Gov. Corzine of NJ announced this weekend a new regulation allowing transgender New Jerseyans would to provide an affidavit of their gender identity to get the Motor Vehicle Commission to change the gender on their license to drive. In the past, the state had required gender reassignment surgery.
Fuck yea, NJ… allowing folks to get a new ID w/ an affadavit rather than SRS is awesome! I hope more states follow suit.
I picked up on this story over at Queers Against Obama (I don’t agree w/ everything posted, but I like to be challenged).
GLAAD has put out an action alert regarding some shitty reporting on the murder of a trans woman in Louisville, KY.
Contact: Richard Ferraro, Director of Public Relations
Phone: (646) 871-8011 Email: ferraro@glaad.org
Contact: Yana Walton, Media Field Strategist – Southern Region
Phone: (646) 871-8027 Email: walton@glaad.org
On August 20, Nakhia Williams, an African American transgender woman, was found by police outside her Louisville, Kentucky apartment beside a dumpster. She died of multiple wounds including a gun shot wound. Williams was transported to The University of Louisville Hospital where she died 10 days later. Subsequent media coverage of her murder by WLKY-CBS 32 and WDRB-Fox 41 used inaccurate terminology, including male pronouns, and failed to use Williams’ correct name. There have been no follow-up stories offered by Louisville media outlets covering the investigation of this crime.
Click on the following links to view the problematic coverage:
http://www.fox41.com/Global/story.asp?S=8953820
http://www.wlky.com/news/17393379/detail.html
GLAAD staff members contacted news directors and reporters at both WLKY-CBS 32 and WDRB-Fox 41 through e-mail and phone messages. WDRB-Fox 41 refused to correct the pronoun errors, citing the coroner’s report. WLKY- CBS 32 News Director Mike Neelly refused to respond to multiple voice mails and e-mails.
Kentucky Fairness Alliance Executive Director Christina Gilgor urged local media to give this story the attention it deserves and avoid sensationalism.
“I am shocked by the invisibility of this story in the media and the disrespectful way two television outlets have covered the case,” Gilgor said. “Our community has suffered a terrible loss and deserves answers. We call on the media to responsibly report this story and push for a comprehensive police investigation.”
The Kentucky Fairness Alliance issued a press release regarding the case:
http://www.kentuckyfairness.org/getinformed/newsroom/press/2008/080926.html
Take Action:
GLAAD urges you to call on Louisville media outlets to provide thorough coverage of this tragic case while avoiding sensationalism and using accurate terminology. (For more information on this, see GLAAD media reference guide: http://www.glaad.org/media/guide/index.php) Media sources should be urged to question police and ask them to investigate whether or not Nakhia’s murder was a hate crime.
Louisville Media Contacts:
Mr. Barry Fulmer, News Director
WDRB-TV Fox 41
Direct Phone : 502/681-0273
Email: bfulmer@fox41.com
Mr. Mike Neelly, News Director
WLKY-TV CBS 32 News Director
Direct Phone: 502/893-3671
Email: mneelly@hearst.com
Mr. Mike Trautmann, Metro Editor
Louisville Courier Journal
Direct Phone: 502/582-4242
Email: mtrautmann@courier-journal.com
Ms. Sarah Kelley, News Editor
Louisville Eccentric Observer
Direct Phone: 502/895-9770 ext. 204
Email: skelley@leoweekly.com
This “Comment is Free” from the Guardian was an interesting read.
Sometimes, I get so caught up in my own bullshit that I forget how lucky I am to live where I live. This group of Iraqis living in the UK are the ones helping to coordinate the operations to smuggle LGBT people out of Iraq. You can donate to them VIA paypal on their blogspot site.
I know she wasn’t Iraqi, but the closest piece of art I have in my possession that I can think of to donate to the cause is this portrait of Benazir Bhutto.
Benazir Bhutto, stitched by beelisty 2008
(Click the picture to see the listing on Etsy.)
(cross-posted)
Posted in Uncategorized
American Apparel is selling shirts that say LEGALIZE GAY repeal prop 8.
Let’s talk about the myriad of reasons this is ridiculous.
