2nd Anniversary of having my Boy-chest

Actually it was Jan 9, 2010. But better late then never :) In an attempt to document changes here's a pic first from tonight. Next here's a pic from Sept 09.

ANTM co-ops Hapa identity to be racist

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/2009/10/30/2009-10-30_tyra_banks_puts_contestants_on_americas_next_top_model_in_blackface.html

Copy and paste the link to your browser.
Urgh!

The Best 25 Buffy Episodes with Their Seasons

Because I've always wanted to do this:
25. Choices - Season 3
24. Fear Itself - Season 4
23. Intervention - Season 5
22. Storyteller - Season 7
21. Potential - Season 7
20. This Year's Girl - Season 4
19. Who Are You? - Season 4
18. Grave - Season 6
17. Innocence - Season 2
16. Becoming Part 2 - Season 2
15. Welcome to the Hellmouth - Season 1
14. Older and Far Away - Season 6
13. New Moon Rising - Season 4
12. Halloween - Season 2
11. Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - Season 2
10. Amends - Season 3
9. Restless - Season 4
8. The Wish - Season 3
7. Doppelgangland - Season 3
6. Family - Season 5
5. The Body - Season 5
4. Hush - Season 4
3. Once More With Feeling - Season 6
2. The Gift - Season 5
1. Tabula Rasa - Season 6

Honestly those are my favorites. But if I was to go on cinematic quality and groundbreaking film, I'd rearrange the top 10 to be:
10. Intervention - Season 5
9. Doppelgangland - Season 3
8. Becoming Part 2 - Season 2
7. Storyteller - Season 7
6. The Wish - Season 3
5. The Gift - Season 5
4. Restless - Season 4
3. The Body - Season 5
2. Once More with Feeling - Season 6
1. Hush - Season 4

And in my opinion the best seasons in regards to overall theme, character development and plot arch were (from best to worst):
-Season Three
-Season Five
-Season Six
-Season Two
-Season One
-Season Seven (actually kind of in a tie with season four for worst season)
-Season Four (despite having some of the best standalone episodes: this was the straightest season of Buffy despite Tara's appearance)

Seasons three, six and five were also the queerest seasons in terms of characters (esp. Buffy's love interest), freedom to discuss queerness and themes.

More Books!

I have been on a reading tear since graduating...and I feel like this blog is turning into an online book review. So here's what I've read since last reporting in:

American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang: A very well done graphic novel weaving three different storylines circulating around a second generation Chinese boy named Jin and his frustration and shame in claiming his racial and ethnic identity.

Black Skins, White Masks, Franz Fanon: I've been meaning to read this classic work of Literary Criticism, Postcolonial/Cultural/Psychological Theory since my last year at Cal. It was incredible and will be on my general exam booklist. Some of it is pretty outdated, but a lot of it isn't.

Parrotfish, Ellen Wittlinger: The one and only YA book with a Transman as the main character. You can tell the author has read Kate Bornstein put has no personal experience with being trans. You can also tell she's been out of high school for a long time...the characters don't really act like teenagers and the slow developing plot gets resolved extremely quickly and rather unrealistically. Could someone else please write a YA transman novel of the same quality as Julie Ann Peter's Luna?


My Dillon manuscript has reached 115 pages...and we're missing about three paragraphs so it looks like I'll be spending a good chunk of next Summer in England if I can get grants.

Also, today I was informed two hours ahead of time that my apt. was going to be shown. Since the landlord told me he wouldn't be showing the unit until early July I hurriedly cleaned up "my" place. Luckily, it was already pretty clean from my older bro crashing here for graduation...but still it reminded me of how impermanent my state is here. And I left before the agent showed up with the prospective tenant. Thinking about leaving is too depressing. Tonight T and El had a family dinner and I realized it's probably one of the last.

Ah Chuck

Which Chuck Character Are You?

More on Chuck. Created by BuddyTV

So glad it was renewed, too bad we have to wait for March...the best show on tv. Viva la nerd!

Reading Updates and Summer Plans

Since last posting I've read the following:

Genderqueer (great great book)

The Color Purple, Alice Walker (just as awesome as everyone says it is!)

Peninsula of Lies: A True Story of Mysterious Birth and Taboo Love, Edward Ball (This was horrible, it was written by a cissexual white straight male who while up to speed on trans and intersex terminology doesn't give his subject the benefit of letting her be her identity hunting for the "truth" of her sex. Kinda like what All S/he Wanted did to Brandon Teena.)

