Kutsu kirjoittajille tulemaan mukaan queer-pornoa käsittelevään zineprojektiin!

Vituttaako pornotarjonta? Tuntuuko että omat kokemuksesi eivät sovi tarjolla olevaan normatiiviseen ja heteroseksistiseen pornoon? Tule mukaan tekemään parempaa iltalukemista!

Lähetä meille fantasiasi, tarinasi, pohdintasi, runosi, piirroksesi, sarjakuvasi, pikkuhoususi… Tekstit ja työt voi toimittaa sähköisesti osoitteeseen kummakerho(at)gmail.com

Tekstejä kerätään huhtikuun loppuun saakka. Voit kirjoittaa suomeksi, englanniksi tai ruotsiksi. Kerro viestissäsi, jos sinulla on erityisiä toiveita taiton tai muun asettelun suhteen. Zineprojektiin voi myös muuten osallistua

• tulostamalla
• pitämällä distroa ja myymällä zineä
• lähetettyjen juttujen kuvittamisella
• oikolukemalla
• yms.

A call for contributions for a queer porn zine project!

Are you tired of the same old porn? Do you feel like your experiences are not in line with normative and heterosexist (mainstream)porn? Let’s make something worth jerking off to!

Send us your fantasies, stories, reflections, poems, drawings, comics, panties… Contributions can be sent by email, to the address kummakerho(at)gmail.com

We’ll be accepting stuff till the end of April. You can write in Finnish, English or Swedish. Let us know if you have wishes on how your junk is presented or other issues concerning layout. You can also take part in the project by

• printing zines
• selling the zines once they’re made, or taking part in the kummakerho distro
• illustrating other people’s stories
• proofreading
• etc.

On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me – KinkForAll Providence from maymay on Vimeo.

An important link for all:

The Yogyakarta Principles address a broad range of human rights standards and their application to issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 2006, in response to well-documented patterns of abuse, a distinguished group of international human rights experts met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to outline a set of international principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. The result was the Yogyakarta Principles: a universal guide to human rights which affirm binding international legal standards with which all States must comply. They promise a different future where all people born free and equal in dignity and rights can fulfil that precious birthright.

The Yogyakarta Principles are available on the website in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.

Diane Savino

New Yorkin osavaltion senaatti äänesti eilen samansukupuolisten avioliitoista. Äänestystulos oli lopulta liittojen sallimista vastaan. Staten Islandin edustaja Diane Savino puhui ennen äänestystä kauniisti esityksen puolesta. Video englanninkielinen.

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Senator Diane Savino, the representative of Staten Island in the New York State Senate spoke eloquently in favor of gay marriage before a vote on the matter. Despite her moving speech, more representatives voted against than for gay marriage. The speech is in English.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCFFxidhcy0

The law [...] would imprison anyone who knows of the existence of a gay or lesbian and fails to inform the police within 24 hours. It requires the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” – defined as any sexual act between gays or lesbians in which one person has the HIV virus.

The law decrees that anyone who is aware of but fails to report homosexual activity within 24 hours be sentenced to 3 years in prison, and that anyone defending the rights of LGB people be sentenced to 7 years in prison. Activists are calling upon the Commonwealth to address the matter in the upcoming summit and to suspend Uganda’s membership if the law passes.

The legislator who introduced the bill in the Ugandan parliament, David Bahati, is a member of the fundamentalist Christian church the Family. Members of the Family are very active in introducing anti-LGBT and anti-woman legislation in many countries, including the United States. The Ugandan president also appears to be closely affiliated with the Family. More about the US influence on Uganda’s anti-gay policies here, here and here.

CHINA The Chinese government plans to open a gay bar that may or may not serve refreshments to its patrons. What the bar will most definitely offer is education and information on the topic of safe sex between men. A group of gay volunteers will be hired to draw in the information-thirsty gay hordes.

THAILAND Thailand has implemented stricter gatekeeper measures for people seeking sex reassignment surgery. Those wanting surgery are now required to live one year as their preferred gender, undergo hormone replacement therapy and obtain the approval of two psychiatrists. Some fear these new measures will turn sex reassignment surgey into an underground business.

Adam Lambert

ARGENTINA A couple’s wedding was canceled after a judge blocked a previous decision that allowed the two men to marry. The couple obtained the initial autorization by suing the state when they were denied a marriage licence in April. The matter is now awaiting the attention of the Supreme Court. Same-sex civil unions are legal in some Argentinian cities but civil unions lack rights married straight couples are granted.

UNITED STATES American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert was dropped from ABC’s morning tv show following a late-night awards show performance that included simulated oral sex and Adam kissing another man. Lambert’s replacement on ABC’s family friendly morning show was Chris Brown who was recently sentenced to community service for assaulting his then-girlfriend, singer Rihanna.

The Morning News features photography by Chad States, an artist who shoots portraits for his project called Masculinities. This collection of images includes males, females, and transpeople – not necessarily male-identified people as the name of the feature implies, but simply people who see themselves as masculine. The Morning News also features an interview where the artist discusses his views on masculinity and how he approaches his subjects. The full set of images can be viewed on Chad States’ own website.

The Morning News: Men at Their Most Masculine (NSFW: some images contain nudity).

Chad States

Newsweekin nettiversiossa on julkaistu juttu polyamoriasta. Tämä on ensimmäisiä neutraalihkoja juttuja polyamoriasta jenkkimediassa, ainakin omien tietojeni mukaan.

Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution?

UNITED STATES. There has been a second hate crime conviction in the US in connection to a killing of a transgender woman. Dwight DeLee was found guilty of killing Lateisha Green. DeLee claimed he wasn’t trying to kill Green when he shot his rifle into the car in which Green was sitting with her brother and a friend. The jury found this believable and DeLee was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and faces between 10 and 25 years in prison.

