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Kramers Bookstore of Washington DC is convening a panel discussion of my March 2020 Book GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, hosted on the Zoom platform, on January 16 at 2 PM Eastern Standard Time.

PANELISTS

Esther Lemmens -- Esther is the founder of the Fifty Shades of Gender podcast, where she gets curious about all things gender, sex and sexuality, exploring stories from gender-diverse folks with inclusion, acceptance and respect.

Ann Menasche -- Ann is a radical lesbian-feminist and socialist activist and a founding member of the radical feminist organization, Feminists in Struggle.

Rachel Lange -- Rachel Lange is the editor of QueerPGH, and a freelance writer and editor. They live in Pittsburgh, PA.




Panelists will critique and discuss GenderQueer for half an hour, then I will join them for further discussion of any issues that have been highlighted. Guests can pose questions or make comments at the end.


Topic: Kramers Hosts a Panel Discussion of Allan Hunter's *GenderQueer*
Time: Jan 16, 2021 12:45 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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Kramers will be publicizing it on their media


———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


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ahunter3: (Default)
Podcast host Esther Lemmens maintains Fifty Shades of Gender, a series in which she interviews a different individual in each episode to do a deep dive into gender, sex, and sexuality. "Come with us on a journey of inclusion, acceptance and respect", she invites.

Esther Lemmens has a gift for asking the right questions to let her subjects introduce or explain the things most important to them. She senses areas where the person might want to elaborate or make things clearer, and probes in such a way as to give that opportunity.

I've been interviewed several times as a book author with a book being published, but often came away from them feeling less than overjoyed about how my gender identity, or my book, were being presented. But Lemmens has elicited from me the best spoken overview I've ever given.

A Conversation with Allan D. Hunter, Podcast Episode 14, 2 October 2020.


You should check out her other episodes as well.


———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts
ahunter3: (Default)
"...the book has some problematic aspects, and may be at odds with some of our queer values today. This seems to be by design, conveying a much different world for queer people."

— Rachel Lange, Senior Editor, QueerPGH



If you were ever part of a children's classroom drama group or were in a choir or rock band as a 4th grader, you may have encountered the "review that isn't really a review". The kind where the writer discusses how adorable your group was and how earnest you all were up there on that stage, and how cute your costumes were. The names of the lead singers or the performers in the primary roles are all dutifully mentioned, and the writer will generally find some nice things to say about the precision of the delivery or how nicely all in tune you were. But you don't get scathing criticism or a pointed comment on how your group chose to stage it, because the writer figures that no one goes to those things to hear the music or watch the dramatic tale unfold.


So-called "third party" politicians often get the same treatment when they run for office. If they get interviewed and covered at all, the questions are softball questions: "Tell me about your main issues", or "What made you decide to run for office?"; the interviewer rarely probes the marginal candidate's most politically vulnerable spot to see if the candidate has a good answer, like "You say you would close the town widget factory because of the toxicity levels. Seven hundred local citizens have jobs there; what's going to happen to them? And where will the airplane industry get their greasy widgets from, won't the cost of air travel jump through the roof if you do that?" They don't ask because the writer doesn't assume it matters to the voters, because this candidate isn't going to win the election anyway so who cares?


Rachel Lange of the queer publication QueerPGH apparently takes me seriously. Not only that I have something to say to the LGBTQIA community but that people might pay attention to it, that it might have some impact. In her interview with me, she asked some of the most provocative and probing questions I've faced.

She isn't wrong in her summary statement: I wrote GenderQueer not to add my voice to the chorus of voices that were already out there, but to add a different voice. To tell a story about an identity that was not already being explained and given a name. And she's quite right—I have often found myself at odds with activists who represent some of the other shades of the queer coalition rainbow, because some of the concepts they use are injurious to the identity I'm writing about. Some of the rhetoric they like to use erases people like me. I'm not unaware of the existing social dialog, so in rising to my feet to present my tale, my dissent with them is indeed by design. Not that I'm out to antagonize or deliberately cause dissent in the community, but because that erasure of which I spoke needs to end. I'm not out to negate anyone else's identity, and I hope readers of my book will see that. But I very much appreciate the candor and seriousness of the questions.

Book Review: Gender Queer: A Story from a Different Closet

———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts
ahunter3: (Default)
I have had many nice reviews printed in college newspapers and I've been reviewed in the LGBTQIA press. And I've had notices and interviews in mainstream papers that speak to the existence of the book, but which weren't actually reviews of it. But until this week I did not have an actual review of GenderQueer printed in a mainstream municipal newspaper.

So it seems utterly appropriate that the first to do so would be the Los Alamos Daily Post, the newspaper from the town where I attended junior high and high school. The newspaper from the town where most of the action in the book takes place.

