MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who has a new baby, spoke recently with ThinkProgress about motherhood and the need for better policies for working parents. As usual, she says a lot of on-target, sensible things — but I have to amend her on one point.
A new picture book by Sarah and Ian Hoffman, Jacob’s New Dress (Albert Whitman, 2014), is welcome addition to the small but growing number of books for and about young gender nonconforming and transgender children.
I dislike filling out tax forms, and am lucky to have a spouse who actually kind of enjoys it. (She was a financial advisor for a while.) This year is tricky for us, however, since we are married in our state and must now fill out federal tax forms as “married” for the first time. In a way, it’s easier than doing the three federal forms we had to fill out in previous years — one for each of us as “single” and a “dummy” married one that we used to complete our state (married) form — but it raises its own set of questions. For same-sex couples married but living in states that don’t recognize their marriages, the questions may be even more complicated. Luckily, there’s help out there.
Transparent, a new half-hour drama from Jill Soloway (United States of Tara, Six Feet Under), centers around a transgender parent who is just beginning to transition and come out to family members. But an even more impressive portrayal of a trans character right now may be that of trans teen Cole on The Fosters.
One of the more delightful recent picture books featuring a child with LGBT parents is Elisabeth Kushner’s The Purim Superhero, about a child with gay dads celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim. I wrote about the book last year when it was first published — and am pleased to see that PJ Library, a project that sends free children’s books to Jewish families, is offering free copies of the book to subscribers who request it.
Audre Lorde, self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” would have turned 80 this week had cancer not taken her in 1992. Here’s what she said about family in 1975.
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry had her second child on Valentine’s Day last week — surprising many viewers of her show because she wasn’t “visibly pregnant.” She gave birth to her first child in 2002, but had her uterus removed in 2008 after suffering from uterine fibroids. She credits “a dear friend and his husband,” who had their child by surrogacy, for suggesting that she do the same.
It’s a myth that LGBTQ parents will necessarily have LGBTQ kids. Some will, however, simply because some percentage of parents, LGBTQ and not, always will. At COLAGE’s KidSafe blog, Sonya, who identifies as queer and has lesbian moms, writes about being a “second-gen” LGBTQ person — but also about how she and her moms have “Two Separate Identities.”
Today is a day to celebrate love. How appropriate, then, that late yesterday, Federal District Court Judge Arenda Wright Allen struck down Virginia’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples, and in her ruling, quoted Mildred Loving of Loving v. Virginia, the case that struck down that state’s and the country’s anti-miscegenation laws.
Facebook took a positive step forward today by offering users the ability to indicate a gender option other than just female or male. Now one can choose transgender, trans woman, trans man, trans person, intersex, genderqueer, gender fluid, and many other variations — about 50 in all. But the range of choices to indicate family members who are also on Facebook remains traditionally gendered.
