Life, Law, Gender

Blogging Difficulty

You might have thought I would have gotten to this point sooner considering everything, but I'm often a bit slow on the uptake.

The list of blogs that I read and enjoy has gotten so long that I no longer have time to read everyone of them every day.  This actually bugs me because I will often miss a great post for several days (or sometimes even altogether).  Now, I get that reading blogs isn't at the same level of import that reading, say, Evidence or Jursidiction is, but let's face it, I enjoy blogs a whole bunch more!

So, I've seen several bloggers talk about (damn, now I can't even remember the name of the thing ...) aggregators, or something like that.  Can someone point me in a direction to one of those and provide some kind of tutorial for me on how they work?  How do they work?  I tend to comment on postings a lot; will an aggregator inhibit my ability to do that?

New Transgender movie

A new movie about a trans woman was just screened in New York.  It looks promising.  I hope they find a distributor for it; I'd like to see it. MSNBC has the full story.

The movie, "Transamerica," screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, which ends Sunday, and earned [actress Felicity] Huffman a rave review from the New York Times for her portrayal of a woman, Bree, who was born in a man’s body and who goes on a cross-country journey after learning she fathered a son.

Bree is desperate for her therapist to give her a final OK so she can complete sex-change surgery and desperate to escape the idea that she fathered a son.

Other than desperation, Bree seems to have nothing in common with Lynette Scavo, Huffman’s housekeeping mother on "Desperate Housewives." But Huffman said the two characters both face feelings of loneliness and alienation.

"Stay-at-home moms are marginalized, so are transgender people," said Huffman, who has two daughters with her husband, the award-winning actor William H. Macy.

"The difficulties of motherhood are hidden or are not spoken about in depth.

The difficulties of being transgender, no one knows about," she said.

I love that this woman seems to have feeling for this role and that the movie is, apparently, done with compassion and sensitivity.  But, I have to wonder why the director chose a natal woman to play the lead role. When will they have to courage to let us play our own roles? I don't know many transsexual actresses, but I'm sure they'd be coming out of the woodwork if roles started opening up to them (hey, I'm a pretty good actress myself -- hint, hint).  Take Calpernia Addams, for instance.  I think she would have been a perfect choice for the role!

Even Ms. Huffman questioned the decision after she was asked to do the role, wondering why a man hadn't been selected to play the role.  That would have, in my opinion at least, been a step in the right direction.  To wit, look at the movie Boys Don't Cry where they got a woman (Hilary Swank) to play the lead as a female-to-male transsexual.

But [director] Tucker was persistent, telling Huffman she possessed the emotional heft and comic flair to make Bree believable.

Became 'more feminine'

Huffman said she was stumped at first at how to play the part, whether to become a man first, then the man living in a woman’s body, or whether she should just play a woman.

She started reading about transgender women, then met with them and finally took lessons from coaches who train transgendered individuals to become women.

"Oddly enough it became a process of becoming more feminine," Huffman said.

"Once I found the speaking voice, then Bree came to life," she added.

New York Times critic Stephen Holden said Huffman’s Bree is "a sensitive, convincing portrait of someone in the throes of change who has yet to settle comfortably into a new self."

Don't get me wrong.  I'm thrilled at having a sensitive protrayal of trans people out there (even if the movie hasn't found a US distributor yet).  When Hilary Swank gave her acceptance speech for her Best Actress award for Boys Don't Cry and she acknowledged publicly the trials and strife of being transgendered, I wept.

But, I do wish more people could see our real faces.

Closing out Nat'l Poetry Month

Tomorrow is the end of April (how, in god's name, can that be?). With it, National Poetry Month ends.  My poetry posts this month were:

Desiderata by Max Erhmann
Summer Sun by Robert Louis Stevenson
Becoming Tao Te Ching translation by Peter Merel
Stray Dog by Anna F. (my mom)

And, my final offering comes from a list that I belong to:

MISCEGENATION LAW

Never let the Church and State

Get close enough to meet and mate;

For the safety of our nation

Prohibit this miscegenation;

Keep Church far from the bed of State;

Separate their greed and hate;

Abstinence is what they need

Or the monsters they will breed

Will mongrelize both law and creed.