Lifestyles Editor Bonne Gordon was a great interviewer; when she called me to ask questions about my book and my experiences, it was obvious that she had not only been giving the book a close read but was also familiar on a deep level with the relevant backdrop issues. We discussed gender from the standpoint of LGBTQIA experiences and feminism, and how things have changed (and how they haven't) over the forty years since the events described in the book.

Los Alamos is both a small community and a special, well-known one. It's received far more literary attention than a typical village of 12,000 inhabitants would, but not so much that the people who live there don't become interested when a book about living there goes to press. So with any luck, the article will spark some local interest in reading my book.


Putting the Q in LGBTQ: Growing Up 'Different' In Los Alamos — Bonnie Gordon, The Los Alamos Daily Post


———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts
ahunter3: (Default)
Interviewed for a PodCast — Off The Cuffs


On May 20, I was invited back to Off The Cuffs, a Kink and BDSM Podcast, to talk about my book and about gender identity and being genderqueer.


I say "invited back" because this was a reinterview. Back in 2016, during the interval between signing a contract with Ellora's Cave and Ellora's Cave going bankrupt and cancelling all outstanding contracts, I had made arrangements to be the guest on Off The Cuffs. But by the December episode date, my book's fate was back in limbo. As it turned out, that was the least of the difficulties with my appearance on their show: the recording equipment or the software, one or the other, misbehaved and the sound file from that evening was unusable.


The episode this time sprawled out somewhat, in part because the hosts, Dick and Max, knew me and had already discussed the book and its subject matter with me once before and had had time to think about it since then, and in part because there were some really good questions posed by audience members which prompted long discussions of their own. So the occasion was split into two consecutive Podcasts:





212 – We Have To Go Back
by Off the Cuffs: a Kink & BDSM Podcast | May 20, 2020 | Podcast

This week we sat down with Allan Hunter for part one of our discussion about the journey of coming out as gender queer in the 80s, long before the concept was in the cultural conversation.


Dick: "Allan, when we did this before...I kind of remember not understanding where you were coming from and I think just with... learning from other people and about gender identities and such, I remember from things I said back then. I feel like I'm more prepared to have a conversation with you than I was four year ago. Just in the past few years as a society we've been coming to this, but Allan, this was in the 1980s... the only ideas back then was like if you were transgender and wanting to change from one body to another ..."

Max: "Or things like men who like to wear women's clothing..."

Dick: "Yeah, it was a time when there wasn't even a glimpse of the language that we have to describe these things now."



213 – Jump to Conclusions
by Off the Cuffs: a Kink & BDSM Podcast | May 27, 2020 | Podcast

This week we continue our chat with Allan Hunter in part two of our discussion about the journey of coming out as gender queer in the 80s. We have some questions from our listeners...


Two questions -- first, as you began your journey of self discovery to genderqueer sometime ago, have you found attitudes have changed much in how other gender nonconforming people respond to you? It seems at times very human for people to become attached to very dogmatic veiws on what a word means especially when attached to how they identify themselves, to the point that people trying to find a space for themselves within a identy word can try to reject others trying to do the same with a different perspective on the same word? If that has been in your experience it would be interesting to know how that changed over time. Secondly, have you found any conversation tools to help change the focus from the word someone identifies with to the lived experience of each individual?


Do you feel it is your responsibility to educate people on your gender identity, or on the gender spectrum in general, due to your divergence from what's considered the norm? How much is up to the public to self educate and much is up to us to spread awareness about our own existence throughout history?


How can people buy your book?


Do you feel that since gender queer identities are more normal nowadays, that your experiences with folks in regards to "I'm queer" conversations are different from when you first came out? How so?


What do you, or could one, do to help present better as gender-queer?


———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts
ahunter3: (Default)
I'm in Newsday! (aka Mainstream Press Coverage); + More Reviews

marginalization, representative memoir, why, language, genderqueer, writing, review, sex v gender, interview


Newsday, Long Island's primary newspaper, Sunday circulation 495,000, is featuring an interview with me as the lead in Arts & Entertainment section of tomorrow's (Sunday May 3) issue. Author: Brian Alessandro, literary critic

Link goes to the online copy of the article, but it's behind a paywall which will put it out of reach for most people who aren't subscribers of Newsday or one of its partners.

It's not a review of the book. The questions were about my motivations as an author and the political situation of genderqueer people within LGBTQIA and how I feel about putting such personal information about the events in my life out there for public consumption -- most of which I've discussed at length in these blog posts.

Getting a spread in Newsday is excellent publicity and I hope it will direct a significant amount of local and regional attention to my book. Public awareness is very much a snowball phenomenon. When people think something is happening that other people in their community are paying attention to, they want to be at least somewhat acquainted with it and what it's about in case someone asks them.


