Online condolence gift & card for my partner Julia McCrossin

“Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

 James Matthew Barrie 

(Scottish dramatist and novelist; creator of Peter Pan; 1860-1937)

Julia, myself, her father and mother on Thanksgiving Day of 2009 (J and I met that July 5th) at a hotel dinner in MD; photo taken by our waitress.

My partner Julia McCrossin's friends are passing around an online condolence gift jar and card for her – “Julia’s Jar”. J has had a very challenging past year and some, and her father passed away last week. Please consider giving / signing / sharing (FB, Twitter, Tumblr, email…) / commenting / Liking / etc. 

http://juliasjar.com/

J and her family are okay financially and otherwise. But this will help further her self-care, help us visit each other sooner and better, and help her move to Boston to live with me (we’ve always been long distance, and our 3rd anniversary is July 5th). J will also donate to Montgomery Hospice's Casey House (Rockville, MD), her father’s hospice – and she invites anyone to donate to them directly. 

This was created by Ginny and Heather – very special thanks to them, and many thanks to everyone involved!  This is yet another excellent example of why the fat and allied community is truly a community; so amazing, wonderful, rare, vitally needed, and much more. 

Julia's thank-you note:

"Thanks to everyone who has sent me words of support and care at this difficult time. I may not be able to respond to everyone personally, but I have benefited from each and every message. Your kindness means the world to me. I've also written a thank you response to anyone connected to the online efforts on my behalf:

I’m still bowled over by all of this, and I wish I had the ability to truly put into words how moved and humbled I am by the efforts you all have done on my behalf. The time, effort, coordination, and infrastructure utilized to make me feel better at such a difficult time is so beyond anything I could ever expect, and for that I am so grateful for your care, concern, and friendship. I don’t know how I lucked into knowing so many wonderfully loving people who think so well of me, and I hope that I can continue to be worthy of your warm regard. Please know that I am blessed to have each of you in my life, and I hope I continue to be the person you think so kindly of. I hope one day to be able to thank all of you in person, and to return the favor when I am able. Big fat hugs to all of you!"

http://juliasjar.com/

Integrity USA & TransEpiscopal – new documentary now + General Convention next month

Our friends at Integrity USA and TransEpiscopal have released a half-hour documentary -- “Voices of Witness: Out of the Box” (with a study guide coming soon) – http://www.integrityusa.org/OOTB/ | http://www.facebook.com/pages/Voices-of-Witness-Out-of-the-Box/210603212392996.  The 3rd in the VOW series, it focuses on trans people sharing their stories. And one of them is ICTE’s very own Rev. Cameron Partridge.

And TransEpiscopal is leading a team of 15+ – several of them also our local colleagues – to guide the trans work and celebration at the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church from July 5th through 12th in Indianapolis (Twitter hashtag #GC77).  For more info and to give financial and other support to their journey, please visit http://blog.transepiscopal.com/.

This is all particularly meaningful to me because this is one of my two personal faiths, and one of my family’s two primary ones (the others are Judaism; yay Trewscopalians).

http://www.integrityusa.org

http://www.facebook.com/IntegrityUSA

https://twitter.com/integrityusa

http://blog.transepiscopal.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/TransEpiscopal/197050370322351

https://twitter.com/TransEpiscopal

MTPC's ICTE update ~ Tuesday June 19th 2012

Happy Pride season, ICTErs!  Can you believe how long and full it has become? 

It was good to see some of you at our first Community Gathering in April, the Boston edition of MTPC’s Trans Town Hall Meetings, the Philadelphia Transgender Health Conference, the Erev Pride Liberation Seder, and of course Boston Pride Day where MTPC was a Grand Marshal and tabled.  I didn’t make it to the Pride Memorial Vigil or Pride Interfaith Service this year, but I heard good things.  We postponed our ICTE Community Conference Call because there was so much else going on, but we will try again at the end of the summer. 

Next Monday June 25^th is our next Gathering, from 6:30 to 8:00 at 14 Beacon Street in Boston.  Please RSVP to Mycroft@MassTPC.org if you can, but please know that it’s more than okay to just show up.  We gather the 4^th Monday of each month.  Share information, inspiration and support with other trans and allied people interested in working at the intersection of trans and faith communities.        

It’s actually time to start thinking about Trans Awareness Week in November, which includes the Trans Day of Remembrance.  We’d love to see even more faith communities participate than last year.  One great collecgtion of ways to do that is through MTPC’s “I AM : Trans People Speak” project (http://www.transpeoplespeak.org/) – the Community phase means we’re now accepting stories from anywhere in the country, and we’d love to have more people of faith. 

We’re also planning to start a discussion group for trans people of faith.  And we’re thinking about faith-site trainings and policies – including helping faith-based social services better serve their trans clients. 

