when we went to see the new fanatstic four movie, they had a simpsons movie display at the theatre, and my hubby took a pic with my phone.

dr. mark craig: “so, what are you in for?”
bob overland: “well actually mark, i’m here for a sex change.”

i recently downloaded the first season of st. elsewhere from iTunes. this episode is from 1983. need i say more?

the cartoon over on alas, a blog has resulted in some responses, and some blog posts across the blogosphere. in heart’s blog post, she states:

Mary Daly did not “compare transsexuals with Frankenstein.” This is a lie.

i quoted the now infamous passage from mary daly’s book in the comments to that thread in an attempt to understand how that passage could be interpreted differently. much of my comment was edited out as “snark”. perhaps in the future, when i post comments to blogs whose moderators are known to edit the comments, i should keep a copy of those comments.

in any event, here’s the passage in GYN/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Chapter One: Deadly Deception: Mystification Through Myth, pg 70 - 71 found here:

“Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophillic invasion/elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.”

at first, my comment is dismissed as evidence of “male privilege”, because i sought clarification of how that passage might be interpreted differently. after, it was pointed out that “patriarchy/male heterosupremacy, in its mythology, religion, technology, institutions is possessed of what she calls the “Frankenstein phenomenon.” There is a *big difference*.” but doesn’t go on to review the difference.

people certainly have the right to express their thoughts and interpretations. i believe that if one makes an assertion however, one should be prepared to be called upon to qualify that assertion with more than just “read this other thread”, which may or may not actually answer with any qualifications. to call a different interpretation a “lie” is simply wrong, especially if one does not offer some kind of qualification. to me, that’s propaganda at best.

that said, there are some bloggers who have embraced the monstrous. and it’s been said about frankenstein’s monster:

As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional creature whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself. The novel portrays him as innately intelligent and literate…

i don’t know that i can count the number of times sensitive, emotional, intellegent people have been called monstrous, whether or not they’ve been stitched up and constructed by our culture.

edited to add:
yes, when we talk about “frankenstein”, we realize that there’s a “dr. frankenstein”, who was the doctor who created the “monster”, and the monster himself, who remains unnamed in the story. in the vernacular, the term “frankenstein” has come to be known as both entities, the doctor and the monster. a “frankenstein phenomenon” could be taken as meaning someone who creates some kind of artificial life, *or* the artificial life itself.

as an aside, my spamometer is off the charts, so if you’re missing a comment here, it might have been inadvertently deleted during the last few days of clean-up. my apologies. and if you’re a spammer, then expect to see your comments deleted. don’t make me moderate every single comment! because i’ll do it if i have to!

carry on.

 

little light has a post up called search and seizure in which she writes about the general public’s propensity to gender us either male or female, and how they deal with androgyny. this type of behavior is something i’ve dealt with as well, especially during transition. even now, i deal with it every day. not that i’m androgynous in appearance - in person i am always gendered as female. it was especially a problem when i was younger and living as male. i grew a beard when i finally developed that ability specifically so that i’d be gendered male. people tend to get upset when they can’t gender others. or when they gender people incorrectly.

i work in a call center, and people can only use the gender cues they recieve over the phone when they force gender through the phone lines. specifically, they have my name and my voice with which to make their choice. for me, that can also cause problems. my name “nexy” is a rather obscure name, and therefore inherently androgynous. and my voice lies somewhere in that overlap area - on the lower edge of the “female” range and on the upper edge of the “male” range.

since people don’t tend to listen very closely on the phone, they’ll sometimes think my name is “nancy”, “lexy”, or “maxie”. when that happens, i am immediately gendered female. when they percieve my name is “nick” or “maxy”, i am gendered male. and i’ve noticed significant differences in how the call may play out, depending on how they gender me. or not, as sometimes they’ll actually hear my name as “nexy”, and then ask how to spell it. many guess “nexie” or “nexi”, which would gender me female. when i respond with the “nexy” spelling, that causes further questioning. using the name “terry” as an example, the “y” spelling is gendered male, while the “i” spelling is gendered female. same with “tony”; the “y” is male and the “i” is female.

my name will sometimes cause a bit of extra conversation, as it is unusual. and i can sense the line of questioning when it comes up as a search for additional gender cues. when the caller comments that the name is “pretty”, i know i’ve been gendered female. male names are never “pretty”. they are “cool” instead.