UNITED STATES. A gay bar was raided in Fort Worth, Texas on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, June 28. Chad Gibson was injured during this raid and was hospitalized for seven days for serious head injuries. He was originally arrested for public intoxication. In a bar. The police claimed that the injured man was making advances at the officer and fell while resisting arrest and this was the cause of his injuries, while eyewitnesses claimed that the officers slammed the man into the wall and the floor, and also tackled other bar patrons. The mayor of Fort Worth has now issued an apology for the injury but not for the raid. The raid is being investigated.

The Advocate reports that the reason for the raid was the arrest of a man for public intoxication on June 26. The Advocate also reports: “in addition, police recordings reveal that on the night of the raid, an officer called for help after he went inside the Rainbow Lounge. His call was prompted by a bar patron who blew a kiss at the officer.”

UNITED STATES. Same-sex couples lack basic immigration opportunities in the US available to different-sexed couples. A different-sex couple’s US citizen half can sponsor their spouse for a green card if the couple wishes to live in the States, but this is not possible for same-sex couples. Reasons given for the justification for this policy are the usual bullshit excuses about eroding the institution of marriage and so forth. In short, states such as New York may recognise your same-sex marriage as legal but you will be deported if you want to make the state your home, because…. you’re not really recognised as a family unit. If there are queers out there who want to immigrate to the US: make sure that you pick a differently sexed person to fake marry for a green card or you’re out.

GLOBAL. Why are we all so queer? Is it nature or is it nurture? Some scientists say neither! Or… both?

“Researchers sometimes claim we’re hard-wired for things, but when you peel through the layers of the experiments, the details matter and suddenly the evidence doesn’t seem so compelling. The problem is that it’s much more complicated to explain why the evidence is on shaky ground, and often the one-liner wins out over the 10-minute explanation.”

SOUTH KOREA. Choi Han-bit, a transsexual woman, has made it to the semifinals in a beauty pageant in Korea. The pageant’s organisers have stated that they take no issue with Choi Han-bit’s participation in the 2009 Super Model Contest – no rules have been broken as her legal sex is female.

CHINA. China is creating guidelines and rules for the treatment of trans people. There are concerns that the rules will be too strict and will prohibit many from having access to surgery.

AUSTRALIA. Australia’s passport laws have been revised to allow a more flexible approach to gender markers for transpeople. Changing your gender marker has previously required a person to obtain a revised birth certificate which has been impossible without specific surgeries or if the person is married. The new law allows transpeople to obtain a limited validity passport in their preferred gender for overseas travel for the purpose of gender reassignment surgery without having to obtain a revised birth certificate. Transpeople who can not obtain a revised birth certificate can also apply for a standard issue passport if they are unable to have the mandatory surgeries because of medical issues and can prove this.

Protesters outside Lu's pharmacy

CANADA. A recently opened women only pharmacy in Vancouver denies service to transwomen. The pharmacy owner is of the opinion that womanhood is dependent on birth-assigned sex, and that they do not have the expertise or capacity to provide services to transwomen. Interestingly enough, they will write prescriptions for transmen. Several protests have been held to draw attention to this arbitrary discrimination.

RUSSIA. A man shot his girlfriend after discovering she had undergone sex reassignment surgery.

“The killer, identified as Vladimir F by police, shot Camila several times, deliberately targeting the parts of her body altered during a sex change operation. He had only found out about her previous identity after she turned down his offer of marriage.”

Every third day, a transperson is murdered.

INDIA. The government of Bihar is setting up a program to provide education and employment to its transgender citizens who often live in poverty.

“Transgenders will be provided literacy and vocational training to prepare them for respectable regular employment. It will give them the opportunity to enhance their socio-economic status,” said Masood Hassan, director of the social welfare department. ‘”

More on India’s LGBT community: Swathi and Sneha are two transwomen who wish to be the country’s first legally married same-sex couple. India recently decriminalized homosexuality, but same-sex marriage laws do not yet exist. Sindh Today gives us some stories from the members of India’s LGBT community, and Asian Tribune features a story on Noori, an influential Indian transgender woman fighting for HIV/AIDS awareness.

UNITED STATES. The Progressive discusses the prevalence of sexual assault on transgender prisoners in the US prison system. Transgender women are routinely placed in men’s prisons where they are vulnerable to assault and subject to punishment from the prison personnel. More here.

RUSSIA. An intersex child born in Russia will be operated on based on genetics, not self-identification.

Five days after the delivery, Olga was discharged, and her baby transferred to the pathology department of the Tushino Hospital.  Now the medical team is awaiting the results of genetic testing.  The parents are praying that the correct decision is made.
“In this case, only geneticists can tell whether this baby is predisposed to either the female or the male end of the gender continuum, ” tried to explain the young father.  “We’ll love our baby all the same, boy or girl.”

Here is a paper on the human rights of intersex children.

UNITED KINGDOM. An award-winning businesswoman raises trans awareness.

“We’re not quite there yet in how to deal with transgendered people,” she said. “I could have gone stealth, my surgery was good enough that people wouldn’t have known, but I decided it was more important than my own bit of comfort to use my experience to help other people.”

Buck Angel

GLOBAL. And here’s something nice and juicy to cap off all the depressing and less depressing news: Samesame features an interview with Buck Angel, transsexual porn star extraordinaire.

It wasn’t too long before the industry realised that a huge market that existed for the kind of porn that Buck was making and before long he had amounted a substantial filmography. It was also apparent that he was a brilliant performer. In 2007 Buck Angel was not only nominated for Transsexual performer of the year, but he actually took out the title. It was a proud day for Buck Angel.

