a totally valid question HarborCity has a homicide problem, particularly in poor communities of color where folks are poor, desperate, etc. So here is my beef with the piece.

All three respondents were white, two were students and the third was a business analyst (also all from comp. safe neighborhoods, and under 30) their three responses were:

"I've never felt threatened or intimidated. You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there"

"It's not as bad as people make it out to be"

"It's terrible that such a thing can happen in a city where you feel safe. It seems to be centralized in certain neighborhoods"

Ask people from the affected communities. If you don't it's a sham. Oh, those poor people in those poor neighborhoods, I guess they just made a bad choice to live there. This is such a lie. We don't choose where we live, for the most part that is decided the urban geo-econo-politics that surround, envelope, and drown us. Further, do not claim that something you simply don't experience isn't that bad. I think I'm more angry with the choice of people than any one thing they said -- but if you want to start a dialogue about the role of violence in our community, you're shutting it down by printing bullshit like that.

Also, Bush signed the Voting Rights Act this week, to make it effective through a few more shitty elections. The headline I saw was "Bush OKs Voting Rights". This made me laugh, and it made me really sad that that is all he did. He didn't celebrate the Voting Rights Act, or commemorate it, or do anything more than put his rubber stamp on and have some people take some pretty pictures. This is an outrage. If he *actually* cared about the principles of democracy there would have been..... well, nevermind.... I guess democracy was just a dream we had once.


PS. If you can't tell, I'm moving out of my funk, I've got my snarky on, and I'm in steamy, steamy, BigCity hangin' with SIster, Esq. and her partner. These things make me very happy.

Calculations of Self Worth

I know I've been MIA, and it's because I've been in a funk. My insides churning with reformulations, and my mouth tightly shut. I've been disengaging from the world, pulling into myself and trying to figure some stuff out.

So, in the past month, I've picked up my running program again, sent a loved one thousands of miles away, started a new job, and started doing creative writing with some intention. All of these things have made me wonder who I am, what I'm doing, what I'm worth. Not without some anxiety and self-deprecation. I think that all of us have these demons gnawing at us, and I am trying very hard to keep them at bay in my own head.

NewJob is going well. I haven't screwed up royally yet, though I'm inclined to think that it could happen any day. The whole idea of this job, for those who missed the memo, is to figure out whether I like research and economics enough to pursue a Phd in that accursed discipline. The trouble is with the word enough. I feel like I've chosen a path, but I think that I might define anything as 'enough' to not have to admit that academia isn't what I want, because if it isn't that I have no idea what is.

TP left about a week ago. The visit was wonderful -- not without disagreements or hard days, but each of those led to growth, and I miss hir everyday, more than I can quite admit to. There is more to say, but the wheels of my brain are still spinning desperately trying to make sense of my heart.

I went to a writing workshop last week, and wrote and read what I had written. It was wonderful and intense. The format was to receive a fairly open prompt, my favorite was a miniature slinky passed around the group, and then write for 20-30 minutes, and then read. In three hours we did three prompts, and I wrote about: marriage/committment/divorce, body issues, and my own contested and conflicted gender identity. I left feeling like I'd voluntarily slammed myself against a concrete wall, but it was a cool wall, and the day was so warm... I'll be going back there. Plus, it's an explicitly queer space, and I need more of those. (I might post some workshop pieces if it seems worthwhile -- any votes?)

And then there is the running. I think that the above three things have been enough to throw my sense of self a little out of whack. Especially some combination of the career apprehensions and the renewed interest in creative writing, something that 8 years ago would have been at the top of my life goals.

So how do I handle these waves? I take them out on my body. When my other measures of self-worth are failing, I fall back on crappy societal standards of body image. So, I'm back to old tricks (that aren't quite mine) -- logging 20 mile weeks, and counting calories. I bought a heart-rate-monitor yesterday, and was running at 6am. The thing is that running is good for me: it lets me clear my head, and enables me to feel okay about my body, and is a way to be outside. But it slips far too easily into a scary terrain I've always kept myself on the edge of, and I'm still there on the edge, just this side of the numbers.

There are so many measures of self-worth -- intellect, integrity, compassion, work ethic. I've used each of these models. But there is also a way in which I was taught to gauge my self-worth off of my grades and my body. It was never that explicit, but I did grow up in an imperfect radical feminist household where grades were posted on the fridge and everyone went around the table at night and said how many grams of fat they'd had in the day.

Is it any wonder that I don't know what to think of myself?

(PS: I'd find a better ending, but I want to go watch the sunset with my gin n' juice, and who can deny me such a simple pleasure)

Sliding Scales

On Thursday TP and I went to a QueerOpenMic which is one of my favorite queer spaces in HarborCity, hands down. I read Good (Almost) Man and it was well received. I think that on Wednesdays I'm going to start going to a workshop run by one of the folks there to work on my writing more, because, while economics is cool and all there is a part of me that will always want to write poetry. And God knows I need more fun queer community in my life.

