So, as I mentioned, I was groped at a work event last weekend by someone, D, who was volunteering (and sometimes worked for us). I talked about it with my coworkers and my bosses, all of whom agreed it was super-creepy, totally unacceptable, and needed some sort of response from the organization.
Well, today the special events director, RW called the guy who did it. She started the conversation something along the lines of, “So I wanted to discuss the…incident…that happened this past weekend at the benefit. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
At that point, D responded, “Wait, are you joking? You mean when I grabbed [male name]‘s fake boob?”
The full story below…
Continue reading 'Do I feel better or worse?'»
I’ve mentioned before that I use Ubuntu as my primary operating system on my laptop and desktop. They recently released version 9.04 and, after taking a deep breath, I took the plunge and upgraded both of my systems.
This is the first upgrade I’ve had where more things went right, and work better, than went wrong or outright broke (and I’ve been using Ubuntu since 5.10). Now, to be clear, my appreciation of Ubuntu has obviously kept me with it, but I have to give shoutout for this release. The system boots much faster, visual effects are smoother and work better (windows fading in and out, moving between virtual desktops, doing a Expose-like window display, and so on), everything just feels like it’s tighter and more polished.
And, wonders of wonders, my desktop’s aging graphics card (an old ATI) not only didn’t break with the upgrade, it works better now! Still no working Steam, which is sad, but Deus Ex is (at long last!) working under Wine! Deus Ex is one of those supposedly-great games from when I was in middle or high school that I never had the patience to finish, but am now hoping to. (Along with others such as System Shock 2, Fallout, No One Lives Forever, and so on.) Because upgrading the full system upgraded a bunch of components, including Wine, there’s no way of telling exactly what made things work, but I’m happy something did! (It’s a lot like alchemy in that regard…)
If you’ve been thinking about giving Ubuntu a try, 9.04 is definitely the smoothest experience I’ve had with the system thus far. So go for it!
-R
I just added a new category to my Trans Fiction page, ‘Offline Media,’ for listing books/movies/etc and placed Supervillainz there. Here’s what I wrote:
From the author’s site: “Supervillainz is a madcap adventure story of a Scooby gang of queer twenty-somethings pitted against a gang of superheroes who believe one of the kids is responsible for their brother’s death.” I think this book is really important becuase it’s about a group of characters who happen to be trans, and while their status as trans feeds the story it isn’t really the core element. That said, the writing wasn’t amazing – it was good, and I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t blow me away. I do, however, look forward to Goranson’s next book. Buy it now from Chicago’s feminist bookstore, Women & Children First!
As a reminder, the Trans Fiction page is where I’m collecting thoughts on trans fiction, as well as examples that I think are worth reading.
-R
Don’t have the energy to write out anything blindingly coherent, so I though I’d post about some various things that have been on my mind, as well as some blog posts I’ve bookmarked.
First, a brief comment on last night. My fulltime job had a gala opening for our show -slash- fundraiser for the year. It was moderately successful as the first (the show was really fun, the technical problems less so) and somewhat less successful as the second (we’ll find out on monday if we made any money…my hope is we broke even). However, right near the end, someone who hadn’t seen me since pre-transition, but who I’d told earlier in the day that I was going by R now, came up to me and said ‘Hey J!’ and grabbed my boob.
What fun. I said something along the lines of “Totally unacceptable,” and walked away. He tried to come up to me a little later and I said “I don’t want to hear it,” and walked away again. I later hear through a friend that he went up to her and said “I just grabbed R’s boob and I think she’s really pissed at me.” Well, duh!
Continue reading 'Things on my mind'»
I’m currently working my way through Angel and, inevitably, they’ve arrived at ‘The Body Swap Episode.’ That’s the episode in every sci-fi and fantasy show where at least one of the main characters has a body swap with either another main character, or an incidental one-episode guest character. Specifically, Angel‘s episode is a ‘Grand Theft Me,’ as was the similar episode in Buffy. (As usual, TV Tropes can explain it better than I can, and gives so many delightful examples, so you should just check out the above links if you want a better explanation.)
I really hate the body snatch episode. Really really really. I hate it when it’s used for humor, I hate it when it’s used for drama, I hate it when it’s used to teach the good guy a lesson, I hate it when it’s used to teach the bad guy a lesson. I just hate it. And I think I’m starting to realize why. It’s a mishmosh of reasons, but I’ll try to make them coherent…
Continue reading 'I Hate ‘The Body Swap Episode’'»
Sorry I haven’t posted for a few days. I’ve been really down, and still feeling like I’m in a rut. I’ve been thinking about when I last felt so consistently shitty, and finally realized it was pre-transition. That got me thinking about what I have left ‘to do,’ which was part of where the previous post (about surgery) came from. The other thing that’s been on my mind is legally changing my name.
