Book Review: The Daring Book for Girls

The Daring Book for Girls, by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, is the distaff version of the bestselling The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. Like its male version, The Daring Book is a throwback to the children’s encyclopedias and magazines of old, full of games, activities, and bits of information the authors think one should know in order to be daring, well rounded, and culturally literate—in a rather old-fashioned sense of the term. There is no talk of iPods or IM-ing. Technology takes a back seat to the kinds of activities one can play in the backyard or at the kitchen table with nothing more than a few household items and a friend. Read the rest of this post »

Yes, We’ve Heard the Turkey Baster Jokes

For those of you observing Thanksgiving this week, here’s wishing you and your families a very happy time. Don’t let the extended family get on your nerves—just show them these cute Orka basters from Target (via Amazon), and tell them you hope using the right color will influence the gender of your next child. See how long you can keep a straight (!) face.

I’m planning to be offline through the weekend, although I can’t promise I won’t put up an item or two if I can keep the pumpkin pie crumbs out of my keyboard. Have a great holiday!

Corn Muffins and LGBT Rights

I was having a reluctant-parent moment yesterday. I had volunteered to help my son’s preschool class make corn muffins for their Thanksgiving “feast,” but the teachers had scheduled it smack dab in the middle of his three-hour session, leaving me with time on either side, not worth driving home, but too long to linger. As if that wasn’t enough, I found out Friday that I was not only supposed to help them make the muffins, but to provide all the ingredients, bowls, and spoons, then drive the batter home to bake. I didn’t really mind, as I do love to bake with my son, but was feeling grumbly about the last-minuteness of it all and the fact that I couldn’t get any blogging done.

I nevertheless packed up a box full of flour, cornmeal, bowls, and other essentials, dropped off my son, and managed to pop over to the supermarket for a couple of items before going back to break down a simple recipe into 20 steps so each child could contribute something. (The eggs were very well beaten.)

Along the way, I reflected that although I was losing my usual quality blogging time, I was in fact doing something that gets right at the heart of why I’m writing this blog in the first place—being a visible presence to support my son and providing a positive example of an LGBT parent. I thought of this again later when I read Deb Price’s column in the Detroit News about Craig Covey, the first openly gay mayor in Michigan. Covey won his initial election to the Ferndale City Council by heeding a friend’s advice to become active in the community, joining or helping with various commissions and societies around town. Now Ferndale is about 15 percent gay, Price reports, and last year “passed a gay rights ordinance 65 percent to 35 percent on the third try.” Covey’s take on it? “Instead of separating (into a gay ghetto) or demanding our rights, we are achieving what we wanted, neighbor by neighbor.”

And corn muffin by corn muffin.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today marks the 9th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, “set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.” The event organizers explain:

The event honors Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Since then, the event has grown to encompass memorials in dozens of cities across the world.

The Remembering Our Dead site has a list of those who were killed in 2007 because of anti-transgender bias.

My thoughts are with the trans community today. For insightful reflections on gender and trans issues, try (en)Gender, Transadvocate, and many of the writers at The Bilerico Project, including Marti Abernathy and Rebecca Juro. (There are many other sites as well, but the ones above should give you enough linkage to get started, should you be interested in finding more.) I’d also be remiss if I didn’t provide a link to TransParentcy, an organization dedicated to transgender parents and their children. I do not know if any of this year’s victims had children, but each was somebody’s child once. As a parent, and as a human being, that is enough to make me bow my head in silence today.

Happy Birthday, Jodie!

A very happy 45th birthday today to Jodie Foster, who, while never officially saying she’s a lesbian, has two children who bear both her last name and that of Cydney Bernard, the woman rumored to be her partner. Good enough for me to wish her a very happy Mombian birthday. Regardless of how she identifies herself, and despite the fact that I’d be delighted if she came out, I admire her resolve to keep her private life just that. It’s a refreshing change from most celebrities today.

I hope Cydney and the kids bake her a really big cake.

