Beautiful Music for Ugly Children

by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is the name of Gabe Williams' new radio show, where he gets to exercise his talent as disc jockey and hang out with his neighbor John, his musical mentor. It's the only part of his life that really makes sense--his family refuses to stop calling him Elizabeth, he can't see how to get a job or go to college as Gabe, and now that Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is getting popular at school, he's got to contend with some bullies making serious threats, the overtures from two girls who may or may not know what they're asking, and his best friend Paige acting weirder and weirder.

Excellent. I zipped through it. The characters are compelling and believable, at times walking masses of contradictions that still somehow make sense. The plot pulls you forward relentlessly. Cronn-Mills manages to slide some history in there without slowing down the book. Paige doesn't get a satisfying conclusion, but there's a fine line between concluding that something will remain unresolved (as happens for another subplot) and simply seeming to forget about it.

Overall rating: 5/5

Project upshot: This book is almost certainly going on the touchstone list.

Transgender 101: A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue

by Nicholas M Teich

Transgender 101 does what it says on the tin--it's a simple explanation geared mostly toward family, friends, and significant others of transgender people explaining what being transgender is. It gives the best clear-cut, non-judgmental explanation of 'feeling like' some gender that doesn't match up with your assigned sex is, with a detailed explanation of the differences between assigned sex, gender identity, and gender expression, and their interactions. It gives descriptions of the hormones and surgery trans people can choose to take/undergo and their physical effects while emphasizing that everyone is different and not everyone will want hormones, surgery, or both. It's also useful for newly out (to themselves) transpeople who want a clear-cut explanation of their choices, the limitations surrounding those choices, and what is likely to be going through the heads of family, friends, and coworkers as they start to come out. Finally, it provides a brief history of the understanding of transgenderism and touches on the intersections with class, race, nationality, and sexism.

Its only flaw was some debate about terms--I'm not sure it's accurate in its definitions of 'transgender' and 'transsexual', and it didn't mention that these terms are used differently by different people. Also, it gave outdated definitions for 'pansexual' and 'asexual' and didn't touch on the romantic spectrum at all, but I thought it could be forgiven for that since sexual/romantic orientation wasn't its focus--in fact, it repeated several times that they were not the same thing and should not be treated as such. It used permutations of'gender assigned' and 'natal sex' but focused on the concept that the letter on a birth certificate is assigned by a medical professional or a parent, not something inherent and immutable. It's current, which is really nice--it provides descriptions of both the just-outdated DSM-IV and its Gender Identity Disorder and the just-in DSM-V and its Gender Dysphoria. Definitely recommended for anyone with basic questions about what it means to be trans, both in the 'definition' sense and the 'now what' sense. It focused on MTF and FTM transpeople, but did acknowledge other gender identities, specifically genderqueer, and other types of queering the gender binary which may or may not be tied to transgenderism for any given person, specifically, gender variant/gender nonconforming, crossdressing, drag, and disorders of sex development/intersexism.

Overall rating: 4.5/5

Project upshot: Not eligible for use in the paragraph I need for the conference, this book will still be helpful in terms of what Leandra's going to find as s/he starts to do research, and for informing the reactions of various people in the story. I think I won't give it back to the library just yet.

Introduction

So, I found the original first draft of the first two pages, made it into a second draft, and am happy to present you with a working title (Querido, Querida, Queride), a birth-assigned name for our protagonist (Leandra) a timeframe (college) and some actual original writing.

Introducción

Jimena, mi mejor amiga, and I have talked together in Spanish all our lives.

Jimena is Latina. Her parents are Puerto Rican, and the language has been part of her heritage. She has grown up bilingual.

I am white mixed-European of who knows how many generations ago, and I speak Spanish because Jimena does. We met in kindergarten. Jimena, being very young and not quite knowing the difference between English and Spanish, talked to me in both at once, the way her parents do to her.

“Ay, niña, eat your almuerzo!”

“Son mis blocks! No play con ellos!”

I, of course, didn’t understand a word, and did not give her back her blocks. Jimena set up an almighty fuss, I set up a moderate fuss in protest, both our parents were called, and by the end of the day, my mother decided that I was not too young to start learning another language, and began teaching me basic Spanish words in the evenings. She found a Spanish tutor for me when I was six, and I learned Spanish amongst a handful of other small children whose parents had high aspirations for them. I practiced my new words on Jimena, who gave me new ones to ask about. Así, we began our own strange way of teaching each other both languages and developing our own mezcla.

