Michael Adams, CEO of SAGE, knows that the LGBT movement has to change tack to address the new challenges offered by trans & queer people to established identity blocks. To discuss this, he got together Mara Keisling of NCTE, Carmen Vasquez of NYS Department of Health and Kate Kendall of the National Center for Lesbian … Continue reading Beyond Identity Politics
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 10:28:13 -0500 Reply-To: Queer Studies List <QSTUDY-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU> Sender: Queer Studies List <QSTUDY-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU> From: Callan Williams <TheCallan@AOL.COM> Subject: The Myth Of Identity Politics It seems to me that the great myth at the core of identity politics is that people in any defined group have more in common with each other … Continue reading The Myth Of Identity Politics
TG & Identity Politics Copyright © Callan Williams, 1996 Are identity politics the salvation of TG people, or the downfall of them? It is a question worth discussing. I got a packet from Dallas Denny, with Chrysalis 10 and AEGIS News 6 & 7. The theme of this Chrysalis is Transgender Gothic, with an image … Continue reading TG & Identity Politics
The core of identity politics is helping other people make the right choices by raising their consciousness about where they diverge from proper thought. The core of queer is helping other people make bold unique and individual choices by encouraging them to trust their mind and heart. The goal of identity politics is to make … Continue reading Identity Politics, Queer
Can you understand, categorize and define me by looking at people with whom I share one attribute? People identified as male at birth who choose to wear women’s clothing; aren’t they all alike? Know one and you know them all? It’s amazing how many who would hate to be pigeonholed because they share an attribute … Continue reading Identity Fail
I love politics. Politics is the art of the possible, the wrangling we do to find the best possible solution, the way we compromise to find workable answers that keep our shared interests and needs on track. I love belief. We need a context for understanding the world in a bigger way, beyond the daily … Continue reading Belief Politics
So when Kate says, The tall red-haired actress drops to her knees downstage center. She looks up at the audience, her face framed in an amber spotlight. “Tell me what it’s like to know you’re a woman,” she says, her voice barely raised above a whisper. “Tell me what it’s like to know you’re a … Continue reading Group Identity
“It’s okay. I’ll just sit with the other trannies.” My hosts usually looked aghast when I said that, knowing that there were no other obvious transpeople in the audience. There was no way I was just going to blend in, just going to be one of the gang. I understand the pull of finding community, … Continue reading Singular
As to how the “Safe Space” open mic evening went, I wasn’t asked if I wanted to present when I walked in; no open sign-up sheet. Just before the presentations started I asked for their e-mail address to the “Ornery” piece. About a hour and a half later, the MC looks at the … Continue reading Discomfort Zones
There was one requirement for being an out transperson when I first emerged in the 1980s. This was still a time when normative was seen as normal and those who violated expectations were easily written down as dangerous perverts, a time when gay rights were just being to be asserted as we began to face … Continue reading Ornery
Who do we need to ask for the permission to reveal what we have been taught to hide? Hiding the parts of us that don’t fit neatly into the expectations and assumptions of others is hiding we need to do “for our own good,” or at least that’s what we are told from a very early … Continue reading Permission For Authenticity
I’m okay until I open my mouth. It’s then that the queer comes out. No matter how much I try to look cute and little and whatever, my big voice spills out of my mouth and then I tend to queer up the joint. Is that a bad thing? Well, when you are with your … Continue reading Queer Up The Joint
“I think that Transgender Day Of Remembrance (TDOR) is simply a vigil,” said the pastor who called the organizational meeting, “and not a time for speeches or anything like that.” “Let me ask you a question,” I said. “What are we trying to remember? Just a list of people we never met? “Clearly, these lost … Continue reading Try To Remember
I have been thrashing about with the concept of “learned helplessness,” the notion that with enough repetition of negative results we learn to avoid even trying to break out of the box that we find ourselves in. How do you break your own deep conditioned responses? Clearly, the best way is to try something new … Continue reading Easy To Slag
Did I ever really have a personal voice? I know that I have a service voice, the voice of the concierge. I can take care of others, helping them develop their own voice. I know that I had a written voice, constructed texts that have attempted to share my learnings, my experience, my feelings. But … Continue reading Lost Voice
Imagine a meeting room at the library filled with 100 people from the community, ready to hear about the homosexuals who live among us. A panel, lead by a board member of a reproductive rights organization, includes a medical doctor, a trained therapist, and the mother of a homosexual. There are two homosexuals on the … Continue reading They Are Among Us
“They wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped them on the face at high noon in Times Square!” We live in a world where what we doubt most is other people’s vision of the truth. They keep saying things that we, for some reason, see as wildly wrong, biased, inaccurate or stupid. Maybe what they … Continue reading Incredible
If the ultimate battle cry of transgender activists is “People are who they claim to be and that’s that!” then they are sure to lose. “People are simply who they are identified as at birth” is a massive falsehood, enforcing a projected binary that is easily demonstrable as an oversimplified pile of tripe, but at … Continue reading Triumph Of The Binary
Scrutiny is the daily experience of women. The most obvious scrutiny is the ubiquitous male gaze, always assessing women for sexual desirability and availability. Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. — Joseph Conrad This male gaze also requires men to watch over his women in … Continue reading Welcome To Woman
There is no backwards button in life. So unkind, no rewind. When Virginia Prince tried to read me out as a crossdresser way back in 1991, she told me that I must have purged, gone through the ritual of tossing all my wardrobe and telling myself that I would never dress up again. That was … Continue reading T3: Writing New Stories
Callan 