Infinite Relationships: Relationships without bounds or boundaries, love without limits, without ends

by Anonymous

This is about so-called “non-monogamous relationships,” about some of the benefits of trying out one of the alternatives to the formulaic dating/marriage/divorce model for love. Your response to this article will probably be similar to the one I had a few years ago when I read a discussion of the same subject by David Sandstrom in the Swedish ‘zine Handbook for Revolutionaries: “good idea, but, uh, not relevant to me, of course…” It turned out I was wrong. Had I remembered a lesson I’ve learned over and over, I would have realized that often the ideas that make me the most defensive and uncomfortable at first turn out to be the most important for me in the long run. Not to say that I’m offering a program that you must all immediately adjust yourselves to… but we can’t remind each other enough to be open to new ideas, in case they do prove to be helpful in our lives.

A couple years ago I had a wonderful experience on tour, in which I finally experienced what it felt like for men’s gender roles to be dissolved: over the course of the tour everyone in the band and the people touring with us were all able to open up and become emotionally supportive and loving, and suddenly the experience of being with a lot of other boys was totally f*cking different from anything I’d encountered before. In this safe, encouraging environment, all of us really felt fearless, free, ready to try anything, with no more doubt or need for walls to protect us. On the surface, it was just that we weren’t afraid to touch and hold each other, and that we stopped complaining and being selfish; but the implications beneath this were immense: I realized that there was no need for intimacy and emotional support to be confined to my romantic relationships—I could create and benefit from these things in every relationship.

This got me thinking about my romantic relationships… if there was no reason my friendships couldn’t be more like my love affairs, why couldn’t my love affairs be more like my friendships? When I thought about it, my friendships had a lot going for them that my love affairs never did: my friends were never jealous or possessive, my friendships didn’t tend to adhere to some strict socialized image of what they “should” be, and while my friendships generally continued on in one form or another through my life, once it turned out that a romantic relationship wasn’t storybook-perfect it would end and I wouldn’t see the lover any more.

All my love relationships had proceeded something like this: In the beginning I would meet a beautiful new person, we would broaden each others’ horizons and have wonderful experiences together, and thus fall in love. At first we would feel more free together than either of us ever had, and the world would seem full to overflowing with possibility and wild joy. But slowly, not trusting the rest of the world, or the future in which we might not feel such wonderful things, we would build our relationship into a castle, to keep out the cold and dangerous outside world, and protect our passion by turning it into an institution. Sex, which at the beginning had been something that came more naturally and freely than anything else, became jealously guarded as the seal sanctifying our love relationship, as proof that it was different than all our other relationships. [This seems, in retrospect, like a really strange role for sex to play.] Inevitably, I would wake up one day and realize that the free, feral passion that we’d been united by was gone, replaced by habit, routine, fear of change; the castle we’d built had become a tomb, sealing us inside and away from the outside world, which we’d actually needed all along to bring us each new things to offer the other and sustain ourselves. Inside the coffin, we fought more and more, each demanding that the other prove her love by sacrificing more and more—when love is supposed to enable you to live more, not disable you in return for an assurance of basic companionship, a companionship that often replaces your participation in larger communities anyway. Falling in love had been like finding a secret entrance to the garden of Eden, a gift economy in which we shared everything without keeping score or worrying about “fair trade”; but now we were back in the exchange economy, competing to see who could need more, who could control more. After all my attempts to transcend the stereotyped roles of people in romantic relationships, I suddenly found that I was a “boyfriend” again, with a “girlfriend” (which is not a healthy role for anyone to have to play in this sexist society!), with no idea how it had all happened.

I started thinking about how it is that we all keep falling into these patterns, and how we could avoid them. The issue of limitation kept coming up: the idea that some things had to be off limits for the relationship to work. With my friends, nothing is off limits, and nothing is demanded either: we offer each other whatever we can, whenever we have it to give, and we don’t demand anything that doesn’t come naturally for the other (that’s how my friendships go when they’re healthy, at least, and most of them are at this point). I decided to look into what other models for love relationships there were, and discovered that there is a long tradition of relationships without these limits and expectations: non-monogamous, or “open,” relationships.

I’m not trying to say that monogamous relationships are bad, exactly, but there are a thousand kinds of relationships, and we generally only permit ourselves to try one format, which seems ridiculous. Let’s explore a bit. Every time I hear about another wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend cheating and sneaking around, every time I hear someone speaking proudly about how (in the name of monogamy) he has managed to resist doing something he really wants to, every time I must listen to someone pathetically lamenting the feeling of being “trapped” in a relationship or unable to pursue her desires out of some kind of fear, every f*cking time I have to witness someone leering voyeuristically (“it’s ok to look if you don’t touch”), it makes me so furious about how we’ve trapped ourselves in this one-option relationship system, accepting these symptoms of suffocation as inevitable instead of experimenting with the other possibilities. More than anything else, our commitment to supporting monogamy as the only option (other than “casual sex,” I guess, which is boring as f*ck and bad in other ways too) keeps us from being honest with each other. We’ve got to dare to address all these complexities of life and desire openly, even if it is painful.

We punk rockers always act like we’re such radical people, but when it comes down to acting, in practice, to try out radically different ways of living that might be more in line with our ideas (or just plain challenging, for once, not safe—nothing is more dangerous than playing it safe!), it doesn’t occur to us to question our programmed habits. All too often our revolutionary ideas are just badges, a different ideology for us to vote for, not catalysts for transforming life. This is an issue that affects everyone, where anarchist values can be tried out in the real world, but thus far I’ve seen very little discussion of this subject in our community; if we’re going to question the way the world works, we should take that home to our own personal relationships, and perhaps try out alternatives there first before proposing solutions to the ills of the world. That is—if we really have solutions to the ills of our society, let’s put those into practice to solve the ills of our own relations. Healer, heal thyself.