We stayed best friends throughout elementary school, middle school, and then high school. I took Spanish in high school to perfect the use of the language, even though the intro classes were so easy I slept through them. Jimena thought she knew it well enough not to bother, and took French. She got tired of French in our sophomore year, though, and we took intensive Spanish together our last two years, which is where we both really cultivated a love of the nuances of Spanish.

Did you know, for example, that to speak of time passing, one literally says, “It makes however long since I did this” instead of “It’s been however many years since I did this”? Or that to express romantic love, one says, “I want you”?

Sorry. Language major. I digress.

Jimena’s family love that I can speak it with them. Jimena loves that, at five years old, she already had enough influence over me to get me to learn a whole new language. We both love that it’s nuestra lengua, our language, what we use when we’re trying to speak privately in public, what we use to tell a secret, emphasize a point, express emotion. The only thing I don’t love about the Spanish language, and other Latin-based languages, is gender.

Every noun in Spanish has a gender, masculine or feminine. Every adjective has to match. Una muchacha es guapa. Un muchacho es guapo. This is easy enough for me to do without thinking, that isn’t the problem.

The problem is that I flinch a little every time Jimena uses a feminine adjective for me.

The problem is that I flinch a lot every time I have to use a feminine adjective for myself.

I don’t understand why. And it’s getting worse.

From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation​, FTM and Beyond

by Morty Diamond
This book was too complex and I have too many quotes and feelings to write this as a typical book review. But I'll try to be reasonably...ah, what's the word...it means going from A to C by way of B instead of Kumquat. I can hear the voices of almost everyone I know asking me why I'm going to bother. A few things you'll want to note while you're still up here at the top. There's a lot of quotes in here. They're all formatted by author of piece, page number. They're good quotes. But if you're not interested in quotes, there's still more writing at the bottom!
     "I started off my life as a boy with a slight disadvantage, nothing so big that it could not be overcome with a little ingenuity and spunk, but a setback, nonetheless. You see, despite being a little boy from the very start destined to become the handsome and talented man I am today, I happened to have had the unexpected surprise of being born a girl. I’ve yet to come across a reasonable explanation for this mix-up, but there’s no sense crying over spilt milk." ~Eli Wadley, 99
I am calling this book Inside Out because like a lot of nonfiction, it has a ridiculously long title. It's a fitting one, though. This book is a collection of personal essays, poems, and one entry that included parts of both, all by people on the trans* spectrum about their experience being there. They identified in ways that would be countless if there were infinite chapters, but they all had one thing in common: They were labeled female at birth and have had some form of complaint about that. Some identify as FTM. One complains about that term because he was never female. One wonders how much of his desire to be a boy came from being trans* and how much from the patriarchy, and refrains from giving himself a label at all. Several found themselves most comfortable somewhere between gender extremes.


"I’ve been blessed to have my physical form be an educational experience for the rest of the world. It’s a truly beautiful existence, riding the line of gender and seeing everything from both a female and male perspective." ~Rocco Rinaldi Kayiatos, 74

"My mom and practically the rest of the world assumed I now identified as FTM female to male) transsexual, but that was a false accusation. First off, I was not going from F to M. Whatever gender my parents chose to raise me was their choice but the gender I truly am is not my choice…It’s just who I am, and who I was meant to be. I never felt I was F because I never was, and therefore the FTM identity does me no justice. Recognizing this helped me form my MTM male to male) identity." ~Johnny Giovanni Righini, 78

  This book could be Transgender 201. 101 gave you the basics: what does my parent/child/lover/friend mean when they say they're trans? They want to be a boy/girl? Doesn't everyone sometimes? But you're still a girl, you haven't had *that* surgery, right? This book takes you beyond, to answering the questions that can only be asked of indvidual people, rather than the community at large. Do I say 'transgendered'? Many people find that objectifying, but some still use it as self-identification. Best not to use it in larger contexts, but respect people's wishes one-on-one. Is it accurate to say someone 'used to be a woman'? Same answer.
There are people in this book who have had no surgery or hormones, some who have had 'top' surgery, and everything else. There's a person who uses 'he' pronouns as a way to screw with people's expectations even more than as a comfortable fit. Many of the authors never say what pronouns they use. One author writes about black boys, one describes growing up in a traditional Hispanic house, and one blatantly admits to having a life made easier by being white middle-class. The last essay is a neat transition into the beginning of intersectionality and queer of color critique, which has its roots in women of color feminism, queer studies, native studies, and more. I took a course on queer of color critique and it's worth studying, but you'll want a strong background in gender and sexuality first.
Anyway. I think this is a must-have for a trans* person trying to find their identity, or words to describe it.