Labor of Love, Thomas Beatie (this was good also. I prefer hearing transmen talk about their own histories rather then read whatever fucked up stuff the media throws out about them.)

In regards to Summer plans, besides working on the L M Dillon Memoir, I just applied to intern for 8 weeks in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans working on rebuilding homes and recovery counseling. We'll see if it pans out...but I'm really excited about the prospect!

Looking forward to graduation, with the appropriate nostalgia of course (hey, it is me!).

Holy Week 09

When I was eight I had a dream that I would die at 16.

At 16 someone did die...my straight cover, a claim to gender/sexual "normativity." I came out as gay. But something much truer and beautiful grew out of that death.

Going undercover to survive my first and most unwanted adolescence I came out again at 19 inside UC Davis's campus ministry. I also made a vow to never surgically alter my body and accept my femaleness.

Then Berkeley called and I read God In the Balance by Carter Heyward. I packed up my Aggie clothes and moved to the East Bay, leaving behind my ambitions to be a Music Historian or Composer.

Didn't know who this "Judith Butler" person was when she sub'd for Gayle Salamon at the end of my Junior year Queer Visual Cultures Class...why no one would speak to the laid back Professor in jeans and a t-shift in class that day. Looking at MDiv programs became my obsession...along with trying to avoid my gender questions.

CJ Pascoe's masculinities class reopened everything in a completely non-threatening, intellectual way. I think if it wasn't for her class and the Vagina Monologues, I'd still be struggling with pronouns and breasts. In a similar way Trinh Minh-ha's Identity Across Difference. Suddenly hiding my Cantonese background behind my Scottish/Irish/Welsh heritage seemed ludicruous. I am everything and nothing at once. It always seems that way. Hybrid that I am.

Tonight feet are washed, vigils begin for those who follow Christian traditions. I no longer count myself as a Christian, but there is still something very powerful to me about aspects of Holy Week. I think about Christ in the garden, very human pleading for his life, terrified about the known unknown and I can't help but find myself in the Passion Story. Asleep from exhaustion perhaps. Or sweating drops of blood from crying so many tears. It was one very long night of pain for him.

Gethsemane is very similar to the Jacob story from the Hebrew Bible. A man alone in the middle of the night, feeling very much at the end of his rope fighting for his life with a superior (masculine) divine figure. Neither leave the encounter completely intact. Perhaps with more resolve to do what they must. To face the responsibilities that they have been dreading. Jacob limps away with a wounded left hip. Jesus is exhausted from what is characterized as a futile prayer. Jacob must face his angry brother Esau. Jesus...well a lot of angry people out for blood.

Three years ago I was struggling with choosing between HDS and PSR. (ah seminary acronyms) This year I'm in a pickle around three doctoral programs: my desire to return to California and a school with strong ethnic studies but also to work with one of the greatest Trans Theorist/Historians ever. My clone and I always fast on Good Friday (I broke this tradition the day I started T two years ago). Something interesting always comes from this practice. I'm hoping that will be the case again.

After all, there always is something life transforming at the end of the story.

Current Book List

Read since last in school:
a mercy
Decreation
Eros the Bittersweet
Talking Back
Invisible Cities
I'm Looking Through You

Currently Reading:
Economy of the Unlost
Genderqueer: voices from beyond the binary
(Dis)identifications
Orientations

To Read:
A Walk in the Woods
Dracula
The Descent of Alette
Read My Lips
This Bridge Called My Back
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Time to Roam...

On the heals of the break-up was news that I got into UCLA and Indiana University's Women and Gender Studies Doctoral Programs. Because of this I am spending a good part of the first and second weeks of March visiting Bloomington and LA. I have a six hour plane trip back from Indianapolis (due to layovers) that gets me into Boston at 11pm and then have a 7:50 am flight out of Logan the next morning to LA (luckily that one's a nonstop).

