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By Rebecca, March 19, 2010 12:29 am

Just finished watching the latest 30 Rock. I do love their take on the Comcast takeover of NBC, as they’re spot on: Comcast provides no minimal service to its customers. (She says, typing away on a computer connected to the Internet via Comcast.)

But the final twist in the episode was “Kablevision” (the 30 Rock stand-in for Comcast) attempting to double its porn profits by providing “porn for women.” Specifically, attractive male models who will look at the camera while smiling and nodding. All for $24.99 an hour. Because the only thing women want is “to jabber,” which conflicts with the only thing men think about: sex. They take the train of thought to its logical conclusion, with one character saying “I mean, I’m more than a pair of ears! I’m a brain, too! A brain that thinks about sex every seven seconds.”

Well, xkcd said it best:

Continue reading '30 Rock on the ‘porn for women’ bandwagon too?'»

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By Rebecca, February 24, 2010 4:05 pm

I had another doctor’s appointment today, as a followup to the one I had a few weeks ago. He said I should stick with the Lexapro (now on week two) and he opened my chakras again.

We also talked for a while about regret and how to look forward.

I explained to him how I’ve been feeling like I’m wallowing in regret. That I’m consciously aware of how good I do have it, but still can’t get over this fantasy that things would be better had I transitioned earlier or not had to transition at all. (By which I meant ‘had been born female.’ Don’t worry.) I know it’s futile, and I know it’s harmful, but I can’t get out out of it. He responded that I need to find a way to look forward, not  backward; regret over what’s passed can consume you. (Tell me something I don’t know…)

On the train ride home, I was rereading some essays from Yes Means Yes and one in particular struck home. From Sex Worth Fighting For:

I remained preoccupied by fears that something “truly” bad would happen, and often imagined gang rape and murder that would finish me off for good. It would probably be committed by boys who didn’t plan to go that far but felt like trying out their power on somebody who seemed like an easy target. This scenario felt so possible to me as to be the likely next step in my life.

Continue reading 'Doctors, self defense'»

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By Rebecca, February 22, 2010 7:30 pm

This past weekend was pretty busy. I saw a friend’s dance recital, another friend’s show, had my final high school class (finally!) and, of course, went to play laser tag and went to an introductory pole dancing class. (What, you didn’t do laser tag and pole dancing this weekend?) Both were a lot of fun, but both were interesting examples of gendered behavior and – more surprisingly – brought up some unexpected gendered expectations I have for myself.

Laser tag brought up feelings of inadequacy as a man, even though I don’t want to be a man or to think of myself as ‘one of the boys.’

Pole dancing brought up major feelings of inadequacy as a woman, coupled with an unexpected desire to be sexy and eagerness to go along with instructions toward that end.

Continue reading 'Laser Tag and Pole Dancing as gendered behavior'»

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By Rebecca, January 30, 2010 12:17 pm

A friend shot me an article from sfgate.com earlier this week: Gender Identity and Phantom Genitalia:

V.S. Ramachandran, a neurologist and psychologist at UC San Diego and a leading authority on phantom limb sensations, says it has long been known that some people who are born without arms have vivid phantom arms. They can swing them around, wave goodbye and make complicated gestures.

This suggests that an intact body image – the maps of the body laid down in the brain before and after birth – can develop without actual limbs. So-called mirror neurons that map the actions and intentions of others into one’s own brain may help bring the phantoms to life, Ramachandran says.

…

This got Ramachandran wondering whether the phantoms applied to transsexuality. To find out, he surveyed 20 male-to-female transsexual women and 29 female-to-male transsexual men.

The first finding was intriguing. Only 6 out of 20, or 30 percent, of the transsexual women who had had their penises removed reported feeling a phantom phallus. But 58 percent of “normal” men have such sensations after the surgery.

The second finding was surprising. A third to a half of “normal” women experience phantom breasts after a mastectomy, as opposed to only 3 out of the 29 transgender men. The third finding was downright astounding. Among the transsexual men, 18 out of 29, or 62 percent, said they had experienced a phantom penis long before their surgery.

Continue reading '“The Phantom Genitalia” would be a great band name'»

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By Rebecca, December 29, 2009 1:41 pm

I’m sure someone else has done this, but the idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while. Links go to video or audio where possible, and lyrics for when I couldn’t find anything else.

