Rolling trans arts thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMPfy1T7MNk

Found Objects of Desire was a DIY/folk/punk group led by Arianna in Atlanta ~10 years ago. she's since moved to AZ and is making some louder noise now but i have always loved this anti-folk stuff. there's a really cool video to go along w this - the album it is from is called "Altamaha", based on one of the most important rivers in Georgia - featuring a lot of wildlife footage from the coast.

ulysses, emil.y is definitely better informed than I am about IF, but the merritt kopas essay I linked to in the first post touches on the Twine scene (short answer, which I can expand on if necessary: in the last several years, and especially between 2012 and 2014 or so, there's been a critical mass of games made with the hypertext programming tool Twine by trans women such as Anna Anthropy, Porpentine, Lydia Neon, and others, often dealing with trans experiences with a nuance and imaginative freedom unusual in game design), and merritt's anthology Videogames for Humans represents that community of writers and designers more extensively.

Sarahell, I hope I wasn't harsh in responding to you; tbh, my own insecurities were at play there, and I'm sorry for putting you on the spot.

Adam, I'm not familiar with Arianna/Found Object, so thanks for the link; her sound has kind of an appealingly loose, patchwork quality.

Branwell, ILX threads often proceed by tangents, and the dormancy of the other trans/nb thread maybe puts an awkward kind of pressure on the conversations here, but I would absolutely like you to feel more welcome here.

Also, Branwell, in case you'd be interested, the last couple of days' tweets by Morgan M. Page (@morganmpage) and Stephen Ira (@supermattachine) on tensions between trans femme and trans masc culture online and cissexism toward gay trans men seem relevant to yr thoughts on Serano.

Checking out that essay, thanks.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n09/jacqueline-rose/who-do-you-think-you-are

Thought to put this here.

Thanks, xyzzzz___! I'll take some time to think about Rose's essay.

To list a couple of other recent publications that are also relevant here, the trans poetry journal Vetch has released their second issue (free here), and Jamie Berrout and Ellyn Page have published An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color, which I want to get around to reading very soon (related blog at twocfictionanthology.tumblr.com; available at https://gumroad.com/l/YRrf).

They Themselves and Schmerm was great btw, Becca Blackwell is awesome
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2015/10/theater/stanley-kowalski-isnt-polish-anymore

Also for those near Cambridge Mass, "A Ride on the Irish Cream" is playing in their upcoming season, along with a January play called "Trans Scripts Part 1: The Women" by Paul Lucas, directed by Jo Bonney.
http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/04/20/american-repertory-theater-announces-2016-17-season/

*corrections: the editors of the twoc anthology are Jamie Berrout (herself a significant and challenging writer) and Ellyn Peña, and a working hyperlink to their tumblr is http://www.twocfictionanthology.tumblr.com

A few scattered comments about that Rose essay: I'm not that interested in trans people's etiology, or at least it seems like questions of etiology are at best a distraction from questions of social acceptance and access to resources (work, housing, healthcare, etc.), but I don't really share Rose's investment in psychoanalysis. While I respect Rose's contributions to feminist thought, it would be nice if the LRB actually published trans and nb critics beyond Stephen Burt (Juliet Jacques has written a few blog posts, but I think that's all), although this is probably also a function of the LRB relying on a fairly narrow circle of contributors. The identification of Janice Raymond as the first TERF is a little inaccurate, given that her polemics codified and intensified rhetoric already used by, say, Robin Morgan and Mary Daly; Susan Stryker's Transgender History provides useful context here. I agree with Rose that trans life writing (especially under the sign of the Transition Narrative) tends to be constricted by the writer's need to secure recognition of their gender, but it would have been worth attending to more literature (such as Sybil Lamb's work, or Imogen Binnie's) that actively pushes back against such expectations. On the whole, though, I thought this was an useful overview for readers unfamiliar with the texts discussed, and I appreciate that Rose didn't try to resolve the tensions or disagreements in a body of texts that is very far from being monolithic. I'm curious what other people of this thread thought about the essay.

I also want to mention Torrey Peters's interview in Essay Daily a few months ago on trans writing and the essay-form, because it seems relevant here:

My first attempt at trans writing was an essay published by Gawker, and in it, I elided my own sexuality, down-played how important my own womanhood is to me for a kind of fuzzy-friendly-gender-is-just-a-construct stance, and worse, I completely skipped the resolution between myself and my girlfriend over my crossdressing, because guess what? There wasn’t really a resolution. The actual narrative would have required me to be 100 times more honest, but I didn’t want to be honest, I wanted to be liked.