Meanwhile, I'm continuing to get college newspaper reviews. The corona virus has of course delayed many such endeavors so they are being spread out over the course of months instead of being more closely packed together. That has the beneficial effect of lengthening the time when I'm popping up in print and affecting search engines and whatnot. That works in my favor, ameliorating the effect of being unable to make guest-speaker appearances and do book signings etc.

Here are the reviews that have come in since my April 3 post:




"First and foremost, what this book does really well is testify to the importance of the 'Q' in LGBTQ. When many people furrowed their eyebrows at the addition to another letter in the acronym, people like this author were fighting to show how necessary it was. Derek’s story takes place in a time way before the 'Q' was introduced, way before most began to understand or care about gender issues.



However, even though Genderqueer takes place in the 70s, there are many parallels to today’s world that will make the story resonate with today’s LGBTQ youth. Derek’s confusion and desperation to understand who he is is so palpable that anyone who has gone through anything similar, or is currently going through anything similar, will be able to relate. With this story, Alan D. Hunter sheds light on a gender identity that is relatively unknown to the general public while also giving others who share a similar story to him validation that there is nothing wrong with who they are."


Anna Vanseveran. St. Norbert Times — St. Norbert College


"The discussion around gender identity and sexual orientation has progressed exponentially in the past decade. Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide only five years ago, and the LGBTQ community continues to fight for equal rights. With this constant push for change, some can only imagine the struggles of coming to terms with your gender identity during the late 1960s and 1970s.



GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet offers an eye-opening view into the upbringing of a gender-nonconforming person in an era when many people didn’t know such an identity existed..."


Camryn DeLuca. The Diamondback — University of Maryland



"This is a novel that is bracingly raw and personal, yet always feels authentic in its sense of place and voice. Its visibility gives an insight into a point of view that doesn’t live in the “traditional” gender boxes...




It is in the last half of the book, when Derek starts to realize the whole person he is inside where the book reaches its peak...it is incredibly satisfying to see Derek hit his stride and finally find his sense of place and belonging in the world. "


Josh Rittberg The Snapper — Millersville University


"...it’s clear from the beginning of the novel where the story is heading. Hunter introduces their ideas of gender at the start of the novel when they talk about their personality as a child – how they don’t identify with the rough behavior usually prescribed to the male gender – and these thoughts stay with them and influence their growing up.



When the revelation is made, it’s not something that comes out of left field. Because of course it’s not – these things don’t just appear one day like a magic trick. It’s always there, even if it’s not super obvious at first."


Celia Brockert The Times-Delphic — Drake University


"...a treacherous and often realistic tale that’s packed with frustration, desperation and yearning. Hunter does an amazing job of captivating the raw emotions of a person seeking their own truths in a world where everyone else seems to know who they are and what their place is in the world...



We see Derek from a very young age get picked on and beat up. He tries time and time again not to let the bullies get into his head, but it proves more and more difficult. All the while he starts to believe the things they say about him. He seeks out answers in both healthy and unhealthy ways, often getting him in all sorts of trouble...



Overall this book is very eye-opening. It puts into words a story for people that are almost never represented. It shakes its metaphoric fist in the face of erasure, saying, 'I’m here and I will not be forgotten.'"


Zarqua Ansari The Beacon — Wilkes University



I've also gradually accumulated reviews on GoodReads, with eight readers leaving review comments behind.


———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts
ahunter3: (Default)
Hi, E. M. Hamill!


YOUR BOOK

* What factors led you to feature a genderqueer main character?  Do
you draw on personal experience (whether your own or other folks in
your life), or were you more intrigued by the concept of being
genderqueer?


I’ve been bisexual all my life, though I’m not genderfluid like Dalí is. It’s something I never had the courage to express when I was younger for a variety of reasons, and then it felt like it was too late. Now that I’m older, wiser, and one of my children has also come out as non-binary, I am finally comfortable expressing this part of myself. Especially after the last election, I felt compelled to speak out at last and be counted with all my brothers and sisters. It’s never too late.


Even though my main character, Dalí, has been shattered by loss, I wanted them to be a person who revels in the fact they are attracted to all genders, and doesn’t hide who they are. They accept this part of themselves without shame, as they should. It was kind of cathartic.



* Are there other gender-bending science fiction novels or
gender-variant characters in science fiction that inspire you or that
you're particularly fond of?



The show “Earth: Final Conflict” fascinated me. The aliens in the show, especially Da’an, were genderless, and I loved that.  Of course, Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who, that most omnisexual of beings in the universe! Who doesn’t love him? One that doesn’t get a lot of notice is Inara from Firefly, who was decidedly bisexual. Lastly, most recently, “Sense8” and it’s diverse array of queer relationships and actors spoke to me on a huge level.


