No Designation

Yesterday I received an apology from Christopher Harrity, Manager of Online Production, apologizing for misidentifying my photo as Briana Freeman. It’s quite clear that it was not malicious, but simply a matter of not paying close enough attention while google image searching. He was “horrified” to think that his mistake caused me strife, tried to reassure me that the transphobic commenters were just being mean because it’s the internet, and he asked if there was anything else The Advocate could do.

As a matter of fact, there is. I explain how the problem goes deeper than mean anonymous commenters and a random mistake and outline steps The Advocate needs to take to correct this ongoing problem in my open letter behind the cut.

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Last week a story a story went around the blogosphere of Brianna Freeman, a 45 year old trans woman in Maine, who was suing Denny’s after a manager refused to let her use the restroom. The Advocate ran the story last Friday and – apparently figuring that one trans woman’s picture was as good as another – they posted my picture along with a caption indicating that I was Brianna Freeman.

I might have laughed it off as a stupid mistake, but glancing down at the comments I can’t help but notice that Advocate readers, being the advocates for equality that they are, took the opportunity to pick apart my appearance, judge me based on whether or not I met their definition of a real woman, and discuss how scared they would be to see me in the bathroom.

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Some people pointed out that the video cut out from my kenote speech about 15 min from the end. Well, I checked it out and it looks like there was an error while uploading it. I’ve re-uploaded it, and verified that it’s the size it should be. Enjoy the last 15 minutes. And please, let me know what you think.

http://www.handbasketproductions.com/video.htm

Sometimes it’s been hard to sift out the real comments from the dozen or two fake ones I get each week. But I’m trying to be more vigilant these days.

That was the title of my keynote speech at the Beyond Patriarchy conference a week and a half ago. I recorded it and did a little bit of editing to include my powerpoint slides and subtitles for the inaudible questions from the audience.

Anyway, since it’s a speech and not a performance or a reading, it’s not nearly as tight as the video I like to upload. I’m self conscious about my pacing and all the “ums.” But if I think of it in comparison to a podcast instead of a recorded performance, it seems much more fitting.

I covered some interesting ground, gave some insight on J Michael Bailey and what that says about our diagnostic medical models around trans stuff, chasers, trans inclusion in LGb(t) spaces, internalized sex-negative transphobia, community infighting, and more. You can download or stream the 92 min file from http://www.handbasketproductions.com/video.htm.

After discovering her transphobic history, the musical performer Bitch, previously of Bitch & Animal, was unceremoniously told that she would not be performing at OUT/LOUD, a queer women’s music festival which she had previously been set up to headline tonight. The festival released a statement on facebook which had this to say:

Knowing that her presence would prevent a significant portion of our community from participating in and enjoying this event, there was no option except to ask Bitch not to perform.

This is not the first time Bitch has faced this problem. In 2007 she was uninvited to the Boston Dyke March, and protests have followed her to several of her performances. Including her performance at Queer Up North in Manchester (detailed by one activist here). In this case, however, it’s worth noting that OUT/LOUD felt this was a significant enough issue to cancel their headliner three days before the performance. They knew they would lose the money they had agreed to pay her, but they decided they had much more to lose by allowing her to perform.

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Last year I wrote about my film Doing it Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project as an attempt to represent trans women engaged in sexuality the way they wanted to be represented as opposed to what typically lines the shelves of “tranny porn” and also to encourage trans women’s inclusion in more alternative, feminist, and queer porn. It’s now finished but wasn’t ready in time for the Feminist Porn Awards this year, however, I did manage to win the Emerging Filmmaker Award for my work on this film.

In celebration I’ve decided to share some of the stills from one of the scenes. Totally NSFW, if you go under the jump you have no one to blame but yourself. Also crossposted on Bilerico.

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That’s right. There’s been minimal information on this topic. I’ve asked the folks at Our Families Count, who could not answer if such a thing would be possible. I’ve googled polyamory and census only to come up with a couple of people under the impression that being poly is not something that could be reported on the census. But once I received my census in the mail and saw the exact framing of the questions, it was right in front of me, clear as day: Poly families CAN be counted.

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Bilerico Backpost: This was originally posted to Bilerico May 22nd, 2009.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/05/a_trans_persons_photo_in_the_hall.php

I’ve heard of administrators or parents complaining when a trans speaker talks to a class, when a teacher comes out as trans, or even when a student does – but I never expected that the mere presence of a photograph would cause a similar reaction.

The photo exhibit, “Shared Community, Mixed Identities,” was not even about trans people, but about representing the diversity of backgrounds that multiracial people come from. My photo was among them, along with a small bio which mentions that I am trans. It was designed as a part of a community project and made available to whatever spaces wish to display it. And when a local elementary school requested to display it, it suddenly became a significant controversy. Yesterday, multiple local news outlets decided to pick it up as a story.

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Backpost: This was originally posted to Bilerico May 11th, 2009.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/05/tobi_then_and_now.php

THEN

1. I was getting involved in my second relationship ever after my partner and I decided to be poly.
2. I identified as bisexual even though all my partners had been women – I knew identity and behavior don’t always have to match up.
3. I was flirting with the photographer but didn’t think they’d actually get involved with me
4. I had just resigned from my job in student government after 7 months of persistent anti-trans/genderqueer harassment.
5. I had recently moved into a house owned by one of my favorite authors
6. I identified as genderqueer, specifically not as a woman or man, and had been fighting my doctor to get access to hormones for 8 months
7. I was so focused on gender and queerness it had been years since I hung out with my straight gaming friends from high school.
8. I had recently completed banking sperm in preparation for starting hormones.
9. I had never drank alcohol
10. This photo was from the first set of nude pictures I posted online.

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Bilerico Backposts: This was originally posted to Bilerico June 17th, 2009.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/06/the_advocate_joins_in_transphobic_media.php

It was bad enough when the New York Post ran the transphobic article “Wedding Crashers” which erroneously describes a trans woman and her cis male partner, Kimah Nelson and Jason Stenson, as a gay couple and how they “duped” the government into giving them a same-sex marriage.

But then the Advocate repeated the story uncritically parroting the same anti-trans message. After some complaints, they’ve removed the male pronouns referring to Kimah but rather than replacing them with female pronouns they opted for no pronouns.

However, the article still uses Kimah’s birth name rather than her preferred name, still describes them as a same-sex couple, still dehumanizingly describes the status of her genitals, and still claims that the couple “fooled” the officials, perpetuating the transphobic fear that trans people are “fooling” people when we say we are the genders we identify as — the very same fear that gives rise to the trans-panic defense for hate crimes and murders. The effect is clearly visible just by reading the comments this story is generating. Do we seriously need a GLAAD action alert before the Advocate will retract this anti-trans framing of the story or even just follow Associated Press guidelines for reporting on trans people?

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