Continue reading 'Stuck in a rut'»
This post is a little personal, rather frank, and took some effort to write. If you’re not interested in hearing my thoughts on having a penis versus not having a penis, and on the possibility of having sex reassignment surgery, you probably shouldn’t read on. Consider yourself warned.
My identity as trans hasn’t really centered around genitals. Sure, I’ve fantasized about what I’d look like without a penis from a pretty young age, but my concept of myself as a boy or a girl didn’t pertain exclusively around what is or isn’t between my legs. I’ve never really though about surgery as something I’d want to do, or would feel like I needed to do.
Likewise, I enjoyed being sexual (alone or, ideally, with a partner) prior to starting my transition, and I never felt like I was forced into a ‘male’ role by having a penis, even though that may have been how things looked to an outside observer. Even as hormones have changed how I experience sex and feeling sexual, I’ve continued to enjoy those feelings – and managed to feel feminine – penis and all.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking more and more about the possibility of having surgery…
Continue reading 'The Penis Game'»
Edit: She’s out, and everything went well. I still haven’t seen the doctor (was at lunch, so missed her when she came out) but according to the check-in desk everything went “extremely well,” and I’ll be able to see her in another hour or so when she’s out of recovery.
I’m sitting in the hospital waiting room right now (huzzah for free wifi…) because my mom just went in for hip replacement surgery. (Everything should be fine; I’ll post a followup later today when the surgery’s over.)
Sitting in the prep room while the nurses got her hooked up to IVs and explained how everything would work gave me a lot of food for thought. First, it was an odd (but good) experience to be ‘ladies’ed with my mom, and referred to as her daughter. Obviously, both of those are good things (it was particularly nice to be ‘ladies’ed while I was still in my big coat and only my head was really visisble) but I haven’t had a ton of experience being read as a woman while with either of my parents.
But the much bigger shock, and what I’ve been thinking about the last couple days leading up to the surgery, is that my mom is getting old.
Continue reading 'Hospital waiting rooms'»
(Note: This post should be subtitled: “In which our blogstress proves she’s a big theatre geek!”)
A while back, right before I came out to my highschool theatre class, I was speaking with the lead teacher of the class and we were joking about posisble transitioning-related theatre games. Here’s what we came up with, but I’d love any more ideas to help the list grow!
- Coming Out Tag
- Spoof of: Scene Tag, where each time someone is tagged they have to go into a brief scene scene before moving on as the new person who is ‘it’
- How it works: Rather than going into a random scene, every time someone is tagged the tagger has to ‘come out’ to them. To make it really accurate, the person who is ‘it’ – the tagger – always stays ‘it’ and has to come out over and over and over and over and…
- MTF (or FTM) Machine
- Spoof of: This requires a little explanation, and is very much an in-joke. Machine is a game where a group (usually 6-10) builds energy one at a time with a repeating sound and motion to construct, as a whole, a ‘machine.’ It can be a generic machine, or a specific type of machine (weather, popcorn, magic, etc).
- How it works: Basically a normal game of Machine, but the call is to change the energy during the machine from masculine to feminine, or vice versa. (Probably would quickly become very bad stereotypes of “manly” or “womanly,” but sometimes those are fun to play with.)
- Coming Out Fingers
- Spoof of: Fingers is a game played by partners, where they agree on three locations or occupations. They then ‘throw’ the locations/occupations at each other randomly and, when they land on the same thing, they go into a random scene prompted by that location/occupation.
- How it works: The partners choose a location, and each scene is a coming out scene at that location.
Any to add?
The tongue-in-cheeck website Deraililng for Dummies promises to help “[derail] awkward conversations by dismissing and trivialising your opposition’s perspective and experience.” The site promises that its instructions applies to “sexism, whorephobia, racism, transphobia, classism, homophobia, ableism, kinkphobia, and fatphobia!” It’s rather amazing.
The simple guide includes such adversarial approaches as
- If You Won’t Educate Me How Can I Learn?
- If You Cared About These Matters You’d Be Willing To Educate Me
- You’re Being Hostile
- You’re Being Overemotional
- And more!
The “book”s intro after the break.
Continue reading 'Enhance your bigotry with Derailing for Dummies!'»
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