"Rachel Tutera... runs a blog called The Handsome Butch."

"Daniel Friedman... makes custom men’s suits, mostly for corporate clients in his end of Park Slope, Brooklyn."

When she wrote to him last year, seeking a sales job, she had a proposition: Why couldn’t Mr. Friedman, with his expertise in men’s suits, make them for women like her — not women’s suits, but the same gear he was making for guys, with the same masculine profile, but fitted to women’s bodies? It was a question he had never considered.

That's an excerpt from an article in the NYT, and here's the blog, The Handsome Butch, which is very aesthetically pleasing and makes an immediate visual argument that females can look quite naturally attractive in man-tailored clothes.

From the NYT article:

What is the meaning of a man’s suit? Every day men disappear into them, as into uniforms. In wool and creased flannel, the suits tell a story of power and belonging. When Ms. Tutera approached Mr. Friedman, she offered a new twist on that story.

“We started looking at these weddings from Maine, because it had legalized gay marriage,” he said. “And these women who were getting married in these tuxedos looked ridiculous. They looked awful. The suits were giant. And I can only imagine these people going into a Brooks Brothers in Maine and saying, ‘I want a men’s suit that’s going to fit me,’ and I can imagine how uncomfortable it was for both sides.”

Note the statement that "men disappear" into suits, so it's not just those women in tuxedos who look "ridiculous." Everyone looks better in clothes that fit properly. No one...



... almost no one... wants his body lost inside a giant suit. But there is the meaning of "disappear" that means — as the NYT acknowledged — I am powerful and I belong here amongst the powerful. Not all men in a suit "disappear" that way. Some disappear into: I'm forced to wear this thing because of the occasion and I don't really belong here. They're like the lesbian in the wedding tuxedo that bothered Mr. Friedman.

Do your clothes fit? Do you fit your clothes? If not, why not? Is it is the clothes, is it you, or is it what you are doing?

"I am neither a man nor a woman. I will remain the patchwork created by doctors, bruised and scarred."

Said the type of person who is the reason for the new law in Germany that allows parents to leave the "gender" line blank on birth certificates.

"We use transgender as an umbrella term that includes people who are transsexual, cross-dressers or otherwise gender non-conforming."

A definition in the sidebar of an article titled "The Heart Wants What It Wants" — supertitled "We Are as We Are" and "Dating Trans?," which is teased on the front page of this new website Ozy under the heading "Tricky Topic: Dating a Transgender Person/Have attitudes about the fluidity of gender migrated much on the T in LGBT?"

For a website with a 3-letter name, that's an awful lot of titles, dragging us this way and that. What caught my eye — among the many things clamoring to catch eyes — was that side-bar definition that I used for the post title. That made me think: Who's not under that umbrella? Only people who are gender-conforming, which in my book — who wants to be a conformist, a gender stereotype? — is an insult.
The erstwhile minority could become the majority by repositioning the line.

But the article doesn't get us any further than telling us about some new Jared Leto-Matthew McConaughey ("Oscar buzz"), the price of some "sex reassignment" surgeries ("creating a penis is difficult and costly"), the fact that the Social Security Administration will now record your change of sex without proof of surgery (why not?), and finally — as we reach the last paragraph, still searching for the multiple teased topics — 3 questions, essentially only repeating the question raised in all those titles/supertitles/teasers.

So that's my first encounter with Ozy. Here's a Business Insider article about it: "Former MSNBC Anchor Launches Ozy, A Fresh News Site With Money From Laurene Powell Jobs."

Watson is the kind of person who is so charismatic, an interview about Ozy required a follow-up phone call. 

What? Is the reporter — Alyson Shontell — saying she was so dazzled by the in-person presence of this man who "wore a gray fitted T-shirt and a bright smile" to their in-person meeting that she needed another interview at some distance from this man's powerful force-field?

[Carlos Watson] is a great schmoozer and I admittedly fell for it during our first meeting. He escaped tough business questions the first time around.

Ha ha. I wonder how Laurene Powell Jobs is doing. Does it matter? She has Steve's billions to throw around however she wants, at whatever cute guys remain amongst the living, now that poor Steve has oh-wowed.

"I think most people would say, 'No, we don't need another news site,'" Watson says. "But if you asked them, 'Has there been a change, such that people are hungrier now to see more, be more and do more than before?' I think they'd tell you there has been. That's why Kickstarter exists. That's why Airbnb has such a robust business. There's a reason why there are things called 500 startups, and a reason startup accelerators are in every city. There's a reason why American Idol is still strong 15 years later. There's a hunger people have for both for themselves and in the world for what's next and what's new."

