Jacky will be on the Radio

I’m going to be on the radio on Wednesday from 4:00 – 6:00 PM. The show is called Homerun and I will be the weekly houseguest. The idea is that the host will use biographical information about me as a springboard to talk about issues that may be relevant to their audience. Themes they are interested in addressing are transsexuality, teaching anthropology, raising an autistic child in Montreal and performing drag.

The show starts at 3:30 but I will be on as of 4:00 for the duration of the show. Basically, the host and I chat in between their usual programming (music, traffic, weather, etc). I even get to pick some of the songs!! You can hear it live 88.5 FM in Montreal, and 104.7 FM in the West Island. You can also listen online at cbc.ca/homerun.

Another side effect?

It seems that, having gained more self confidence as a person, I’m now able to go into very scary territories in areas that have nothing to do with transition or other things that people sometimes compliment me for being “brave” about.  Today, I went ice skating for the first time. My mom knew how to ice skate but since there wasn’t much ice where we lived when I was a kid, I never got to learn. Then, I grew up with a terrible fear of ice: this fear that I would fall and break my neck. Determined not to transfer my own fears and self-imposed limitations to my son, I faced me fears, went with him to an indoor rink, rented some skates and went at it!

There were lots of kids since there was a ped day in most elementary schools in the area. They seemed to think it was a hoot to see this 30 something year old guy hanging on to the railing, desperate not to fall. And my little guy did way better than I did! After the third time around the rink, he would spend up to 2-3 minutes skating without holding on to anything! I didn’t even make it to a minute. BUT: just putting on ice skates and venturing out onto the long-dreaded ice was an accomplishment for me. And, yes, we loved it and will go back!

The Day After

The 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance has come and gone. As you see, my page is back to what it looked like before, with lighter colours. I’ve never really been a memorial kind of person. They get really emotional and sometimes I worry that people who don’t care about an issue the rest of the year, or who care but are unwilling to really do too much about it, take those days as their “pat on the back”. “Look, I’m a good person, I remember so-and-so on this day” then, for the rest of the year, they remain oblivious to how members of various groups of people on the planet are continually being marginalised.

A letter to my readers on this important day

Dear readers;

I thought I was going to be speechless but writing has helped me get out what I wanted to say.

First, Mercedes Allen wrote a beautiful post on Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is well worth a read.

Many sites are blacked out today, making their content unavailable. I looked for a way to do this but I couldn’t find a way to temporarily inactivate my blog. I don’t know enough about all the WordPress features to do so without fear of losing all my information.

Kudos to Gender Outlaw who found a way to black out without removing content from his site. I will try to do the same.

It’s hard for me to think about this as clearly as I would think about the senseless deaths of people in an “other” group. This is the first time in my life that I’ve been a part of a group that is so actively hated that when its members are murdered, they are not only blamed for their own murders but they are further humiliated in their death by reporters who refer to them in ways that are inconsistent with their self-identification.

Although I stand in solidarity with my trans brothers and sisters and our allies every day, as well as with other groups of people who are targets of hatred and scorn, today I have a special thought for those who have lost their lives because of transphobia and also for sisters and brothers who live in places where they must fear for their lives every day. I’m lucky – I live in a fairly trans-friendly location. The worst I get is people who think I’m a disgusting freak and who think I will burn in hell. I can easily avoid being around those people. I’ve successfully avoided having transphobia and homophobic people in my social circles much in the same way that I avoid having racists and misogynists in my circles.  So I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in constant fear. The idea of one’s freedom of movement and speech being be so restricted is horrifying to me.

In solidarity,

Jacky

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2008

http://www.hrc.org/issues/transgender.asp

From femme to GQ to drag king to ftm to ftmtv

Are you confused? I’m not. Not anymore. In the past 5 years, I really have gone from femme to MTF transvestive. I used to wear femmey clothing to try to be a “real” woman. Now that I don’t have to prove anything anymore, once in a while, for sexual purposes, I like to dress like a femmey slut. And it feels subversive now, so I like it.

50th post!

I know most “milestone” posts happen at the 100th post but . . . I go through long periods of inactivity so that might take a whole other year. So here’s to 50 posts! (and two drafts!!! and a list of at least 5-6 posts-to-be!)

I have to say that I’ve enjoyed blogging here. I feel like starting a WP blog connected me to a really cool and supportive trans and queer community, something that I never found on LJ when I first started over there about a year ago. Instead of hurtful comments and silly, immature arguments about who has the right to call themselves FTM (like on LJ), I found a diverse group of trans and queer folk of all stripes who support each other and discover new ideas through dialogue.

So, here are some stats to mark the 50th:

Taking a plunge

OK, so quite a few trans folk have been showing their faces on their blogs. I hesitated for a long time. One of the reasons was that I was worried that a student would accidentally stumble across my blog and put 2 and 2 together. You know what? I don’t care anymore. At this point, I’m pretty sure that several students know, just because my occasional ventures to the campus this semester (I’m on leave) have consisted of quite a few encounters with confused looking students. Also, I’ve given guest presentations to students that have had me in the past as a teacher – as a woman. And I was now introduced as male so . . .