sex, lies, and gendertape

So, I've been sent a few news articles regarding the murder of Angie Zapata, a transwoman whose age I haven't been able to determine (a quick Google search reveals a range of cited ages, from 18- to 21-years-old. Honestly, I guess there's just not a whole lot of difference between 18 and 21, if you're talking about the endpoint to someones life. Zapata was young). For anyone who hasn't heard about this murder, here is a shamefully brief summary: Zapata was born male but had been identifying as a girl/woman for the past six years or so; she had not yet had any reconstructive surgeries (I do not know if she planned on ever doing so); she met a 32-year-old man online, and they arranged a meeting; they met and shared some sort of intimate experience; she lied to him about her sex; he found out and beat her to death with a fire extinguisher.

While being questioned by the police, the murderer, Allen Ray Andrade, explained that he thought he had "killed it," referring to Zapata. It hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer, this cold, casual, statement, and transfolks and allies have jumped all over this dehumanizing language. Rightfully so.

The thing is, my brief survey of the commentary out there regarding this case reveals that very few people seem to be troubled by Zapata's behavior. A (possibly) 18-year-old dating a 32-year-old? A biological male passing himself off as female--and not just for a night out dancing, but while inviting and engaging in sexual encounters? Reckless and dangerous and unethical and absolutely unacceptable.

So, for the record, I am totally against the death penalty as it exists, but in my world, this Andrade fuck gets got. What he did is heinous, inexcusable, unforgivable. This world has no place or use for him. This is where my own temper and problems with anger get the best of me--I imagine a thousand excruciating tortures for Andrade, a slow, harrowing, agonizing death, when I know the simple snuffing of his life is the more honorable thought. I have a code for fuck's sake, ok? It's just the darker parts of my psyche that have a hard time honoring it...

I need to say here that I also think that what Zapata was doing was a crime. In my world, if Andrade had been able to hold his weak, pathetic shit together, he could have sued Zapata for false representation or something. Honestly. It is not acceptable to lie to people about your fucking sex. Period.

I guess I should also say here that my relationship with trans issues is really thorny. From the moment I heard about "sex-change operations," when I was about six-years-old, I dreamed of the day when I would have mine. Up until that time, I had gone to bed every night praying to wake up as a boy. After a few years of this, a TV show about Christine Jorgensen totally blew my little mind and made me decide to put my faith in science, not god, to help me become what I knew I was supposed to be--a real, live boy.

I was in my 20s before I fully accepted that a sex-change was not what I wanted. This realization was watershed, and it was tied to my slow recognition of all the glue and tape and thread that it takes to patch together the myths that form our cultural fabric. That's a whole 'nother story and a lifetime of blogs, but suffice it to say that I think there is something heartbreakingly misguided about carving up a body in order to meet society's expectations for sex and gender performance. Yes, I feel at odds with my body, yes, I present as masculine, yes, I have passed as a dude--accidentally and purposely. Still, my decision to forgo body modification is because, after much rumination and writing, I realized that I don't locate "the problem" within myself; I locate it within the collective ignorance, fear, and complacency that forms the bedrock of our culture.

What I'd love to see is a forced recasting of our cultural notions regarding this thing we call "gender" and the way it relates to our genitalia; we must divorce privilege, expectation, and opportunity from our sexual organs. In fact, I will be so bold as to argue that the form and function of one's junk should only be important to said junk's owner and to any potential sexual partners:

"So, your penis is fully functional, then?"
"Why yes it is, m'lady, fully functional. And may I inquire as to your own genitalia?" "Oh, but of course! Both my vulva and my vagina are in fine working order, I can assure you!"

Or:

"My, but your clitoris is lovely in the morning light."
"Why, thank you, sugar. I was just thinking of how very much I adore the shape of your ass"

And so on.

Anyway, here's the thing that I think about a lot lately: I suspect that if I had been born into a world that had allowed me to do all of the things that came naturally to me--play sports, climb trees, sit with my legs "like a boy," ride dirtbikes and skateboards, shun baby dolls for GI Joes, wear tennis shoes and jeans and neverever a dress, learn a trade like carpentry or masonry, and, you know, most importantly, love girls like I love breathing--without overloading me with all those cultural messages that made me know that my behavior was suspect, then maybe I wouldn't have spent this lifetime so dreadfully uncomfortable in my own skin, sure that I have been born the wrong sex.

Usually this sort of talk from me invites a little bit of thoughtful dialogue and a whole lot of angry responses from transfolk who want to get into pissing matches with me about which of us "feels" the most male, about which of us has the bigger imaginary cock.

