the bois, the bois

Speaking of the ladies college that dare not speak it's name -- Smith College got a lot of press two years ago for removing the terms "woman", "she", and "hers" from it's student constitution (replacing it with the gender neutral "the student"). Officially Smith remains a "women's college" -- restricting entrance to "female" students. The little paradox is that this fact may be what makes it a place in which so many kids are exploring transgender identity and ideas. One such kid appears in a Transgeneration a documentary airing on the Sundance channel September 20th.

Another thing I find fascinating about the growing trans movement -- aside from the huge growth of FtM identified kids -- is the coverage that it garners in the mainstream and small town press. Ft. Wayne comes up with a headline like "Newest campus minority are kids who shun original sex" Can you imagine how long the education reporter frowned over this headline, how confused she was, how many bad puns he came up with before settling on the biblical ring of "original sex"? There's an obvious sensitivity and effort behind the piece, if not a simplification of the issues at hand, but The Restroom Revolution? Come on, the last thing we need in queer politics is more overly-self-serious martyr-complex analogies.

Which is why I so often cringe whenever images of the civil rights movement are used as paralells for gay rights. The gays face inordinate amounts of violence, prejudice, and societal demonification -- but to compare that to the state-sponsored troop-enforced push against desegregation is entirely too much. There are interesting points of intersection, connection, and cooperation between anti-racist and anti-homophobic struggles; things shared, borrowed, and learned on both sides. But to use civil rights for nostalgia and sympathy is misdirected. It takes away from it's unique place in our history. Take that HRC!