An apology and a promise

A few months ago I posted an events notice for a MichFest Women’s Festival event in NYC. I screwed up big time in that original post by not including any text noting the trans-exclusionary policy of MichFest, which has excluded trans women as festival participants for many years.

I apologise unreservedly for neglecting to highlight this as part of my original post. We did discuss the issue in comments, and I did amend the post after some prodding, but I should have challenged the trans-exclusion from the start, or better yet not promoted the event at all.

Here’s the promise: I will not give any trans-exclusionary feminist event any promotion here in the future. If I do unknowingly post a link to some event that is trans-exclusionary, I will delete it as soon as I am made aware.

I am aware that this decision is likely to affront some trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs),

Friday Feminism: Fierce

[This is a crosspost from Shakesville where it was originally posted in October of 2007.]

I was standing in front of a full-length mirror with my leg stretched out, modeling at its end for my own consumption the left half of a pair of kelly green steel-toed Doc Martens knee-highs I had just bought, in spite of their outrageous price tag. "Girl, those boots are hot!" came the voice from beside me. This was St. Nate of the Perfectly Shaped Eyebrows, my coworker and friend, who would, one day, find himself at my parents’ house in the suburbs racing through their kitchen as I screeched, "Get the baking soda!" to help put out a fire I’d started on their deck with the grill. But today he was admiring my boots. And admiring me.

"God damn, look at you!" He pulled my shirt from the back so it clung to my form. This was not a look I felt was particularly good for me, even in those thinner days, and I pushed his hands away, squirming and frowning at myself in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow and frowned back, then turned me around by the shoulders, away from the mirror.

"Bitch, be fierce…"
 

* * *

Nate was one of many people who fall under the "T" in LGBT who have been important to me in one way or another, many of whom have played vital roles in helping me understand and appreciate my queer-brained self, and sort out what it means for me to be a woman. This is, quite obviously, no coincidence. Being myself a person who is, like many non-trans feminists and queers, uncomfortable with, and thusly constantly challenging, the expectations imposed on my sex and gender, I have found it valuable (and, in my personal experience, inevitable) to engage with Ts as part of divining my own self-definition. Which is to say nothing of simple and precious friendships.

Event Announcement: Chicago screenings of Nubian’s documentary

“Nubian” is the nom du blog of the writer of Blac(k)ademic, Kortney Ryan Ziegler. She is fundraising in order to finance the final post-production phase of her documentary, an experimental film project titled still black: a portrait of black transmen, and there are screenings this weekend in Chicago.

Directed by experimental filmmaker Kortney Ryan Ziegler, still black is a feature-length documentary that explores the lives of six black transgender men living in the United States. Through the intimate stories of their lives as artists, students, husbands, fathers, lawyers, and teachers, the film offers viewers a complex and multi-faceted image of race, sexuality and trans identity.

It sounds like a 101 on intersectionality, doesn’t it? There are some clips from the film at the film’s website.

Details of the screenings are here, including contact details and a link where you can donate money if you like her work but can’t make it to the screenings.