The MANgina Monologues- A one “trans” show on her political, and funny life experience as a translady. ”Use your real voice!” “Hey, Honey can I have some toilet paper?” LOL
Pride person of the week: Riki Wilchins. I love me some Riki Wilchins. I find it fascinating that she gave up her priveleged hetero straight guy role in society to be an androgynous lesbian transexual woman. But then again, I also read Gender books for funsies and analyze disney movies so I realize things that fascinate me aren’t the same for others. Riki is a gender theorist/preformer, and the founder of GPAC a transgender rights group that works with Human Rights Campaign. I read an article of hers in my gender studies class that really connected and stayed with me about how gender effects everyone from the anorexic 17 year old destroying her health to be the ideal woman to the gay guy that is told to butch it up to earn the same rights as heterosexuals. So I read some more of her books, and they are just amazing. They talk about how society shapes gender and policing individuals identity and how she came to know her identity- First she was a gay man, not because she liked men but because she expressed herself stereotypically queer. Then she was a trans woman, then she met her partner- a genderqueer chick that doesn’t really fit in with man or woman, and was a lesbian. This seems like a long full circle process to me. To this day, Riki gets crap from lesbians whose rights she fights for (and who she is married to!) One woman told her She ‘doesn’t like men and she doesn’t hang around women who used to be them. Cough CUNT cough. What I also really like about her books and theories is the depth and the idea that for the gender movement to progress we have to stop pushing off of people and embrace them- move away from identity politics. Men and Women come in all different races, sizes, sexualities and we have to recognize that, but so much is based off of “We’re not like that!” For early feminism it was “We aren’t men haters, we want different but equal!” For gay rights it was “We’re just like you! We don’t want to be different gender roles!” But when you spend all of your energy pushing back, you leave nothing there to construct. You leave gender to transgender rights and make gender be an opression that appears to always have been there and is right. Call me crazy, but when women are raped every six minutes, people are killing themselves, and being an asshole is what it means to be a man, things aren’t fucking right. Anyway, If you are into gender (and academic post-modern queer theory) you have to read them. They will blow your mind.
