astute and dead


I am the name of . . . do not . . . agree with . . . sat in and was a part of . . . none of that will do . . . tiny executioner words on a stick, tiny worlds of execution. have made a habit of removing random nails from random crosses. if you agree . . . lets talk, ask questions, do the right thing; ancient and dream-like. a paradigm of cast-iron rumble and red hot pig iron. from behind the hand . . . the world disappears . . . flooded in selfhelp grids . . . fragment and shouts . . . in the morning someone whispers something . . . the clouds tease us with rain . . . the distance is a spy tube and droplets sounds. you seem to understand the tiny brittle needles arecovering the past . . .you say, electrodes to for the dead

to piggyback on Ron Silliman's blog:
Saturday, November 22, 2003  
*It's strange what one remembers after nearly 40 years . . ..*


it is interesting how that image (the kennedy assasination) is burned into our collective memory.. maybe how 9.11 will be, but I am not sure.. you are right though (Ron), mass media changed that day... there was live broadcast on all the time.. even when there was nothing to say.. or at least that is what I remember. I was not 10 yet, could not wait to be 10, in one more month. but the one thing that struck me during that time was the silence... no one went to work, no one spoke, an air of mourning was ever present or it seemed it was. everything stopped for what seemed like days.. it may have been just the weekend.. my recollection is it was a Thursday when it was announced at school and we were let out early.. everything shut down the next days until the funnel ended. which for an almost 10 year old was years.. the days dragged on.. and though I was aware of the significance-.. the endless nothingness on the TV did not hold my attention.. I think I ended up building a sculpture out of wood in the garage. by the fourth or fifth day I had had enough.. I remember asking when things were going to get back to normal... I was informed, "things would never get back to normal..."

that was an interesting comment in view of the mass media coverage of 9.11... it seems like that was a resistance to get back to normal.. at least during Kennedy's coverage there was a sense of completion. the burial, the end. and little johnhohn (is that right?) saluting... 9.11. seemed to be on repeat... a time loop.. an image loop . . . a never ending story... I do not no, maybe it is my change perception, but the media today did not let dead air come into being. during the final march of the funnel procession all one heard at times was the sound of a horse hoofs... there was dead time, and boredom... all good stuff for reflection and sculpture making...

now, with split screens and multiple images.. no rest.. one must stay glued to the image for days to catch it all in its brilliant colors... so I guess my parents were right . . . things would never get back to normal...

milk magazine_______________________________________________________
editor/Larry Sawyer
fiction/web editor/Lina ramona Vitkauskas

milk volume 5 now online with . . .


poetry:
Bill BERKSON
Jenna CARDINALE
Jorge Lucio de CAMPOS
Mirela Ramona CIUPAG
Tom CLARK
Adam CLAY
Stacy Elaine DACHEUX
Linh Dinh
Stacey DUFF
kari EDWARDS
Vernon FRAZER
Michael McCLURE
Sheila E. MURPHY
Daniel NESTER
Jerome ROTHENBERG
John SOLT
Tony TOWLE
Abram VALDEZ
Mark WINTER

fiction:
Ovidiu BUFNILA
Brendan CONNELL
Graham CATT
Jason DeBOER
Soren Alberto GAUGER
Allan GRAUBARD
Sergey KARPUKIN
Prasenjit MAITI
Eleanor LEVINE
Bryan McMILLAN
Mike MELLISH
Ryan Robert MULLEN
Ron PORTER
Willie SMITH
Paul A. TOTH
D. Harlan WILSON
Derek WHITE


PLUS features:
20 Questions w/Michael McClure [tk]
The Ghazal: Kirby Olson [tk]
Visual Art: David Hwang, Wendy Lu, Charles Henri Ford
Tom Hibbard: Fantasy Niedecker
Online Chapbook: Michael Rothenberg [tk]


With even more to come! We're still reading for the current issue!

starting with a quote from Walter Benjamin's *The Work of Art
in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Third Version* Nick Piombino announces -the trumpeting of the significance.- ... (a manifesto) (my words) for blogging-.. check it out

*The masses are a matrix
from which all customary behavior toward works of art is today emerging newborn. . . .*

Our natural mother, our gracious mother, because he willed to become our mother in everything, took the ground for his work most humbly and most mildly in the maiden's womb…. Our high God, the sovereign wisdom of all, arrayed himself in this low place and made himself entirely ready in our poor flesh in order to do the service and the office of motherhood himself in all things.