* Some science fiction operates as a sort of "intellectual
laboratory" to play out "what if" scenarios, and some is more of a
vacation fantasy, creating a fascinating different world to put
characters into, and so on.  Is there a 'tradition' or sub-genre of
science fiction that your book is a part of?



I would call it a space opera in the vein of Star Trek or Star Wars, with deliberate allegories to modern day social and human rights issues. Aliens and humans work alongside each other, and deep friendships or relationships develop as a result. 


* Is this a stand-alone book or are you working on a series?


This can be read as a stand-alone, but I definitely left the door open for more books featuring this character. I’ve already started writing their next mission.


* What sort of audience do you anticipate for DALI?  When you were
writing it, did you have an audience in your mind that you were
writing for?



I hope it appeals to all readers of science fiction, but especially to fellow queer readers. I also hope it resonates with mainstream sci-fi fans, because fiction opens doors to new ways of thinking.


* If you could inhabit the world in which your story takes place,
would you do so for a weekend, a year or two, or the rest of your
life, or would you pass on that option entirely?


Oh, a year or two, because you can’t get from our solar system to Zereid quickly!

* Did you have the idea for DALI floating around in your mind for a
long time before you wrote it, or did you write it more or less as it
first came to you?


Once Dalí started talking, they didn’t stop. I finished the first draft in six months, which is really fast for me!

* Aside from the science fiction element of it, you describe the book
as an "adventure"; is it a suspenseful action-thriller, or a big
drama with large social forces squaring off, a personal odyssey with
a central heroic figure... how would you characterize the plot?



I would characterize it as a suspenseful action-thriller, or spy drama. There are elements of a personal odyssey as well.


* How long did it take you?  If you've written and published
previously, how did this one compare to the others in terms of the
ease and speed with which you wrote it?


My first book took me five years from start to finish, but only two after I got serious about it. The second book in that series was easier. Dalí took six months to write, six months to edit, and I signed a contract with Nine Star Press in early 2017. 


WRITING


* What's your favorite environment to write in?  Do you have a studio
or do you just work in any convenient place?


I have a big recliner in front of my picture window. I get up before everybody else does, because it takes silence and solitude to get me in the zone. I have a small writing space carved out in our utility room, but it’s less comfortable! It’s the place I go when everybody else is awake.

* Do you do a lot of formal planning, with notes and databases or
spreadsheets and research, or do you work more spontaneously and
impose any additional needed order later on?


Nope. Total pantser. I love that improvisational writing mode. I start with an idea or a single scene that’s been in my head, and run. I break a cardinal rule by doing some heavy editing as I write, and also afterwards. 

* What's your main writing tool?  Do you write using a standard word
processor, a dedicated book-authoring software package, a fountain
pen and a ream of parchment, dictate your tale into Siri, or
something else?  What do you like about your preferred tool?



My trusty MacBook Air. It goes with me when I’m waiting to pick up kids from extracurricular stuff, in doctor’s waiting rooms, on long car trips…it’s an extension of my consciousness by now! Tool wise, I love AutoCrit software. Best investment I ever made. 


* Do you keep the contents of your book private until you like the
form it has taken, or do you like to solicit early feedback from beta
readers and friends?



As soon as I have the first draft out of my head, I run it by my alphas to see if it sucks or not! My betas don’t get to see it until the later drafts. I have the best critique partners ever.  You can’t have them; they’re mine.


* Do you write in 3rd person past tense omniscient, 1st person
present tense, or some other combo of perspective and grammatical
tense?  How does this affect the ways in which you include the
thinking of your main character and, if relevant, the internal
thinking of other characters in your stories?  Is this something
you're consistent about or have you (for example) written some
stories as an omniscient narrator and some from a 1st person
narrator's vantage point?



I write in both. My first three novels are third person past/omniscient, but Dalí was my first person/past tense debut, other than a few short stories. I’m not a huge fan of present tense as a writer or a reader, with one notable exception: The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.


* Who were and are your favorite authors?  Have they generally been
writers who write in the same genres that you write in?


Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula LeGuin, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Madeleine L’Engle, David Brin, Piers Anthony, Gregory McGuire, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Heinlein, Stephen King, Robert McCammon, JRR Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander…I could go on way too long!  I write sci-fi and fantasy of all flavors, so they’ve all influenced me in different ways. I am a lifelong, voracious reader. I make occasional forays into paranormal and historical romance, with a few well-loved literary fiction books.

* What has been the most useful feedback you've ever received about
your writing?


Every bit of feedback I receive is useful. This is why I value my editors and CP’s above all. Most recently, it was to pay attention to body parts, especially eyes, wandering off to do their own thing…LOL

* Have you ever tried cowriting or being part of a collaborative
writing experience?  Is that something you would recommend, or
recommend against?



I haven’t yet. I’ve only heard horror stories, but there’s proof out there that it can work with the right partnership.


