And in one oral transsexual account an anonymous male-to-female expresses her alienation from her male body in terms of being encased, surrounded by a false skin: “I used to look at my body and think it was a bit like a diver’s suit, it didn’t feel like me inside.”–Jay Prosser, Second Skins. Prosser doesn’t draw out what to me might be the most striking aspect of this metaphor: the diver swims in an implacably hostile environment, the coldest depths of... Read more

…As Butler exemplifies, queer theory has written of transitions as discursive but it has not explored the bodiliness of gendered crossings. The concomitant of this elision of embodiment is that the transgendered subject has typically had center stage over the transsexual: whether s/he is transvestite, drag queen, or butch woman, queer theory’s approbation has been directed toward the subject who crosses the lines of gender, not those of sex. Epitomizing the bodiliness of gender transition–the matter of sex the cross-dresser... Read more

THE SEASONS COME, THE SEASONS GO: 2009 best-of. I’m posting it now because I’ve accepted that I probably won’t finish Under Western Eyes in 2009. Previous years’ compilations can be found on the sidebar…. I did a lot of re-reading this year, and read a lot of fiction I don’t need to revisit. I also separated out plays for the first time. Those facts combine to make the book lists a bit thinner than usual. So I’ve starred the books... Read more

And had I known, Blog Watch, she said,What this night I did see,I’d ha’ ta’en out your twa eenAnd put in twa of tree… (…Sorry.) Camassia writes the only interesting post I’ve read on the theology of Twilight! Jesse Walker lists the ten best movies of 1989. And Jesus, a wealthy young man: “‘That’s so pathetic, to say that Jesus was struggling alone in the dust and dirt,’ Anderson says. ‘That just makes no sense whatsoever. He was constantly in... Read more

ON THE JUKEBOX AT THE WHOLE FOODS: Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop,” followed by Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”…. Read more

THE WRONG END OF THE TELESCOPE: I’ve added what I hope is a clarifying paragraph to my bitchy post about reviews of Andrew Sullivan’s books. I think the para. is really about whose eye we’re supposed to take as our lens. Read more

Oh, Allison Gross, that lives in yon towerThe ugliest witch in the north countryHas trysted me one day up in her bowerAnd many fair speech she made to me She stroked my head and she combed my hairAnd she set me down softly on her kneeSays, “Gin ye will be my leman so trueSae many braw things as I would ye gi'”–“Allison Gross”; Steeleye Span here, and something in another language here. I always sang it as “leman,” not “lover,”... Read more

EVERY DAY IS LIKE SUNDAY: So a chain of events led me to read a lot of reviews of Andrew Sullivan’s various books. Here are some comments on the reviews. For reference, I think Virtually Normal is his weakest and Love Undetectable is brilliant; LU‘s third section, about friendship, I think is genuinely life-changing and beautiful, whereas its middle section, about psych theories of homosexuality, is really weak. Apparently this places me at odds with pretty much everyone who got... Read more

“BLACK AND WHITE“: I have a review in the current Weekly Standard, of the Phillips Collection’s exceptional show, “Man Ray, African Art, And the Modernist Lens,” through 01/10/10. The show is really terrific; and I think actually this review is pretty good, too. Subscribers-only for now. Read more

“I tell you what,” said Miss Haldin, after a moment of reflection. “I believe that you hate revolution; you fancy it’s not quite honest. You belong to a people which has made a bargain with fate and wouldn’t like to be rude to it. But we have made no bargain. It was never offered to us–so much liberty for so much hard cash. You shrink from the idea of revolutionary action for those you think well of as if it... Read more