This Monday, my thesis project is due. It's a year-long feature piece that is about 6,000 - 7,000 words long. We were allowed to choose our own topics and in my dismay about the lack of any gayness at the school I chose a very gay story.

It's all about an on-going conflict between male-to-female transsexuals and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. The festival has been in existence for 30 years, and as it's title implies, it came out of a very '70s lesbian feminist separtist discourse. The argument goes that the festival wants to exclude transsexual women from attending because they claim that women who were born women and have lived their entire lives as women have a different experience than MTF transwomen. They say that they are not trans-phobic and that they support transwomen and acknowledge that transwomen are, in fact, women. But, they say that their own experiences as "womyn-born-womyn" are unique and deserves a place of celebration of its own. Obviously, transwomen feel differently. They say that the festival is discriminatory and that they had no control of the bodies they were born with. Many of these people believe that they are in fact "womyn-born-womyn" but they were born with the wrong biological parts. They say that a festival which celebrates womanhood in all its many aspects should make room for transwomen as just another valid experience of femaleness. Some of the problems that arise in this conflict center around transsexual surgery. Festival attendees, many of whom are incest and sexual abuse survivors, say that they are concerned about the possibilty of penises and other male type indicators on the land. (There are open showers at the festival and many people spend the entire time either naked or topless.) In addition, these days, many many queer people choose to identify as neither male or female, rather somewhere in between. They don't want to have surgery or take hormones. This kind of gender subtlety leads to a slippery slope where it becomes difficult to say where the line can be drawn between who is a woman, trans or otherwise. There are plenty of men who might say things like "I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body" who would then have the option to attend the festival. It becomes very hard to draw a line. The transwomen argue that not every MTF can afford to have surgery since these kinds of operations are very expensive. Therefore, they say, the fear of penises is racist and classist. They also say that gender is not black and white, and that a blurred line is exactly necessary to accomodate everyone's particular experience. The whole thing gets extraordinarly complicated. People are very pissed and angry on both sides.

I thought I'd have an easy time getting access to the people I needed to get the whole story. Not so. It's been a huge pain in the ass. I've been dealing with flakey lesbians of all stripes, defensive and suspicious women, both trans and otherwise, endless unreturned phone calls/phone tag, cancelled interviews and endless e-mails not to mention my very own thesis adviser who is somewhat uncomfortable with the whole story. She thinks mainstream people will have a hard time relating to transsexuals. That most straight people think transpeople are "freaks." She wants me to pare the whole thing down, to talk about the medical and biological approach to gender. Clearly, the people involved in the story (and me too, for that matter) think that approach is ridiculous. Biologists are still futzing around with the origins of homosexuality, but that doesn't change the fact that gay people exist. Despite whatever notions doctors may have about transsexuality, the politcs and theory of gender are miles ahead. The whole discussion, I think, is about post-modernism, not biology.

So, anyway, the whole thing is hugely overwhelming. And, of course, I'm procrastinating like crazy, i.e writing in my blog, for example. I've already written 2 drafts, but I still need input from several people, all of whom are not returning my pleading calls and e-mails. This despite their assurances that they will and want to contribute. At this point I have to be careful not to let my irritation show (which is very hard for me), because I need *them*. They don't need me. I really can't wait for this thing to be done. Then I can concentrate my fullest anxiety on finding a job. I sure am looking forward to that.

In other news: Long time readers of frothy may remember the boring and tedious posts about my friends Amanda and Andrew and their dog Saffy. By sheer coincidence and really the rental market of NYC, we have ended up living a block away from them. Despite the close proximity, I've found that I never spend time with them. Every once in a while Sam and I will run into them at the dog park which lies in between our two homes, but otherwise I've not really engaged with them. I'll say here that it was a conscious decision.

Last semester when Sam was back in SF for a week, I happened to run into Amanda at the park. We chatted and I mentioned that Sam was away and I was having a hard time with Isaac since I had exams all week and was not able to get home to walk him. She asked if there was anything she could do, so I, thinking she goddamned owes me this favor, asked her to watch him for one day - not overnight - since I would be out from 8 am to 10 pm. She got a funny look on her face and demurred. I thought to myself, Ok, then. Clearly, she won't watch Isaac. Fuck her. And therefore she'll never ask me to watch Saffy again either. Fine.

Months go by. Again, one night Sam and I run into her at the park. She starts going on and on about this actress friend of hers who is SUCH a self-absorbed person who is SO narcisstic and SUCH an energy drain and NEVER listens and is SO not a real friend and how she really needs to not hang out with her anymore. In the midst of this, Sam and I exchange furitive glances. Soon after, Amanda reaches a stopping point and then turns to us and asks "Do you think I'm like that?" Silence. A full 30 seconds go by. Finally Sam says "I know a girl at work who is just like that." Amanda says "No, really. Am I like that?" I pause, and say lamely "No, you're not." It was ridiculous since I usually completely speak my mind. Immediately I regretted lying. But in retrospect I think it was ok, since it's not like I really wanted to get into some long-ass narcisstic processing session with her all about why she's self absorbed. I haven't seen her since.

Anyway, this weekend out of the blue I get this e-mail from her - asking me to watch Saffy while they go out of town! I was so fucking pissed. I cannot believe she would have the chutzpah! Sam and I talked at length - at serious length - about what to do. We agreed that we would not do it. So I made the call. It was not a pleasant conversation, but I tried to make it clean. With Sam's coaching, I told her we couldn't watch the dog because Sam and I had decided that the dog watching program doesn't work. That no-one has ever been really happy about how it plays out. That it's always messy and everyone ends up resentful. That it puts a strain on our relationship with them. That I assumed after she had declined to watch Isaac that we had all realized that we didn't want to expect that from each other. She just said well I don't remember that at all. I said, ok, but it did happen. And again, I'm sorry we won't be able to watch her. Then she just got all pissy and said well then, I guess I need to make some phone calls to find someone else. Then she hung up on me.