feminist blogs

Jill posts about vegans being seduced by Mannon, and mentions Skinny Bitch. (It will get no link love from me.) Its creator has been criticized for publishing a how-to book for especially health-conscious anorexics:

Lisa–as usual–has already devoted many paragraphs to responding to this post, but I’m adding my contribution here, because I read this comment and sorta went, “Hm.”

Here is my position in a nutshell:
1. Transwomen are people (yep! “people”) that have made some sort of *change* to be considered (trans) “women”
2. To have transitioned is to have supported the message that links what our bodies are to how we express them. That, to me, is gender. (That those expressions, however, oftentimes have binary influence-influence not carbon copy- is no accident.)
3. I don’t want body parts “expressible” (maybe you do? or don’t care either way)
To “express” womanhood/being a “woman” is to further define/perpetuate how those with the status of “woman” under Status Quo Norms should act or behave and, thusly, what people expect from them (for obvious reasons, you didn’t become trans to be considered translisa). Any positive re-enforcement of this, afaic, is problematic and oppressive.4. I recognize that my latter points are not appreciated by transpersons so I’m not going to go out of my way (across seas, lots of expense) to say those things to transpersons who already have a hard enough time with conservative values. Contrary to typical conflation radfems are not conservatives–our positions are wholly different and you are smart enough to discern.
5. All I would like, wrt to trans exclusive spaces, are enough places I may go, in one lifetime, on one hand, that allow me to speak comfortably about the points presented above.
6. I will always question the motives of trans who can in one breath call me transphobic (or bigot, or fundamentalist) and then ask “So can I come?”

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Speaking of Andrew Sullivan–I’ll stop soon, I promise–I found this post linked off his blog. I don’t have time for any real response to it now, and I’m sorry for that, especially since it’s off Sarah’s long and conscientious piece at Shakesville, but this comment just kind of jumped out at me:

Me: gay, 27, just out of grad school.

In my experience, most self-described bisexual men are totally in denial about being gay. I, too, have fallen in love with one of them, and that experienced proved more damaging and traumatic than any experience with a gay guy.

I have one militant bi friend, however, who adamantly clings to his bisexual identity despite not having been with a woman in several years (also for as long as I’ve known him) AND admitting that “women just don’t like me.” I’m a psychologist, so I’m inclined to label that statement as his subconscious saying “I just don’t like women.” So despite exclusively dating and fucking men for several years, he still is, in his mind, “bi.” Weird.

Either way, “authentic” bisexuals are left in a quandary should they enter a monogamous relationship. I don’t see how an “authentic” bisexual could ever be happy married to one person, unless the partner was down with some serious threeway action or didn’t mind her husband fucking men on the side. There are some women out there who get off watching their husband suck off another dude, but not many, and threeways usually destroy relationships over time.

I am shy, and I do tend to dress like someone who expects to get paint all over her clothes at some point in the day, but…I do not understand this argument. I hear it a lot. Where is all this sex that we’re supposed to be having? Why have I not seen the benefit of these increased odds? Why aren’t all my bi-identified friends living lives of idle cheatin’, as opposed to the durable partnerships they seem to commit themselves to? Are we some sort of aberration?

Maybe they lie to me about their proclivities because they think I would judge them or become jealous. Maybe they laugh at me behind my back.

And maybe I’m wrong to say that this argument makes exactly as much sense as the belief that your gay coworker will attempt to hump your leg in the men’s room because, after all, you have a penis.

BBC News published an article a couple of weeks ago about transition in Iran. In Iran, it is legal to change sex: if you can convince a doctor that you are a transsexual, and if they permit you to undergo GRS, then you can legally change your name and gender on your identifying documents. (It’s a package deal: there’s only one way. In the states, “full” transition is usually privileged by the law over “partial” or “incomplete” transition, but the trend, knock wood, is towards autonomy and it’s not illegal to opt out of any procedure, stop hormones, or fail to change any marker on your documents.)

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Little Light put up a post about antecedents and record-keeping:

History is full of these things, no matter where you go, things we can circle around, draw rough outlines of, even make very good educated guesses about. But we don’t have them any more, and we’re different people now, and nobody thought to leave us careful instructions because they just assumed that what they had would always be there. There’s an entire genre of Song Dynasty Chinese poetry that’s really song lyrics, but we don’t have the tunes any more in part because they were so popular they didn’t need to be written down. There are buried cities that periodically turn up all over Arabia that we don’t even know the names of, any more–huge capitals of trade and art just vanished, when once everyone knew where to go to find them.