Are you still hungry? Or does this put you off your feed?

"If someone says I believe God requires me to wear a hat..."

"... it's considered completely inappropriate for the authorities or people who aren't intimate with the person to pressure him about whether there really is a God and whether that God cares about who's wearing hats."

The last sentence of my long comment at the end of the thread on the post "Not much is getting said about the Chelsea/Bradley Manning transgender announcement."

Not much is getting said about the Chelsea/Bradley Manning transgender announcement.

I'm thinking it must be disappointing to some people that mean/stupid things haven't been said. Or did I miss something? There's nothing about Manning at all currently trending on Memeorandum. A search for "Chelsea Manning" at rushlimbaugh.comcomes up empty. The Blaze only quotes the Washington Post on the difficulty of reporting about someone who's acted in the past under one name and gender and now asks to be referred to differently.

I can't find anyone saying anything that gives pro-transgender advocates an opportunity to pounce. Where did all this restraint come from?

Here's James Joyner at Outside the Beltway handling the issue with great sensitivity a day after an almost agonizingly reticent discussion of the topic with Joshua Foust on Bloggingheads:



I don't think I've ever heard more hemming and hawing on Bloggingheads (and that's saying a lot).

ADDED: I do see this piece in NRO by Kevin D. Williamson, "Bradley Manning Is Not a Woman," which comes across as serious and not mean-spirited. Key passage:

We have created a rhetoric of “gender identity” that is disconnected from biological sexual fact, and we have done so largely in the service of enabling the sexual mutilation of physically healthy men and women (significantly more men) by medical authorities who should be barred by professional convention if not by conscience from the removal of healthy organs (and limbs, more on that later), an act that by any reasonable standard ought to be considered mutilation rather than therapy. This is not to discount the feelings of people who suffer from gender-identity disorders — to the contrary, those feelings must be taken into account in determining courses of treatment for people who have severe personality disorders.

That's very focused on surgical intervention, which requires the participation of doctors. Speaking of things that can be disconnected, you could disconnect that surgery from more speech- and expression-based things about names, pronouns, dress, and behavior. Why can't those things be treated more like other matters of conscience, like religion, where we leave people to their own notions?

"I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood..."

"... I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition."

Said Bradley Manning, in a statement released after he received his sentence of 35 years.

The statement went on to request that Private Manning’s supporters “refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility).” It was signed, “Chelsea Manning.”

Woke up, it was a Chelsea Manning.... and the first thing that I knew/There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too...

Private Manning’s decision to live as a woman raises questions of how the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he will be held, will respond. A spokeswoman for the prison recently told Courthouse News that the prison does not provide hormone therapy or gender-reassignment surgery. As is the case for all soldiers, transgender inmates are only eligible for psychiatric care, she said....

[Manning's lawyer David] Coombs said that if the military did not provide hormone therapy willingly, “then I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure they are forced to do so.”

When asked whether Private Manning’s ultimate goal was to be housed in prison with women, instead of men, Mr. Coombs said, “No, I think the ultimate goal is to be comfortable in her skin and to be the person that she’s never had an opportunity to be.”

And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses... That's not really what prison is supposed to be. Not so much butterscotch sun in there. 

Oh, won't you stay/We'll put on the day 35 years/And we'll talk in present tenses....

This is a complicated prison law question which I've never researched, and I don't have a position on what the right answer is. It's easy to say prison should be stark, but medical treatments should not be withheld. The issue of who should be housed with whom is difficult, and we don't want prisoners hurting each other. As for sexuality, is the official policy to deny all sexual expression to prisoners? If so, is that enforced across the board? If not, what should the answer be for someone who chooses/feels called to express himself/herself this way?

And here's the erstwhile "Bradley Manning" page at Wikipedia right now:

"A Colorado school district discriminated against a transgender first grader when it refused to let her use the girl’s bathroom..."

"... the state’s civil rights division has determined, a decision gay and transgender advocates say will have an indelible impact on how such cases are handled in the future."

Telling Coy [Mathis] “that she must disregard her identity while performing one of the most essential human functions constitutes severe and pervasive treatment, and creates an environment that is objectively and subjectively hostile, intimidating or offensive,” Steven Chavez, the division director, wrote in the decision....