Julian of Norwich's - "God our Mother"

OF bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat -

METAMORPHOSES - by Ovid

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
-Albert Einstein

Beloved, show me the way out of this prison.
Make me needless of both worlds.
Pray, erase from mind all
that is not You.

Have mercy Beloved,
though I am nothing but forgetfulness,
You are the essence of forgiveness.
Make me needless of all but You.

     Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir - "Nobody, Son of Nobody" - Vraje Abramian

shorten version of my GENDER Bibliography

Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood, New Directions, NY, 1937.

***Barbin, Herculine. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Dicovered Memoirs of a Ninetheenth-Century French Hemaphrodite. Pantheon, New York, 1980.

Blum, Joanne. Transcending gender: The male/female doulbe in wonan’s fiction. U.M.I Research. London. 1988.

Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: on men, woman and the rest of us. Routledge Press, New York, 1995.

**Bornstein, Kate. My Gender Work Book. Routledge Press, New York, 1998.

Bullough,V. L., Bullough, B.. Cross dressing, sex, and gender. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1993.

Bullough, B & Bullough, V., & Elias; ed., Gender Bending, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 1997.

Bulter, Judith. Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between life and death. Columbia University Press, New York, 2000.

Butler, Judith. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of “sex”, Routledge, New York. 1993

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge, New York. 1990.

Burke, Phyllis. Exploding the myths of male & female. Anchor Books, New York. 1996.

Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn ; Podesva, Robert; Roberts, Sarah, & Wong, Andrew; Ed.. Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning Theory and Practice. CSLI Publications, Standford, Calfornia, 2002.


Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. Dover Publications, Inc., New York. 1946.

*Califia, Pat. Sex Change: the politics of transgenderism. Cleis Press, San Francisco. 1997.

Colapinto, John. As Nature made him: a boy wh was raised as a girl. HarperCollins, NY, 2000.

Cromwell, Jason. Transmen & FTM's: Identities, Bodies, Genders & Sexualites. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, Illinois, 1999.

Denny, Dallas., ed. Current Concepts in Transgender Identity, Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, 1998.

de Choisy, Abbe. The Transvestite Memoirs. Peter Owen Pulbiher, London, 1973.

*Doniger, Wendy. Splitting the difference: gender and myth in ancient greece and india. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Ekins, Richard, & King, Dave. Blending Genders: Contribution to the emerging field of transgender studies. Current Concepts in Transgender Identity, Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, 1998.

Ellis, Havelock & Symonds, John. Sexual inversion. Wilson and Macmilan, London, 1897.

Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the family, private property, and the state. The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, Edited by Robert C. Tucker, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1978.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the body: gender politics and the construction of sexulity. Basic Books. NY, 2000

***Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues. Firebrand Books, Ithaca, New York, 1993.

***Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Warriors: making history from Joan of arc to Dennis Rodman. Beacon Press, Boston. 1996.

Gabriel, Davina Anne. The myth of kybele and attis. Transsisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, Issue #4, Spring 1994. Kansas City, Missouri.

Gravois, Valory. Cherry Single: A Transvestite Comes of Age. Alchemist / Light Publishing, Belmont, California. 1997.

Green, Jamison. FTM: An emerging voice. Current Concepts in Transgender Identity, Edited by Dallas Denny, Garland Publishing, Inc. 1998

**Groz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion,Routledge, New York, 1995.

Halberstram, Judith., Female Masculinity. Duke University Press. Durham, North Carolina.
1998.

**Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness, Avon books, New York, NY. 1981.

**Hale, C. Jacob. "Consuming the living, Dis (re) membering the dead in the Butch/Ftm Borderlands.” Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies: Volume 4, Number 2 (1998) 311-338.


Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.

**Jorgensen, Christine. A Personal Autobiography. Paul S. Erikson, Inc., New York, 1967.

Jordon-Smith, Paul. Tiresias., Izanagi and Izanami. Parabola: myth and the quest for meaning “Androgyny, Volume III, Number 4, Brooklyn, New York, 1978.



Kailey, Matt. Transifesto: selected clolumns and other ramblings from a transgended mind, Xlibris Corperation. 2002

Kates, Gary. Monsieur d’Eon is a woman: a tale od poltical intrigue and sexual masquerade, Basic Books, NY, 1995.

Kessler, Suzanne J.. Lessons from the intersexed. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ , 1998

Keuls, Eve C.. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985.

Lang, Sabine. There is more than just women and men: gender variance in north american indian cultures. Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: anthropological and historical perspective, Edited by Sabrina Petra Ramet, Routledge, New York, 1996.

