Comments (2) Obligatory plug: Uncovering the Mirrors opens tomorrow! Get your tickets today!
In other news, this link has been sitting in my ‘drafts’ folder for a while while. Jezebel had a post on “Boob jobs that don’t involve actual boob jobs,” including
That seems like a reasonable claim to make...
There’s also bras and bra inserts, hypnotism, and “boob slapping.” Good stuff.
Today is my last day of working full-time. As of tomorrow, I will officially enter the world of the freelancer. Ad revenue from this blog sometimes pays for hosting costs (and sometimes doesn’t) so donations are a HUGE help, both in keeping this blog alive and allowing me to work as an artist.
But I don’t like begging and pleading for money. I’ll do it, but I don’t like it. (Did I mention please donate!?!) In an effort to spice things up, I’m going to introduce some donation gifts for people who donate at the following levels:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: your donations help make what I do, doable. PLEEEEEEAAAAASSE (please please pretty please) donate.
Please?
Just like this. Except I wasn't vacuuming. Or in a dress. Or in heels. Really, nothing like this at all.
My room opens out to the apartment dining room. One of my roommates has been working from home lately, and he often sets up his laptop and materials on the dining room table.
This morning, I’ve been in a bit of a rush (though I obviously paused long enough to write this post…) and was trying to pay bills while getting dressed. I had my shorts on, but hadn’t gotten around to putting on a shirt or bra, when I realized I needed the tape dispenser from the other room.
You can probably see where this is going.
Forgetting I was topless, I boldly opened my door to my roommate working. At which point I remembered I was topless, helpfully squeaked, “I have no top on!” and retreated to my room.
I’m the classiest.
Earlier this week, my director and I were discussing metaphors for transitioning. I was saying that transitioning is something I’ve mostly been able to acknowledge in retrospect. Everything I did seemed to be in tiny, incremental changes, regardless of how I am able to understand its significance now. And so I come up with a new transitioning metaphor: that of a frog being boiled alive.
Supposedly, if you place a frog in cold water and slowly bring the temperature to a boil, the frog is too stupid to notice and hop out. (Wikipedia says it may be true, if the temperature rise is slow enough.) I’m not saying I was too stupid to notice the transition, but I do stop and wonder sometimes at how different my life is than it was just a few scant years ago.
Ribbit! Ribbit!
Warm and bubbly
…or even Chicago! Here are some pics I’ve taken in Colorado.
Flying from Denver to Durango
Truth!
Slashdot recently had a story up about Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, being accused of rape (and the charges subsequently being dropped). Slashdot is a very male-dominated site, and any discussion of rape and sexuality usually turns to how men are unfairly targeted by rape accusations, and presumed guilty before any evidence is presented. I wasn’t expecting a horribly well-informed discussion, but I was surprised to come across a comment about Enthusiastic Consent. From the comment:
Here in the US they’ve coined a term for the PC way of going about sex: Enthusiastic Consent. [suite101.com] It is an outgrowth of the PC version of “No means No!” from the 1980′s. In the 80′s in the US they counseled college kids that they had get permission at each step of the way. They actually had role-playing seminars where you’d ask “is it OK if I touch you here?” “Is it OK if I kiss you there?” You really got the feeling that these people had never had a real sexual encounter in their lives, and wanted to make sure that nobody else did either.
The commenter goes on to talk about how the Enthusiastic Consent movement is attempting to create a world where “anything can be considered rape.” Way to misrepresent. My response is below.
As someone who is a fan of the Enthusiastic Consent model, I think you’re misrepresenting its goals. Specifically…
So this [idea of Enthusiastic Conset] has morphed into an “anything can be considered rape” model, where even getting an affirmative “yes” to each of these questions is not enough. The “yes” has to be truly enthusiastic to count. So telling a girl that you love her and want to have sex with her is rape – because you are exploiting your relationship. Have a couple of drinks together? Rape. Tell her “it’s Ok, everybody does it?” Rape. Know somebody who lives in a society that is OK with casual sexual encounters? Ooops, that might be social conditioning – better not try to hook up. ‘Cause that’s rape.