Everybody wants to be liked, of course, but for trans people the stakes to being liked are really high. If you are afraid to be seen as a pervert freak, afraid that you'll lose everything you value and might get killed, it chills your writing. For some white dude to be awful, he’s just another phallic narcissist, bravely saying how it is. No biggie, here's your Pulitzer. So it’s not a surprise to me that trans people, in memoir, sometimes throw out the honesty and ethics required for truly good narrative structure in favor of likability. We face so much higher political consequences for being honest.

Essay may incorporate narrative, but it can also function as almost description. You can have an emotional landscape, and often I find my experience of being trans best reflected in descriptive prose rather than through classic conflicts. So lyrics, essays, and essayistic experimentation often feel most accurate. However, there is not necessarily a loser in description the way there is in the resolution of conflict. There is no wife trapped in a marriage to a woman, no girlfriend who has to push down her discomfort with cross dressing—so writers are free to be honest, but the stakes are sometimes made lower for the lack of conflict. That said, my own personal goal these days is to strive for a future of narrative in trans writing that can hold itself to extremely high ethical consistency in the resolution of conflict. Because ultimately, other trans people will understand, and for the cis people that judge us? They’ll see the value in another generation, if they don’t get it now.

http://www.essaydaily.org/2016/01/t-clutch-fleischmann-and-torrey-peters.html

Also, from the same essay:

There are a lot of people doing cool stuff in different formal realms that I’d call essay. I read a lot more work by trans women, because that’s whose work speaks to me. (Original Plumbing has a lit issue with trans dudes if people want to check that out) But for me, I’d want to list the games of Merritt Kopas or Anna Anthropy. Autostraddle actually has become a place for trans women to publish some weird essays with interesting formal conceits, like How To Write About Trans Woman by Gabrielle Bellot or a take-down of a take-down of Candy Magazine by L’lerrét Jazelle Ailith, which starts like a conventional bloggy response to a Salon article and unexpectedly becomes a list of black trans heroes. All of Imogen Binnie’s We See Through You columns in Maximum RocknRoll are great. Oh, and I’d say also The Seam of Skin and Scales by Elena Rose. Basically, because this is a conversation—the trans essay—that is still being carved out, I try to pay attention to the seemingly ephemeral stuff that gets passed around, from person to person, or technically from email account to email account. There’s nothing like a canon, so I just try to see what essays seem to move people in ways that haven’t faded. For instance, trans women I know have been talking about Elena’s essay since she performed it something like 2007. The way that writing gets passed around makes the creation of trans art a communal act.

ows - Thanks for that essay.

As for the Rose essay I just found useful as an overview but yes there are problems as novels will not be written about at the LRB, and as sensitive as Rose is to all this she comes from that very narrow group of contributors. I would've loved if they got Roz Kavaney to write this up - but as the piece you've linked to says the literature is still being formed.

On the offchance that any other trans women read this thread and are cultivating writing projects, this writers' workshop in New York this August is worth knowing about: http://topsidepress.tumblr.com/post/144160601409/proclamation

For some reason I thought emil.y had posted more of the UK queerpunx stuff in this thread but I think I was getting muddled with some EOY threads on ILM; if it's not too gauche/trite to post some Aussie music stuff,

Two Steps on the Water's "YoYo":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=875lJG_mCu8
(& previous EP Having pop punk feelings in a country​-​western body)

+ a good interview touching on the Melbourne GNC/trans*/non-binary scene:
http://whothehell.net/archives/28420

Thanks for the link, etc, esp. since I know extremely little about the Australian trans arts scene.

I found this twitter discussion of the current dynamics of trans writing (moderated by the poet Oliver Bendorf and the essayist Gabrielle Bellot) wide-ranging and useful, especially on questions of audience and the additional barriers faced by trans writers of color: https://storify.com/ohbendorf/translit-twitter-chat

Taylor Mac broke my goddamn mind and i need someplace to talk about it though perhaps ILX is the wrong spot?

I'm seeing Elysia Crampton perform her "Dissolution of the Sovereign" piece this Sunday, will report back if I find myself able to say anything interesting about it.

To hop on board the (stalled?) introduction train upthread: I'm in Philadelphia, at the point where I'm going to seek a referral for a therapist to work through some gender issues but not 100% ready to commit to the idea of transition, kind of worried about everything all the time for various reasons, among them age (33, really REALLY regretting not taking the steps to do this earlier and still dealing with a lot of anxiety issues that are not even halfway solved) and a history of isolation (and also the sense that my presence- as an upper-middle-class white person with the relative luxury of not being forced to deal with anything and just quietly letting my life fall into disrepair for a decade+- is not only unnecessary but counterproductive).

Respec knuckles at you Tt

(Porpentine is the most important artist to me, if people want a guide / starting points to her stuff I'd be super happy to do that)

Yeah, congratulations on being willing to start working through those feelings in whatever form that takes, telephone thing! I didn't really start dealing with my own dysphoria directly until I was 30, so I can certainly relate to the strong feeling of belatedness, but it's never too late to reexamine your experience. I can webmail you my main email address if you ever want to talk about gender issues off-board (though having a supportive therapist and people you can trust to talk to about your feelings is really more important).

Also, I've checked out of this thread and most of ILX for a while now, but I would be interested in yr thoughts on Porpentine, Mac, and EC if any of you want to share them.

wish you wouldn't check out OWS, yer one of the good things about this place

Thanks, ulysses. I'm not leaving the board in any decisive way, really: I've just been kind of depressed lately, so not in the mood to post here often, but it'll presumably pass.

It always does though it doesn't always feel that way.
explaining the Taylor Mac show is too big for me just now but i just heard this and it's good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_zOOnvB7K8

also here's a review with Becca Blackwell, general rad person and writer/performer of 'They, Themselves and Schmerm' discussed above on NYT's Theater Page Facebook Live thing
https://www.facebook.com/nytimestheater/videos/1312776212068778/

Yeah, that's a great first single--the arrangement and Shea's vocal delivery both have the requisite heft. I was a little startled to see that my friend Meredith had a cameo near the end of the video, since I hadn't heard about it before today, but I guess I haven't talked to her in a while.

https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/april-dawn-alison/
https://hyperallergic.com/519800/april-dawn-alison-sfmoma
This looks great

Oh! I didn't know this thread existed. Well, 2016 was a bit of a year so I'm not surprised I missed it...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/nyregion/Miss-Subways-NYC.html

Dylan Greenberg, 22, a film director from Brooklyn, came onstage with her band, Theophobia. Ms. Greenberg, a trans woman, wore a leopard crop top and low-cut leather pants. She said that if she were presented the crown, she would melt it and smear it on her body... After a drawn-out deliberation from the judges, Ms. Greenberg was crowned Miss Subways 2019. Later, when Ms. Greenberg was asked about her agenda as the new Miss Subways, she said, “I’m going to release rabid wolves into the subway.”

https://www.facebook.com/640184943110972/photos/a.640190479777085/745503905912408/

I don't know if I've recommended it anywhere here but I really like "Songs I Hate" by Envelope Generator. Quality synthpop that also very much brings the trans realness.

Anybody watching "Work in Progress" on Showtime? I think it's great.
https://www.sho.com/work-in-progress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai8TD3aFn8M
bonus points for casting on julia sweeney's husband

also watched Seahorse which was more of a thirty minute documentary than a ninety minute one; i could definitely have done without all the arty shots of starlings and tadpoles.
L. and I were really shocked the subject wasn't getting more therapy, especially when they explicitly say they could use it! Dunno how much of that is a question about what NHS provides; that too is out of my experience.
Frustratingly, the film doesn't provide a lot of reasons as to _why_ this guy wants to raise a child in his mother's house without a partner and I mostly felt "what are you doing here?" twentysomething energy toward them. But hey, they did the work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGhycuSoaDg

thought this was gorgeously shot; lots of interesting discussion about naming and some big cultural differences on display
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzhXBjmaUw

Portland's Victory Over the Sun is getting a fair amount of hype this year it seems. Definitely a quality record, definitely in my wheelhouse, all of the influence from the early Soviet avant-garde doesn't hurt either!

i'm just gonna leave this here

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/22/21076981/isabel-fall-clarkesworld-attack-helicopter-short-story-gender-art-controversy

hahaha not surprised none of y'all bit at that, i shouldn't be biting either

i mean, yeah. transgressive art. the thing that came to mind for me was ballard's "why i want to fuck ronald reagan".

i grew up in that sort of world where offending people was a goal, where the worst thing was being "inoffensive". nowadays, it's more a matter of who i'm hurting and how ok i am with that. i'm ok with hurting some people in some ways.

i don't know if i posted it here, but i wrote something on a similar issue. i think it's an _interesting_ topic. i posted a link to it somewhere in a trans discord, with appropriate CWs, and the feedback i got was that a lot of trans people would be... uncomfortable with that.

i felt that was honest feedback and good feedback. there's some shit that's hard for me to deal with in ways that don't hurt people who, i feel, just don't deserve to be hurt. there's no big huge Issue here, nothing to make big speeches about. even though i don't know, maybe i'm making one, maybe clark (whose conclusions, ultimately, i don't think i agree with) was making one.

there are a lot of things that don't have easy answers, can't be determined by any set of Principles. i have to take them on a case by case basis. i've met people who were out as trans before me, way before me. i couldn't be who i am if they weren't who they were. and they self-identify as a word that, to me, that's a slur. i'm not even going to use that word here, and if that makes what i'm talking about more vague, fine.

i was talking with someone yesterday, and they were talking about wanting to reclaim that word. they can want that. the person who has identified with that word for decades, they have the right, and nothing is going to erase the fundamental respect and admiration i have for them.

i'm also, i think, probably always going to be hurt by that word. i'm not interested in reclaiming it. there are some topics that, no matter how one talks about or explains it or Contextualizes it, talking about those things are going to hurt people. that's sort of a painful learning experience for anyone who has it.

There was some discussion of it on the Literary Clusterfucks thread. I thought it was a really powerful story. I also think that literature is a really important and useful place to explore feelings of ambivalence (or even hatred) about yourself, and while for some people that is going to bring up really bad shit, for others it provides solace and connection. Oppositional/countercultural/marginalised lit has had a long tradition of ending in despair, and I think it's great that there has been a move to show more hopefulness, but I don't want to read your utopia, there's no place for me there. I'm looking for companionship in a world where things will only get worse.

Re: reclamation of terms, there are a lot of people who still feel that way about queer! It's such a positive term for me that I have to check myself not to use it before sussing out if people are comfortable with it.

ah i totally missed the literary clusterfucks thread (took me a while to find it because i was looking for it on ILB and not ILE).

so i found time to read the story, not because i much wanted to, but because if i'm going to talk about it i should have some minimal knowledge of it. it was sort of what i thought. a lot of paranoia and self-doubt in there, a lot of talk about war which i kind of skimmed over, since it's not a topic i find interesting or a topic i can much relate to.

i'm not opposed to anybody who wants to reclaim any word or phrase. i'm not saying they can't or shouldn't prioritize that. i think "queer" is a wonderful word, perhaps the first word that meant something to me (it would pop up in some of the older children's books i read but i knew somehow, cultural osmosis, that it meant more than that). i also don't think that reclamation is as simple or straightforward as lenny bruce made it sound.

i also agree with you about the therapeutic power of literature. i've written a lot of dark shit. writing that stuff, going there, has been a key part of my journey. i wouldn't dream of publishing any of it, though, because it's pretty awful, because i got a lot of bullshit in my head and i try to be respectful about where and how i put that bullshit on other people.

i don't know ms. fall, i don't know what drives her, but i have found it easy to underestimate how much hurt delving into that liminal shit can cause to other people.

i smile a lot, i laugh a lot, and i don't tend talk about dark shit. partly because i sound like a teenage goth girl when i do, partly because i have the tendency to ruminate, partly because it is fucking terrifying to think of what i might be capable of, under certain circumstances.

so i don't have a utopia for you. the closest to utopia is me, where i live now, and it's a shitty goddamn utopia, that's for sure. but i don't have any dystopias for you either. i don't know shit about the future, and i'm not sure anybody else does either; i'm just trying to survive, have the best present i can, and help give the people i care about the opportunities i have.

Oh, I meant the general you in 'your utopia', not you specifically! Sorry if that sounded dismissive of you.

i figured as such, but i wanted to cover my bases. :) i know the school of literature you're talking about - "hey why don't we write more stories about space elevators" or whatever - and i don't find those utopias entirely convincing. i don't subscribe to the philosophy that says our problems are going to be solved by technology, whether that's space elevators or gcs.

On consideration I'm not sure I agree with the hypothesis. I don't think "soldier" is a gender. I mean I know the joke is that it stands for "Assigned Cop At Birth" but it's just a pun, it doesn't speak to some deeper truth.

See, I'm always a woman, but I'm not always a woman first. Whatever else you are, if you're a cop, you're a cop first.

loved and highly recommend this show; it's a fun time:

https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2020/j/joes-pub-live-from-the-archives--becca-blackwell-schmermies-choice

(streaming free on Saturday April 4 at 7pm EST)

i don't really watch movies but this film "bit" out tomorrow sounds potentially interesting

oh yah? the vampire comedy? I thought that was due out in June, presumably COVID timeshifted. will likely watch.