Never let Church marry State-

Do not even let them date.

                  Edwin Kagin, a Bright

Lavender Graduation

Tonight I attended a graduation ceremony for a few dozen gay graduates.  The president of the U didn't come, but a couple of vice-presidents, including the Provost and the Dean of Students did come and speak. 

It was a powerful ceremony; a true celebration of these young people's lives.  I was thrilled to just be in the room and witness it.  We filled the room to capacity.  I don't have a good count of how many people came out to support these graduates, but there was over 200, easily. I was so happy to see many people that I know and have worked with this past year. 

Because this only happens once a year in late April or early May I will either have to skip it, attend next May's ceremony or come back the following year, since I will graduate in December of next year.  I am thinking I will participate in next year's ceremony.

In addition to honoring the graduates (a short bio was given on each graduate as she/he came to the receiving line) we also honored several activists for their accomplishments over their time at Michigan. As I reported earlier, I am in awe of these young people and their commitment to social justice.  With people like this in the world, we can't help but eventually achieve full equality.

Congratulations queer graduates!!!

Seriously?

OK, it seems we have forever lost the code to the quiz about determinants of sex.  I will try and recreate one (possibly that has a wider range of choices to satisfy my readers who were not happy with the selection as initially offered).  But, in the meantime, I offer this non-blogpoll quiz:

I just did something which, in the past 13 months that I've been up here I have only done twice before. It is something that gives me intense pleasure when I do it, but apparently it's normal for the need for it to diminish as you age.  What did I just do?

Only 5 years left

I should probably be working on my paper, but I got less than 4 hours sleep last night and my mind is a fog.  So, I'm going to clean house today and relax, and blog and try not to take a nap.  Then, I'm going to bed early and get up in the morning and get crackin'!

In my perusals of blogs, I came across this stupid little quiz over at Coy's place.  Part of me thinks:  You need to make some lifestyle changes, Denise.  Part of me thinks: Damn, you mean to tell me I still have another 5 years left?! (Updated -- I decided I better see what it said if I answered honestly):

You Will Die at Age 55

55 Not bad, considering your super wild lifestyle Want to live longer? Try losing a few bad habits.

What Age Will You Die?

The semester that was

BoSox, a very dear friend, called me the other day to say, essentially, the same thing that she said in a comment to this post: "I am proud of you, Denise. This has been a rough term".  That was so sweet of her. 

You know, it has been a rough term.  Ever since "spring" break when I had to travel back to Florida and file divorce papers I have not been able to get my head back into law school.  And, then of course, I had to go back again at the end of that month to actually finalize the divorce.

Then, there have been other "issues", only a few of which I've blogged about (no one wants to read a blog that does nothing but complain do they? -- I certainly don't).  And, of course, there were my activities of choice.

I rationalized all kinds of ways. But, in essence, I always figured there was time to do what needed to be done to get caught up.  But, that time is now gone as far as my Property class is concerned.  I am not caught up.  I know what a fee simple is and even the defeasible estates. I even have a clue about fee tails. But future interests?  Ha!  Reversion and possibility of reverters and remainders, oh my!

I guess the two comforts I have is that I fully expect to pass EO and CRT with no problems, plus I know that barring a complete and utter meltdown I won't fail (hell, even with a complete and utter meltdown I probably won't fail) either Property or Transnational Law (which exam is next Tuesday, followed by the EO exam on Wednesday).

[UPDATE]  Is there a rational reason for my still being awake at 2 frickin' o'clock in the morning when I have to get up for my first exam in 4 1/2 hours? Uh, that would be no.  I just cannot sleep. 

[UPDATE 2]

OK, first exam down. Two-parter: 1st part - 12 multiple choice questions; 45 minutes. I knew none of them (NONE!) for sure. I was able to narrow it down to 2 in 3 or 4 questions and the rest were damn near random guessing. Second part: 2 essay questions; 2 hours. I kicked ass on those, I think. I felt really good about my analysis on both questions (well, the second one was painfully simple, it was nearly exactly the fact pattern of one of the cases we had read!).