What an open relationship is:

The most important thing here is to get over the idea that a person’s value is measured by whether she alone can be “enough” for another person. The world is infinite, and so are we—no amount of living, no number or depth of interactions with others should be “enough” for any of us, just as no amount of interactions with a person you love will ever be “enough.” To set borders on what another person can do or feel, as a condition for them to be able to receive my love and affection, goes against everything I believe as an anarchist and a human being; I want to trust others to know what they need, and never limit them—and I certainly don’t think my life will be any richer from the limitations I place on others. We have to free each other to be and become ourselves. This isn’t just about other lovers or sex partners or friends, it’s also about other undertakings, needs, even the desire for space and solitude—it’s heartbreaking how much of our selves our lovers often ask us to sacrifice to be with them.

I want to be valued for what I am, for what I do naturally, not how well I conform to some pre-set list of needs that someone has. If someone else can fill some of those needs, I wouldn’t deny that to anyone, and I don’t want to be jealous when others have something different to offer; I just want the chance to offer what I have to give to those I love, and to remember that those things are priceless and not comparable to whatever unique gifts others may have. None of us should ever be saddled with the role of sole provider for someone’s needs (romantic or otherwise), anyway; our purpose on this earth is not to serve others, but to find ways to be ourselves in ways that also benefit others. By saying the rest of the world isn’t off limits to your partner, you free yourself of the job of being the whole world to your partner.

The monogamy system means that people hesitate to share themselves with others in certain ways, lest they become romantically involved—for since you can only have one romantic partner at a time, you have to make sure that your one partner is a good investment (and here we are back in the capitalist market even in our love relationships). Women check men out for financial means, men ponder whether a woman’s beauty is socially recognized enough to offer the prestige he hopes to get by having her at his side, and no one is able to experiment with partners who don’t meet enough of these criteria to be potential spouses. For that matter—just as in your friendships, there may be people in the world with whom you can spend some wonderfully romantic time once or twice a month, but with whom you don’t have enough in common to date steadily and then marry, etc. (although you often see such mismatched couples, who would have been happy as more sporadic partners, making each other miserable in fifty-year marriages). Non-monogamous relationships make such things possible without paying any price of mutual unhappiness.

I’ve decided that I no longer want to have a hierarchy of value between my friendships and my love relationships: they’re both crucial, irreplaceable in my life, and f*ck anyone who wants me to choose between any of them. Not only that, but I’ve stopped classifying things as “love” or “friendship” according to arbitrary superficial details—the feelings I share with certain friends are so intimate, so beautiful, that it’s ridiculous that I don’t call them lovers just because we don’t sleep together. It’s f*cking absurd that sex should be the dividing line between our relationships, between which ones take precedence, between who we play with, live with, sleep with, who we take care of first, who we die with at last.

By the same token, in open relationships, sex isn’t weighed down with so many implications and restrictions. Love and desire outside the lines of the monogamy model are demonized and attacked on every front in this society—in the lives of women, at least, and those men who don’t want to be monogamous but also despise the superficiality and sexist bullsh*t of the “player” scene are unlikely to find support in feminist circles, either. Sex should not be contained, and it should not be made symbolic of anything—it should simply be another way for people to be physically affectionate with each other, to give each other pleasure, to be intimate and emotionally expressive, taking equal responsibility for their involvement but without having to answer to some hypercritical mass, social expectation, or moral taboo.

An open relationship is just that: it is a relationship in which people can be open with each other, and with themselves—in which nothing need be hidden or suppressed or off limits, in which the whole world can be ours to explore without fear of transgressing imaginary boundaries. When we demand total openness and honesty from each other in relationships that include limits and taboos, we’re setting ourselves up for betrayals and dishonesty: to say “be open!” without being receptive to all of the possible truths is fascist and preposterous. We have to be supportive of each other, in every aspect of our individual characters, if we want real honesty to be possible. Otherwise, we’re like Christians at confession with each other, demanding that we reveal all out of some moral imperative, with the whip of shame ready for any straying impulse. We have to learn to embrace and celebrate anything that feels good for each other. If it’s good for our lovers, it’s good for us—are we really so selfish that we can’t see this?

For one example of how this could work, let’s go back to the story of our tour. On the tour, different individuals formed close bonds, and shared private worlds together like lovers do; but they also remembered that for the community to function, they couldn’t withdraw from their relationships with everyone else. And whenever two people needed a break from each other or wanted to expand their horizons a bit, they would spend more time with others, because there were always others around them who also had things to offer. Everyone was safe and cared for, and no one was left out, because we weren’t paired off in exclusive twos.

Conversely, the scarcity economy of lovers which we have right now makes each person hurry to pick another and chain her to him, before he is left alone forever. The alternative, which this fear of solitude prevents us from seeing, seems more preferable: a world without borders, in which each of us would be part of a broader family of lovers and friends, with no distinction made between the two—and no set format for any relationship, so experimentation would be a constant feature of every one, and no relationship could ever get dull or overwhelming. To get to such a world, we just have to get used to not limiting each other, to not thinking of love as a limited commodity.

Jealousy, and what I’ve learned from it:

Yes, I still feel jealous sometimes. I’ve had experiences before of being insanely jealous—not just of another man, but of other things my partners loved or experienced or were excited about. Being able to come to terms with these things has been very important in the development of my confidence and sense of self. It took me years to feel (not just understand) that if my lover loves other things or other people as well, it doesn’t mean I am less valuable. Besides, if (he or) she truly loves me, it’s not because I match up to some list of desired qualities that someone else can outmatch me at—she loves me for reasons that are unique to me, that no one else can compete with, so I have nothing to fear. Love isn’t a scarcity commodity—it increases, just like joy, the more it is permitted and shared and given away. I don’t feel like I have to hoard anyone all to myself now. I know that doesn’t work, or help to protect love (or me, for that matter).

