The Path to Wisdom

this was one of the greatest books i have ever read. It was soo touching. With ever story i felt so at home reading it. I cried during one of the story’s it really touched me i felt like someone was stalking my emotions and writing them down. Some stories where so funny and good. I couldn’t stop reading it was addictive. My teacher borrowed it from me. although i have people in my class saying i was a freak for reading this book. it didn’t matter to me(it bothered me a little for a day but i got over it) i felt comfortable reading my genderqueer book for everyone to see. A MUST READ!!
Rating: 5 / 5

Fascinating critters, slugs.

“True” hermaphrodites, each possess female and male reproductive organs. Although slugs can, and will, fertilize themselves, they prefer mating. Both mates lay eggs. Often in the process, “apophallation” occurs – that is, in order to disengage their sperm-producing organs, both slugs must undergo “castration.” Starting out hermaphroditic, slugs default “female.” Since slugs mate only once, it’s a tidy arrangement. Baby slugs hatch independently and fend for themselves. Communists.

My daughter and I raised a clutch of eggs once. 55 of the little rice-sized goobers turned into slithering 6-inch mollusks. Big appetite for cucumbers and mushrooms. We took ‘em to her kindergarten show ‘n tell, put them all out on a big, wet plate, their eyeball stalks a-quivering. “EEEwwww!” groaned the gals. All the boys wigged, eyes-popping, challenged, upstaged. My little girl, ostensibly sugar and spice, was the class rebel hero. Now she’s raising 9 rats. The neighborhood kids are impressed.

With a high-testosterone mom and a superfem dad, her parents, a gender-variant unity of opposites, often joke that we live the Munsters’ life, two outcasts who produced, magically, a beautiful and socially normative Marilyn. Time (and puberty) will tell, however. I like to think normative will be an option by then; goth, hippie, punk, queer – imagine there’s no genders, it’s easy if you try.

Gender was bewildering to me “when I was a boy” – I thought I was in with the hopscotch girls ’til someone’s older sister poured a cream soda on my head and told me to go – but soon I discovered Keith Richards’ outfit on the cover of Satanic Majesties Request. It’s no coincidence 1967 was the year of paisley, beads, long hair and flower power; what defied the draft better than fem? And, all these years later – consider the New York Dolls’ reunion – rock and trans continue to crossfertilize, positively.

“Are you a man or a woman?”

“I’m Mick Jagger!”

Back to the garden.

After reading the dense, academic, postmodern Transgender Studies Reader (Stryker, Whittle), GenderQueer was a shock of pure pleasure!

Interesting ideologies, told personably, credibly, even forcefully through street-smart prose. Most essays are very short, and assume the readership has been around the block. Mercifully free of superstar surgery stories, GenderQueer troubles all TG hierarchies and identity politics. Men-horny lesbians and T-girls refusing to pass, and plenty inexplicable more: “It’s a whole different generation” ["Disorderly Fashion"].

Smash.

A combination of fairytales (”Loving Outside Simple Lines”), tearjerkers (”Passing Realities,” “Preadolescent Drag King”), horrorstories (”The A Train”), ravers (”World’s Youngest”), mindbenders (”Wanting Men”), clarion calls (”Do It On The Dotted Line,” “Transie,” “Do I Dare?”) and supertight essays by editor Riki Wilchins, GenderQueer is, to date, the latest word in the expanding, increasing visible TG universe.

Absolutely essential vitamins – and psychedelic, too.
Rating: 5 / 5