nclarkson's blog

Too much testosterone kills brain cells

This article has been circulating on trans mailing lists. Maybe it's worth being a little concerned about the effects of testosterone on FTMs brains, but generally speaking, haven't we been at least a little concerned since we started T about the other health risks posed by testosterone?

There's lots really interesting stuff going on here around the gendering of biology as well. Lots of feminist theorists would remind us that our understanding of sex is always already gendered. That is, the way we understand masculinity and femininity strongly influences our scientific approach to sex and biology. Emily Martin, feminist medical anthropologist has written an article called "The Egg and the Sperm" where she talks about how scientific and medical textbooks talking about eggs and sperm gender those cells. Sperm gets characterized as aggressive and active--swimming and the like--while the egg is passive and waiting like a damsel in a castle.

An email about Beyond Marriage.org came across the Queer Studies listserv I'm on. The summary provides a very interesting vision for queer politics. The authors of this statement would like to see GLBT political groups (among others) focus on expanding the rights and recognition of a broader variety of kinship structures.

I've been particularly interested lately in anti-racist training. I know how frustrated it makes me to be tokenized as a transguy; I know that I don't know enough of what I need to know to make sure I'm conscious of the ways in which I might tokenize and otherwise frustrate people of color.

A link to the following story came across the gay Indy email list. I think it speaks well to some of the problems of white gay activists perspectives on how they think people of color should fit in to a white gay activist agenda.

Please take some time to read some of this piece.

Taking back the black gay movement

Why is it all the white-led LGBT groups think they know how to reach out to African-Americans about gay rights? And do they willingly push black queer groups out of the way in the process?

By Jasmyne A. Cannick

In an earlier entry, I talked about my first day at Starbucks and having to confront my manager about a potentially transphobic comment. Here's an update on how things are going since I actually came out to my manager.

In producing this self portrait, I was trying to represent something more universal and simple than my “otherness,” an emotion I had hoped people could identify with directly. It seems like my scars—which had to be part of the photo, which I want to be part of the photo—have prevented people from identifying with the simpler message I was trying to communicate.

My first day at a new job, I had to confront my manager about a potentially transphobic remark.