**Livia, Anna, Pronun Envy: Literary Uses of Ling uistic Gender, Oxford University, Nw York, 2001.

Livia, Anna & Hall,Kiva; ed. Queerly Phased: Language, Gender, and sexuality, Oxford Press New York, 1997.

Lober, Judith. Paradoxes of Gender. Yale University Press, London, 1994.

Macy, Joanna Rodgers. Perfection of wisdom: mother of all buddhas. Beyond Androcentrism: New essays on women and religion, Edited by Rita Gross, Scholar Press, Missoula, Montana, 1977.

MaCaulay, Rose, The Towers of Trezbizond. Meridian Books, NY, 1956.

Martino, Mario, with harriet. Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography. crown Publisher, Inc., 1977.

McCloskey, Deirdre N. Crossing: a memoir. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, Il, 1999.

Morris, Jan. Conundrum: from James to Jan - and extraordinary personal narrative of transsexualism. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York. 1974.

Herdt, Gillbert; ed. Third sex third gender: beyond sexual dimorphism in culture and history, Zone Books, New York, 1994.

Nanda, Serena. Neither man nor woman: the Hijra’s of India. Wordworth, inc. 1990.

Nestle, Joan; Howell, Clare; & Wilchins, Riki; Ed.. Genderqueer: voices from the sexual binary, Alyson Books, Los, Anglees, NY, 2002.

Nettick, Geri, & Elliot, Beth. Mirrors: Portrait of a lesbian transsexual. Rhinoceros Press, New York, 1996.

Ovid. Metamorphoses, Edited by Charles Boer, Spring Publications,Inc., Dallas, Texas. 1989.

Pagels, Elaine. The gnostic vision. Parabola: myth and the quest for meaning “Androgyny, Volume III, Number 4, Brooklyn, New YorK, 1978.
Pattanaik, Devdutt. The man who was a woman: and other queer tales from hindu lore. Harrington Park Press. Binghamton, NY. 2002.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: art and decadence form nefertiti to emily dickinson. Vintage books, New York, 1990.

Palmer, M., Ramsay, J., Kwok, M., Kaun Yin: myths and prophecies of the chinese goddess of compassion. Thorsons, 1995.

Pratt, Minne Bruce. S/HE. Fire Brand Books, Ithaca, New York. 1995.

Plato. Symposium. translated by Tom Griffith, University of california Press, Berkeley, 1989.

Pollack, Rachel. Unqenchable fire. A Tusk Book, Woodstock, NY, 1992.

Prosser, Jay. Second Skin: The bodies narratives of transsexuality. Colombia University Press, New York, 1998.

Queen Carol, & Schimel, Lawrence; Ed.. PomoSexuals: challenging assuptions aobut gender and sexuality, Cleis Press, San Francisco, 1997

Raymond, Janice. The Transsexual Empire: The making of the she-male. Teachers College Press, New York, 1994.

Ramet, Sabrina Petra; ed. Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: anthropological and historical perspective, Routledge, New York, 1996.

Rees, Mark. Dear Sir or Madam: The autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual. Cassel Press, London, 1996.

Rice, Doug. Skin Prayer: gragments of abject memory, Esaserhead Press. Fountian Hills, Az. 2002.

Rice, Doug. Blood of Mugwump:a tiresian tale of incest. FC2, Normal, Il, 1996.

Richards, Renee with Ames, John. The Renee Richards Story: Second Serve. Stein and Day, New York, 1983.

Roland, Barthes. Mythologies. Will and Wang, New York. 1972.

Rothblatt, Martine. The Apartheid of Sex: A manifesto on the Freedom of Gender. Crown Publishers, Inc. 1995.

**Roscoe, Will. The Zuni Man-Woman, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1991.

Salah, Trish. Wanting in Arabic, A TSAR Book, Toronto, CA, 2002

Sanders, J.T.; ed. Dionysus, cybele, and the ‘madness’ of women. Beyond Androcentrism: New essays on women and religion, Edited by Rita Gross, Scholar Press, Missoula, Montana, 1977.

**Scholinski, D. The last time I wore a dress. Riverhead Books , New York. 1997.

Stone, Sandy. The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto. Body Guards, Edited by Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, Routledge, New York. 1991.

Stone, Alluquere Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the close of the Mechanical Age. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998.

Sullivan, Caitlin, & Bornstein, Kate. Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure. High Risk Books, New York. 1996.

Sullivan, Louis. From Female to Male: The life of jack Bee Garland; Alyson Publications. Inc. 1990.

Weigle, Marta. Spiders and Spinsters; women and mythology. University of new Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1982.