UCLA doesn't have anyone working on Trans Theory/Studies, but they have a fantastic Asian American Studies dept. Also the music history dept does a lot with gender and sexuality. I got a phone call from one of the Profs from the department and she suggested that I get the Trans Theory from USC (for those who don't know SUC is the cross-town rivals to UCLA and the bane of Cal's existence). Ah, the Trojans. I gotta say it's really tempting to spend the next 5-7 years in LA. It'd be nice to not be the only transman of color in the city. Since I know my big educational gap is in critical race theory, I know I could get that from UCLA. There are also the budget cuts to consider; the whole UC system (like everyone else) is going to be in spin cycle from the recession and the Govenator cutting off all state funds to the UCs. Haven't found out about funding yet. I axed UW because of their lack of financial support, thanks to Cali residency if I do have to pay out of pocket for a bit it's not going to be as bad as being out of state.

Indiana is the cutting edge program right now, they frame the dept on third wave feminist theory and put Trans experience at the heart of the program. Indiana also has a fabulous Religious Studies Department. But they are kinda weak in regards to Asian American Studies/Ethnic Studies. Also, I need a pretty hefty financial aid package to be a Hoosier next year. But the cost of living is fan-freaking-tastic in the Midwest. A lot will depend on what they plan on doing hiring-wise, financial aid and my impression on living in Bloomington 5+ years. It sounds like they are trying to get their grad students in and out fast, which is a plus in my book.

T asked me about my Summer plans, and a lot depends on getting a job. I found out that I can keep my barista job until the end of the year, which is great because right now finding a job with a commitment of 6 months is hard. I've made some inquiries and done some searches but most want a commitment of a year. All the temp jobs have pretty much vanished.

I'm also still kicking around the idea of working in New Orleans this Summer. It'll be tough to leave my queer family. That's going to be hard regardless. But I'm getting the itch to leave again. I have a lot less tying me to Boston and it's been no secret that I hate the weather here during the summer and when the temp drops below 30 degrees in the Winter. Sidewalk skating rinks suck. That said, Cambridge/Somerville has been more of my home then any other place for the last eight years if home is measured by years spent in a place. Also in regards to friendships, I have found a family and level of intimacy with my friends that I only had with Nina and Jen at Berkeley.

If I do get a job here, my plan is to work through August (hopefully extend my lease through then) and do some Dillon research on the side. Sept 1 pack up a u-haul and drive to Bloomington or LA. I'd like one last roadtrip to wherever is my spot for the next five years of my life.

butch-femme

When pinocchio said,
“I want to be a real boy!”
What did he mean?
desiring soft flesh
instead of wood;
Stone.
Who was his femme?
Geopetto? The Blue Fairy?

What other way can you read this Tale of
becoming Real
legible, desired, human?

spectacle of Other embodiment:
the entertaining little wooden boy barely loose of themastersstrings
Seen only by a Lady in Blue
or a gentle older Cisman.

All those books...

I never read but wanted to. Since finishing two weeks ago I have read:
a mercy, Toni Morrison
Decreation, Anne Carson

Currently reading:
Talking back, bell hooks
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Next:
Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingslover
Economy of the Unlost, Anne Carson
Eros: The Bittersweet, Anne Carson
Orientations, Compilation
(Dis)identifications, Jose Munoz

Break Up Music

The Cripple and the Starfish, Antony and the Johnsons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbG2MfElkVc

Samson, Regina Spektor

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1283668

Goodbye Love; Thanks Phoebe

New Year Thoughts

I think it's time to reassess. I haven't written in this for a while.

Struggling with how personal to be on this...I guess I made this my transition journal so I'll try and stick to only queer and tranny things (which may of course be one and the same).

There is still residue from last year. I mean more then scars and friendships.
A paper I still need to write that is still traumatizing in it's content. Don't have to write it of course, but I do think I can do better.

For any FTM out there reading this, writing about Boys Don't Cry before top surgery when your family (if they haven't abandoned you) is falling to pieces around you is not the best idea. And trying to write about the same topic over winter break (in my blood family Christmas) the next year is not any easier. Esp if you are in a new relationship and gender stuff is complicated.

Milk was horrible. It displayed a lot of the racism and xenophobia rampant in the A list crowd of the gay and lesbian community. Diego Luna's character was composed of every terrible Latino stereotype imaginable. Penn's Milk said great lines to his white ex-lover about Luna's character like "It's ok, when I go home from work I don't have to think." and "he's taking english classes, so he's getting better." Urgh. I really hope it flops at the Acads. Brokeback Mountain was so much better.

This last topic is difficult to write about, esp. since I meant to tell my gf this last night and didn't. I'm thinking about bottom surgery. It's probably at least 3-4 years out (probably way more), because it's damn expensive and right now I'm really worried how I'm going to get through the month. But it's come to the point where either T has to go or I need to "mutilate my body" again. There's too much pain to write here, but lets just say I've felt more like a freak in the last two months then I have since I lost my virginity. Esp when having sex.