I consider my jealousy a worthy adversary, one that can teach me a lot about myself if I confront it rather than trying to protect myself from it by controlling others. I’ve had experiences in relationships before where lovers of mine have limited themselves in order to protect me from my jealousy, and it has been catastrophic for both of us, you can imagine. It’s just as important to me now that I help others to not be “afraid for me” as it is that I learn not to be afraid for myself.

One of the things jealousy has taught me about is my attitude toward other men. It’s interesting for me to note that I’ve never felt threatened by women whom my partners were attracted to or involved with, but other men have always made me see red. In our society, men are conditioned not to trust each other, to hate each other, to try to “protect” women from other men (which often looks more like hoarding and protecting personal “property”), and this inclination makes sense when you look at how f*cked up many men are when it comes to interacting with women. But for me to not trust any men to be something good for my partners (past the point of limited friendship) is outright paranoia and territorial bullsh*t. If I trust the judgment of my partner, I should trust her to know what and who is good for her, and to not let my each-against-all male conditioning interfere.

Some objections I’ve heard raised to open relationships:

“It sounds good in theory, but the way people feel is more important than these abstractions…”

Some people think that we come up with ideas and theories not as solutions to the real problems of our lives, but to show off what good ideas we can come up with. If it’s not clear by now that I’ve been thinking about this as an attempt to solve rather than exacerbate the problems in my love relationships, then I apologize for doing such a poor job writing this article. And hey—if you think open relationships can be tough on your emotions, just try long-term monogamy. They’re both hard sometimes.

“But human nature—”

F*ck you. Enough said. Human nature is what we make it, and you know that too, whether or not you want to own up to it—you cowardly excuse-mongering bastards.

“I guess that’s fine if it’s what you want to try, but luckily I only want monogamy for myself! I’m all set!”

That’s great for you, if it really is true—for the time being, at least. We’re always so thrilled when our desires happen to coincide with social rules: then it’s easy for us to feel proud of our desires, to think they’re beautiful, since they are universally accepted (indeed, everything around you is reinforcing the idea that what you are lucky enough to feel for the moment is perfection itself)… but you might not always be that “lucky,” you know. Should you (or someone else) ever feel a need that isn’t satisfied by the monogamy system, if you haven’t already made the effort to get others to understand and accept the idea that there are many different acceptable kinds of relationships and desire, you’ll be back at ground zero, finding yourself misunderstood, hated, called slut and whore. Nobody should have to go through that, ever, so whatever you personally need, you have a stake in promoting non-monogamy as a viable option too. Otherwise, we’ll all live in fear of waking up one day feeling a desire that is unacceptable—and that fascist power of moralism over our lives is exactly what I thought we were trying to fight in punk rock.

That’s why I consider myself non-monogamous right now, even though I’ve only had sexual relations with one person over the past five months: I do what I do not out of a commitment to monogamy, but rather a commitment to meeting my own needs and those of others, with no f*cking regard for social norms—and to supporting others who do the same thing, whether or not they do it in the same way. Non-monogamy isn’t about sex, anyway—it’s a general approach to relationships with people, as I discussed above.

“Open relationships are bad for women—it’s just another way for men to be selfish, and absent when women need them…”

This is the kind of sexist remark I’d rather not have to deal with, but I’ve heard it before. It reminds me of the old myth that all [“good”] women want “responsible” monogamous relationships, and the ones who don’t must be confused [so it’s OK for us to look down on them, just as misogynist pigs call them sluts]. First of all, women have been the ones who introduced me to most of these ideas. Besides the women I know personally, the very best book I’ve been able to find on this subject (The Ethical Slut, by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, on Greenery Press), which I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in the issue, is written by women [if you can’t find it, write me and I’ll lend you my copy]. Second of all, a lot of the men and women involved in pioneering different models for relationships over the past few decades have not been involved in heterosexual relationships, so in those cases this is a totally unfounded criticism. Third—people who say this make it sound like they think men are only emotionally nurturing to women who are paying them off for it with sex and denying them access to any other sex as a way to be sure the payoff will always work. God, I hope that’s not the best we can hope for in heterosexual relations…

Finally—yes, it’s true that men have been conditioned to be selfish and somewhat less than nurturing in their relationships, and just shifting relationship models is not going to cure that. But that’s going to be a problem in whatever kinds of relationships they have, not just open ones, and it has to be dealt with separately. A loving, caring boy is not going to go running off for sex with some stranger when his lover (or one of his lovers) really needs him. There are so many dangers in our sexuality, since so much of it has been programmed by our enemies; we men need to unlearn the pressures that make us seek out superficial sex as a way to avoid real intimacy and support. That brings me to the third objection:

“So does this mean you’re giving up on your romantic dreams, your hopes for living happily ever after, just trading them for a series of sexual episodes with acquaintances?”

No, not at all. I’m not interested in evading personal commitments and long term relationships—rather, I want to protect them from being unnecessarily at risk. I want to secure my romantic relationships, so they won’t be at risk from trivial things like temporary boredom or attraction to others, by creating relationships that are sustainable through changes in my life and needs. That way I can hope to have my lovers as long as I have my friends, ‘til death do us part for real, and no old taboos (or jealousy, insecurity, etc.) will interfere. Sure, this will be hard sometimes, just like everything is hard sometimes—but the rewards of making this work will be greater in every way, I think.