Welch, J. L.. Cross-Dressing and cross-purposes: gender possibilities in the acts of Thecla, Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: anthropological and historical perspective, Edited by Sabrina Petra Ramet, Routledge, New York, 1996.

**Weston, Kath. Gender in Real Time: power and transsience in a visual age. Rooutledge, New York, 2002.

**Wilchins, Riki Anne Wilchins. Read My Lips: Sexual subversion and the End of Gender. Firebrand Books, Ithaca, New York, 1997.

Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the body. Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1993.

Gender and Pronouns in the Phillippines
by
michelle
poet/mandirigma


The major Philippine languages do not have a gendered pronoun. In Tagalog the word siya (pronounced shee-ya) means either he or she. The gender is understood in the context, by either understood reference between the speakers or mention of the person's proper name. Many men are named Jose Maria (Jesus Mary), though I don't know many women named Maria Jose. Many men in the southern part of the Philippines where an outfit called a malong, that is a tubular skirt. Things that Americans connote as gendered aren't seen that way in the Philippines. Yet in other ways the Philippines can be more gendered. But even without gendered words, gender expectations are high.

In the Filipino martial arts I train in, I have a gendered title, Gura, yet the Tagalog word for teacher, Guro, is non-gendered. Gura is not a Tagalog word. I have been told that I am ruining the culture and I have no right to call myself this. People I've never met hate me with such passion for this use. In the Filipino Martial arts there are few women, very few of them teach. I have felt a need to be explicit about my gender because otherwise I feel like I don't exist.

The kali itself stresses that all people contain male and female energy and that we must really be both regardless of physical named gender. It's the understanding of how these energies blend, integrate and work together that make it so powerful an art.

So in one hand having a gender-neutral pronoun doesn't keep people from reacting to gender. On the other there is an incorrect gendered term to speak of an art that acknowledges a blending of gender. I'm not sure what it all means.

Incorrect spelling allows one to challenge the dominant force. How it relates to gender, I do not know.

matthew barney versus donkey kong

Anarchist People of Color event attacked

1ST AD SOLDIER DIES FROM NON-HOSTILE GUNSHOT WOUND 11/17/2003
ONE SOLDIER KILLED IN IED ATTACK 11/17/2003
ONE 4 ID SOLDIER KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN ATTACK 11/17/2003

this whole - words don't kill - only strangers with guns kill business, is silly, and everyone knows it . . . If our perception is altered by language, and we all live in this soup of language, then is it not the gaze that situates an individual into a class or thing, is this not language based . . . was it not rabid propaganda (words and images) in nazi germany that ignited hatred of jews to a frenzy . . . does language kill? I work with those psychologically injured by hateful and oppressive language. does language kill or at least maim . . . look at the suicide rate of gender queer youth and others that do not fit so neatly into the myth of western thought . . . I think of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's main character in The Yellow Wall-Paper, what words where used to diagnose this character, so that a gaze was fixated on to this individual causing a mental breakdown, where before this individual may have just been oppressed . . . ask any one of color, what words mean, ask someone who is differently abled, what the word "disabled means" . . . what does it mean to have a learning disability? maybe it is not all words, but the construct and markers that are in close association with the language. right after 9/11 any one who wore a turban was at risk, was it not language that allows us to identify these markers-.. turban is not a top hat . . . it may be stretching it a bit . . . but I think when you hear words enough like: bitch, stupid, faggot, queer, nigger, spick, kike, retarded and so on . . . something happens . . . and I think there is way to much research on PTSD, and other trauma related behaviors to not except words do kill . . . or do enough harm so someone may take up arms and do the work the words where intended.. if words do not kill, when Brandon Teena discovered to have a vagina. was it not in that moment that the categorization of gender came in to play; male is this, and female is that . . . is it not that moment that led to the rape of brandon tenna that was the the finality of that violent signify practice, but what led to that moment, was it not language based. does language kill - stop being stupid.

another gender test:

http://test.thespark.com/gendertest/

These sites are amazing. Check them out:
 
 
Krafty


themeatrix

ONE KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN IED ATTACK 11/15/2003
1ST AD SOLDIER KILLED, TWO WOUNDED BY IED 11/14/2003
SERVICE MEMBER DIES OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN AFGHANISTAN 11/14/2003
TWO SOLDIERS KILLED, THREE WOUNDED IN IED ATTACK 11/14/2003