1. From the AA page featuring the shirt:
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
–David Bowie, “Changes”
A couple of years ago, Judith Halberstam spoke at the University of Cincinnati where I was working (I’m also an alumna of UC), and I had my graduate assistants run the staff meeting with the resident advisers so I could go see Halby speak. It was a great talk (I took a lot of notes). Halberstam talked about March of the Penguins vs. Happy Feet, and the ridiculousness of anthropomorphizing the penguins as being in love, and also about the Chucky horror series. A couple of weeks later, I bought my partner Halby’s book, In A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005, NYU Press), but I hadn’t read it until now. I picked it up last week and have gone through it quickly because it’s a really great mix between academic language & pop cultural analysis.
The place in the book where I was reading this morning on the bus really spoke to me:
Fourth, queer subcultures afford us a perfect opportunity to depart from a normative model of youth cultures as stages on the way to adulthood; this allows us to map out different forms of adulthood, or the refusal of adulthood and new modes of deliberate deviance…
For queers, the separation between youth and adulthood quite simply does not hold, and queer adolescence can extend far beyond one’s twenties. (174)
It was perfect that Changes by David Bowie came on at the exact moment I was reading this.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
I grew up in Ohio– I lived there for 30 years before moving to Minnesota w/ my partner. I spent the last three years in Ohio working as a hall director– free rent, free food, decent pay, shitty hours. But it’s an extended adolescence because you’re immersed in college culture. When we decided it was time to bust out of the hornet’s nest of Cincinnati, we chose the Twin Cities because my partner grew up here. Part of a big move is finding a job and housing in the new place, and we both struggled a lot with the employment piece particularly when we moved here. I have a M.Ed. (higher ed admin), and my partner used to teach composition at a community college. We were both woefully underemployed for the first year or so of living here–and as a result, we had a very limited amount of money to spend on rent–so we live in a very small one bedroom apartment. I feel over-educated for my job (but in this economy, I’m happy to have a full-time job, so I’m not complaining). Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m not grown up enough. A lot of our friends/family (all over the country–not just here) have bought houses, had kids, etc…but I’m not really interested in doing those things. The “adulthood” benchmark I have set for myself is starting a doctoral program, but I’m not seriously considering that right now for any number of reasons.
For queers, the heteronormative benchmarks of adulthood can also apply, but I know so many queers who have done things in a different order– friends who had a kid in high school then came out, friends who had a child w/ their partner but never a commitment ceremony, friends who buy houses but have not completed college degrees, etc… These events are all marked as Adult, yet many queer people I know have chosen a different path. My path has been fractured at best, as I think most are. I think of my friends who are still working on undergraduate degrees–some of them are over 25, some of them over 30. It is important to consider heteronormative benchmarks of adulthood as false markers for us because so many queer people have not had economic access to the tools that heteronormative folks use to build their benchmarks.
For a couple of years, I felt like an adult because I had a master’s degree and a husband (duh, that didn’t work out), but I felt immediately propelled backwards when we split up, and I had to come out to my parents all over again. I lived alone for the first time in my life, and suddenly the rules that my parents set for me as a 17 year old away at college came back. I had to call them every Sunday night, I had to call them when I left Oberlin to drive to Cincinnati to visit, and then call to report that I was back safely. I also had to ask them for some financial help– the car my ex-husband and I shared was his, so when we split up, I was without a car in a place I needed a car. (I still have to call once a week…which is a strange thing, because I feel like I call them less than I did when I just called whenever I felt like it.)
All of this is germinating… I’m just interested in hearing what other people think about the ideas of extended queer adolescence– and also, I’m not suggesting (nor is Halberstam, from what I can tell) that the idea of extended adolescence means that we, as queer folk, have to do any of the heteronormative adult actions like getting married, having kids, buying houses, etc… I think we can see that some queers (not gays and lesbians–people who would self identify as queer or radical) choose to form different family structures, make different economic choices, take different emotional risks. And that’s fine by me– I tried the heteronormative route and it didn’t work for me.
I have thought, read, and written about the extended queer adolescence before, but I really needed to hear it again and the message came to me simultaneously by Halberstam and David Bowie, and really people– how can you not hear a message delivered by two fucking awesome Brits such as these?
Posted in editorial