It was clear, the state said, that Coy had completely integrated into society as a girl — wearing girls’ clothing, standing in the girls’ line at school and choosing to play with girls.

But the state’s ruling went even further, saying that evolving research on transgender development showed that “compartmentalizing a child as a boy or a girl solely based on their visible anatomy, is a simplistic approach to a difficult and complex issue.”

Transgendered SEAL.

"Brother, I am with you ... being a SEAL is hard, this looks harder. Peace."

"Because I'm transgender, I was always completely disconnected from my body."

Says Chaz Bono, blithely purveying a stereotype about transgendered persons. Apparently, they are all completely disconnected from their bodies!

This head-body disconnect is offered as an explanation for obesity: "I really lived in my head and just kind of tried to ignore everything from the neck down."

Chaos for all-female Smith College after it rejects a transgender applicant, who's got social media to champion her cause.

"A transgender high school student has had her application to a prestigious all-women's college denied because she is tagged as legally male on government documents, prompting a vocal online and social media campaign on her behalf."

Laurie Fenlason, Smith's vice president for public affairs, said the school does not comment on the status or admissibility of individual applicants. But she added, "Every application to Smith is treated on a case-by-case basis, and application materials must reflect female identity."

Smith also has legal concerns over changing its admissions policies, Fenlason said. Schools such as Smith are concerned they could lose federal funding under Title IX, a law that bans sexual discrimination in education but exempts single-sex institutions.

Female identity... that sounds like they've already worked out the answer for the future. Beyond that, they can't say why they rejected the applicant, Calliope Wong. They're not allowed to talk about that. It's Wong going public, making the claim, enlisting social media in publicizing it.

Students and graduates have taken to social media sites, including the Facebook groups "Trans women belong at Smith College" and "Smith Q&A," to show support.

Here's "Trans women belong at Smith College." Sample comment there: "Our alma mater is being incredibly douchey...."

They're allowed to discriminate against men. They're more discriminatory than most schools. But I guess that's the trouble. Once you start discriminating and draw a line, you have to figure out who's on which side of that line, creating problems non-discriminators don't have.

For example, if you are going to do affirmative action, do you simply accept that people are the race they feel that they are? Actually, it does work out that way! It's surprising there isn't more chaos around that, but that's because once students are admitted, they make their own assumptions about who is what race, and they are never confronted with the admissions materials. So, for example, if Liz got bonus points because her application said she was Native American, and when she joins the student body, she's a blue-eyed blonde, the other students just see the blue-eyed blonde. Meanwhile, the school is happy to show better diversity statistics. Everybody wins. (That is, everybody who's there, in person, now, wins. The losers are unknowns exiled who knows where.)

But if you have a place like Smith, that's all female, everyone on site is quite aware that this is an all-female place, and they'll notice if a non-female makes it past admissions. The entire student body is activated as a check on the admissions people. Some of those students might be inclined towards inclusion of transgendered individuals, but some are not. Chaos!

Wong has not undergone the costly reassignment procedure.

Chaos!

"Why should they be forced to deal with the news that a male teacher they have always known as Mr Upton will henceforth be a woman called Miss Meadows?"

So wrote Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn in an article headlined "He's not only in the wrong body … he's in the wrong job."

The school's headmaster had written to the parents telling them that Nathan Upton "has recently made a significant change in his life and will be transitioning to live as a woman" and would be called Lucy Meadows.

Now, Upton/Meadows has been found dead:

Helen Belcher, director of TransMedia Watch (TMW), which monitors media coverage of trans issues, stressed on Friday that while the circumstances surrounding Meadows's death were unclear, "we know that Lucy suffered a huge amount of monstering and harassment by the press when she was very vulnerable around Christmas. That level of press attention could not have helped her mental state one bit."

"Monstering," according to an Urban Dictionary definition from 2010, is "The art of abusing people. Of ambushing them with questions, following them with questions, hounding them with questions, driving them to their fucking graves with questions. It’s sort of being like a photographer, except no ones' killed any royalty doing it…yet."

Now, the monstering turns to Littlejohn:

[F]ormer Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell... tweeted: "I hope journalists are doorstepping Dacre, Murdoch and Littlejohn for their reaction to Lucy Meadows' suicide. The Mail really is scum."
Jennie Kermode, chair of TMW, said: "What we want to come out of Lucy's death is for people in the media to think about what they are writing and the way they are writing it...."