Note: nothing was listed in the daily reports from central command about the 14-16 that died when two blackhwak helicopters crashed. 11/15/2003

when I see words like (hermaphrodite) being used and praised in writing as a vehicle, I wonder if there is an awareness of the struggle the "intersex" individual in this society . . . or what the word means today to these individuals . . . or is there just a general true lack of awareness of what its like for anyone not fitting neatly into this policed state of gender (myth)...... it seems the word (hermaphrodite) goes easily unexamined and gets used in poetry as a romantic myth (it has throughout history**, in the dominate discourse mostly as a fetish, sometimes as a way to escape or transcend or transition from one gender to another (sic)) and today is no different, it is used without an awareness of contemporary struggle of these individual and of the rigidity of gender

there seems to be this general assumption of gender... as a solid state... if you think that I would suggest you read:

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Human Sexuality. http://www.isna.org/library/bookshelf.html#anchor34004

its time to realize the depth this police state and the commodification practice has wiped away true gender diversity - if it was not so, there would not have been 37 *reported* trans/gender murders this year... please read/ watch and check out?

Ke Kulana He Mahu:
Remembering a Sense of Place
Dir. Kathryn Xian & Brent Anbe
video 67min. 2001 USA
---------------------------
This documentary gives a platform to the transgendered and homosexual communities within the Pacific Triangle to speak out against the rise of homophobia perpetuated by the continuation of colonization.
http://www.trannyfest.com/2003/films/2.html



As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto, HarperCollins (2000)

Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex by Alice Dreger, Harvard University Press (1998)


The Zuni Man-Woman by Will Roscoe, University of New Mexico Press (1991)

http://www.gpac.org/

_____________________

here are some notes I gathered from the Intersex Society of North America...

Intersex Society of North America
http://www.isna.org/newsletter/

(a general thought by Doctors from the 1950-2000)

"intersexed individuals could not possibly live normal lives as intersexed individuals; the only chance for happiness and psychological well being is the establishment of a secure male or female gender identity. There simply is no precedent for intersexed individuals living as normal people in our society."
http://www.isna.org/library/history.html



1995-2003
Intersex Society of North America

Frequency: How Common Are Intersex Conditions?

?Not XX and not XY-------------------------one in 1,666 births
?Klinefelter (XXY)---------------------------one in 1,000 births
Androgen insensitivity syndrome---------one in 13,000 births
Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome-one in 130,000 births
Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia-one in 13,000 births
Late onset adrenal hyperplasia------------one in 66 individuals
Vaginal agenesis----------------------------one in 6,000 births
Ovotestes------------------------------------one in 83,000 births
Idiopathic------------------------------------one in 110,000 births
(no discernable medical cause)
Iatrogenic -----------------------------------no estimate
(caused by medical treatment,
for instance progestin administered to pregnant mother)
5 alpha reductase deficiency---------------no estimate
Mixed gonadal dysgenesis------------------no estimate
Complete gonadal dysgenesis--------------one in 150,000 births
Hypospadias ---------------------------------one in 2,000 births
(urethral opening in perineum or along penile shaft)
Hypospadias ---------------------------------one in 770 births
(urethral opening between corona and tip of glans penis)
? ?
Total number of people whose bodies
differ from standard male or female
-------------------------------------------------one in 100 births
Total number of people receiving surgery to
"normalize" genital appearance-------------one or two in 1,000 births

1. Dreger, Alice Domurat. 1998. "Ambiguous Sex" -- or Ambivalent Medicine? Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Intersexuality. Hastings Center Report, 28, 3: 24-35.
.

2. Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, and Ellen Lee. 2000. How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis. American Journal of Human Biology 12:151-166. Available from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/issuetoc?ID=69504032


Building a world free of shame, secrecy, and unwanted sexual surgeries
http://www.gendertalk.com/gtransgr/hwademo.htm
____

**-
a complete list of fiction and literature containing tv/ts (sic) themes
http://www.susans.org/reference/tsbooks.html

Hermaphrodites: Gender Transgression, or Gender Transcendence?
http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~mkozusko/634/hermo.html

in soft focus

























I seem to want to forget what metal is today, and only remember the dead . . . there use to be a way without instructions. I hold the list in my hand, no names just faces and silhouettes. carefully in the quite, I feel the bottom crush. hold the list, forget metal. the days wipe away to dark, and then again; the list gets longer; we have forgotten how to live without lists, outside of lists, without instructions on lists, lists of instructions. I sit, the dead cover my face, my body is littered with corpses, and then again and again . . .. I try to forget metal and blood, seem to only remember lists, instructions of lists, lists of instructions and the dead. I seem to want to forget what metal is today and only remember the dead.