I don't know how I'm going to live the rest of my life like this. I hate public restrooms. I hate turkey basters. I feel hand tied and scared. I hate questions about "transitioning back" (as if there's only two genders to live in) when I talk about stopping T. I hate it when old "friends" ask me what sexual orientation my girlfriend is. To them I'm not a "real man" unless I'm "with a woman" who must be straight. This hurts because not only does it delegitimate queer transguys, and cite horribly misogynist gender histories of women "making" men, but by implication they are saying that queer women aren't "real women."
Like Susan Stryker said in "My Words to Victor Frankenstein" gender is violent. And the continual process of being gendered by one's partners and choices to make visible (or invisible) one's gender identity is so god damn violent.

I don't know if I should just be single my whole life. I think her life would be easier without me. I feel that who I am is just doing violence to her and everyone she's loved. I'm afraid of turning into too much of a "breeder" for her taste.

Chest, one year later

First anniversary of top surgery. Swelling is gone and still have the remnants of the hematoma on the right side. Fischer was amazing, but I agree that she doesn't make you as flat as Menard in Montreal. Still, after all the panic of last fall trying to get everything in line I had a (dare I say it?) fun time in Baltimore.

Nostalgia

It's the midst of finals week. EDS already had it's graduation last Thursday. Since I didn't know a lot of last year's class and Amy and I were about to take off for a cross-country roadtrip last year I was anticipating the end of schoolwork.

But this year I get to be one of the one's left behind. And let me tell you it sucks. When I graduated from Berkeley I kept thinking how happy I was that I wasn't taking an extra semester. Mostly because you have to remember all the people you used to talk to in all of their old haunts.

So nostalgia hits you like a mack truck, and I know I've been grieving my friends leaving since Spring Break. It's odd how finals begin and then graduation happens so quickly. You see someone briefly and wonder if that's the last time you'll see them. And maybe you didn't get especially close to them but they were a regular face and aquaintance in your life. You got used to their smile their voice saying your name. You both laughed at a certain joke during orientation. Or maybe you pulled metal poles out of the ground with him.

Well to avoid anymore of this sob story I'm making my Summer Reading List:
1. The Amber Spyglass
2. Black Skin, White Masks
3. The Last Battle
4. The Metamorphoses
5. This Bridge Called My Back
6. The Great Deluge
7. The Gita Govinda
8. Laura Nee Michael
9. Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

Summer Movie/TV Watching List:
1. Prince Caspian
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
3. The Dark Knight
4. When Harry Met Sally
5. Stagecoach
6. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
7. The Neverending Story
8. The Muppet Show Season Two

How I hate saying goodbye.

What (Goe)s in(to Choosing) a Name?

Because I'm two weeks away from my one year anniversary as Jacob, I thought I'd post some of the other names I considered:

1. Harry. As in Harry Potter...yes I am a freak. Given my last name I think this wouldn't have worked. Plus as my twin pointed out it makes you think of "hairy" which I have become, but that's not quite what I was going for. She still gets a laugh out of thinking I might have been Harry/Hairy Lau.

2. Scott. I've always really liked the name. But I'm not a Scott.

3. Judas (Jude for short). Let's just say Jesus Christ Superstar really made an impression on me. In high school I hated how much Judas Iscariot was demonized, both in classes and in the Bible. I tend to side with the underdogs. My EDS friends voted for Jude and (surprise, surprise) were not thrilled with Judas. This was my third choice for a name.

4. Gabriel. Ok these are sounding ultra Christian, but for the record this was what my best buddy/hall mate April really wanted my name to be. She thought I could have been a Gabe. I was a bit apprehensive about being associated with an angel. This was my fourth choice for a name.

5. Gene. This was the spelling of my grandmother's version of my birth name. Ironically it's also traditionally the "more male" spelling. I seriously debated this name more then the others. I thought I could both keep and reclaim my birth name. But the history of abuse tied to this name got to be too much for me. I wanted a name of my own with a narrative that didn't have so much historical victimization. I thought somehow I could transform Gene...but it seemed better to leave that with the memories of my Grandmother.

6. Elwood. I know this makes most people think of the Blues Brothers. I pondered this one because it's a family name and I liked that it means "old forest."