E. M. Hamill: NineStar Press hosted author page, primary website

DALÍ will be available in print and in e-book format from Amazon.



————————

I am now echoed on DreamWidth, like many other LJ folks. My DW acct is here. Please friend/link me on DW if you are a DreamWidth user.

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Index of all Blog Posts
ahunter3: (Default)
In my Sept 14 blogentry, I posted this teaser:

> Things have been simultaneously hectic and non-newsworthy for the
> most part in the land of STORY OF Q. That's a situation that just
> changed today, but I'm not quite prepared to write about today's
> developments (I think the relevant phrase is "waiting for the
> dust to settle"). Watch this space for more activity in days to
> come.

My next entry was on Oct 3, when I announced that the book deal with Ellora's Cave had fallen through. That wasn't the announcement I'd been expecting to make. The news I had been anticipating just before EC dropped their bombshell was that I was *finally* in negotiation with the relevant people for securing the rights to quote some Pink Floyd lyrics in my book.

Here's the backstory on THAT: I started pursuing that matter late last March; I went online, checking the BMI web site and finding out that Warner-Chappell managed the rights to that particular song, "In the Flesh" from side 2 of The Wall. In early May, I corresponded with them and was informed that their affiliate Alfred Music handles those matters.

Corresponded with one Gabriel Morgan at Alfred Music for an iteration or two, but then on May 23 he wrote to tell me that they no longer administer that catalog, that in fact Warner-Chappell no longer publishes any of Pink Floyd music. Apparently the contract expired and Roger Waters opted to sign on with someone else. No, they didn't know who that someone else was. I went back to the BMI web site. Still said Warner-Chappell.

Recontacted Gabriel Morgan and said they had to have had a contact person, an agent if not Roger Waters himself, and therefore whoever that person was should be able to inform them who the contract was with now. Nope, he said, because, well, actually the contract was with our UK affiliate, Warner-Tamerlane. So I go online to find contact info for Warner-Tamerlane in the UK.

By the third week of May, Warner-Tamerlane had informed me that those types of rights are handled by their affiliate, Faber Music, much like Alfred Music does for Warner-Chappell in the US I guess. I make repeated attempts to contact someone at Faber Music, culminating in correspondence with one Charlotte Mortimer, who cc's me on her communication with one Christine Cullen: "please let him know as soon as you have any further news on where the catalogue has gone?" Never heard from anyone at Warner-Tamerlane subsequent to that.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, I signed the publishing contract with Ellora's Cave. I would need the Pink Floyd permissions in order for the book to be published.

Meanwhile I had managed to track down the agent directly representing Roger Waters: Mark Fenwick Management, for whom I had only a snail-mail address. I sent a registered USPS international letter which arrived June 3. I received an email on June 7 from Louisa Morris of Mark Fenwick Management: "I am currently dealing with your request and will get back to you as soon as I can".

On 8/1 I email Louisa Morris "Just checking in" having not heard anything.

Checked the BMI website which still listed Warner-Chappell as the relevant publisher for this work. Chatted with BMI support line and they said "sometimes it takes awhile before these things get updated". Yeah, I noticed.

On 8/11 called and spoke with an assistant "Hopefully an answer by end of the week". I hadn't heard anything by 8/29 so I attempted another phone call. No answer. So I sent another email which also went unanswered.

On 8/30 spoke with Louisa Morris on the phone again: "Hopefully we'll have an answer by the end of the week". Not having heard anything by 9/6, I called and spoke with someone named "Kitty" who said Louisa Morris no longer works there, so I re-explained.

Recontacted the folks at Mark Fenwick on 9/15: they're working on it, maybe they'll have something soon...

I went on the BMI web site again and lo and behold FINALLY it lists a new publisher of record: BMG Platinum Songs US

I talk with them, they have me email a copy of the manuscript, and on 9/19 I am told by one Joe Betts that it will be passed on to Roger Waters for approval.

On November 25, I receive an email: my use of the lyrics has been approved "in principle", meaning it is OK with Roger Waters that it be used in this context. All that remains is negotiating with Hal Leonard Music, their affiliate who handles this sort of thing, and they will determine the amount I should pay and all that. I have an application pending with them, but essentially I have the important OK — I may use the lyrics as long as I pay the relevant price for doing so.

Yeesh, that was bloody exhausting.


* * *




I went to a one-woman show in Manhattan a few weeks ago. She was a black butch lesbian woman who had grown up living with her mom in the Bronx. She gave an interesting reading/acting show in which she dramatized the tension between her and her mom, much of which had to do with her rejection of the life she saw around her and her determination to get out. That rejection included a rejection of the identities "black" and "woman" and all the limitations entailed within those. She became acquainted with the East Village counterculture and rock music and avant garde theatre and the alternative gender and sexual orientation culture developing there and made her home in it, the only black person in a homeopathic white-hippie social infusion.