Her essay touches on a lot of aspects of remembering and defending continuity in the face of erasure; like she says, it isn’t only time that creates this kind of loss. I wish I had something brilliant to contribute myself, but it’s just that good.

So, go read the whole thing.

A trans woman from the Bay Area was not allowed to undergo a breast augmentation at a Catholic hospital in Daly City:

God made you a man.”

That’s what Charlene Hastings said she was told when she called to inquire about breast enlargement surgery at Seton Medical Center, a Catholic hospital in Daly City.

Now the San Franciscan is suing the hospital, claiming officials there discriminated against her because she had a sex-change operation.

Hastings, 57, had already had the major surgery she needed to become a woman. She had chosen a San Francisco plastic surgeon with privileges at Seton to perform the breast augmentation in October 2006. But the surgeon, Dr. Leonard Gray, told her that Seton no longer allowed him to operate on transgender patients, Hastings said.

When Hastings called Seton to learn more, a surgical coordinator said the hospital would not allow its facilities to be used for transgender surgery, according to the lawsuit, “She was saying, ‘It’s not God’s will,’ ” Hastings said. “I couldn’t believe it. It’s a blatant case of discrimination.”

Seton has no problem allowing breast augmentation for cissexual women, and Hastings’ surgeon performs those procedures at Seton. The argument is not the artificiality of breast implants but the artificiality of any surgery related to physical transition:

“Seton Medical Center provides medically necessary services to all individuals,” Nikels said in a prepared statement. “However, the hospital does not perform surgical procedures contrary to Catholic teaching; for example, abortion, direct euthanasia, transgender surgery or any of its related components.” The hospital did not comment directly on the lawsuit.

Gray still performs breast enlargement surgeries at Seton on women who are not transgender.

When it was owned by Catholic Healthcare West, a large hospital conglomerate, Seton apparently did allow transgender surgery. But when the Daughters of Charity, which took ownership of the hospital in 2002, learned in 2006 that such surgeries were still taking place, they were stopped, said two sources who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly for their organizations.

“Transgender surgery” refers to several different procedures; I assume that Seton’s definition is broad. It can include procedures which are both “medically necessary” and necessary to transition for some patients, e.g. hysterectomy. It can also cover cosmetic procedures that constitute both reconstruction and “transgender surgery”–say, for example, a transmasculine person undergoes a double mastectomy because of breast cancer but requests masculinization for hir new chest. Seton wouldn’t be the first hospital to err on the side of endangering trans patients.

Pretty, huh?

(This review and the one I’m linking to contain some spoilers–the plot isn’t exactly full of twists and turns, but just in case.)

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There was a comment on the Barnes and Noble thread about where one would go to find new books:

Where do you folks find out what is new in lit? I’m really curious as I don’t hang with literary types, so my reading is a lonely enterprise.

Also, I agree with Angi, my curiosity about the real world keeps me engrossed in non-fiction so much that my good intentions to dive into the world of lit, new or old is nothing but that; good intentions.

I tend to have too many recommendations on my plate rather than too few. When I need something new, I usually just check out the new acquisitions shelf at the library. I also check out Bookslut occasionally.

Where do you get your suggestions? Friends, family, the paper?

…Or, the Jonathan Safran Foer open thread that ended up containing a review of the book we weren’t talking about. (This post contains Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close spoilers.)

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Speaking of Chris, he also has a post up–off of a post by Michael Berube in Crooked Timber–in response to some people who need literature to keep score:

And plus, every time a person reads it, a nut gets its wings. After finishing the novel, I recalled an entertaining post Michael Bérubé wrote at Crooked Timber, with one of his trademark post titles dropping coy references to hip and current musical groups so that the young people will find it relevant. The post discussed the usual bleatings by Conservative Academics that the Literary Canon is being eroded by the relentless inclusion of writers who have the temerity to be not-white, or not-male, or not-dead-since-before-the-bleaters-were-born, or some combination of the three. It’s an old argument, an evergreen, and yet no matter how many times the argument is made it never gets any more justifiable. Or for that matter more interesting.

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