BuddyG: My Two Moms and Me: A New Animated Show for Children of LGBT Families

A few weeks ago, I wrote of the new DVD series Dottie’s Magic Pockets, the first show targeting children of LGBT families. Now comes news of the second such show, and the first fully animated one, BuddyG: My Two Moms and Me.

As with Dottie, BuddyG is a labor of love, time, and money by two lesbian moms searching for images of families like theirs. The two are no newcomers to championing LGBT causes. USA Today featured their family in an article on same-sex couples and family law back in 2003, as did the Detroit News, and they were quoted in a Lambda Legal press release in 2005. As for their latest endeavor, Margaux and Donna say that they wanted to create a cartoon, “like a Caillou with two moms or dads”:

The more we talked about it the more important it became. It was almost like, if we didn’t do something about it after we had this fantastic idea, then we were somehow being irresponsible parents. So out of that, “Buddy G” was born. It took longer, cost more and was way harder then we thought it would be, but we couldn’t be happier or more proud of the cartoon and the potential it represents. “Buddy G” has added incredible joy to our family and we hope he adds a little happiness to yours.

The show focuses on the everyday adventures of five-year-old BuddyG, his two moms, and his seven-year-old friend Owen, aided by BuddyG’s armband computer, Socrates, an electronic device with a personality of its own. I had the honor of seeing a sneak preview of the first episode, The Lost Rings, in which “the boys learn the value of being truthful while picking up some facts from Socrates about the science of metal detectors.” I was impressed by the 3D animation, catchy music, and sense of fun. There are a few signs that this was a family effort, without the resources of Pixar or Disney: Margaux and Donna’s son Grayson is the voice of BuddyG, and does a fine job but lacks some of the polish of a trained actor; the Web site is still getting some finishing touches.

Still, if my own four-year-old son is any indication, both BuddyG and Dottie have lots of kid appeal, and would make great holiday presents. (Dottie is available now; you can order BuddyG now, and it will be delivered in time for Christmas. Margaux and Donna assure me they’re working as hard as they can to get the DVD out the door, but will unfortunately miss this year’s early Hanukkah.)

For those of us longing to give our children images of families like our own, it seems an embarrassment of riches to have these two shows launch within such a short time. Despite the rough edges of both, they are impressive efforts and full of potential we should support. I look forward to their next episodes and hope this is a sign we’ll soon see more children’s shows depicting other parts of the LGBT spectrum and other age ranges.

“Cutie Patoots Reading Nook” for LGBT Families in Boston

Passing along this invitation from the Family Equality Council. We may try to be at the event with our son, although this being both cold and holiday season, nothing is certain. If you’re going, too, though, drop me a note. I’d love to say hi in person.

The Family Equality Council is hosting its first ever Cutie Patoots Reading Nook—one fun hour of reading children’s books about LGBTQ families and doing fabulously entertaining LGBTQ family-themed activities.

It will be on December 8th from 11 AM until 12 PM at the Boston Public Library on 276 Meridian Street in East Boston.

Please bring your children ages 0-8 for a really lovely time!

Please RSVP to Julia Bean at Julia.Bean@familyequality.org or 617-502-8700 ext. 231! For more information, feel free to look at our website at www.familyequality.org.

Mixing It Up

I just bought myself the mixer of my dreams: the Kitchenaid 600, a 6-quart, 575-watt beauty. I’d been eying it for some time, since I’ve gotten into bread making in a big way since staying home with my son. I thought about the smaller and cheaper 5-quart model, but decided to hold out. Yesterday, however, in browsing Amazon, I noticed the 600 on sale for $269, a price comparable to that of its smaller sibling. Only two colors came at that price: licorice and meringue, but as most people would call them black and white, I didn’t mind. If it had been some weird olive or orange that clashed with my kitchen, I might have had qualms. It also qualified for free shipping. Not only that, but Amazon offered me a free trial of Amazon Prime that included free two-day shipping, so my whirling, light-dimming monstrosity should be here on Tuesday.