Both of these places, and many others I go to, operate on a sliding scale/pay what you can system. In the past I have depended on that policy to be able to go to these events, and I honor the diversity that policy allows and engenders. So, here is the story, NewJob pays me well, better than OldJob and includes benefits that make me feel a little bit like EliteU doesn't know what to do with all its money and so throughs it at its employees in the form of really cheap gyms and incredible healthcare. I can no longer pretend that I have anything but a middle class paycheck. So I'm a radical queer with a middle class paycheck, who spends a lot of time in fringe cultural spaces. This is new to me. On Thursday for the first time, I paid the upper end of the sliding scale at the open mic. On Wednesday I will need to decide how much to spend on this workshop that I'm going to.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to negotiate this income shift. Sure, I'm putting more money in my savings account. Generally I think that I am the most radical investment I can make. The world will benefit from me being able to afford graduate school, and the books I want to read, but probably not all the books I want to read, and certainly not the cute clothes that I sometimes want to buy. And none of it will mean much at all if the community organizations that I depend on crumble due to lack of funds. From an economics standpoint it's an interesting model -- it would be better if I had the energy to actually create/find a graph for y'all to see. But basically you pay a price for something, and some people want it, but are only able/willing to pay less for it than the price, and so they don't get it and some people are willing to pay more for it, but don't and sort of get their cake and eat it too. The sliding scale/pay what you can system asks everyone to pay what they can and what the "service" is worth to you, eliminating that eat your cake and eat it too phenomenon, but also providing access. So what I should do is ask myself this question: How much would it need to cost for me not to go? One dollar below that is the amount that I should pay... hard to do in practice.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface of how uncomfortable people are with differences in wealth and the ways that having money are connected to being inauthentic. When I pay more money I am sincerely thinking about investing in spaces, and holding them dear and trying to help them balance their books. Yet, I also don't want to distance myself from people by paying more money. Keep in mind that these are small communities where 'nigh on nothin' stays private. Privilege is best when it is easiest to abdicate, to cast off and spread around, like so much shit (compost metaphor), and I think this is one of those cases where that can happen, if there weren't so much angst around it.

But, for real, bottomline:
I hate money.

P.S. It's Saturday night, tonight TP and I grilled veggies, and walked up to the pond in the sunset, and now we are listening to Louis Armstrong, I'm blogging and ze is reading the latest Harry Potter book. Totally priceless.

Queer Theater

On Saturday night TP and I went out to a play put on by a queer theater group in HarborCity.

For us, going out is an excuse for TP to be charming, dark, and handsome, if not tall, and an excuse for me to be a flirty femme, who is sometimes fatale. Really, for us, the theater started far before we made it to the actual location of the event, and the costume designers were the stars. I was wearing a v. low cut wraparound black dress with a lace hem, my new heels, and my new red dangly earrings. TP was wearing a nice shirt and tie that I love, and, in the interest of full disclosure, was a present from me. We looked nice. Hot, even.

There was some drama about getting to the theater (that pun was not intentional). But we got there and got our tickets and watched a play set in a pink motel room, that was very queer and highly, highly surreal. Now, as we walked in, there was a lady, who was maybe 70, and had a nice white bun of hair on her head, and a nice husband at her side. She smiled and winked at me. She was starting to flirt. As we sat down and looked through the programs, she caught TP's eye and gave hir an approving look, and then looked me up and down, as if to say, "Nice catch". It was hilarious.

After the show there was a little gathering with wine, cheese, and disgusting Mike Hard Iced Tea. It was fun, the cast and crew were maybe 10 people, and the audience was only 15, so it was an intimate crowd. Or at least that's what the little old lady thought. She flirted with everyone, could talk to anyone. It was amazing, the thing is that it was this very funny mix between the somewhat standard old-lady-nice and the classic somewhat bawdy flirt. I loved it.

We talked to one of the troupe founders about potentially touring one of their shows to ELAC and URedState. We mingled. We never mingle -- we are both shy and sometimes awkward, but somehow that husk started to fall away in that setting. I love being queer out in the world. Being femme, holding TP's hand, having people recognize us for who we are -- so often we get read as something other than how we think about ourselves, even, and most painfully, within GLB communities. But in that theater our performances were respected.

That was a big part of what made it such a lovely evening. There was also the moon, the booze, and the sweetness of any moment spent with TP. Ze is flying home next Wednesday, and I'm very sad about it. But that is a whole 'nother story. I want to find more places where I can feel recognized in a sexy black dress as the radical queer I am, and I also want those places to be comfortable with me being in carhartts and a button-down shirt. Do you think I'm asking too much?

Requisite Update

Some things you should be aware of:

• This was my first week at NewJob. It was exciting and challenging and a little mundane. Basically I am ResearchGirl for two economists who do fascinating work and each see their role in my life as very different. A communication challenge, let's say. It'll work out
• TP has been here for several weeks now and is leaving in about ten days. It's been good and complicated, and I will be very sad when there isn't someone to come home to, and talk to, and kiss, and all those nice things that TP does in my life.
  
• NewRoomie arrived on Monday and thus far has been fabulous introducing a nonchalant attitude about food, making yummy bread and dinner, going for runs with us, and practicing her violin beautifully. She's a keeper. Her initial is B.
  
• I just made the most orgasmic Rosemary Olive Sourdough, and it might be what I have for dinner along with the Hit the Trail Ale from Vermont, which is a lovely state with incredible beer.
  
• **** Nubian "features" some of the most fucked up shit I've seen in a while. ****
  
• I have a long list of blogables in my brain. They'll be "uploaded" soon enough. Hang tight, kids.