     "One of my MTF friends has spoken of transition as crossing the fear barrier.” We feel commanded to do this crazy thing, to slash the ropes of family ties and crush the bones of our previous values. As we start to walk through the fire, we have the opportunity for a reprieve, as Abraham also received, we do not have to be murderers and no one has to die. We can transition safely and usually less catastrophically than we feared. But by our willingness to have made the worst possible sacrifice, we are reborn and have a new relationship with the powers that be."  ~Tucker Lieberman, 24

     "We are diplomats. We are go-betweens for men and women. This is true whether we embrace or deny it. We are here to make peace with ourselves, our lovers, other transgendered people, and to carve out a home in the cliffs that sprang up between the sexes. We belong to the holy order of the self-sacrificing diplomats." ~Tucker Lieberman, 25

     "Whatever gender current or gender vector we have, whether our birdhouse hollow points toward the rising or the setting sun or the harvest moon, we are all pursuing the question of how to be at peace with our bodies in the world and to realize, through that peace, the true meaning of it all. At that point, gender is no longer about navigating one’s life between two categories."~Tucker Lieberman, 25

     "It isn’t about becoming” another person—I already am who I am—I just want my body to reflect that. It’s not like I am suddenly changing from the person you’ve always known—this is more about your willingness to see who I’ve always been." ~Cooper Lee Bombardier, 28

    "I am not sure which is worse, feeling invisible as a tranny when being perceived as a butch dyke or feeling invisible as a queer when being perceived as a man." ~Cooper Lee Bombardier, 29

     "I don’t want to disappear into the world as a straight man." ~Cooper Lee Bombardier, 29

     "For awhile, I was swindled into thinking, as many of us are, that there is a correct” way to be trans, we have to take hormones, get surgeries, get a GID diagnosis, change pronouns, pass, feel like a boy in a girl’s body, and get a preppy haircut. My inclination is to break rules or flee from them, and if this long list of rigorous requirements was what it took to be trans, I didn’t want that." ~Boots Potential, 33

     "I know what is acceptable once I leave the comfort of my genderqueer microcosm where self-identification takes precedence over body parts, voices, and names. I know that there are ways that I can act, ways that I can present myself when I step outside of my door so that people will not question who I am. It’s hard not to fall into that." ~Wyatt Swindler, 67

     "I think it is sad that even the most enlightened people seem to think that gender stereotypes are what makes people want to transition. I used to be guilty of that myself, when hearing about the decisions of my trans friends. In fact, my belief that only sexists would want to transition was the main reason why I fought so hard against coming out to myself and anyone else. In fact, it’s the notion that anyone who transitions is antifeminist and patriarchal which kept me from dealing with this for so many years."  ~Gavriel Alejandro Levi Ansara, 92

     "I am transitioning not because I think men and women have different characteristics, because I am emphatically NOT a gender essentialist. I am transitioning because I feel most comfortable when people refer to me in male terms and because I feel most comfortable and liberated in my body as a man." ~Gavriel Alejandro Levi Ansara, 93

One of my favorites was about a man who was wondering about the fact he attended a women's college, and whether this would continue to haunt him on job applications. He finds it ironic, being a man and being an alum of Bryn Mawr.

Yes, Bryn Mawr! I go to Bryn Mawr! And I have such a lot, statistically speaking, trans* friends there. I want to call them all up and tell them I found a brother of theirs who went before them. This fellow talks about how he learned a lot there, how to be a feminist, what it is like to be a woman in those circumstances, and is he expected to just forget four years of his life in order not to be constantly haunted by his past?

“Will I switch my memories to the coed college a mile down the road?”~Daniel Ray Soltis, 128

I know exactly which college he's talking about, and have been there several times. No, I want to tell him, you will be a proud queer Mawrtyr, for isn't it just this past Plenary we started rewriting our constitution to include gender-neutral language, isn't it here people have asked me my pronouns, not, I think, because I present very masculine, but because my name is Phoenix and even the slightest hint of gender non-conformation is enough to make people here want to check, isn't it here that despite years of roots as an all-women's college my friend group is the most inclusive place for trans* people that I have ever seen?

Now, I know my trans* friends have their problems with it, with the casual use of 'garden party girls' and 'freshwomen', and I don't want to act like we are some kind of utopia for trans* people. But--and this is why I am not an activist--I want to compare it to the way I grew up and the way most of my high school people live and the blank looks my parents give me when I throw out 'sy' as a pronoun and explain that there is more than one way of being agender or asexual (or anything else, but those are my pet peeves right now), and celebrate how good it actually is at Bryn Mawr. I'm so freaking proud to be here.

Overall rating: 5/5

Project upshot: I think I'll get a lot out of this book for the project!