From the ‘Transgender-Is-the-New-Normal’ file, The Atlantic (Nov. 2008), in an article called ‘A Boy’s Life,’ tells us of the new attitude of parents, teachers and doctors toward small children who clearly exhibit the belief that they have the body of the wrong sex. The article focuses on ‘Brandon Simms,’ who, before he was two, would attempt to drape things over his head to imitate long hair; he’d rip off his clothes to wear his mom’s stuff—by two and a half he’d ruined all his mom’s heels in the sandbox. His portrait of himself, drawn in kindergarten, shows a feminine, highly ornate and quite talented picture of a lady. Taken by his puzzled working-class parents to the Trans-Health Conference in Philadelphia when he was 7, they observed the following conversation between their son and another boy: ‘Are you transgender?’/ ‘What’s that?’/ ‘A boy who wants to be a girl.’/ ‘Yeah. Can I see your balloon?’ Doctors are beginning to give these children puberty-blocking drugs so that if and when they have operations as adults to alter their bodies’ appearances they won’t have irrevocable body changes that’d interfere.
From the ‘Three-Movies-and-a-Play’ file, check these out: The Chicago Sun-Times (Oct. 10) reviews Save Me, a flick based on, and set in, a camp run by Christians to save gays from gayness. The critic calls the movie ‘even’ and says ‘sympathies are distributed across the spectrum of viewpoints.’ Hmm, does this work when one side is oppressed (like the Jews) and the other side is flat-out evil (like Hitler) ? The Chicago Tribune (Oct. 10) looks at a documentary entitled Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture. Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s mentor and a seminal American architect, died in poverty. By all accounts (except his own), he was gay. Interesting to see if this aspect of his life is even hinted at. The New York Times (Oct. 10) looks over the film Breakfast With Scot, in which most of the cinematic mileage is made in the contrast of an 11-year-old girlie-boy (beads and boas) bonding with a former-hockey-star who happens to be gay. It’s good-hearted but about as deep as a petri dish. And how about a little revived play? The New York Times (Oct. 22) mentions Corpus Christi, in which Christ is a gay man. The Times observes there aren’t any riots, fusses, boycotts, etc., this time around as there were 10 years ago.
R.I.P., Richard Sylvan Selzer, AKA Mr. Blackwell (and ‘Mr.’ was not a title, but his first name), known for his worst-dressed list was a fashion designer, said he’d been a child prostitute, and had been an actor and model. Some of the more snarky comments from his list: Camilla Parker-Bowles was the ‘Duchess of Dowdy,’ Queen Elizabeth II went from ‘her majesty to her travesty,’ Elizabeth Taylor reminded him of the ‘rebirth of the zeppelin’ and ‘two small boys fighting under a mink blanket,’ Diana Ross was a ‘Martian meter maid’ and Martha Stewart dressed like a ‘centerfold from the Farmer’s Almanac.’ Blackwell is survived by his partner of 60 years, Robert L. Spencer.