What I’m hoping to do here is free us from the unnecessary tragedies of our love affairs, the insecurities and possessiveness that deny us the commitment and pleasure we could have together. In order to be ready to remove those obstacles, we have to be ready to face the real tragedies head on, with great courage: we can’t demand that others protect us from our insecurities by limiting themselves, and we have to face the fact that there will be moments when we are alone. The price of not doing this is absurd—today, we suffer both the necessary and unnecessary tragedies in our relationships, because of the courage we lack. Is it too much to ask that we try something new?

UNITED STATES. The Maine Human Rights Commission has ruled that a transgender girl is allowed to use the girls’ bathroom at school. She had been using the girls bathroom without incident until a young lad, egged on by his charming grandpa, followed the girl into the bathroom and harassed her. As a result, the school decided the girl needs to use the faculty’s bathroom instead (what logic!). Fortunately the Maine Human Rights Commission intervened.

GLOBAL. There was a lovely wave of sexism in the wake of the announcement of lab-created sperm. The Guardian’s columnist Tanya Gold concluded that women are domestic and boring, and men are obsessed with tech wank and  violence. But women still need men because otherwise there’d be no-one to have sex with. Apparently in the world-without-men, lesbians have disappeared. My guess is they’ve disappeared because there are no more men to hate! Ahahaha! It’s a veritable carnival of all kinds of stereotyping, and that’s always more fun than several barrels of primates. The Times Online gives us 101 uses for a man beyond sperm production. Men are kind of dumb! And they’re kind of adorably doglike, and do such silly manly things! Like #13: “Ensuring that the children learn to play happily on their own by applying special male method of childcare, namely sitting on the sofa reading the paper while they set fire to the house.” Because men don’t give a fuck about their children. Everyone knows this. Except my dad. Oh, please stop, Times Online, you’re killing me with your funny.

GLOBAL. Consistent condom use can reduce your risk of contracting herpes by up to 30%. Consistent here means every time you have sex. More here and here.

UNITED STATES. Another gay panic defence in court, and this time it results in acquittal. Man stabs another man 61 times, then claims he was protecting himself from sexual advances. Is let go by the jury, because, hey, if a person with the same bits as you comes on to you, it’s their fault if they get stabbed. 61 times.

“Biedermann said Hauser threatened to sexually assault him, then held him around the neck and tried to stab him in the stomach with another weapon, an 16-inch dagger. Biedermann testified he escaped Hauser’s grasp, gained control of the weapon and stabbed Hauser as many times as he could. There were no witnesses.”

Regardless of possible threats of sexual violence… I may be going on a limb here… but stabbing someone 61 times is no longer mere self defence.

Image from documentary Be Like Others

SWEDEN. A couple in Sweden is trying to raise their kid without gender norms. They refuse to tell people the child’s sex and don’t use gendered pronouns when referring to the child. The child gets to decide what gendered behaviours to adopt and can experiment freely.

GLOBAL. A new documentary, Be Like Others is out, depicting the lives of young Iranians who undergo sex reassignment surgery. Some of them are gay men who view sex reassignment surgery as the only way they can live in Iran and adhere to the strict gender binary. The film’s website has reviews and clips.

GLOBAL. Diagnosing Difference is a new documentary about the effects of having a medically diagnosable gender identity is out. The film is currently being screened at film festivals and US campuses.

“Using the diagnosis as a departure point, the participants debunk myths and misconceptions about transgender identities, challenge stereotypical gender expectations, and offer educative insight into the terms and language used to describe transgender lives.”

Go here for more onformation about the film, and here to see clips.

Välitila is made up of two words, väli and tila. Väli means the space between two differing objects or states. So for example there is a väli between between each word that I write. Tila is the word that means measurable space. So an object or place can have tila (but it’s not the same as the final frontier).

Together they make up the word that is closest to transition, välitila. But there is a marked difference, which is the major difference between Finnish and English in the sense of how the languages make us see the world. Transition is a state of being. You can be in a state of transition. Välitila is a space. You can be inside välitila, as you would be inside an airport. This may seem like a small thing, but the way we understand the world is eons apart in those little words.

So when we use the word transperson as English speakers, we are thinking about a person in a state of being. Going through transition they are moving between those states which are the recognized cissexes. But transition leads to being trans. It is a state that becomes who you are since it is a state that differs from the cisnorm. Transition is the journey a person takes. Trans is what they become through deciding to transition.

The word has never been properly translated into Finnish because in this sense välitila, being the key word for describing transition, means a completely different thing. So if we shorten it to, for example välimies – or transman, Finnish speakers will not think of transmen, but will think of a man who is a gobetween. Maybe someone who is arbitrating a dispute. Since välitila means a place in between, it must be something that one crosses. It is not something that becomes inherent in you, it is an abstract place where people can go on their way between two separate places.

So if we use this word, välitila, the whole concept of transperson changes. They are a person experiencing a place of transition between two states. They are neither completely women or completely men. When the transition is over, they stop being “in trans” and become coherent wholes because that is the meaning of the word: välitila only comes into existence when two coherent states are not seamlesly joined. Through those wholes, a välitila can be discerned.

So for a Finnish speaker, who is in välitila, transition is not a story that has a beginning, middle and an end. The word in English does: there is the moment when you leave your original state, the going from that to another and in the end closure as the action completes itself. Thus, through transition a person becomes transsexual. They have walked through the story of transition and it has added to them something that is not part of those who have not.

In välitila, you are simply navigating through a state that is in between. But you never become it, the place never becomes you unless you decide to stay. You do not grow into a transperson through välitila. Being inside välitila is the only moment you can in the logic of the word välitila be trans. And thus if we think about people who are in this välitila, we notice that they can be there for different reasons. There are those who might never find their way into either man or woman, or those who go from one to another. There can be movement, but it’s arch and direction changes. There is no law of motion.