7. Robin. A gender neutral name and I liked Robin Hood growing up. ;) But I wanted a clearly male name in the end. Plus my middle name begins in a similar way and that would have made my full name sound weird.

Others considered very briefly: Thomas, Moses.

Mass HB 1722

Today is a huge day for Trans Equality in Massachusetts. If you are in the Boston Area come to the state house at 1 pm and show your support for House Bill 1722 "An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes." This is just like changing the non-discrimination code at Harvard except much, much bigger.

Coming from California where I didn't have to think about basic non-discrimination issues at all, I think it's about time that Massachusetts had gender identity and expression covered.

In other news healing from surgery is going well...I have a sizeable hematoma under my right nipple that hurts (and unfortunately looks like I'm growing a breast)...but I was told that this should vanish in about four more weeks. If it doesn't by then I'll have to get a revision (which will be a few years out since it's expensive).



Some pics of healing thus far:
1/30/08























2/22/08

New Year, New Chest

My Top surgery is a little over five days away. Time for some new years resolutions to ring in 08.

1) Call my (Berkeley) mother.

2) Lift 2-3 times per week.

3) Tell and show the people who I love that I love them.

4) Walk for a few hours 3-4 times per week, and start training for Half Dome in March once my chest has healed enough.

5) Help out with the service trip to New Orleans and try to make inroads to move there after graduation.

6) Reach out to the family members who have been supportive to me. Let go of those who don't and won't respect me for who I am. It's been way too painful trying to be in "relationship"
with people who treat me like an alien and only communicate with me because I'm a blood relative. I don't have to save face for the sake of the family because no matter what I do my parents have made it obvious that they're pretty disgusted with me (esp. my mom) and would have nothing to do with me if I hadn't been born their daughter. I don't think I'll be visiting them in California for a long while.

7) Legally change my name and gender.

8) Work music back into my life.

9) Try to find other service opportunities in the Boston Area (maybe volunteer at the Living Center or Cambridge Cares).

10) Get my social life back.

11) Take time out to meditate and be.

Poetic Renderings

Ocean Springs

At twelve oaks I was renamed.
Blessed by 32 hands, some biting gnats and one playful Airedale.
Not kicking, struggling, gripping by the wrist;
the ankle. No Esau to usurp. i was my own Laban
supplanting the Bean which never grew stalk.
But meanwhile;
I yanked out the roots,
willing the end of destruction even while
I destroyed.

On Good Friday I was rebirthed.
Surrounded by the beauty of a family beyond blood.
Claiming my eunuch-hood, awaiting the needle.
My entry way, birth pain through the hip.
Held in the silent circle willing to wait up the extra hour, overcome with anxiety and joy.

-4/6/07

I pass because
I have to.
(Do I really pass?)
Pass, such an oddity (I am).
Pass into male out of female,
Passerby looks:
-first, at the front
-next, the face
-finally (if interested) the crotch

I thought about it again today
leaving my binders, wearing a bra.
Not as a political statement or to
genderfuck the pass-(h)er-bys.
(This thought makes me smile)
Simply,
to breathe.
Out, In-hale.
No more lyrca, spandex or velcro;
elastic lines etched into
reddened skin.
I will have red skin soon enough.
A permanent (in)visible bra, binding skin to muscle,
encircling my areolas.
And I wonder,
does that really make me male?
Or do the scars really make the
pass-(h)er-bys more comfortable?
As they pass him by.

-9/ 07

What it feels like to be hapa me

You didn't
want this: the yellow mixed with
the White.
You'll never say
this; miscegenation.

I didn't want "this" either: my mixed race. But
Your eyes staring. Orientalism.
Being told that my almondshapedeyesmustmeanthatI'mJapaneseor
Mexican. I was an
"exotic female"
Polynesian looking. I had a round face,
small muscular waist.

Now I am "like chocolate cake" to the rice queens. When
You look for It tomorrow
the ricebowl will be cleared.
And you
won't
get
one
bite.

-11/8/07

Adam's Rib

did he missher when she came
out of
hisside?
were there unrecorded scars? silent, unspoken.
Fig or Apple is there a difference?
the guilt is just the same;
clothing, breast, color, scent.
he was only sleeping(it was only a rib)
dreaming of what he could never know;
childless birth(er)
while She, fully conscious,
watched his pale blue lips.

-10/28/07