A Dahl’s House

Crossposted from Trans Group Blog and Shakesville:

The defense attorney for the alleged killer in the hate-crime murder of Lawrence King argues it’s the victim’s fault for not conforming to gender norms.

King, who was openly gay and had begun wearing make-up, earrings, and high-heeled boots to his junior high school, had been harassed by other students, including Brandon McInerney, 14, who is charged with shooting King twice in the back the head during an English class shortly after school started. Fellow students said they witnessed confrontations between the two in the days before the shooting, including King’s teasing McInerney and telling him that he liked him.

But to hear McInerney’s defense attorney tell it, the problem was that King should have been closeted and straight-acting:

[Senior Deputy Public Defender William] Quest said he believes school administrators supported one student expressing himself and his sexuality — King — and ignored how it affected other kids, despite complaints. Cross-dressing isn’t a normal thing in adult environments, he said, yet 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds were expected to just accept it and go on.

Now if you’ve ever been around a courthouse, you’ll know that blaming victims, sullying their reputations, and/or claiming they provoked the accused are part of the standard repertoire of the defense, whose job it is to raise doubts. Disappointingly, I’ve heard comments on various LGBTQ blogs that McInerney’s attorney is “just doing his job” and obligated to make the best argument he can for his client. But while the latter is true, there are a variety of arguments that aren’t allowed in court because society considers them illegitimate and unacceptable.

If a student killed another student for dressing “differently” because they wore a yarmulke or a head scarf, or a t-shirt with a biblical quote on it, we’d call it for what was: religious bigotry.

If a white student killed a black student for creating a “disruption” simply by attending school, we’d call what it was: racist.

If a teenage boy shot a girl he didn’t like because she kept flirting with him, we wouldn’t consider that a justifiable provocation.

Society and the law don’t consider any of these valid excuses for the accused’s actions, or reasons for lesser punishment; in fact, California specifically outlawed the infamous “gay panic” defense in the wake of the public revulsion about its use by the murderers of trans woman Gwen Araujo—a law that Quinn seems to be trying to do an end-run around by claiming it was King who was doing the harassing, when in fact King was just standing up to a bigger, stronger bully. A bully who allegedly decided to put the “uppity faggot” in his place: six feet underground. This wasn’t a panic. This wasn’t a provoked killing. It was a planned, cold-blooded execution.

Being different shouldn’t be a death sentence, and a “back to the closet” defense shouldn’t be tolerated.

The latest in the Lawrence King hate crime murder—the accused killer’s defense attorney argues it’s all really the victim’s fault…

[Senior Deputy Public Defender William] Quest said he believes school administrators supported one student expressing himself and his sexuality — King — and ignored how it affected other kids, despite complaints. Cross-dressing isn’t a normal thing in adult environments, he said, yet 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds were expected to just accept it and go on.

I’m scheduled to fly to Miami Friday—on America Airlines….

O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.

Sarah Whitman points out that the Lawrence King killing raises the question: where are our leaders?

Recent months have brought several disturbing events in our community. Lawrence King was shot in his classroom after being teased and harassed for being gay. Simmie Williams was killed while wearing a dress in Fort Lauderdale. Just yesterday, Duchy Trachtenberg, a Montgomery County Council member who authored a bill outlawing discrimination against transgendered people, announced that she is receiving death threats.

And Joe Solmonese is running around telling our legislators to vote for a non-inclusive ENDA bill?

When King was shot, The LA Times covered the event as a local story. While the LGBT blogsphere immediately spread the news, the mainstream media took much longer to cover the story.

Last year, six African-American teenagers were charged with attempted second-degree murder charges in Jena, Louisiana. There were rallies, online petitions, a legal defense fund was created, The New York Times, New York Post and LA Times all covered the events. John Mellencamp even wrote a song in support of the Jena 6, as they came to be known as.