Later, I was engaged in dialog with a roomful of artists and dancers and musicians who had been at the show, discussing what we'd seen. Several of the other viewers complained that she didn't ever "deal with" being black. I disagreed: she had explicitly "dealt with" it by explaining how she did not identify with it, rejected it socially and culturally as an identity. On some fine-grained level you could argue that what she was saying was "even though I am black, I like this rock music, and this theatre and dance, these other cultural things and these other values, and these white countercultural folks are my choice of company". But how she experienced it personally and emotionally at the time, as how she presented it, was "This was my identity; this is who I was and have been, and my mother hated that because I was rejecting her and her identity".

That was true of her gender / sexual preference identity as well. We're a bit more accustomed to that, more exposed to it; she rejected the femininity thing, the being-a-woman thing. If she were coming of age now, she might identify as transgender; in her era, she identified as a butch, a tough masculine no-frills short-haired lesbian who dressed in what was considered men's clothing.

She identified with the white countercultural people she befriended but she did not PRESENT as white; she made no attempt to make any modifications that would cause her to be taken as ancestrally caucasian. In asserting her identity she was effectively asking us to accept that here is a person who is ancestrally and ethnically black but that her identity is other than that, that she is one of the white countercultural folks of the East Village.

That's strongly akin to what I am doing with gender. I present as male and I do not expect to be perceived as female, and yet I assert an identity that is not man, that is not masculine, but is instead a girl or woman identity.


* * *


I recognize that it's not easy for everyone to wrap their minds around that. There's a social awareness of transgender people, but I'm doing something different from what most of them are doing, I'm saying something different from what most people have heard about being transgender, and it requires processing some additional ideas and concepts.

I was interviewed yesterday evening by Dick_Wound and Minimus Maximus (aka Dick and Max) for their kinky podcast, OffTheCuffs. They were interviewing me specifically as a genderqueer person and as the author of THE STORY OF Q. Dick and Max kept apologizing for using the wrong words (they kept referring to me as someone who was "female" inside or had a "female identity") and they said it was very interesting but more than a little confusing to understand a distinction between sex and gender, to understand what it means for me to be not female but a woman. To be a male woman.

It was an interesting discussion and would have been good publicity for my book. I say "would have been" for two reasons here, the first being that between the time that we first started discussing them having me on their podcast and yesterday evening when I sat before the microphones, Ellora's Cave went belly-up, so at best it would have been good publicity for my story and my ideas and for the eventual potential book that I am determined will some day be available. The second reason is that they had technical difficulties of which we were not aware at the time, but the sound file on the computer was corrupted and unusable.

They asked me to come join them February 11th for a LIVE podcast along with other guests, so stay tuned for further details as February approaches.

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ahunter3: (Default)
Hi! Yes, I am nearly 10 days past my presentation date, and I didn't review the experience or anything. There's a reason for that: a battallion of bronchitis buggies set up their field offices in my lungs and colonized my nose and sinus passages and left their dirty bootprints all over my carpet and stuff. I've been very busy doing things like breathing and being alive. Now I'm starting to do some other things, but reviewing my presentation at Life in Nassau / Nassau County LGBT Center isn't where I'm going to begin today. Soon, I promise.


But today I thought I'd cycle over to the Tone Police Station. We hear so much about tone policing, most of it negative and most of that, I'm afraid to say, well-deserved, but I was curious to see if there was another side, any other side, really, to the story.


Luw Movin, Community Relations Officer, was quite willing to talk to me. Luw, who prefers xe / xes / xe's pronouns, is a soft-voiced intersex individual of Aleutian and Pacific Islander background who identifies as trigender woman-man-altbeing and xe's distinctive handcarved arm-braces and some posters on xes wall proclaiming "SCHIZOPHRENIA IS A DIFFERENCE. NORMATIVITY IS A DISEASE" and "STOP INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT" provide testimony to Movin's status as one of the differently abled and differently minded amongst us. "Yeah, really", xe says, "I'm not a joke. What's a joke is that some of the folks in Tone Police thought that by putting an individual who belongs to the smallest number of obvious privileged identities in this chair, they could make their problems go away. You better believe there is tokenism, but I'm good at what I do and this position appeals to me for my own reasons. Sit down, if you're a person who sits by preference".

"Anyway, sure, that's part of the Department's image problem, that tone policing is a behavior of the comfortably privileged people, and directed towards marginalized people. But that's not where the Tone Police dug themselves into this hole, it's not the core of our PR problem, our public relations situation. No, the problem with the Tone Police is that we've reacted to people's anger, their expressions of trauma, by focusing on HOW UPSETTING THEY WERE BEING when they spoke of what they'd been through."

I nodded. Movin was saying just what the critics of tone policing so often said.