Mine is huge, trust me, but not so much that it scares the ladies.

Anyway, I won't engage in that sort of "look-inside-my-soul-for-the-penis" discourse. It's OK with me if you've decided to modify your body; it just isn't my path.

Obviously my mind is everywhere--whenever I start thinking about trans issues and the world around me and my own identity, my thoughts turn quicksilver--but one place it keeps returning is to Angie Zapata's picture. Young, beautiful, brash in that way only teenagers can manage... I know I called Zapata to task posthumously for what I think was reckless and unethical behavior, but she and I are kindred, and I am outraged by her murder. I understand, so acutely, her desire to match what she felt under her skin with what she presented to the world. I understand, too, that what is sometimes perceived as disguise is actually just a fumbling attempt to build a bridge between our self-perception and the myopic eyes of the world.

Mostly, I understand that we lost another beautiful creature to a senseless, monstrous crime.

Stay safe, people. The world is scary and confusing, and it is so easy to get lost, fall into harm's way, and never make it back again.

Rest in Peace, Angie; may the stars welcome you home.

I'm a Kitty Cat

I don't know why.

Pretty (Bad Ass) in Pink

Have you seen Current TV or checked out current.com? I saw the video below while watching the channel a few nights ago, and I thought it was an incredibly compelling story. The focus of the piece is on organizer Sampat Dal and the revolutionary group known as the "Gulabi Gang," which is a women-led, grass-roots organization in northern India that is willing to get physical while battling for women's rights. I've done a little research since then on Sampat Dal, and I've read some things that I find troubling--hints that her desire for women's empowerment has led her to embrace a role-reversal of sorts (young men who jump when she snaps her fingers, for example)--but mostly I think this is incredibly inspiring and all-around fanfuckingtastic. Hope you do, too.

PS: I broke some bones in my left foot. I am on Darvocet. It's not so bad.

Triple Scoop: Contemporary Blues

Hope it's ok if I don't attempt to explain or detail the past six weeks or so... There were days and there were nights, and they mostly seemed to follow one another in a pattern of sorts, though you couldn't always prove that by me or by my behavior.

There was also lots and lots of music, though there always is, you know?

Lots and lots.

While listening to the aforementioned lots and lots of music, I decided to give in to my compulsion to group and listen to music in sets of threes. Further, I have decided today to use this convention to grease my reappearance here--I can just about always talk about music, no matter the noise in my head or the heavy in my heart. So, today's Triple Scoop is comprised of Here Comes That Weird Chill [EP] by the Mark Lanegan Band, Dislocation Blues by Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang, and Magic Potion by The Black Keys.

Mark Lanegan used to play with The Screaming Trees, of Seattle grunge fame, though he has been releasing solo albums since 1990. He's a master of collaboration and has played with folks including Josh Homme, PJ Harvey, and The Twilight Singers, and the album he recorded with Isobel Campbell in 2005, Ballad of the Broken Seas, is startlingly beautiful and eclectic, and I digress...

So, anyway, Lanegan's ...Weird Chill EP is a "preview" of his 2004 release Bubblegum, which I have somehow never acquired. Strange that I never picked it up, because this "preview" of it is just mesmerizing. The music drones and burbles with bluesy, rocksy, gospely sound while Lanegan wraps his gorgeous baritone around guilt and longing and hope and fear and heartache. There is something industrial here, mixed with something ancient, and it moans and it groans and I feel it in my stomach and in my chest.

[Take nice, long licks here: (1) Methamphetamine Blues; (4) Message to Mine; (9) Sleep With Me]

I had heard the names "Jeff Lang" and "Chris Whitley" before, and I knew that they were both blues guitarists--Lang by way of Australia--and I knew that Whitley had a fervent cult following and that he had recently died, but that was all I knew until I stumbled upon Dislocation Blues. Lucky stumble, that, because this album--a mix of traditionals, originals, and covers (Dylan, Prince-!)--with its lap steel beauty and haunting, ethereal vocals, with its mix of jaunts and romps and dusty, old slow-motion blues, was totally worth a fall. And fall, I did, people. Barely a minute into the menacing, hypnotic "Stagger Lee," and I was flat out on the floor. The album mostly feels raw and primal, but there's this fragility, there, too--maybe it's in the falsetto vocals, maybe it's in knowing that Whitley didn't know he was dying when he recorded this (he was dead within months of completing this work).

Anyway, like Lanegan's ...Weird Chill, Dislocation Blues hits me deep, and it, too, seems to meld the old and the new, yet in different measures than Lanegan's work, with much more focus on the keeningrural than the fuzzyindustrial. I find that I am liking this form of blues very much; I aim to track down other stuff by Whitley for sure, and possibly Lang.