So, Soundtrack for a Transition track list

1. How Lovely To Be A Woman – Bye Bye Birdie (song stars about 35 seconds in, here are the lyrics)
2. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman – Aretha Franklin (lyrics)
3. I Don’t Need a Man – The Pussycat Dolls (lyrics)
4. When I Was A Boy – Dar Williams (lyrics) Continue reading 'Soundtrack for a transition'»

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By Rebecca, December 23, 2009 11:46 am

I’ve joked before that one gauge of how my girl friends perceive my gender is how often/extensively they volunteer information about their period with me. That is, over the past year, I’ve gone from only very close friends rarely or occasionally mentioning their period, to all of my close girl friends (and a few of my female coworkers) mentioning their period or PMS at some point in the past few months.

Continue reading 'Pregnancy and PMS'»

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By Rebecca, November 9, 2009 6:14 pm

I was delivering postcards for my show this morning (obligatory plug) and got a flat tire. I was on Lake Shore Drive, heading south at the curve by North Beach, when I felt the steering jerk. I’ve never actually been in a car when a tire went flat, let alone driving a car when it happens, so I didn’t realize what was happening. I just thought, “Shit, something’s wrong with my car” and promptly forgot about it.

That meant that, to make matters worse, I didn’t notice it until I was parked at the place I was dropping post cards, about 2 miles later. (I subsequently learned this meant the tire couldn’t just be patched – $35+tax – but had to be replaced – $100+tax. Taught me a lesson about always pulling over ASAP when something goes wonky…)

But I didn’t actually notice the flat myself. Two guys were walking from their pickup truck when one of them said, “You know you have a flat there?” And thus started the most subtlety gendered interaction I’ve had in a while.

Continue reading 'Speaking of gender roles…'»

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By Rebecca, November 6, 2009 11:59 am

A friend of mine, Adam, recently got into something of an argument with one of his friends, Bob, over a third friend, Claire. (Ah, computer science naming schemes.) Adam, who has been interested in Claire for quite some time, had said something along the lines of, “I’d sure like to fuck Claire,” to Bob. This had made its way to Claire, by way of Bob, who was really pissed at Adam. Adam was likewise pissed at Bob, for having mentioned it o Claire in the first place.

(Confused yet? My friends have never been known for their lack of drama.

I was talking about this with my roommate last night. She was saying, basically, that Adam had been bogus and – even though it was a little shady that Bob told Claire, since he’s also interested in her – Claire was right to get really upset with Adam.

I, on the other hand, was saying that, yes, what Adam said is bogus. But the context is also really important, and I’d want to hear more before passing judgment; initially, I thought that Bob’s conflict-of-interest when it comes to Claire and Adam made his gossiping somewhat more obnoxious.

But then I remembered this post from July. And I realized that I’d been thinking about the situation from the perspective of being more likely to say, “I’d sure like to fuck her” than to have it said about me.

Continue reading 'Tis better to give than to receive'»

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By Rebecca, October 18, 2009 3:38 pm

I was having a conversation with a friend last night about sex, and gender identity versus physical body. It got me thinking about how easy it is to get into circular reasoning, especially when it comes to something so emotional and sensitive as all that. The circular reasoning we were talking about goes like this:

1. I like sex, and being sexual
2. I identify as a woman
3. I was assigned “boy” at birth, and still have ‘boy bits’
4. Women can’t have ‘boy bits’
5. But I like sex…

(Rinse and repeat…)

Basically, is it OK to enjoy sex, even if your body isn’t what you really want it to be? Or, you have issues using your body in the socially/culturally expected way?

Continue reading 'Sexular Reasoning'»

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By Rebecca, August 20, 2009 11:48 pm

Twice in the last twenty-four hours I had an experience that really reminded me how awesome my friends are.

First, last night, I was talking with both of my roommates. We had one of those long, meandering conversations, and it came up that a girl we all knew in highschool was engaged. This was particularly noteworthy because she’d dated another girl in highschool for about a year, and explicitly identified herself as a lesbian at the time.

One of my roommates said something along the lines of, “So she was gay then, but is straight now.” I was about to speak up and point out that sexual identity doesn’t need to be so simple, that A) bi people exist, and B) there are other possibilities as well (that she only publicly identified as a lesbian but never really felt it, that she only now publicly identifies as straight but doesn’t really feel it, that she doesn’t identify with any mainstream sexuality, and so on).

But, before I could, my other roommate said almost exactly that.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in a liberal group of friends to begin with. But there’s a big difference between being liberal-and-well-meaning-but-still-ignorant and absorbing all of the identity politics I sometimes feel like I spew. So it felt really good to hear one of my roommates speak up against making assumptions about identity and, on top of that, point out that sexuality doesn’t need to be a binary.

Continue reading 'I (Heart) My Friends'»