Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Lawrence

Defending the author. Lady Chatterley obscenity trial in Britain. Lots of Lawrence's poetry. The D. H. Lawrence Society of North America. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature in a reliable, academically edited online version. F. R. Leavis, Leavisites and Lawrence.

A message to send. A complete org chart. A map with directions. DHL's favorite word.

England. Old coal mines. Old industry. A ruin.

What has to be simultaneous. Ideology everywhere. Ways to classify everyone. Disability issues. The mind-body problem. A liberator.

Into the woods. A work of art isn't necessarily a program.

Wandervogel. A gift. Lose your virginity and turn blue. Come on and touch me. Lady Chatterley's destiny is here not here. That's what it is.

Good timing in sex. In search of real men. Always pointing elsewhere. Some men are babies. More adults who are babies.

Men are from dog, women are from cat. Feminist cat studies. Women have eggs.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Mansfield, Lawrence, Rich, Grant, Ukeles, Freud

Please keep following Topside Press! Remember that there are other resources for contemporary transmasculine identities: Bear Bergman comes to mind.

These are contemporary, perhaps near future, ways of living. What's present from the past, or in the recent past? Concepts that were confining, or fruitful, or went without saying?

Three concepts in particular to keep in mind. Later writers puncture or push back.

First, a guy with a cigar. A special type. He didn't think homosexuality required a "cure."

He gave us a complex. Or two. And a series of stages. A roadmap to the right kind of adulthood.

Thinking about immaturity. A word that does not mean what he thinks it means. Enjoy the ball.

Warning: freeze-dried. An arrow. Psychoanalytic detection. A series of tubes. Big questions.

An idea of marriage. One way to treat women's complaints.

A lot of research help (aimed at college students) on gender in Victorian Britain. Women in men's hands. Or in men's houses.

Women as men's property: Gayle Rubin. Sedgwick's Between Men. A similar contest.

Flirting with stockings. Not him. Not him.

If you or another real person (not a made-up literary character) experience unwanted sex, or violence in a relationship, you can get help.

Can intimacy be separated from money? Are sex workers doing a job? Melissa Gira Grant's essay on brothels. Robin Hustle was an escort and will be a nurse.

Sex work is a thing people do, not a thing people are. There are other jobs that most people don't want to do.

Ukeles and maintenance art. (Note the poke at Freud.)

Is there a bright line between sexy and non-sexy intimacy? Or a continuum? What makes men afraid? People aren't produce.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Audre Lorde

Men and women and Austen and basic math.

Looking at Audre Lorde. A brief life of Audre Lorde. The Audre Lorde Project.

Sister Outsider. One essay: on "the erotic." Another famous essay: "The Master's Tools."

Intersections. Not the house of difference. A house of difference.

Harlem (W. 125th St), in 1939. Harlem in 1939 again. The whole Caribbean. A house on Carriacou.

Seeking connections. Writing to your future self.

Thomas Couser on memoir, a lot. On memoir, a little.

A letter to lose. A culinary symbol. Another symbol.

Learning to label. Read some Ann Bannon. Like this one. Bannon's original book covers.

The importance of the 1950s bar scene. Of an urban bohemia before Stonewall.

Don't stay isolated. Don't assume your lover is the one.

A queer database documentary. Looks very cool. Another one from the UK.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Sense and Sensibility

Title page, first edition of S&S (1811). Illustrations for a 1907-08 edition, by C. E. Brock. Another edition, whose introduction, by Laura Engel, I recommend.

A searchable electronic text for S&S: your eyes will pop out if you try reading it all online (which is why you had to buy the book) but you do cool things by searching for phrases & words. Jack Lynch's online edition of Fantomina.

Book trailer for "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters." More Sea Monsters. S&S and something else. Something else.

Not monsters so much as a set of constraints which dictate the life course. Like this.

"The economic basis of society." Country society.

Some Austen plots could work almost anywhere, especially in high school. Why is that and what gets lost?

What was sensibility? More on sentiment and sensibility.

Elinor: like a visual artist, or like a writer. Marianne: a musician; a terrible actor.

Sensibility, feeling and the French Revolution" ("Liberty Leading the People" by Delacroix)

Limited choices. Men can go here. Women have small dating pools.

Who courts whom, who gets married, at what age?

Should you look for the One? Or round up, as per Dan Savage?

Who gets to have a body? Who feels what through the body? Who conceals and who reveals what feeling? Who cares for whom?

Take the analogy seriously. Also, trolls.

The places in S&S (nonacademic). Disapproval. D.W. Harding and "Regulated Hatred." A vast trove of Austen-related images and nonacademic (but articulate) essays.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Nevada

Imogen Binnie official site. Binnie's older, more punk rock site. Her Twitter feed. An interview with Binnie. Another interview.

Universalizing as against minoritizing identity.Individualizing identity. In the first scene, Maria can't speak.

Is gender something you are, or something you do? Is it all performance? Judith Butler only sort of thought so. This is a costume. So is this. So is this. One more social construction.

Realist novels give practical advice. About sparkles, for example. What to expect when you're trans. Want more advice in that line? Here are good YA novels.

It would be cool-- but it's not actually possible-- to see ourselves as others see us. Maria would rather not take them off. What is junk? Good luck being present in your body.

The real Star City, NV is a ghost town. The real Strand Bookstore might or might not be a terrible place to work. Other work from Topside Press.

Most trans women are not seen here. Most trans women are not Jenny Boylan. Boylan's best-known book. Most trans women are also not Julia Serano, who blogs a lot. Reinventing queer narrative with Robert Glück.

Most life stories aren't that simple, let alone that simple. Some can feel like Nevada Route 80.

Nevada also includes, in effect, a short trans (mostly transfeminine) reading list. Here's a very long one. Here's a heavily annotated one from the very helpful Helen Boyd. Here's one for transmasculine people.

A trans man whose memoir refuses the classic narrative. A lot more Gender Outlaws.

James thinks about something called "autogynephilia," a memorable but pretty much discredited psychological (and pathologizing) model of what transfeminine people want.

The stories that James likes to read are out there. A lot.

Kinks are arrows. Some writers I trust about kink.

About Kathy Acker: Acker talks about narrative. A long introduction to Acker from Peter Wollen at the LRB. Acker's NYT obituary and Guardian reintroduction.

We may be on the road, but we're definitely not On the Road.

Practical (not necessarily literary) trans groups and resources at Harvard, and in New England, and for young people, and for trans and gender-noncomforming young people's families, teachers, and caregivers, and an important conference in Philadelphia. A Harvard-student-run resource for kink.