The idea of Enthusiastic Consent is not to rewrite rape legislation out of whole cloth. Rather, it’s to create a social movement where the healthy expectation is that sex should only occur between two people who enthusiastically consent to the activity. To use your example, saying “It’s OK, everybody does it” isn’t and shouldn’t be rape. But I’d sure say it’s an ethically questionable way to get someone in bed with you. Likewise for exploiting a relationship status, likewise for using somebodies social expectations of casual sexual encounters to pressure them into sex. Again, none of those situations are rape but they’re all situations in which the consent of one party was not given enthusiastically.
And as a woman who really enjoys having sex, surrounded by friends – male and female – who also enjoy having sex, why would I want any of us to be having sex that wasn’t consented to with enthusiasm!? Why would you ever want that for yourself, or your friends, or your children? There are enough things in my life that I’m only blase about, sex shouldn’t be one of them. And so no, Enthusiastic Consent does not mean that the situations you list somehow are transformed into rape. It does mean that they’re indicative of a society which sees little wrong with unenthusiastic sexual encounters, and argues that that’s a problem.
As a final note, you scoff at the idea of asking “is it OK if I touch you here?” “Is it OK if I kiss you there?” You don’t get to decide what level of consent your partner has offered. And if you don’t ask, you can’t know for sure.
The two replies, neither form the original commenter, continue to miss the point, that Enthusiastic Consent is less about legal reform than it is about social. Which is frustrating, but I felt good about chiming in and trying to correct the misconception.
What do y’all think about Enthusiastic Consent? Did I miss anything myself, or misunderstood some important point?
I sort of want to buy this shirt...
Galcon
Just got Galcon on my Android phone to tide me over while I’m traveling this week. (And am currently playing it instead of, y’know, memorizing my lines or prepping for my show…)
It’s a pretty great game, described by Penny Arcade as “Space Risk in Real Time.” That is, you’re trying to take and hold planets by moving armies around. There are no dice rolls – it’s a pure numbers game – and the bigger your planets are the faster you generate new armies.
At an easy $2.99, available for iPhone and (in a larger edition) for computer) I highly recommend it.
Uncovering the Mirrors debuts a week from tomorrow. Have you bought your tickets yet?
I had a chance to speak with Behind the Fringe recently, and they’ve just posted that interview. Here’s an excerpt:
BTF: How and when did [your show] come about?
RK: Uncovering the Mirrors has been forming for at least twelve years, when I stood awkwardly in front of friends and family and had a Bar Mitzvah. Because having a Bar Mitzvah – a ceremony at thirteen for Jewish boys to become Jewish men – just sucks when what you really want is to be a girl. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to find that perfect ceremony to say, “No, wait. There’s been a mistake. See, I’m not really a boy. Isn’t there some way I can have a do-over?” But while working on this show, I realized the issue is larger than me: we should all be allowed to decide which parts of ourselves make up our identities. This show is my own contribution toward that end.
Read the full interview here. I’ve also been interviewed by the Chicago Sun Times blog, as well as having coverage appear in the Evanston Review and Steadystyle Chicago.
Girl at Mirror - Normal Rockwell
I started this blog after coming out to a friend and coworker. I was talking about my then-pie-in-the-sky ideas of creating performance material out of my experiences as a trans woman. She responded with the entirely reasonable question, “Are you keeping a written record of your experiences?”
“Um…no. You think I should?”
And thus The Thang Blog was born. I’ve always been open about the self-indulgent nature of this blog: it’s a forum for discussion, sure, but it’s first and foremost a place for me to record my thoughts, my musings, and whatever catches my interest. (Read my Comments Policy if you don’t believe me.)
But over the last three years(!!) this blog – and performing, and telling my story – has become something more for me. As my hit counter has gone from one or two (or none) a day, to a few dozen, to a hundreds of readers and visitors, as my performances have gone from a pipe dream to what I hope will be a livelihood, my perspective has changed.
Telling my story has become my activism. Telling my story has become my politics.
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