Problem: Rumor Central has it that he only looks at the essays if he needs to adjust to the curve, otherwise the multiple choice determines our grade. There's a rule against perpetuities? What is a perpetuity?

Ann Coulter "attacks"

I am not so naive as to think that transsexuals have achieved anything like social status or recognition.  But, criminey, I had no idea how low we really were on the scale.  Apparently, a favorite attack on Ann Coulter is that she's a male-to-female transsexual.

Like I said on the CoulterPoint blog, where I first saw this, I hope not.  What a shame to have our good name so smeared.  And, even if it were true, I hate how they completely diminish the transsexual experience by then saying "Ann Coulter is a man" or as someone in comments at DailyKos says:

I will always refer to her as "Ann-drew" or "Ann the Man," until someone convinces me that he/she is indeed a female who just happens to look like a skinny guy with a big Adam's Apple.

Pitiful. I have no trouble with attacking AC; heaven knows she attacks so many herself.  But, why must we resort to diminishing others to do it?  She supplies plenty of material on her own!

Defining Woman

For the first time (to my knowledge -- and I have done some, albeit limited, research) federal law is about to define "woman":

According to the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2005 (Senate Bill 51 and House Bill 356, if you're curious), it's the ova and the uterus and nothing else. The Act, which has been criticized for its possible effects on abortion law, has been referred to committee in both the House and the Senate. It contains this excellent definition:

WOMAN- The term `woman' means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.

This definition of 'woman' was considered appropriate by both House and Senate.

I first saw this at Class Maledictorian, but then traced it back to Feministe and ultimately to Big Brass Blog. In particular, I liked this comment, on Feministe's blog:

As I like to say, in this culture (hell, pretty much any culture), “women” are uteruses first and people second.

This reminds me of my Queer Theory class last semester, reading Judith Butler and the like, and the difficulty we had in defining “female” at all; discussing the idea that sex may be as constructed as gender. Is a female a person with XX chromosomes? Then what about women like Jamie Lee Curtis, who has XXY chromosomes? Defining it by reproduction doesn’t work either, as you pointed out (two of my aunts were unable to concieve and adopted children; by the legislation’s definition, they are mothers, but not women). If genitalia are to be the definition, then we’re stuck with the fact of thousands of perfectly healthy intersexed babies born every year with “atypical” genitalia, as well as transexual people. Secondary characteristics don’t always hold true either; think of Frida Kahlo’s moustache (and what about females who get mastectomies and hysterectomies? are they no longer women?)
We decided that in this society we’re taught the circular reasoning that “Women” are simply “not men,” and “men” are “not women.”

So, Mom, in case you're curious, the federal government no longer thinks you're a woman. 

How do you spell procrastination?

Some of the law school blogs I've read today have at least one post that talks about how they should be studying instead of doing other stuff (like blogging!) (exceptions, of course, are those poor people on quarters who are not now preparing for exams).  I am no exception.  I've spent the better part of this day "working" on a paper that is due on Friday.  I've never written a law paper before (Legal Practice notwithstanding) and I've little idea how to do it.  I find that I get started and then I get stuck and my mind instantly wanders.

In my last wandering I came across this from Samples.  She says she thinks I posted this before, but I did not.  My post was about writing, here.

So, appropriate for a gender discussing blog:

Your Brain is 80.00% Female, 20.00% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

New Blog Layout

Well, what do you think of the new design?  I've already had one long-time and trusted reader tell me that because it was pink it looked too "soft" and not to be taken as seriously.  I appreciate any and all comments!

Personally, I like it.  Pink is one of my favorite colors and the header is freakin' awesome, I think.  There is only one problem -- and it has nothing to do with the design, but rather with the blog polling software.  For some reason, when I post a poll (using BlogPoll) it changes the background color.  It did this before (you may have noticed; I did) but it wasn't quite as problematic with black text.  However, now it becomes practically unreadable.  The temporary solution is to put the actual polls below the fold (but, even then, comments become difficult to read).  My longer term solution is to find different poll software (does anyone know of any?).