Why? Because the leaders showed up. They went to the rallies. Among those in attendance? Civil rights activists Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. Rappers Mos Def and Salt-n-Pepa showed their support, as did New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Rapper-actor Ice Cube took it a step further, funding buses to bring protesters from California.

Who was at Lawrence King’s funeral? Where were our leaders?

In this star struck culture, the way to draw attention to an issue is to put a recognizable face out front to draw the press out. Where were Joe Solmonese of HRC, Matt Foreman of NGLTF, Kevin Cathcart of Lambda, Kate Kendall of NCLR, Neil Giuliano of GLAAD? Ellen DeGeneres did her part, but what about the newly out Cheyenne Jackson? Cynthia Nixon? Melissa Etheridge? Where’s the song from Elton John? It takes leadership to bring make the kind of public statement that surrounded the Jena 6.

But we don’t have that….

The nice folks over a Bilerico were kind enough to publish this today:

Dear Christian,

I hope you’re enjoying your new-found, and well-earned celebrity. It was refreshing to see a “Project Runway” contestant who’s actually as talented as they thought themselves to be. And if you’re brash… well, that’s part of being 21-years-old.

I saw that you recently retired “fierce,” and—as someone who’s trans (I’m a crossdresser who also performs as a drag queen)—I’d like to ask you to retire your other catch phrase: “hot tranny mess.”

I realize you probably started saying it to be hip and edgy. Maybe you even meant it affectionately in a snarky sort of way—although you clearly intend it to refer to something tacky and ugly. But think about it. If straight folks started using “hot faggot mess” as a put-down, I suspect you’d be a bit peeved. (BTW, did I mention how adorable you look when you’re miffed…?). And yes, it is a put-down, just in the same way that “that’s so gay” is an offhand put-down straight kids use to describe something lame. As if being gay or being trans is sucky and something one ought to be ashamed of.

Or to put it another way- somehow I doubt you’d even think about using “hot n-word mess,” yes?

I also just wanted to let you know that your use of the word “tranny” is treading on insensitive ground. Yes, some of us trans people do use the word “tranny.” But there’s a difference when a term that’s often been an epithet gets reclaimed by members of the stigmatized group as a way of saying “yeah I am a [insert derogatory term here], wanna make something of it”—and quite another when someone outside that group decides to fling it around carelessly.

I realize you probably don’t mean it as a slur—which is why I haven’t given you my “hot tranniest look” (yet…). But the thing is, usually when most of us trans people hear the term “tranny” it’s said by someone taunting us, threatening to beat us up, or even kill us. (So far in the first three months of this year, three other gender variant or trans people besides Lawrence King have been killed in apparent hate crimes. But you rarely hear about them, ‘cause after all, we’re just “trannies”—nobody worth giving a damn about.)

Since you weren’t exactly the most straight-acting kid in the class, I’m willing to bet you had people call you “faggot” in similar circumstances, so you understand how hearing an epithet can hurt, even if the speaker didn’t mean anything by it.

As a celebrity—like it or not—what you do and say does influence people. And from what I’m seeing, “hot tranny mess” is becoming the latest “ain’t it cool” thing to say in certain circles. I’m sure you’d much rather be remembered for your stunning designs than for creating a catch phrase that thoughtlessly hurts others.

You helped start and it. You can help stop it. The next time you do a talk show, let people know that you’re retiring “hot tranny mess,” and why. If Leno can do that, so can you.

But if you really want to keep using the word “tranny,” why not use it describe something worth admiring—I’ve even got a new catch-phrase for you: “hot tranny fabuliciousness.”

Yours in fabuliciousness,
Lena Dahlstrom aka Joie de Vivre

One of the hassles on being a “public crossdresser” is shaving—yeah, I shave my arms, chest and legs once or twice a week. I’ve found that hair conditioner works really well as a lubricant—the moisturizer is actually the “secret ingredient” in “adult” shaving lotions.

