TransGrad

Can Healthcare reform change marraige?

2009-08-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

It is not uncommon to hear proponents of gay marriage list access to health care as one of the many benefits of marriage. What happens if folks can access health care and not be married? Would access to health care change main stream ideas about marriage? Would marriage's pedestal shorten a bit if there is a public health care option?

I began with gay marriage because the use of the health care argument in favor of it indicates that health care, in part, is one of the things that makes marriage desirable. If health care becomes easier to access for non-married folks then perhaps there will be one less reason to get married. Perhaps access to health care could help us move towards untangling public benefits from heterosexual marriage. Perhaps I am too optimistic :) but if we get health care reform then we can change other things like inheritance rights.

How do we define intimacy?

2009-08-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

I recently re-read "Sex in Public" by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner. I also recently saw Stranger than Fiction and Julie and Julia. Revisiting Berlant and Warner's questions and arguments about intimacy and watching these films made me wonder if Julie and Julia, and Harold Crick and Karen Eiffle interactions (this is not quite the word I need) constitute intimate relationships. What are relationships? How do we define them? What is intimacy?

In Stranger than Fiction Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, is a boring IRS worker who follows the same routine everyday, down to the number of steps (which he counts) that it takes to get to the bus each morning. One morning while brushing his teeth (and counting the brush strokes), Harold hears a woman with a British accent narrating his actions. Harold's ability to hear the narrator means that he is no longer just the protagonist but also an audience member or perhaps he becomes a sort of reader of the book in which he is the main character. I haven't quite got this worked out yet.

Harold solicits help from Professor Jules Hilbert a professor of literature, played by Dustin Hoffman. Hilbert tells Harold that there are two kinds of stories--tragedies and comedies--and that they need to figure out which one he is in. If Harold is in a tragedy then he will die. The Professor eventually figures out that Harold's narrator is Karen Effile, played by Emma Thompson. Harold learns that Eiffle always kills her main character at the end of her books. He finds Eiffle and asks her not to kill him.

Throughout the film Eiffle plays out/visualizes varying deaths for Harold. The meeting between author and character leads to a change in Eiffle's novel. Instead of killing him she puts him in a body cast.

I think that the interplay or interactions between Harold and Eiffle constitute raises interesting questions about intimacy. As author Eiffle knows everything that that her protagonist does. If intimacy is a certain kind of sharing or knowing then perhaps Eiffle has an intimate relationship with Harold. But this relationship is one sided because Harold does not know about Eiffle. When Harold begins to hear Eiffle's voice the relationship changes. The confrontation between author and protaganist changes both their lives.

Obviously I am struggling to find a way to talk about their relationship. I'm going to stop for today. Maybe tomorrow I will figure it out.

New TSA regulations could be trouble for transgender folks

2009-08-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

Beginning tomorrow, August 16th, airline passengers will be required to report their birth date and gender when purchasing an airline tickets. The Detroit News reports that

Because the government will have access to additional pieces of identifying information, the TSA says it will be better able to distinguish between, for example, a 25-year-old John A. Doe who is OK to fly and a 37-year-old John Z. Doe who is not.
In addition to the data required of passengers, fliers who have had difficulty with watch list confusion can include a "redress" number. Those are issued to cleared passengers who have been stopped or delayed before because of similar names or other confusion.
"By enhancing and streamlining the watch list matching process, the Secure Flight program makes travel safer and easier for millions of Americans," Gale Rossides, the TSA's acting administrator, said in a statement.
The Secure Flight program was born out of a Department of Homeland Security directive issued in 2006 that required the TSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to start working together to implement a system to make sure airline passengers have been cleared.

While the intent is great, I worry what it means for transgender folks. What happens if you are a trans guy with a government ID that says female? Will you be harrassed? Will you be able to board the flight? Why do they need to know one's gender anyways? Date of birth, okay that makes some sense, as the above quote makes clear but gender, really?

During NPR aired some folks' comments about the ne regulations. Some folks commented that gender is a given, that it does not need to be asked. For some of us it is not a given. What will happen when we try to fly?

Frances Kissling and aborting the poor

2009-08-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

In a recent Salon.com article Frances Kissling argues that it is better morally for a poor ignorant woman to have an abortion then to have a baby (I am paraphrasing, of course). She does not tell her readers what a poor smart woman or rich ignorant woman should do with an unintended pregnancy, perhaps for Kissling these kinds of women do not exist.

Kissling's argument is a response to Congresswoman Rosa Delauro's statement that the U.S. should

foster an environment that encourages pregnancies to be carried to term.

This statement is part of a promotion for the Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act. I must admit that I have not yet read this act. Delauro's statement and the Acts title, for me, suggests that this act is problematic on several levels.

For Kissling

In its extreme application DeLauro's ideal would applaud Pope John Paul II's plea to Muslim women in Bosnia and Herzegovina who had been raped by Christians during the war. In a 1993 letter he called on the community to draw close to these raped and degraded women and "help them transform an act of violence into an act of love and welcome" by having their rapists' babies.

Whoa!

Kissling starts off with a valid question: Should we encourage women to have babies? For me this question might lead to a discussion of heteronormativity, government sanctioned gender roles, or how the desire for parenthood is constructed. But Kissling isn't interested in thinking critically.
Instead she argues that sometimes it is morally better to end a pregnancy. The people whom she thinks should abort are poor ignorant 22 year olds who are caviler about the consequences of sex, are confused about life and have low self esteem.