The choices they make, the things they do become secondary. What is shared is the sense of being between. Those people who have lived in the välitila of the sexes are not separated by categories like butch vs. transman or queen vs. transwoman. What they share is the experience of the place, not the choices they make.

And in that sense, the moment we start to use Finnish words to talk about our existence, that existence changes. We simply become the people who know what it’s like to be there, beyond what we are percieved to be at any given moment of our lives.

HONDURAS. Reuters features a photo essay depicting transpeople in Honduras.

MEXICO. A city regulation that enabled police violence and abuses has been repealed in Puerto Vallarta. The regulation allowed the police to harass and arrest whoever they felt was engaging in “public practices that indicate the development of an abnormal sexual life.”

Historically, misdemeanors codes have been used to persecute, abuse and arrest people whose sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression deviates from social norms. These regulations have enabled various types of police abuse, such as the arrests of gay men and lesbians for simple acts of affection, like holding each other’s hands. Such discrimination—always in violation of basic human rights—occured in Puerto Vallarta despite contravening the provisions of Mexico’s constitution.

TURKEY. Hossein Alizadeh writes about the conditions of Iranian glbtq refugees in Turkey.

For LGBT refugees in Turkey, this is the daily struggle they must contend with: away from family and friends, with painful memories of persecution and harassment in their native country, they are now unwelcome strangers, living in extreme poverty, isolation and hopelessness, waiting for what feels like an eternity to find out if any country on the planet will give them a chance to live like human beings.

More in the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission blog.

UNITED STATES. The Stranger, a Seattle paper has published its annual queer issue, titled “Shocked and Repelled”. This year’s issue features personal stories about polyamory and kinks (among other topics) from an adult American standpoint.

UNITED STATES. New Hampshire has legalised same-sex marriage, being the 6th state to do so in the United States. You may enter into a legally binding union with any consenting adult of your choosing in the following states: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine. New York and Washington, D. C. will honor your choice of spouse but will not marry you unless you happen to be of different legal genders.

Danny La Rue in character

UNITED KINGDOM. British drag queen Danny La Rue has died at the age of 81. He said of his character: “It took me 20 years to make something that wasn’t acceptable, acceptable. I mean, it’s not funny just to put on a frock and a wig. It takes a lot of time to develop a character. But I suppose I must be doing something right, otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted.” You can read Danny La Rue’s obituary at the Guardian.

GLOBAL. The Amnesty International Report 2009 is out. Questioning Transphobia lists the items that concern transsexual and transgender rights.

GLOBAL. Jamison Green, a researcher and author is gathering material for a book called The FTM Guide to SEX (working title) and you can take part by answering a survey. There are separate surveys for transmen and the partners of transmen. Act quickly, the information is being collected only until June 30 2009.

Angie Zapata

UNITED STATES. Transwomen are being targeted in Memphis, Tennessee. There have been 5 violent attacks on transwomen since 2006. The latest victim is Kelvin Denton who was shot on May 27 and is in critical condition.  More at the Curvature and Pam’s House Blend. In the United States the perpetrators of hate crimes against transpeople tend to use the trans panic defence in court. In July 2008 in Colorado Angie Zapata was beaten to death by Allen Ray Andrade after he discovered Angie Zapata was a transwoman. His defence in court rested on the trans panic excuse -- the shock of realizing he had had sex with a non-cissexual made him kill. Andrade was convicted of first-degree murder and hate crimes, this being the first time anyone has been convicted of a hate crime in connection of a transperson’s murder. More on Angie Zapata’s murder at Shakesville: 1, 2.

UNITED STATES. And some happy news to wrap things up: Sergio Garcia, an openly gay fellow, was elected prom queen at a Los Angeles high school. Associated Press reports (via Yahoo News): “He also promised that he would be wearing a suit on prom night, but ‘don’t be fooled: Deep down, I am a queen.’” Sergio Garcia’s interview below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgl-OxWKYKE

The same attitude is with psychology. They wanted to see me within their existing structure. My Bible studies had confirmed me that the Bible could not be true by any imaginable margin. When the Bible ruled the impossible demand of simultaneous love and fear, modern psychology plays on the fear of collapse and insanity. I re-entered the realm of psychology obediently when I started to transition as a transsexual 1997 in the renowned Lapinlahti ward, Helsinki. The chief psychiatrist, Dr. Heikman, had the queen from chess placed by his door. I thought that told everything I wanted to know about his personality. I was fortunate, I never saw him. There were many transsexuals in the gender program and we made jokes about the Lapinlahti staff so they threatened us with a libel suit. After that we spoke of them in anagrams. Even ten years after people in the transgender community come and ask who is “I Varttihuora” (I Quarter Whore) everybody talks about and Veronica Pimenoff’s study, published in German, has one of the jokes translated in it. We were pretty sure that the staff knew nothing about transsexuality. We were advised by the community to “do our homework”. In that time it meant reading all pieces of literature we could get hold of about transsexuals, and none of them described our experience. Serano’s groundbreaking “Whipping Girl” was not yet published. In the internet, almost everything that related to transsexuals was porn. If females are raised in a world with some pornographic imaginery, we are raised with nothing but pornographic imaginery. No wonder many of us became prostitutes.

Prostitution was a quest for sanity in a world that was insane. It was a rebel against moral, acceptable gender norms and the middle class values. The dim-lit alleys and strange bedrooms felt more our home than this hypocritical, middle-class, society that was pretending to tolerate us. The prostitute support center Pro-tukipiste confirmed that transsexual prostitutes usually do well. And why not. For us, prostitution was queer and empowering. It was the first signifier that the values force-fed on us were false.