One challenge is finding a conditioner that doesn’t have a lot fragrance in it. Besides being a bit… aromatic… afterwards—given the amount that I’m putting on myself—fragrances are also often irritating to your skin. I had been using a conditioner from http://www.cosmeticscop.com/ (the company owned by the woman who wrote “Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me”—an must-have “Consumer Reports”-style guide to make-up and skin care products).

But yesterday I was at Trader Joe’s and noticed they had a store-brand hair conditioner. So I gave it the sniff test. Minimal scent—and about half the price of the Paula’s Choice conditioner. I’ve got no idea how well it works on hair, but as a shaving lotion it works pretty well. It’s a little thicker, so if it dries out it can clog the razor, but at the price I’ll put up with it.

Getting a chance to catch up with the blog during my flight to Tucson for the IFGE conference….

Had a show last Friday at The Cinch. The night’s theme was “Riot Grrls”—and since it was an unexpected booking, I hadn’t had anything songs lined up. Fortuitously  though, there was a Grace Potter and the Nocturals song, “If I Was From Paris,” that I’d been interested in doing, but felt was a little too hard-edged for my other shows. It’s not actually vintage riot grrl, but it’s definitely got the same ‘tude. (It’s also unlike most of GP&N’s other stuff, which is more along the lines of Janis Joplin-fronting-The Black Crowes-with-Booker T. on the Hammond B3 organ.)

It was also the birthday of another performer “Damn Dyke,” who was celebrating her “seven-year bitch.” So Anna started the show with a cake, which she proceeded to fling into the crowd and onto the stage. The next performer also had cake, which she did a face-plant into, and then shook herself like a dog. So when I took the stage, it was a gooey, lethally slippery mess. Plus I’d found some cool new shoes that look very glam, but with heels that about an inch higher than I’m used to. So it was a very nervous Joie de Vivre who took the stage….

Then Anna made a point of telling the crowd how much she enjoys seeing me bust a move while I’m performing. Thanks, Anna—I’ll get you back, my pretty…. But I managed to make it through without turning an ankle or falling on my ass. It wasn’t my best performance, because I was having to keep one eye on the stage to avoid slipping, but I guess it must have come across alright, since I got a complement from Trauma Flintstone (who was there en drab) after the show.

Says the Feminist Majority Foundation in a newly released video. (And yes, some feminists look like men—that’s because they are men.)

I’ve got a show at Aunt Charlie’s tomorrow night and I realized it’s been a year since I first took the stage as a dewy-eyed drag-princess-in-training. I’ll have some Deep Thoughts about drag in the near future, but tonight I just wanted to say thanks to all the singers whose songs I perform.

Special thanks to those who make up the core of my set list:

• Candye Kane – “The toughest girl alive” whose voice is as big and beautiful as she is.


• Joan Osborne - Best known as a one-hit wonder, she’s actually full of blues and soul and rock and sheer passion.


• Grace Potter – A singer of near Joplinesque charisma who also plays a mean Hammond B-3 organ.

As well as to:

• Shirley Bassey


• The Be Good Tanyas


• Bonnie Bramlett


• Exene Cervenka


• Wendi Colter


• Martha Davis


• Geri Halliwell


• Chrissie Hynde


• Deborah Iyall


• Angelique Kidjo


• Jill King


• Lisa Koch


• Rickie Lee Jones


• Miranda Lambert


• Annie Lennox


• Courtney Love


• Luscious Jackson


• Allanah Myles


• Bonnie Raitt


• Susheela Raman


• Dusty Springfield


• Margo Timmins


• KT Tunstall


• Gretchen Wilson

I may mouth the words, but you came up with them. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I’ve been on a LGBT history binge, here’s my reviews of what I’m been reading:

“The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture” by Daniel Harris – A very bitchy (and I use that word intentionally) book that simultaneously acidly critiques aspects of gay culture and sentimentalizes the “outsider” aspects of gay culture. It would’ve been nicer if the author has copped to this ambivalence in the introduction rather than the final page, since the swings initially come off as if the author just hates everything. But it’s got some great insights, and also offers some interesting looks at gay life outside the major metropolitan areas. For example, Harris discusses the “hobbyist” magazines that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s whose ostensible purpose was to connect people who shared common hobbies, but which quickly became thinly-veiled gay personal ads. Ads from the hinterlands by gay men seeking to meet someone, anyone, who lived locally are all too reminiscent of the posts I still see today on mailing list by deeply closeted crossdressers hoping to meet in person someone like themselves. (NY Times review here.)

“Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America” by Lillian Faderman – Very well written and comprehensive history (up through 1991).

But a couple things left a bad taste my mouth: Faderman repeated insistence that some people seen as butches might in fact be trans men. To be fair, she was obviously reacting against the “invert” theory of the late 1800s that proposed [I]all[/I] lesbians “men trapped in women’s bodies,” and against the way masculinity was used to discredit lesbians and feminists. But she seems to want to ignore away evidence that some women living as men seemed to be doing so because they saw themselves as men. Plus both of her two actual references to “transsexuals” come complete with scare quotes—while Faderman is a little oblique, it seems like she was of the mindset that if trans people just freed themselves from gender stereotypes they wouldn’t need to transition. Finally, she misrepresents the [URL=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Stone”“]Sandy Stone[/URL] incident. Correctly stating that it caused a huge controversy when the women’s recording collective refused to fire Stone in the face of transphobic attacks by lesbian-feminists—Stone was specifically targeted in Janice Raymond’s “Transsexual Empire”—but neglecting to mention that the company later caved in to the demands and fired Stone.

“Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco” to 1965 by Nan Alamilla Boyd – A bit on the academic side, but worth wading through the formal prose. Interestingly Boyd begins her book with a chapter on trans and gay male culture—and in fact argues that drag show nightclubs—featuring both drag queens and drag kings, and tolerated because of the tourist dollars they helped bring to the city—provided the city’s first publicly visible queer cultures and communities. Unlike New York, San Francisco was a “wide open town” in a variety of ways—from local politicians ignoring or downplaying morality issues, to the lack of entrenched political machines, to the lack of the Mafia; all of which caused San Francisco’s queer to differ greatly from New York’s. (Here’s a review by the San Francisco Chronicle.)

“Gay L.A.” by Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons. L.A. finally gets its due as the overlooked birthplace of many mainstays of today’s gay and lesbian institutions. This time around the scare quotes are gone and trans people do crop up now and then. But disappointingly, only three or four pages out of the 464 pages specifically looked at trans history. It came out in 2006, so Virgina Prince’s biography (as one was Vern and Bonnie Burroughs’ “Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender,” both of which included a fair bit of trans history in L.A.) was available had the author’s cared to read it. (An example of how not only is history written by the victors, but how it’s written by those with the best meeting minutes.) It’s disappointing because early in the book the authors explicitly say they intend to do a comprehensive LGBT history—and that they used “gay” in their title because historically it had been used as an encompassing term that included LGB and T people. Like San Francisco, was also a “wide open town” in its own way compared to New York—with the film industry being a being a haven for all sorts of alternative behavior (as long as done discretely), fewer social hierarchies (since almost everyone was a relative newcomer) and an extremely diverse population.

“Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940” by George Chauncey – Revelatory on how—at least within selected subcultures in New York City, concepts of sexual orientation and gender were far [I]more[/I] flexible than they are today. Aside from oral histories, Chauncey relies heavily on the reports filed by investigators of various “morals committee,” which gives an unusually detailed look at the lives of gay men in public places. (The book doesn’t look at lesbians and lesbian culture at all.)

“The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America” by Charles Kaiser – Good for a general overview of gay and lesbian life in NYC from World War II through the early 1990s, mixing historical analysis with oral histories. But while Kaiser tries to include a spectrum of voices, it feel like it focused heavily on the lives of the gay/lesbian rich and famous.