The faces and stories of transgender teen America:
People call me a “transtrender.” It’s people who pretend to be trans to be popular. It’s because of what I look like and how I’m not taking hormones for my transition, but there are plenty of transgender people who don’t want to go through that process. I like how I look, I really do. It’s up to other people to change their perception of me rather than for me to change myself to fit what their perception is. I wear dresses sometimes, but that doesn’t make me less of a man. I definitely have a feminine side. I enjoy having my makeup done and can still look pretty and be a man.
In charitable signal-boosting news, I encourage anyone who can to donate to this GoFundMe for Burnell and Keasha Colton, a couple from the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, a designated food desert, who have thrown their life savings into opening the first grocery store in the area since Katrina.
If you’d like to hear Friend of The Toast Helen McClory read, she will be appearing this Thursday at WORD Brooklyn at 7pm with Tobias Carroll and Susan Rukeyser.
Here is another Friend of The Toast endeavor I encourage you to support!
How Alasdair Gray reimagined Glasgow:
“Most people I know have an Alasdair Gray story,” Beatrice Colin, a writer and professor at the University of Strathclyde, told me recently, “most of them unprintable. To give you an example, I once heard that he threw a party in his flat. When it was late and he wanted everyone to leave, rather than ask them politely, he took all his clothes off and stood at the door naked until people got the message.”
There’s some good news coming out of Oregon today! Following the story we posted yesterday about Oregon all-girls Catholic school, St. Mary’s, firing a counselor who’d revealed she was a lesbian, a source has informed us that they’ve just amended their equal employment policy to include sexual orientation.
The world’s longest yard sale:
The family that lives here grows corn and soybeans like everyone else; they’ve been on this land since the ‘30s, maybe longer. They’re a husband and wife, kids grown and gone, spending the day sitting on lawn chairs in the corner of the tractor shed where they’ve laid out the overflow of their lives, folding tables piled with baby clothes and knitting patterns and Garfield mugs. There’s a doll in a green floral dress lying on the table just above some crocheted pot holders, with a yellowed porcelain face and muslin limbs. She’s lying on an index card: “Doll is 80+ years old. $40.00.”
My friend Carrie’s new puppy is a menace:
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