[Lick and lick and lick: (1) Stagger Lee; (10) Underground; (12) Motion Bride]

So, the Black Keys and their Magic Potion. I know everyone's talking about Attack & Release, but I picked up both albums at the same time, about a month ago, and I listened to Magic Potion first, and so I've been giving it more of my aural attention. Besides, I kind of have this need to progress chronologically through a discography, so... Anyway, wow, man. I know I'm a little late to the game and that I need to pick up their first few releases, but with Magic Potion, these two monstrously talented dudes (guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney) totally win my bluesy, greasy, garage-y heart. Thing is, their music also moves my dark, horny, achin' heart. So, you know, that's almost all of me ; ) This album was recorded in the drummer's basement, in Akron, Ohio, and everything about it feels close, dangerous, intense. The sound is lo-fi and humongous, it thuds and it rumbles, and it is exquisite in its controlled chaos. And if I hear something industrial in ...Weird Chill, I hear it, too, in Magic Potion; yet, there is also something here that feels, somehow, post-industrial.

As I write this, I am realizing that there are actual musical genres called "industrial" and "post-industrial," and I'm not really sure where those categories and my own notions of these terms meet and overlap, if at all. When I use "industrial" in reference to Lanegan and to the Black Keys, I mean that there is this sound in the music that is fuzzed-out and makes me think of the noise of factories; there is also something in the rhythms--vocal as well as instrumental--that makes me think of the rhythm of factory machinery. Beyond those observations, I hear something in this music that, for me, evokes the soullessness and disconnectedness of the industrial-age.

So, I hear all of that in Magic Potion, but--and maybe it's just because I know these guys grew up and continue to live in Akron, Ohio, maybe it's because I know they recorded one of their albums in an abandoned tire factory, maybe it's because I have an affinity for cities that have been butchered and left to rot by industrialism--I also hear something that sounds like alienation and desperation and that makes me think of crumbling factories, boarded up houses, and burned-out cars, empty lots, waist-high weeds, and broken glass ... the mood and decay of the post-industrial age.

[Lick well here: (2) Your Touch; (3) You're the One; (8) The Flame]

So. I guess that's it--today's Triple Scoop of Contemporary Bluesberry. Lean back, settle in, and, you know, don't be worried about getting some on you...

(Ba)rack and a Hard Case

So, I just read this article by Zillah Eisenstein on Common Dreams, and, to be honest,I found it so infuriating that I ended up just skimming it. I really don't even know how to articulate my own response or rebuttal to Eisenstein's "theory," and while there is much here that is intriguing and perhaps even rooted in truth, I think, on the whole, this particular piece of her writing is riddled with holes and fallacies. Here's an excerpt:

"Hillary’s preoccupation with white voters is a dead give-a-way of how she thinks about gender, and being a woman. Gender is white to her, like race is black. Bill and Hillary Clinton have thrown African-Americans to the wind because they thought they could play the gender card with its history of whiteness and win."

Uh...

I'm not so sure anyone can say that Clinton has "thrown African-Americans" to the wind. I mean, Blacks make up less than 13% of the population, and, depending on which poll you consult, anywhere from 85 - 93% of the Black vote is going to Obama. Is anyone taking Black voters to task for voting based solely on skin color? Or Obama, for courting the Black vote by relying on his "Blackness"? Who's raising that issue? I mean, Clinton's and Obama's voting records and political stances are way too similar to account for Obama getting 90% of the Black vote--there is no way to explain this except to say that many Blacks are voting for Obama simply because he's Black. Clinton is not getting 90% of the white votes or of women's votes anywhere.

Now, I do not mean to imply that Clinton should forgo courting the Black vote simply because she doesn't have a chance of getting it--though I actually think that's mostly true--I just think when talking about these issues, the way the voters are perceiving the candidates is just as important as the way the politicians are (supposedly) campaigning. I mean, the other huge elephant in the room, for me, is the fact that Obama is just as White as he is Black. I mean, jesus, people, his mother is fucking White! And he was raised, except for that four-year-stint in Jakarta, by his white grandparents in a mostly white town and attended a mostly white high school and then eventually landed at (mostly white) Harvard...