Even though it was evident that the psychologists did not know anything about gender, I took seriously when they gave a diagnosis of mixed personality disorder with narcissistic, schizotypal and unstable traits. I thought that they made science so that my transsexualism would not influence their assessment of my personality. Was I ever wrong. I read a lot of books about narcissism and mental health. Most notably I read Alexander lowen’s “Narcissism: Denial of True Self”. I found it when I was a house cleaner and I happened to clean customer’s bookshelf and bought it. Customers are paranoid about janitors stealing and perhaps they needed the book. At any rate, I learned, put it simple, that narcissists are crazy people that are pretending to be sane. They do not fear anything more than insanity. With transsexualism the suicides are frequent with people that transition for false reasons. I had been convinced throughout my life that I was crazy, mentally unstable and weird. The one thing I mostly feared of was if I really was.

My parents were bourgeoisie in the sense described in CrimethInc book “Days of War, Nights of Love”, they were all about how things appear in front of general public. I was the black sheep of the family. However, they felt that they needed to keep contact with me probably because it would seem odd that they did not know about the whereabouts of their offspring if asked. I got a ten year curfew for the whole province of Kuopio so they were eager to keep me at a distance. After I transitioned, I often thought why I felt suicidal. Deicide sums my thoughts about it: “I have no problem coping with my life, it is this world that wants me to die”. It really was my family, psychology and Christianity that wanted to kill me, everything that I felt precious and special in my experience. I cut ties with my parents because I could not stand their transphobia that had continued for more than a decade.

I had god gender congruity, my “subconscious sex” – as Serano calls it was in aligment with my gender expression and body. It was like in a cartoon with man, dog and a car, man asking dog: “Now when you have caught it, what are you going to do with it?”. I am a woman, and I had always said that being a woman, and gender congruent is a prerequisite for finding my self and growing up. I was almost 40. What would happen if I became crazy? Nobody would care about an elderly woman being a little bit disturbed or weird.

My first decision was whether I should trust people or not. Based on my experience with people, nobody would blame me if I didn’t trust people. Then I would be all alone, cynical and cursing, but my life would be safe and I could as well kill myself. The other alternative was more exciting: I trusted people and showed them that they prove their worthiness for me. I might burn my fingers a few times, and I could be abused and become crazy, but I was already willing to take that step. What can I lose. Besides, my belief in Anarchism relied on trusting people. Deacon Jaakko Ahvenainen said people should have some hope in their lives and how can you have a hope if you did not believe in people.
Hierarchies make people subservient. That is problematic for traditionally sexist males, when their natural inclination for “a man does and a man answer about his doings” freedom is castrated and they are made subservient to welfare-control state, so they made up a lie that all people are prone to be evil and wicked so that the control and hierarchy are actually needed because they lack courage in standing up this society and the courage of being labeled weird and insane. That is why narcissism is more common in males.
Determination in transwomen is scorned by some American self-appointed feminists. It is seen as leftover from mythical “male privilege”, which I just criticized in last chapter. On the other hand, if we are disempowered sissies, we are seen as conforming to traditional woman’s roles. Arguments should be falsifiable. During transitioning we are encouraged to be sissies so we convince the gatekeepers. There is a so-called “real-life test”, which has nothing to do with real life. During that time we are encouraged for traditional female presentation, despite of our natural inclinations which could be androgynous or bigendered. I heard about a transman that was a transvestite and thought he was cool. I tried male clothes on and let facial hair grow a little, but I did not enjoy it. I had reached a my gender limit.

My gender expression is dictated by Helsinki weather and my mode of transportation, which is bicycle. Therefore I appear androgynous, which has lead to confusion. I’ve had a female and a male homosexual having a crush on me. At first I thought the moment was embarrassing, but now I think that is cool, I can serve as a medium for other people’s self exploration by just being my normal self.
The more I shatter image of transsexual normativity, the more I am silenced. The media concentrates on women who currently undergo transition, so they can underline that the birth-record gender holds some validity whereas the real female gender is artificial and has to be maintained by different medical and cosmetic operations whom they are only happy to explain in the minutest detail. Therefore they promote the idea of the naturalness of birth gender. They are neither interested in transwomen pre-transition experience of desperately trying to pass as male nor us that have lived loing life after transitioning. Especially they do not want to hear that we are questioning and playing with gender whilst we do not question or “regret” our transitioning in any way.
When I had taken the risk of trusting people, I met a depressive woman who kept her own blog. She was recommended a self-help book “Reinventing your life” by Jeffrey Young, Ph.D. and Janet Klosko, Ph.D. I noticed that I had been following the pieces of advice in the book throughout my life. I try to stretch my experiences where they feel uncomfortable and analyze why I feel like I feel. I was in the woods camping at the night alone and I woke up in the middle of the night and heard sounds of birds and other animal life. Even though I recognized the sounds and knew they were harmless, I felt intense fear and anxiety. I analyzed it afterwards. Without being masochistic I feel that I grow by experiencing things that cause me discomfort. In the Madventures it was said “comfort breeds fear”. I think also that sharp identities and tight boxes, or lifetraps breed fear. Therefore I am queer, because I want to be open and fearless. My life is too short for being fearful. Besides, it is plain stupid to close people out just because they do not happen to please my current whim. Studying other people’s fears might tell something about my fears.

Psychological diagnoses split people in smaller and smaller groups, tribes and identities. I know many lesbians discovering themselves through therapy. Perhaps they will, someday. It seems so time consuming. Put frankly, when they are looking inwards they have forgotten to look at other people and what joins us. I like the queer nonidentity, it connects, rather than separates, and brings multitudinous stories together.