"You think about that for a moment", Movin continued. "Here's somebody finally putting into words how badly they were abused, the lack of any acknowledgment that treating someone that way even constituted abuse, and here come the Tone Police telling them 'Whoa, the way you say that, you could be making some folks in here feel like you're blaming them personally, be careful how you express yourself'... "

Luw Movin brushed xe's braid back from xe's face and laced xes fingers together on the desk in front of xes. "Tone Police going to be seen in one of two ways if they keep doing that. First off, people are going to feel like the content of what they have to say has been belittled, after saying something of that impact, something as personal and vivid as what they just shared, because the reaction ignores what they said and focuses on the WAY THEY SAID IT. Now, as bad as that is, that's the more charitable interpretation, because the other likely interpretation is that the Tone Police doesn't LIKE what they said, that they've got some kind of stake in the silence, that they don't WANT this kind of truth coming out, because it makes them uncomfortable, so they turn to tone policing as a way of silencing them."


"Well, wait a minute then", I reply, "because it sounds like you're agreeing with the charges people are making about tone policing. But you ARE the Tone Police, so since you're here you must have some notion that tone policing isn't always a bad thing...?"

"Are you asking if I think there's any legitimate purpose to the Tone Police? Well, yes, or at least I think there can be. At least if there's less... tone deafness from the Tone Police themselves. But let me give you some examples."

Movin glanced around the room, xes eyes finding their way over to the bookshelf on the far wall, and xe nodded. "All right. Example. Psych Rights. The National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy, 1985, the big conference. Internal politics within the movement was in more uproar than usual because the mental health system was all of a sudden trying to fund user-run self-help, and that was us. But to most everyone who'd been a part of the movement all the years up through then, the mental health system had been The Enemy. It was an Enemy of many parts, many arms and legs... you had the APA, that's your organized psychiatrists themselves, hard-core enemy; you had various state Departments of Mental Hygiene... always sounded like they thought of us as an infection, bloody Department of Mental Sanitation, but they were mostly enemy... anyway, the nationals, the Nat Institute of Mental Health, often progressive in some ways but they work with the others... the astroturf organizations, Alliance for the Mentally Ill, phony grass-roots, really the parents and families who love medical-model psychiatry because it isn't Freudian, yeah my kid is batshit insane but not because we toilet trained her wrong, she has a mental illness, and we need to be able to drug her up for her own good and ours too, so them, AMI, theoretically potential allies but Enemy, pure Enemy, in every fight along the way. Then associations and endowments and stuff, the Mental Health Association, that kind of thing. They don't have to manage institutions or justify what they've done in them so sometimes pretty progressive, but not always on the same channel as the movement. And so on. Well now all of a sudden some factions in that constellation of Enemy is saying they want to fund us. Give us money to organize, run our own alternative stuff, do public education. And overnight, half the people in the movement are all 'Oh goody goody let's write grant proposals' and the other half is 'Anyone who accepts their blood money is tainted and we should blackball them from all future movement events'." Movin shook xe's head with a wry smile. "We needed to be talking to each other, respecting each other, listening to each other. But there were a lot of people who figured certain... let's call them 'issues', I guess... certain 'issues' had ALREADY been discussed, and wise people had been present to discuss them, and a consensus was reached, and therefore we ALREADY know the answer to that one and if you're not on board with that answer you have said wrong things, you've destroyed your credibility in this context."

Movin pointed to the sign about involuntary psychiatric treatment. "That— in my opinion— is where the line in the sand should have been drawn. If the Mental Health Association of Lower Septic Tankland wants to pay us to do user-run self-help and we don't have to put anyone into an involuntary treatment situation, not by mandated referral, not by required reports to the police, zero, nada, then I don't see what's wrong with accepting that money. It costs money to run a program. If we don't run it, someone who isn't us, who doesn't share our values, is going to get that money and run something."

Xe turned around to face me head-on. "So. Tone Police. This is me, being the Tone Police, and you imagine that you, and a handful of others sitting next to you, have been saying anyone in the movement who takes money from mental health orgs has joined the oppression and is out of the movement." Xe glared at me as if I were the described faction. "YOU do not get to speak to ME, your ally and comrade, as if the wise and important people already decided this and OUR role is to either agree with them or shut up. That would be elitist, and so you sound elitist. YOU do not get magic authority by waving your arms towards established tradition in our movement, magic authority that lets YOU decide whether I have transgressed without hearing my side of things. Want to know why? Want to know why? BECAUSE WE ARE NOT ABOUT TRADITION, you noisy blustery rudeness! We are about CHANGE. All the wrongnesses that change organizations are up against, they are rigid and full of bad thoughts and ideas BECAUSE they have clotted themselves up with tradition and closed themselves off to anything new."