You know, there used to be this thing in the United States called the "rule of hypodescent," which was also known as the "one-drop rule." This rule is rooted in our illustrious colonial past and was used to determine the lineage of a mixed-race child. It states that even one drop of Black blood in your veins is enough to make you Black. 'Cause, you know, it's so potent and stuff. So, even if you looked white, even if you had to reach all the way back to your great-great-great grandpappy to find some Black blood in your ancestry, that "one drop" would be enough to make you Black. And, of course, being Black severely restricted your freedoms and limited your opportunities. So, naturally, any fair-minded, thinking person recognized this rule as the control mechanism that it was intended to be (control of Black people is inextricably linked to control of White women's sexuality, though that's another blog...).

Flash-forward to the 21st-fucking century, where people are gleefully clinging to this supposedly offensive and antiquated notion--Obama is touted as the "Black candidate" and everyone is talking about the possibility of the first "Black president" and ...

What the fuck?

Dude is Black AND White. Period.

Anyway.

So, you know, I was actually a Kucinich supporter, and then I leaned toward Edwards, before being forced to choose between Clinton and Obama. I took the tests at http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm, and Clinton's voting record is more progressive and more in line with my own views than is Obama's. Also, my mom and grandma and I were all pretty stoked after Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and I bought my grandma "The Audacity of Hope" as soon as I could get my hands on a copy.

Grandma read it, and then I read it, too.

Neither my grandma nor I were impressed. In fact, we found much of what Obama had to say very troubling. Paul Street's review pretty much reflects my own thoughts, and here are some excerpts:

"... Obama relates youthful discomfort with his college roommates' 'irresponsible' criticism of 'capitalism' and then confesses respect for Ronald Reagan's supposed success in embodying what Obama calls 'American's longing for order' (p. 31)."

"... Obama commends 'the need to raise money from economic elites to finance elections' for 'prevent[ing] Democrats...from straying too far from the center' and for marginalizing 'those within the Democratic Party who tend toward zealotry' (p. 38) and 'radical ideas' (like peace and justice)."

"Obama contends that defense of New Deal and Great Society programs is contrary to 'the changing circumstances of globalization' (p.38)."

"The American people, Obama argues, harbor only modest expectation of their government (p.7), reflecting little concern (by Obama's account) with traditional left goals of social justice and equality. There's no room in Obama's downsized image of popular 'hopes' for the citizenry's widespread disgust at savage socioeconomic inequity in the United States."

"... Obama praises the United States' founders for 'recognize[ing] that there were seeds of anarchy in the idea of individual freedom, an intoxicating danger in the idea of equality.' If 'everybody is truly free, without the constraints of birth or rank and an inherited social order,' Obama asks, then 'how can we ever hope to form a society that coheres?' (pp. 86-87).

I find that last quote particularly chilling, and it brings to mind a classroom debate at EMU that arose when the professor asked the class which they considered most important--freedom or equality... I guess that's another blog, too, though you can check out Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom for a particularly rich account of how the idea of freedom in the United States has changed with the socio-economic times...

So yeah, Street is obviously no fan of Clinton, and, honestly, she has done and said things that make me cringe. But, again--I support her mostly because her voting record is more reflective of my own views than is Obama's--barely so, but still, enough to matter to me (it's on social issues where I diverge from Obama and am a bit closer to Clinton; economically, they're about the same for me). Still, I will admit right here, that if their voting records were the same and if I found them both just as likable and competent, then I would still vote for Clinton.

And yes--because she's a woman. Why the fuck not?

I just wouldn't vote for her only because she's a woman. But I am not above letting that fact tip the scale in her favor if all else were equal. But, all things are not equal, and, compared to Obama, I think Clinton's smarter and tougher and, honestly, I also think she's warmer and more real. I am sure that I will get lambasted for that statement. Whatever.

Also, I am one of those crazy people who actually think that Clinton's stint as First Lady actually does give her an edge--she was in the White House for eight fucking year as a very interested observer and sometimes-participant in political machinations, domestic and foreign. I cannot comprehend the self-delusion it takes to negate the importance of that experience. Finally, and this is a big one for me, I like Clinton's chances against McCain much better than I like Obama's chances.

I am cranky.

I think Clinton has been treated pretty viciously--by the media, by pundits, and by regular-joe citizens who just seem to boil with hatred for her. Still, the truth is, this election is incredibly disappointing, and though I claim a distinction can be made between Obama and Clinton, it really is fairly slim. So, I guess I am relying a lot on my gut, like I think a lot of voters are doing. And something in my guts is turned off by Obama's rhetoric, which seems either naive or coldly calculating--neither of which work for me. Also, there is something messianic about his campaign and his followers--all this "I am asking you to believe" and "join the movement" stuff--that makes me shudder. Finally, it seems as if Obama's campaign is rooted in symbolism and the idea of change more than in a concrete plan for leading the country.

I gotta go.

I leave you with this: