Rolling trans arts thread

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.