About next year – the Trans Equal Rights Bill we passed in November didn’t include public accommodations, so MTPC will be filing a new bill in January.  We will be coordinating the faith campaign, including the 2^nd Transgender Faith Action Week (the 1^st was last April).  We will also be looking to add signatures to our Declaration of faith-based support for trans equal rights (an open letter to the MA legislature, signed by hundreds of people and communities of faith).  So please keep next year in mind, and in mouth, as we journey through this transitional year. 

Best wishes,

Mycroft Masada Holmes

Chair, MTPC’s ICTE

http://www.masstpc.org/about/committees/interfaith/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7923372429

http://www.interfaithcoalition.blogspot.com

Celebrate my birthday & Pride Month by fundraising for MTPC!

http://wishes.causes.com/wishes/304723

I'll be 36* on Thursday June 28th (also the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, which explains a lot). Please help me celebrate that and GLBTQIA Pride Month by helping me fundraise for the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. 
(*Double chai, the Hebrew word for "life", symbolized by the number 18. $613 is to honor the traditional number of mitzvot in the Torah -- but please feel free to exceed it.) 

MTPC works to end discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. I chair their Interfaith Committee for Transgender Equality (ICTE). We passed most of the MA Trans Equal Rights Bill into law in November, but public accomodations was not included, so we need to file that bill in January and pass it asap. And we have a lot of other work to do. 

Please consider giving -- and whether or not you can give, please share this Wish with everyone you can. 

PLEASE NOTE -- donations go through BAGLY (Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth), MTPC's fiscal sponsor (fairly common arrangement between an older larger nonprofit and a newer smaller one). 

Thank you, 
Mycroft

http://wishes.causes.com/wishes/304723

Call for Papers - Fat Studies journal - special issue re: visual representation

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Fat Studies on Visual Representation

Special issue of Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society on Visual Representation, 

edited by Stefanie Snider, PhD

 Visual representations of and/or by fat people are powerful tools of both oppression and empowerment. This special issue of Fat Studies seeks to explore the wide variety of ways in which visual representations have helped to give voice to and affirmed fat-positive cultures as well as fostered institutionalized fatphobia on local, national, and international levels. Further analysis of positive, negative, and neutral visual representations from a Fat Studies perspective can help to increase our cultural awareness of just how prevalent and important the visual world is to issues of social justice in our everyday lives.

Visual representations should be taken to include any and all forms of visual media, including, but not limited to: photography, the “fine” arts, mass media imagery, film, live performance, museum installations, posters, and ephemera. Submissions do not need to be bound by historical timeline or cultural boundaries, but please be culturally- and historically-specific in your analyses. Fat Studies analyses do not need to be restricted to particular body sizes or shapes; Fat Studies approaches can examine numerous ways in which body weight, size, and shape might have particular social meaning – and in the case of this special issue of the journal, particular visual significance.

Potential topics might include, but are not limited to:

• The use of visual representations in teaching Fat Studies
• Intersections of body size, race, class, sexuality, gender, and other forms of cultural identification in television shows such as: Roseanne, The Gilmore Girls, Huge, Drop Dead Diva, Dollhouse, The Biggest Loser, Glee, Mike and Molly, etc.
• Nineteenth and twentieth century advertisements for fattening and/or dieting products
• The use of visual media to represent “the obesity epidemic”
• Moving beyond the “rubenesque” in paintings of fat subjects

To submit a proposal for inclusion in this special issue of the journal, please send a 250-500 word summary of your article as well as a current CV to Stefanie Snider, at Snider.Stefanie@gmail.com by July 1, 2012. Any questions about the special issue can be directed to this email address as well.

Final submissions should be between 3,000 and 6,000 words, including all notes and references. If you wish to include reproductions of visual images with your essay, you will need to receive permission to do so from the artists/ copyright holders of the image(s). All authors will need to sign a form that transfers copyright of their article to the publisher, Taylor & Francis/ Routledge.

Fat Studies is the first academic journal in the field of scholarship that critically examines theory, research, practices, and programs related to body weight and appearance. Content includes original research and overviews exploring the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, and socioeconomic status. Articles critically examine representations of fat in health and medical sciences, the Health at Every Size model, the pharmaceutical industry, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, legal issues, literature, pedagogy, art, theater, popular culture, media studies, and activism.

Fat Studies is an interdisciplinary, international field of scholarship that critically examines societal attitudes and practices about body weight and appearance. Fat Studies advocates equality for all people regardless of body size. It explores the way fat people are oppressed, the reasons why, who benefits from that oppression and how to liberate fat people from oppression. Fat Studies seeks to challenge and remove the negative associations that society has about fat and the fat body. It regards weight, like height, as a human characteristic that varies widely across any population. Fat Studies is similar to academic disciplines that focus on race, ethnicity, gender, or age.