history

How did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place?

The Conversation has a very interesting, and relatively short post on the history of gender specific bathrooms.

How did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place?

For one thing, separate bathrooms is fairly new

What if they gave an election and nobody came?

Does that sound funny to you? Think about it. It has been happening for a long time for a lot of people in this country. Bernie has been energizing people who have stayed at home in the past because they see a real choice in him.

I learned something from President Obama that I shall never forget. I learned that I am not as smart as I think I am. I learned that I forget hard learned lessons. Let me explain.

Don't get me wrong. I'll never give up.

Thanks for all the great responses to my blog about hope. I will never give up hope nor my way of viewing the world as a big interconnected system.

I wrote that blog because I was observing the inevitable workings of this sick system of ours. First let me remind you of the summary of our book:

Overture. Dim the Lights

I hear it all the time. We transgender people just have to wait for our time; We're just too new.

A team of trans people are busy putting the lie to that. We've Been Around is series of documentary shorts that chronicle the lives of Lucy, STAR, Albert, Little Ax, and Lou. They are directed by Rhys Ernst, produced by Christine Beebe and the narration is done by transgender people. The team includes Transparent actress Alexandra Billings, writer and filmmaker Susan Stryker and trans historian Monica Roberts.

I know it's terribly bad form to write a diary that asks the readers to go somewhere else and then come back. But I sure hope you do. The videos do not embed well.

Making me feel old

Esquire magazine has an article about a time long ago: 5 Transgender Americans on the Hardships of Transitioning, Then and Now.

Transgender men and women have lived openly for decades in America. Most of them transitioned before it was remotely acceptable to the wider culture—and so made possible the social transformation in gender identity that we are seeing today. The three women and two men on these pages lived much of their lives as one sex and then, along with thousands of others, have lived long, accomplished (and dangerous) lives as another. They are a comment on the abiding nature of the human impulse to change sexual identity (at a moment when it's almost regarded as a fad) and also emblematic of those who did so when it was so much harder.

Full disclosure: The author of this diary began transition 23 years ago.

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