when my name is “unusual”, i know they are still having trouble gendering me. and that’s when they avoid pronouns all together. and in many cases, those calls will be a bit more difficult. the caller simply doesn’t know how to treat me. the simple truth - people, both male and female, treat people differently according to their gender*. or according to their sex, depending on who the person doing the treating is, and how they see sex and gender.

since i work at the bank, i am often called upon to explain how finance charges are calculated. sometimes, when the caller is having trouble gendering me, they will gender me male after i go through the mathematical explanation of finance charges. they accept my explanation, usually without question. when i am gendered female, they argue in many cases.

at a meeting last week, one of the new employees was asking about the best way to explain finance charges. our team manager suggested that one of the more seasoned employees review his mostly successful explanation. the new employee looked confused - her explanation was almost identical. i suggested that callers believed the seasoned employee’s explanation because he was male, and questioned the new employee’s explanation because she was female. and as someone who is experienced as both genders on the phone, i’m in a unique position to compare. the other women at the meeting applauded.

i am rarely asked my gender on the phone - perhaps once or twice a month. as little light observes, most people just assume. and some will make updates during the conversation, based on my behavior and knowledge. some will go back and forth more than once. little light also suggests that if people are unsure, “just ask”. i don’t think that’s going to work.

see, making judgements about people and treating them accordingly (read discriminating, oppressing, infantizing, and dismissing) based on their gender is as ingrained in society’s collective consciousness as the idea that anyone with even partial functional intellegence can tell the difference between a man and a woman. and if one can’t tell the difference, then either they are somehow defective, or the person under examination is. and no one likes to think of themselves as defective. which is why trans people are considered defective. it’s perceived that we are “confused” about our own gender, and thus, do not have even partial functional intellegence. and thus defective.

in the mainstream, gender is absolute, binary, and obvious. the ability to determine gender is absolute, binary, and obvious. and if an individual is none of these, then they are somehow defective.

*in this post, this is the first use of the word “gender” as a noun - up until here (i think), i’ve been using the term as a verb. when used as a noun, many people will use it as synonymous with “sex”. i believe this is very wrong, and causes many problems. and i believe people started to use the word “gender” instead of “sex”, because many people are very uptight about using the word “sex”. it’s unfortunate that the word “sex” means both our physical and biological state (as in reproductive ability) and the act of intercourse. that just further confuses and stigmatizes the term. in this post, since i’m talking about the way that the mainstream views sex and gender, i use the word gender as it is used to describe me by the mainstream. i admit and accept the problems inherent in this usage, but also believe that in this case, it’s somewhat more accurate.

i came across this post on feminist which links to this post on lawyers, guns, and money which links to this post on blogs for bush. it’s amazing where one can find oneself by following the bouncing links.

the post on the blogs for bush site raise the subtext to the surface for me:

Because they are always, say, campaigning over our transgendered citizens, it would seem:…

[and via kahn:] I actually don’t care about gays, transexuals, transgendered,or whatever the code word of the day is. They are a tiny minority. They can live as they please as far as I’m concerned. Note, the same applies to bigamists and animal lovers as far as I’m concerned.

so, what does this say to me? to insult gays, because calling them “gay” or “fag” doesn’t have the same impact as using the word against, you know, “normal” straight guys, one calls them “transgendered”. who, as kahn so lovingly suggests, are on par with “bigamists and animal lovers”.

well, i’m glad we straightened that out.

so namoli performed at mama java’s coffee house this past friday. i missed it as i was working that night. fortunately, namoli has this eventful thingie that everyone who visits here to my little blog can click on and demand that she come back here soon.

now marti will scold me for saying this i’m sure, but i had to hack the original “eventful” code to make it show up here. neither the java or flash code worked, so i just took a screen print of the flash graphic and linked it to the appropriate url. stupid wordpress code. and i thought i hated blogger…

it’s midnight, and it’s 102° outside. so to all the people i laugh at during the winter, when it’s sub zero where you are, and a balmy 75° here in phoenix, now’s your chance. well, either now, or sometime over the next three months.

and yet, in the immortal words of my friend morg, “I’m only wearing black until they make something darker…”

i’m trans. i panicked.

via shannon, a link to utilikilts, american made utility kilts for everyday wear. for men, even. and apparently, women find this hot. reload the page for the next video - they have several.

and for what it’s worth, i’m kinda partial to men in skirts. and tattoos.