N the 1936 Olympic Games, the sprinter Stella Walsh — running for Poland and known as the fastest woman in the world — was beaten by Helen Stephens of St. Louis, who set a world record by running 100 meters in 11.4 seconds. After the race, a Polish journalist protested that Stephens must be a man. After all, no woman in the world could run that fast.

Olympic officials performed a “sex test” on Stephens, who was found, in fact, to be female, proving once and for all that a person could be incredibly fast and female at the same time.

Forty-four years later,…

Gives Good Headline: How the Media Loves its Sex Changes
by Mercedes Allen
(reprinted from dented blue mercedes blog)
Not too long ago, Calgary City Council voted whether to change the title of “alderman” to something ungendered, such as “alderperson” or “councillor.” They voted the idea down, leaving them the last major Canadian city yet to do […]

My friend Julie Serano–trans activist and writer– posted this over on Feministing– and, while I know the perils of cross-posting between there and here, I thought this was a good insight on the most recent Bailey dustup regarding trans issues. So here’s her post:
March 07, 2008
A “Bailey Controversy” Follow-Up, by Julia Serano
Julia Serano […]

Here’s a short video featuring Jennifer Finney Boylan’s antics on the current book tour for the memoir, I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU: Growing Up Haunted. The books’ been getting very nice reviews; in particular one might check out this lovely one at the L.A. Times and this even nicer one at the Chicago Tribune. […]

The trans community has been upset in the last week or so over this article published by the St. Petersburg Times (FLA) concerning “Susan Stanton’s Lonely Transformation.”

It’s a follow up article on the story of male-to-female transitioning transsexual Susan Stanton who, as Steve, was city manager of Largo, Florida until spring of 2007, when […]

Okay. So first off– I’m glad Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is the eleventh woman to win it, and one of our most articulate feminist voices. That’s fantastic.
I remember reading “The Golden Notebook” when I was 21; I’d been given it by a good female friend, one of those people […]

George Wills column in this week’s Newsweek noted that “last week there was nationwide merriment at the expense of an 18-year-old participant in a south Carolina Beauty pageant. … she got lost in syntactical tangles and spoke nonsense…” After it was placed on Youtube and it generated over 10 million hits, Will said, “the casual […]

I heard a story last weekend about a trans man in a rock and roll band, Lucas Silviera in the band Cliks. This was on NPR. The story can be listened to at the NPR site here.

(Photo by A Taste of Rain, originally on Flickr.)
Lucas was born female, then did the guy thing. I was […]

You’ll all be happy to learn that performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson has had a life-size porno doll made of herself, and that she and the doll have been married in Las Vegas. According to the Chicago Reader, “The doll project grew out of a response to a job she had before grad […]

John Travolta’s turn as Edna Turnblad in the film of Hairspray has provided the occasion for more than a little awkwardness in the press recently.
The part, which was of course orignally written for, and embodied by Divine in the oriignal John Waters film, has also been played by Harvey Fierstein, who won […]