trans identity

Original Plumbing, a new magazine published and distributed out of San Francisco, is a fresh new publication dedicated to FTM sexuality and culture. Made for trans men by trans men, its first issue ("The Bedroom Issue") came out in October and features voices from five rooms and a couple different continents, with content ranging from interviews to fiction to a detailed summary of how Germany's health care system helps transitioning. They're off to a great start, and I asked editor-in-chief/photographer Amos Mac and assistant editor Rocco Kayiatos (who raps as Katastrophe) a few questions about future plans for ORIGINAL PLUMBING.

Today marks the eleventh annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to honor and grieve victims of hate and ignorance (a disproportionate amount of who are trans women of color) and a day to respect and celebrate those with us today. Read on for thoughts from the blogosphere....

Lately I've been thinking about the process of coming out and identities/shifting, and how for so many of us it's an ongoing/lifetime process. In part because we as individuals change, and/or in part because our environment changes, and/or in part because our identities can't be read on the outside, and/or because some of us feel the most comfortable in those in-between spaces yet sometimes feel compelled to "pick a side" (so to speak/referencing here the dualism so prevalent in mainstream Western culture), because the struggle to have our identities validated (or even finding language to define ourselves and our experiences) simply becomes too much work. But then when we "pick that side," we might eventually feel the weight of that boxed-in identity start to hurt, so we begin the process of coming out again... Or geez, to put it most simply, because things just change... 

I knew I was close to home when I started hearing corn crop fungicide commercials on the radio.

I got into Minnesota a day early, because I took a wrong turn leaving Chicago and by the time I called the folks I was supposed to meet up with, they laughed (kindly) and told me to keep heading West, as it would've taken another two hours of backtracking to get there.