ct07

I'm leaving for Camp Trans in a few hours. That's exciting. After CT last year- which was the first time I'd ever gone- I kept promising to process online all the stuff I'd been through and figured out and experienced, but I never did. There was too much.

There's this thing- well, okay, background. There's this other thing (and forgive me if you've read about this a bahundred times in a bahundred places already) called the Michigan Women's Music Festival that's been going on since the early seventies, I think? Since the heyday of Janice Raymond's the Transsexual Empire, the pinnacle of second-wave feminism's transphobia and, incidentally, a work so thoroughly discredited that it doesn't even have a descriptive blurb synopsis on Amazon. Basically, her thesis is, transsexual women are men! Invented by science! To undermine the women's movement! Which, y'know, is problematic, but I don't think anybody really listens to her any more.

The problem is, this music festival is the largest women-only space in the country, or the world, or whatever, and is this hugely (historically, at least) bit of lesbian ... I don't want to say herstory, but y'know. They might. They spell woman with a y. Which is fine, just- jesus, never mind about that. The point is that they ae an enormously important cultural touchstone in dyke culture, and about fifteen years ago they booted a trans womans (whose name I forget whether I'm allowed to drop, so I won't) for being trans, and since then have had a "womyn-born-womyn" policy that says, trans women are not women.

Basically CT has this winding history since then that involves Les Feinberg, Riki Ann Wilchins, strap-on.org, and a bunch of other folks. The point is just that it started out as a protest against Michfest's no trans women policy. Dig?

Anyway, okay, whatever. Firstly, fuck Michfest: it's for rich women who have jobs the let 'em have two weeks off in the middle of the summer to go topless in the woods; it's for women who can afford not to work for two weeks; it's for women who can afford the gas or bus or plane tickets to get to Michigan from wherever they are; it's for women who like lesbian music; it's for women who aren't trans; and it claims to be an inclusive space. Lame. Bouge. I'm not invested in protesting Michfest at this point; I kinda don't care about their policy, except in the 'oh yeah, that sure is fucked up' kinda of half-appalled half-interest I have whenever I read about an organization with a fucked up agenda toward trans women.

What I'm invested in with Camp Trans is the empowering space it makes for trans women, regardless of what the protestual context is. (Which is funny- that's what Michfest is supposed to be for all women.) Lina said it better than I think anybody else ever has, as far as I'm concerned; other folks with similar shit where you're not inside THEIR heads with THEIR neuroses, getting perspective on your own shit. All these beautiful queers.

I book music: I'm playing. So are: DJ CPI, MC Redorix, Nervous But Excited, Gage, Kristin Bell Murray, Vanessa Marie Spitzer, Athens Boys' Choir, Miss the Maudlin Geek, Tough Tough Skin, and the Degenerettes. (I'd make those links but I just got all sleepy. Google 'em.) Also, fuckin Lezzies on X are probably going to come spin a set on Friday, if we can get ahold of a pair of CD players and a mixer. I bet we can.

In case that wasn't explicit: That's seven solo performers and two bands, out of eleven acts total, who are trans. And the majority of THOSE, I am stoked to report, are trans women. Not that I have anything against trans men, just that my experience has always been that, in so-called trans-positive spaces, trans men are visibly the majority. (Which, interestingly, is the opposite of how trans folks are portrayed by the media; probably because it's harder to make a trans man look like a freaky crazy- Julia Serrano talks a lot about this in her book Whipping Girl, which we carry at my store, by the way. I think it's her most important contribution, the whole scapegoating of femininity thesis.) One of my favorite things about Camp Trans is the fact that it started as a protest specifically for trans women's rights, not trans rights in general, which in a way acknowledges that trans women and trans men have a lot of issues in common and a lot of issues ... not.

Which is a conversation nobody seems interested in having, I guess because it's hard and I guess because it cracks the unified front we like to put up. Hi, problem that comes up every couple years in feminism!

Anyway, whatever. My point is just that- I know I keep using the word "empowering," but I can't think of another one. For three months after last year's CT, I was high on the possibility of my own life. Thank God for radical queers, is my point.

Well, also: see you in two weeks. They don't have internets in the woods.

my impression of David Foster Wallace

Hey, look at me! I'm David Foster Wallace! Everything I write is absolutely fucking unreadable!

protest + regular test

A couple things happened. Firstly, we went to the silent protest in San Francisco a couple mornings ago, to support a trans woman named Alexis Giraldo, who's suing the California department of corrections for holing her- a woman- into a men's prison, where she was assaulted. The nice thing about the protest was that everybody was supposed to wear red to show their support- but since it was a bunch of activists whose clothes are all black, everybody was wearing red & black: it looked like a white stripes video shoot! Nice.

Also, I mean, I guess red & black are the Official Colors of Anarchy, but whatever. White stripes. The only thing about the white stripes that's better than the doorbell song is that they still only dress in a couple colors.

Anyway, after that, Micah came with me for my driver's test, which I passed this time. That's nice, because I'm driving to Michigan on Friday. The test was terrifying and I borrowed Isla's car, which doesn't have power steering, so I think I got points taken off for turning smoothness, but whatever. I passed. (It's weird to use the word "pass" in a context other than, like, "passing for one gender or the other," but also really, really nice.) I get a license in the mail in a month and a half, and then I bring it back and say "please fix this goddam wrong name and sex marker."

wwn

Last night, Josh told me that the Weekly World News is closing down. Turns out this is true. So: Punk Planet, Jane, Weekly World News- it's like the magazine industry is going in reverse order of my life and shutting down my favorite magazines. Next are the guitar magazines I swallowed whole when I was like fourteen, and then, finally, Highlights, the logo of which makes me feel nostalgic and weirdly icky for making jokes.

Anyway the Weekly World News! I bought that thing every week for like six years. I was mainly interested in rifling immediately through to see whether there were any fake "sex change" stories, even though I hadn't really even owned up to that to myself. And nothing really seemed amiss with my obsession, becuse it was the Late Eighties and Early Nineties: When Everything Was Stupid and Weird. I learned a lot about bad, obvious jokes from Dear Dottie; the crossword puzzle was enormous and almost frustratingly easy; once time, I convinced my brother and two cousins to act out three of the stories in front of my dad's sweet camcorder as an excuse to, well, y'know. Not to be a one-trick genius, but the real impetus there was to perform the article about the husband and wife who both had "sex changes" and remained husband and wife. Gross. I don't even remember what the other skits were about.

Anyway, all I'm saying is: I'll miss you, Weekly World News. You gave my confused gender identity a confusing, unhealthy outlet, and helped me understand Flaming Lips' visual aesthetic back before they became geniuses.

(Here's a tangent for you: I was obsessed with the Flaming Lips back then. Y'know, they grew up became all famous pop geniuses and stuff, but back when they were singing about unconsciously screamin, and turning on all the distortion pedals for half an hour just to see what would happen, I was in love with them. Their aesthetic was: 'whatever, let's just put this stuff down. Let's stretch this picture, let's make this thing pink. We are on acid.' It took me a long time to understand that this is annoying. At this point in my life, I have a nostalgic affection toward what they used to do, but I can't stand the whole accomplished songwriter/musician thing they've got going on now. You know? It just seems pretentious and insufferable and unexciting. I'm glad they're successful, I'm just bored.

My point is, the Weekly World News never got boring like that.)

(Actually, it probably did. I stopped reading it a long time ago.)