Xe stopped, closed xe's eyes for a moment and chuckled. "That felt good. Except of course that would not work, not saying it that way, not to them. Because Tone Police. It's the right message but the people involved, the old movement regulars, would not have reacted well to being scolded BACK even if, yes, they'd started it. But saying it, saying it the right way, that's a legitimate role for the Tone Police. To tell people, in any activist movement, that it isn't nice to tell others in the same movement that they're on the wrong side of some issue that all the people who matter have long since decided."

I scribbed some more notes for my article, but Luw Movin wasn't finished.

"There's a flip side, even there. There usually is in these matters. Simplicity and activist politics don't mix. Anyway, let's say we all agree that yes, it's bad form to tell other people in your movement, your sisters in arms and whatnot, that the word or phrase or partial opinion they just voiced is Oppressive and that they should Not Say That Again. Not like that, not in that kind of belittling tone, they're entitled to be heard out if they think otherwise than you do on it, whatever it is. But the flip side is that yes, it DOES become tiresome to have to say and resay and reiterate and explain and re-explain the same thing". Movin pointed again to the sign about forced treatment. "The funding did happen. Lots of organizations that applied for it were not our movement and were not opposed on principle to forced treatment. A few years later, people who had come up through user-run self-help orgs that were not movement-run began coming to meetings we'd called and advertised. And they'd say HORRIBLE things in discussion groups! 'Hey that person who just spoke sounded awfully confused and decompensated to me, don't you think we should call 911, maybe they're off their meds and need to be locked up' So immediately of course it wasn't a safe place and what they'd said was wrong in so many ways... " Movin shrugged. "After the first time we implemented an identity policy. That who we were, if you were in here, if you were in these groups, was not just user-run self-help but user-run self-help that accepted, as a principle, that we did not use or condone forced treatment. That lets us stop situations like that without violating the Tone Police principles. I don't want to become that gal or guy who says 'You Just Said a Bad Thing. That Was Wrong and Oppressive and Triggering and You Must Self-abase Now". The Tone Police are still right to jump on that kind of behavior."

"Well", I asked, "so are you going to take every one of the ideas that most of the activists in your cause have come to accept as true and incorporate those into your Declaration of Identity? Does that fix the problem, or are you just sort of relocating it from being an internal friction thing to an us versus them thing?"

"If we took everything that the loudest and most contiguous, let's say, block of activists agreed on and made every one of them part of our Definition, we'd have very little rancorous argument. Of course we'd have maybe 11 members, having either defined everyone else as not-us or driven anyone else away with the sheer volume of what they're supposed to read and say 'Yeah I agree with that' before they can even come in and participate. Look, there are GOING to be hurt feelings and misunderstandings and miscommunications. Someone is GOING to say something that reminds someone else of the way the Oppressor used that language and they're going to find it triggering, and they will hopefully say so and explain what hearing that evokes in them. But you know what? You know what? It doesn't mean the person who said it did something wrong. People complain about the Tone Police as if tone were unimportant, but it's the tone that the Oppressor gave the phrase that made it triggering. How you say something, the hostility or contempt or belitting condescension or whatever, that is what gives terms and phrases, and even opinions and positions and ideas sometimes, their bite. Think of the worst epithet you can think of, a word so bad that people in nearly any progressive movement would be horrified to be seated next to anyone who spoke it. Got one in mind? Got any idea of the origin of the word itself, like what language it comes from, what it meant in that language... OK you're nodding. Tone. And given enough time of the Oppressor using a word with a tone, you've got a meaning, the tone has become the meaning. But if you have an activist movement, well, not just the voice of the Oppressor gets to put tone to a word or a phrase. You hear of any activist movements that have reclaimed what was hurled at them as a derogatory term, and they use it with pride? Oppressor is not the only voice that gets to have tone. So part of Tone Police's role is to say, sometimes, 'Back down. I understand what you heard is something you associate with negative. But the person who just said that is in here, one of us. Give the speaker the benefit of the doubt. You heard it elsewhere with a tone that the current speaker didn't necessarily intend. You should hear it here with the ear you give to someone who shares this cause with you, and don't be so fast in saying 'Bad Word' or 'Phrase Used By the Oppressor', at least not until you've given it an opportunity to be something new and different".

"Well... you've given me a lot to write about, and I think my readers will find this interesting to think about. I want to thank you for your time".

"Well, I should be thanking you for yours. You may be helping the image of the Tone Police with your article... it's not like it could get a lot worse than it is at the moment. Your readers spend their political attention in one or more activist concerns and movements, I imagine. I bet it isn't the psychiatric rights movement, though, is it?"

"Not for most of my readers, I'd say, no".

"Good. Some things are easier to hear and understand when the examples given aren't right up close to where they've been spending their time. Send me a link to it when it comes out, OK?"

I said I would.

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