I promise Mombian won’t turn into a food blog, much as I have aspirations in that direction, but I beg your indulgence if I put up a recipe or two. Feel free to add your own as part of the Lesbian Mom Holiday Recipe Exchange.

I checked Amazon today, and it looks like the price is up to $299 for the same two colors. It’s still a great deal, though, since other colors are $368-399. If you have dreams of being the next Cat Cora, you might want to check it out, or send the link to your sweetie with a promise to bake her cookies.

Amazon is also having a big sale the Friday after Thanksgiving. I can’t promise they’ll be the best deals around, but if my mixer is anything to go by, there should be at least a few real bargains. As always, purchases at Amazon made by clicking a link from this site (even if you purchase different products from the ones I mention) generate a referral fee to me to help keep Mombian going. Thanks for your support!

I think I’ll ask Helen to buy me the flame detail kit for the holidays. There’s something very lesbian about decorating a mixer like a Harley.

Weekly Political Roundup

• The U.S. Senate and House are arguing over the LGBT-inclusive hate-crimes provision attached to the 2008 defense authorization bill. The Senate approved the bill but now House Armed Services Committee leaders are concerned they do not have enough votes to pass the bill with the hate-crimes provision included. At this point, a vote on the bill will be delayed until December.
• Openly gay Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
• If you live in a conservative state, you could be part of “a gay demographic tidal wave” that could have a significant impact on the 2008 elections. UCLA demographer Gary Gates adds “Any notion that the rights of same-sex couples and gay men and lesbians are somehow separate from those of mainstream America looks politically iffy at best. In fact, using the gay and lesbian community as a political wedge might just wedge candidates into a losing corner.” Read the rest of this post »

Boston Leads the Way to Welcoming Schools

Originally published in Bay Windows, November 13, 2007 (which explains the Massachusetts bias). See also this recent article about a similar initiative in Toronto.

LGBT parents and educators in the Boston area are the source of one of the most comprehensive new resources for making elementary schools across the country more welcoming for all types of families. It started in June of 2004, when Greater Boston PFLAG called a meeting of educators, social workers and parents, and asked them to collect materials K-5 schools could use to teach acceptance and reduce bullying. Out of this came the idea for the Welcoming Schools Guide, an extensive teaching manual and reference. The team then worked for two years to build the Guide, gathering resources from a variety of organizations, individual teachers and parents.

At the same time, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was conducting an audit of diversity and anti-bullying work being done around the country at the K-5 grade levels, hoping to assist those efforts. In 2006, they invited one of the original members of the Boston group and head of the editing team, Newton mother Kathy Pillsbury, to their own meeting. Ellen Kahn, director of the HRC Family Project, says “What we found is that the Guide really pulled all the pieces together into one place.” Rather than reinvent the wheel, HRC partnered with the Boston group to make the Guide more widely available. HRC took over formal leadership, but with input and guidance from the original members. Pillsbury still leads the editing team.

HRC incorporated further materials and put the Guide through a review by additional educators and diversity specialists. They got well-known children’s-book author Todd Parr to do the illustrations. Now over 300 pages, the Guide covers topics like family diversity, gender stereotyping and name-calling. It offers educators age-appropriate lesson plans as well as ways to handle “teachable moments,” such as when a student says “That’s so gay.” The Guide also offers information on relevant laws and curriculum standards, annotated bibliographies of LGBT-inclusive books and other media, and additional articles on LGBT parenting, gender stereotypes, bullying, welcoming religious resources and more. While the Guide is inclusive of LGBT families, it is careful to put everything into the context of overall acceptance. “A lesson on name-calling,” Pillsbury notes, “is not just about LGBT name-calling, but on name-calling in general. What’s different is that it includes LGBT words.”

Giving teachers and social workers practice in talking about these topics is a critical part of the Guide, adds Pillsbury. “When someone asks ’What does gay mean?’ it can be because they heard it being used as a put-down, or they could say it if they heard somebody’s dad was gay. So ’How’d you hear it?’ is often the first question. Are you going to talk about name-calling or about a dad being gay?” Read the rest of this post »