Anna and Flirt from BlogTogs created this for me, and did it for an extremely modest donation to charity!

[Update]  Hey, I just realized that my blog's birthday was the day before yesterday!  How appropriate that it should have it's third incarnation today. My first post, ever.

Stray Dog

Her ears are alert as I coax,

Any pedigree lost in ribs and matted fur.

She slinks from sight

As a wisp of cream in black coffee if I come too near

Daily I leave food and water.

She is wary as she licks the bowls clean.

Trust is a distant planet,

Perhaps unreachable, far beyond the galaxies of need

Still, like lovers, we are eager to ease hunger, claim devotion.

We move apart, uncompromising, remeasuring distance

Our anxiety stretched like a leash between us.

-Anna F. (my mom - Ed.)

Determinants of sex

Here's a poll for you.  Most of you long-time readers have now had some exposure to transsexualism (at least I've tried to give you some!).  In the trans community (and in the legal community and in the queer community) there is quite a debate raging about what defines sex.  I'd like your opinion, specifically as it relates to "the surgery" also known as "sex-change surgery" or "sexual reassignment surgery" or "genital reconstruction surgery", etc.  Essentially, I'm speaking about surgery which transforms your genitals from being an outie to being an innie or vice versa.

A Michigan Alum

Please check out this article about Michael Silverman, a University of Michigan Law School alumnus.

Two years ago he was at the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest working on health-care discrimination, though the practice was limited to cases involving discrimination based on race, ethnicity and disability. He regularly received calls from transgendered people who needed legal help.

“We had a lot,” he said. “We had a substantial number.”

The complaints ranged from a provider refusing to address a client with the proper pronoun, to refusing treatment, to “freak show-type complaints” where a provider would treat a client like a medical oddity and summon peers to see him or her.

Transgendered people have all the usual medical needs and they may have additional issues related to transitioning from one gender to another. Discrimination can lead them to abandon of the health-care system.

“Transgendered people have certain unique medical needs,” Silverman said. “When they check out, they put themselves in danger.”

While Silverman and his employer were sympathetic, their mandate prevented them from helping the transgendered callers and he was frustrated by his “inability to do anything about it.” After conversations with friends and colleagues, he decided to launch TLDEF.

People like this make me feel all warm and fuzzy.  This is very close to what I had in mind when I decided to come to law school.  Damn, this is cool.  In some ways this is also being done by transgendered attorney Dean Spade at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York.

Last day of classes

The third semester of instruction comes to a close today.  We had our final 1st year class - Property - this morning.  It was weird knowing that these same 90+ people will no longer have any classes where we're all together.  If I had to do it all over again, I would still be a Summer Starter.  It was so cool getting to know lots of people right off the bat. 

I have two more classes to go.  I have to give the "Final Presentation" to our CRT class on the case I've been working on and I have my final Enterprise Organization class this afternoon (we had our final Transnational Law class last week). 

One of my classmates in EO just told me that he thinks it's unfair that people in that class have to compete with me on the exam.  He observed that even when I've not done the reading I am able to engage in the class and give the answers she's looking for based simply on my business background.  I think he may have a point.  Another classmate told me that she was electing to take the class on a pass/fail basis just because I was in the class. But, how would we make it more fair?  I took this class because it was a prerequisite for other classes I want to take.  I knew it would be fairly easy for me (and it has been) but I didn't give a lot of thought to the effect that would have on my classmates in the grade curve.  Perhaps they should have given me the opportunity to test out of this class?  But, still, despite my knowing the underlying business concepts and the rules that drive EO (at this very basic level) I did learn things in this class and I would not have wanted to miss it.  On the other hand, if I elected say Patent Law I would be at a disadvantage to the scientists in the class.  Maybe it's just the luck of the draw?

Next week -- exams.