Articles by Rebecca

I saw two specials the other day on Comedy Central.  Both were hosted by comics.  One was a woman, the other a man.   The woman was significantly funnier than the man was.  Their styles were different too. She was more self-deprecating, and not afraid to be "naked" as we say in the blogosphere, when it came to how she joked about life, her travels through it, and her observations of it.  And the crowd was laughing out loud.   

The man’s humor was different.  It was more one liners and more challenges to the audience that they had better laugh, his material was funny!  His flow was off too, probably just a bad night, but while he is a funny, national headliner for comics, he seemed more prone to goad the audience into laughing about his material than telling a story to have them laugh with him.  It was an interesting contrast between the two.

That got me to wondering about humor between men and women.  Have you ever wondered how they differ or are the same?   Well there’s a great article, written by Gina Barreca, at Ms. Magazine entitled  "Real stories, real laughter, real women" that I think you might like that talks about this.

Gina Barreca makes this interesting observation about the differences:

The difference, in fact, between men’s humor and women’s humor seems to
be the difference between revolt and revolution. Masculine humor has of
course included digs at the conventions of the world, poked fun at the
institutions and establishments, but without the truly anarchic edge
that characterizes feminine humor. Women’s humor calls into question
the largest issues, questions the way the world is put together.

She also makes note that feminine humor has been and is often hidden:

Why has the feminine tradition of humor, ubiquitous as it is, remained
essentially hidden from the mainstream? In part it is due to the
Tupperware mentality that sought to preserve humor by keeping away from
the potentially hazardous male gaze. If men didn’t find funny what we
found funny, then they would think we were foolish. If they thought our
joking was foolish, we might learn to like it less ourselves. It wasn’t
worth the risk.

You can read the whole article for yourself by clicking to this link here.

(photo courtesy of benhamin’s photos, used under Creative Commons license)

There is an interesting artilce on Transgenderism (gender dysphoria) in the Lahey Clinic Fall 2005 Journal. The clinic actually features this article, and you can read it at this link here. I was referred to it from doing some reading at Andrea Jame’s outstanding TS Roadmap.

The article does a good job of outlining the potential sources for our being transgendered as well as the ethical issues in intervening in children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. There are other good insights in the article as well, such as the authors opinion that psychological issues (such as depression, fairly common in the trans-community) are really a result of not dealing constructively with a person’s gender dysphoria.

Click here for this excellent article, from this well respected medical institution in New England

4-2-2008 Update
There is a nice Q&A Interview on the author of this Lahey Clinic article, Dr. Norm Spack. It was done in Boston.Com. You can reach the Boston.com Article by clicking here. You can read our coverage at Beck’s Cafe on this Boston.com article by clicking into Beck’s Cafe at this link here.

If you live in the New York Metro area, you might want to consider being a part of the Transgender Project. 

The project, funded by the NIH, is designed to:

describe the economic, social and personal, family and workplace experiences of male to female trans-persons, how these experiences change over the course of our lives, and the impact of these experiences on our mental and physical health.

This sounds like a worthwhile study that will produce some very valuable information on the transgendered community.   If you live in the NY Metro area, go have a look, sounds like you could be a part of history if you do!

Helen Boyd is the author of one of the best books on dealing with living with someone with who is transgendered from the spouse’s (most particularly the wife’s)  perspective.  If your married, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to understand your spouse’s point of view, it goes a long way to helping  you both communicate on your very real transgender (GID) issues.  Whether your male-to-female or female-to-male I’d suggest you take a look at her book.  This book was very important to me in understanding my wife’s point of view.  For my wife, she was able to at last read something from another genetic woman who’s husband is transgendered and who did not necessarily think their situation was all "wonderful" nor all "terrible".  It’s well researched, well written, and well worth reading.   

Helen’s journal, (en)gender, is at this link here.

You can buy the book from Amazon at this link here.

Link: Macleans.ca | Why be just one sex?.

Macleans is Canada’s premiere monthly magazine and a great read.   I live in the U.S.A., but with friends in Canada, it’s hard not to peruse their periodicals from time to time to see how life is with our Northern neighbor. 

Among my friends is "Sally", one of the people written about in the story at the link above.  I am very proud to know her.  She is a personal inspiration to me, and to others.  Pull up a mug of cocoa and read the story at the link above to learn a bit about her, and about being transgendered in Canada.

Link: HBO: Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She.

I noticed this documentary while at tsroadmap.  This looks very interesting, hopefully HBO will do a good job of showing a balanced view.

UPDATE 12/6/05:
I pulled the link to the article.  This is out of respect for the speakers who, apparently, did not want themselves featured in a news article.  In fact, it appears that the reporter who wrote the article was in fact not even supposed to be in the student assembly where the talk was being given.   For the editorial as to why I am pulling the link, please read that here.   

Link: Theology of the body

Maybe, just maybe, being transgendered will be our strength in the next life.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the bodies & characteristics we posses now will be transformed into what so many of so desperately want; to be female, or certainly to achieve a balance in who we are gender wise.  See this link at Amy Wellborn’s blog to spur your own thinking on  Link: Theology of the body