And being poor and ignorant and living in a country that doesn't care that you are both doesn't eliminate personal responsibility or moral agency. Somewhere along the line it would be helpful if feminists acknowledged that far too many women (and men) are irresponsible when it comes to sex and pregnancy. If we want to say that women can be trusted to make good decisions about reproduction, then we need to demand of each other that we make good decisions about not becoming pregnant.

I am pro-abortion and pro-choice; I do not believe that having or not having a child is a moral decision. And though Kissling acknowledges that rich people can be bad parents and that poor people can be good parents her piece slides down a slippery eugenicist slope and lands squarely on the mind set of "if you can't feed them; don't breed them."

The tennis player without a racket

2009-07-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the man with no dog transitioned into the tennis player without a racket. When I arrived at the park he was sitting on a bench just outside the dog park gate. He wore a basketball jersey shirt over a white Hanes t-shirt and running shorts. He had a towel, a cassette walkman and two tennis balls.

Forty-five minutes later Niki, one of the dog owners, decided to go talk to him. When she walked over a huge grin broke out on his face. This seemed to be the moment he was waiting for. As I left the park I heard him tell Niki that he had been "playing tennis with a 16 year old and a 20 year old" and "beat them both."

Dexter Part One

2009-07-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Showtime's series Dexter is the story of a serial killer who only kills bad guys. Dexter claims to not to feel. He associates the absence of feeling with being empty inside. He tells us that some people fake some interactions but he fakes all of them. I wonder if we can use Dexter to think about what it means to have or not have feelings, about what feelings are and appropriate feelings.

I was fascinated with the concept of non feeling at the beginning of the first series (I am still fascinated). As the series continues I find myself arguing with Dexter about his lack of feelings-- If you don't feel then why do you save Deb? If you don't feel then why are you so protective of children? Do you feel when you kill? If not then why do it? Through questions like these I realized that I am marking feeling as the motivating factor for life choices, loyalties, extracurricular activities, etc. I find the assumptions that I seem to be making problematic and yet I still want my questions answered. Additionally does Dexter not feel because those things we might mark as feelings can not be found in the available feelings language? Am I trying to push Dexter into a mold that I understand because I want to find new languages for feelings?

I have to say that I was very very disappointed when he started having sex with Rita. The sex was going to happen eventually, they are dating after all but I don't like that he likes it. His enjoyment of sex seems to seal (or something else) his heteronormativity. Before the sex his narration of faking heteronormative interactions sounds strikingly like the narrative of a closeted gay. Afterwards something (that I can't quite put my finger on) is different. The killings that occur in the finales of season one and three are not just the death of humans but also queer tensions between Dexter and his soon to be dead friend. Season two's finale death of Lila could be read as keeping Dexter in heteronormativity by returning him to Rita and the kids.

I have started reading the books. I want to know if anything useful has been left out of the show that might help me understand these questions. I also need to find someone who has cable in September, when season 4 begins.

The man with no dog

2009-07-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

The man with no dog arrives at the dog park around 7am. He drives 20 miles from Rita Ranch to stand around with dog owners. He does not pet the dogs; he is too busy trying to talk to the humans.

His father abandoned him when he was 9. Forty years later the man with no dog found his father. They will meet in Detroit in 28 days. His enthusiasm for this meeting is only dampered by the thought that he will hear a lot of "brother and sister talk" while he is in Detroit. He wonders why "they can't talk normal."

The man with no dog knows if you are Jewish by the size of your nose. He does not keep this magnificent skill to himself. This is a skill that must be shared. He asked Buster's mom if she is Jewish. When she replied with a yes, he said he could tell by her nose.

At noon when the last of the dogs have been taken home to cool off indoors, the man with no dog drives 20 miles back to Rita Ranch.

I am in love with my dog

2009-07-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

I never though that I would be a dog person. In fact, I had been cultivating an anti-dog persona for a number of years. I did not dislike all dogs, just all dogs with bad manners. My sister is shocked that I would allow a dog into my home. Many of my family members own big slobbery dogs that want to jump on people and lick their face off. Ew. Getting knocked over and licked by a 90lb dog is not my cup of tea.

I had fairly neutral feelings about well behaved dogs but kept this neutrality to myself so that owners of bad mannered dogs would not push their dogs in my face. Yes, people actually do this.

I adopted Foucault in late May. He has turned me into a dog person. I worry about him if I leave him at home alone for more than a few hours. I miss him if we are apart for more than four hours. I get out of bed at 5:30am to take him to the dog park or for a long walk. I've trained him to sit, wait, find, shake, and roll over. I read books about training dogs. And now, I am writing a blog post about Foucault. He has changed so many things in a very short amount of time.

I am so impressed that he is always joyful about life. Every morning he is happy to wake up. Imagine being happy to get out of bed everyday! Running around outside is wonderful; so many smells to smell and lizards to chase. Running around inside is wonderful; there are humans and cats to love on and toys to play with. My mind boggles at his happiness.

He is always excited to see me. I thought I could resist his enthusiasm. False. His excited greetings are contagious. When he meets me at the door my grumpiness fades away.

I still dislike bad mannered dogs.