Trans/plant/portation

This post originally appeared over on GayYA.org, a great place to talk about all things LGBTQ in young adult literature.

Like many writers I know, I took a meandering path to this writing profession, starting out confident and then dedicating a long decade in quicksand—I think it’s called self-doubt—after which I think I found myself in the center of the earth, and let me just say, it’s hotter than I thought it would be down there. During this long break I suppose I opted to have a sex change, and then I realized that I needed to write about my transition. I didn’t want to relate a tale of anguish and grief. Instead, I focused on the ludicrous situations that popped up as I navigated through gender roles, gathered information on doctors, civil courts, and resources, and klutzed into whatever manhood I now find myself. Where I have ended up as a writer is not where I estimated I’d find myself, but I understand now that all of my wanderlust has made me a much better storyteller. And along the way, I’ve identified my audience in young adult readers, in whatever stripe of gender and sexual orientation (or questioning place) they may be. I now have a good idea of my goals as a writer of transgender and queer experience. Read More…

The joke when I first started telling people I was queer was that it took a broken leg for me to do it. Truth be told, I started admitting I was pretty darn gay a couple of weeks before my fateful trip around Goldstein Auditorium on roller skates, but it made for a nice chuckle, and who am I to deny anyone a moment of fun? Besides, hobbling around on crutches with plaster caked up to my keister could potentially, I thought at the time, help me get a date. I was one of only a few people I knew (even still) who came out without a relationship as the main motivation.

This was May of 1991. I was about to turn 21, which, as it turned out, was much less a big deal for my life than I presumed it would be at the time. But I felt like freedom was close—I’d finished my junior year of college, and the humongous Real World pressed upon me—and I needed to fully explore it. Which okay, was a little challenging in my then-current condition.  Read More…

I was reminded yesterday that we’ve just passed the one-year anniversary of the It Gets Better project, that anti-bullying campaign from Dan Savage and his partner, Terry Miller. On September 21, 2010, they made their now-iconic YouTube video telling queer youth that they should hang in there, because someday things will be better than they seem right now. Dan and Terry had been catapulted into action, they said, because of the recent media attention on a number of gay suicides, all of which, the narrative went, came in context of those kids being bullied and harassed by their peers. That Dan and Terry were really only speaking about young gay men and not the gamut of youth on the LGBT spectrum, and that the media lavished its attention only on recent white gay men’s deaths was not a topic Dan wished to discuss, though I and many others attempted to do so. Read More…

Please welcome Rosa, a high school student from my home state, who is the latest guest blogger for Transplantportation while I attend to my wee one. I would also just like to note here that Rosa runs a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school, which have clearly shown to help with anti-bullying initiatives and increasing cultural competency of teachers, administration, and staff, when implemented in a school—something not available at Walla Walla High School, and banned this month by the Benton Franklin County School Board. We all need to push harder to include these student-focused groups in our schools.

When I was first asked to write a post in Ev’s absence I was incredibly excited to have a chance to bridge at least some of the gap between teenagers and adults. I so often feel like it’s nearly impossible for most teenagers to try to communicate with adults, and vice-versa. Adults view teens as these hormonally crazed aliens without a rational bone in their bodies. While teens view adults as these fascist rule makers with no purpose other than providing various doses of misery and “ruining their lives.” Read More…

Here’s another guest blog post from the always insightful and heartful s.e. smith; today the focus is on the death penalty and Rick Perry’s problematic framing of the issue.

A moment of fireworks occurred during the GOP debate this week when the moderator asked Texas Governor Rick Perry if he ‘struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of [the 234 Texas inmates executed in modern times] might have been innocent?’ Before the moderator could even finish the question, the bloodthirsty crowd broke out in applause, raising eyebrows among many observers. The section of transcript describing the interrupted question and subsequent applause has been widely circulated.

What hasn’t been as widely discussed was Perry’s answer,which was honestly more chilling than the applause: ‘No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all.’ Read More…

I will say right off the bat that I’m not the biggest fan of Dancing with the Stars. I like it enough to watch when someone I like—or greatly dislike—is on the show, much like I’ll watch American Idol on only a spotty basis. I really like dancing as an art form, especially given my total lack of physical grace, because I love to see the human form do things I didn’t know were possible, and then whoa, there’s music and lots of feathers to boot! But DWTS sometimes makes me sad, because the “stars” in question often seem to be scrapping for whatever vestiges of glory they can still obtain, and the whole faded Lola a la Copacobana thing is not my speed.

In short: I will watch Margaret Cho, Ralph Macchio, Jennifer Grey, Joey Fatone, and a whole host of others out of love and interest. I was not a fan of Kate Gosselin, Bristol Palin, or The Situation, but I still kept up with their performances. And that said, I do like how DWTS has included lots of out gay and lesbian personalities, like some of those I just mentioned and other folks like Lance Bass. It was only a matter of time before a trans man was selected for the dancing show. And so we have Chaz Bono, the “most famous” trans man out there. Or is he? Read More…

I know I’ve posted before about weak or disingenuous arguments that writers create, articles that take issue with people in the LGB/t community. One one level, I want to know why we’re so willing to cannibalize ourselves before or instead of people like the Koch Brothers, who unraveled collective bargaining in Wisconsin, Glenn Beck and the incendiary statements he makes from his Internet war room, Ryan Rhodes, who considers himself the Obama Heckler Premier, or any number of other figures currently at work destroying reproductive rights, civil rights, and advances in ecology. Is it really the “celebrity” trans men who are to blame for the trials of trans women?

Seriously? Read More…

With summer comes the spate of anti-gay sentiment, or at least it feels that way to me. Maybe it’s because state supreme courts are wrapping up their year and the toughest decisions come out in June, or thereabouts. Of course this summer season we have the GOP primary jockeying, so as candidates are scoping for uber-conservative votes, they’re more than willing to say things like “gay families aren’t families.” We could blame the incessant “heat dome” for frying people’s brains and in their heat exhaustion, causing chronic foot-in-mouth disease. Whatever the cause, I am beyond sick of it. Let’s call a scapegoat a scapegoat. In this time of financial strife and political cowardice, I think it’s fitting to look at all the ways in which people crap on the “gays,” and excuse me, Dan Savage, but I’m using it as an umbrella term for queer, not a reference to your clique in Seattle. Read More…

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog post is about sexual assault.

A friend asked me to write something up about the debacle that was the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and presumed future candidate for the French Presidency. And then I sat in front of a blank screen, staring and staring and feeling more than one wave of frustration crash over me. Something bothered me about this case—the way it intersected with power, race, and gender hierarchies, its resurrection of the threadbare narrative of “she asked for/deserved it,” and finally, the hopelessness many of us felt because of the outcome of the case that never made it to trial. For if such a preponderance of evidence as was gathered against Mr. Strauss-Kahn still fails to be taken seriously, what possibility remains that any case will actually be heard on its merits? Read More…

It started making its presence known in the wee hours of the morning, a little before the sun would rise, otherwise known as the time when even roosters are silent. I hate waking up when there’s only an hour or so until dawn, because I know, even in my groggy mind, that the next bit of sleep I can scrounge together is going to be wholly lacking in actual rest. It’s a piss-poor way to end the night shift.

But worse than simply rousing at the wrong hour was the awful, horrible, je ne sais quoi pain that accompanied my burst into consciousness. At the back of my neck, about three inches from the base of my skull and just to the left of my spine, a knot of pain drilled away at me. Read More…