Mira Bellwether

Last updated

Mira Bellwether
Born(1982-03-31)March 31, 1982
DiedDecember 25, 2022(2022-12-25) (aged 40)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • illustrator
  • sex educator
LanguageEnglish
Subject Transgender sexuality
Years active2010–2022
Notable works Fucking Trans Women

Mira Bellwether [lower-alpha 1] (March 31, 1982 –December 25, 2022) was an American author, artist, and sex educator [4] best known for Fucking Trans Women , a single-issue zine in which she wrote and illustrated all articles. Described in Sexuality & Culture as "a comprehensive guide to trans women's sexuality", [5] Fucking Trans Women was the first publication of note to focus on sex with trans women and was innovative in its focus on trans women's own perspectives and its inclusion of instructions for many of the sex acts depicted. [6] Bellwether was also an advocate for transgender women and in opposition to trans-exclusionary feminism.

Contents

Bellwether's work has served as an influence to trans writers, journalists, and scholars, particularly in the field of transgender sexuality. Her death in 2022 was met with grief in the trans community, in which her work had attained a "mythic status" according to Kai Cheng Thom in Xtra. [7]

Early life and gender transition

Mira Bellwether [lower-alpha 1] was born on March 31, 1982. [8] Her mother, Tammy, was a hospice nurse; her father, Terry, was a respiratory therapist. In her youth she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, a disability that would frame the rest of her life. [4] Raised in the U.S. state of Iowa, she began playing dress-up with girls starting at the age of six, ending when her parents moved to a more rural area in her teens. Describing herself later as "the smallest, slightest boy [she] knew", Bellwether experimented with women's clothing and makeup—drag, in her words—while at the same time exploring her sexuality. [9] She left Iowa as soon as she was able to. [4] As of 2010, she described herself as "a trans dyke and student ... a femme, a queer, a dork, a cocksucker, and lots of other things". [1]

Fucking Trans Women and sex education

In 2010, living in Iowa at the time, [10] Bellwether self-published Fucking Trans Women #0 , intended as the first issue of a zine about sex with trans women. Finding submitted materials insufficient, she chose to make the zine a solo effort and number it "#0" to leave room for a "#1" featuring others' contributions. [11] (Bellwether grew frustrated in subsequent years as, despite issue #0's popularity, submissions for issue #1 failed to materialize. [4] ) The zine (sometimes abbreviated FTW) explores a variety of sexual activities involving trans women, [lower-alpha 2] primarily ones who are pre-op or non-op with respect to bottom surgery. [12] Bellwether emphasized sex acts possible with flaccid penises or not involving penises at all, [13] writing that "almost all sexual discourse on penises" was "on erect penises, hard penises, penetrating penises". [14] Bellwether emphasized this point throughout the rest of her life. She told Autostraddle in 2013: [15]

One thing that I really tried to capture in FTW was that there are all sorts of ways to pleasure trans women. I gave a lot of time to soft penises for this reason, because in sexual literature they are almost completely ignored, and if they're not ignored, they're treated as defective or at rest or, even worse, an object of pity or scorn.

This attitude subverted prevailing associations regarding inability to become erect. [16] Lucie Fielding's Trans Sex (2021) cites Bellwether on this topic among others. [17] Fielding later said of Bellwether's influence on her, "Her work is stating that our bodies should not just be tolerable or accepted, but that they are there to be joyously experienced", crediting Fucking Trans Women as "a huge lightbulb moment" in her own gender transition. [4]

Bellwether coined the term muffing in Fucking Trans Women to refer to stimulation of the inguinal canals with fingers, testicles, or both—a practice she discovered by accident while tucking. [18] The zine in turn popularized that act. [19] Muffing has since received coverage in Autostraddle, [20] Playboy , [18] Broadly , [12] and The Daily Dot , [21] with Fielding promoting it in Trans Sex [22] and in Jessica Stoya's sex advice column with Slate . [23] Bellwether likewise continued to promote muffing as an affirming form of masturbation in the years following the release of Fucking Trans Woman. [24]

Fucking Trans Women is heavily colored by Bellwether's own experiences as a disabled trans woman. Sexual health scholars Riggs et al. write in an editorial, "To speak of Mira Bellwether ... as a powerful trans advocate also requires speaking about Mira as a woman who lived in the context of a health-care system that failed to meet her needs." [25] Writes Sloane Holzer in Them : [4]

The innovative determination it takes to survive in the world as a disabled person is evident in FTW and all of Mira's writing about sex. She was tenacious and endlessly curious, always focused on sharing new, accessible ways to move through a hostile world and still find pleasure.

Personal life and advocacy

In her 20s and early 30s, Bellwether moved numerous times around the U.S. to cities including Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco, ultimately settling down in 2016 in New York City with her husband, who had read Fucking Trans Women for advice on dating his first trans girlfriend years prior to meeting Bellwether. [4] In 2020, the two launched a GoFundMe seeking funds for Bellwether's planned vaginoplasty. [26]

Bellwether was a strong critic of Valerie Solanas's radical feminist work SCUM Manifesto . In the context of some criticizing Solanas as trans-exclusionary, Bellwether wrote on her blog that the manifesto was "the pinnacle of misguided and hateful second-wave feminism and lesbian feminism". [27] She accused Solanas of biological essentialism for equating male-ness with having a Y chromosome in order to argue that "the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion". [28] In the essay "On Liking Women", Andrea Long Chu objects to Bellwether's association of Solanas with lesbian feminism [29] and argues that, by associating trans-exclusionary radical feminism with second-wave feminism, Bellwether incorrectly implies that it is a relic of the past. [30]

In 2015, Bellwether advocated for the release of an Illinois trans woman who was arrested after checking in to a Des Moines, Iowa, hotel with an ID bearing a male gender marker. [31] Bellwether's other advocacy for trans women included supporting Camp Trans and speaking out for access to transgender hormone therapy. According to her widower, on at least one occasion she bailed out a transgender sex worker but took no credit. [4]

Illness, death, and legacy

Bellwether was diagnosed with lung cancer in October 2021. The cancer returned at stage four in September 2022. On December 19, 2022, two weeks into a hospital stay, Bellwether was admitted to an intensive care unit, where she had a massive stroke; she died on December 25 beside her husband and sister. [32] Her death led to grief within many trans communities. [7] Bellwether's widower subsequently proclaimed March 31, 2023—Bellwether's birthday, and also International Transgender Day of Visibility—the "First Annual Mira Bellwether Buy a Trans Woman a Pizza Day", pizza in the trans community often serving as a placeholder for any sort of care. [33]

Trans author Emily Zhou described her short story collection Girlfriends as inspired by Bellwether's work. [34] Ro White of Autostraddle, obituarizing Bellwether, said that "Writing about trans bodies in a way that centers playfulness—or really, writing about trans bodies at all—was revolutionary in 2010, and it's still revolutionary today." [35] Ana Valens, who had frequently written about Bellwether's work, credited her career to her, writing in a tweet that Fucking Trans Women had "changed the landscape of trans and queer sexuality" and "saved countless trans people and opened their eyes to what their bodies can do and be". [36] Kai Cheng Thom in Xtra Magazine wrote that "Bellwether profoundly transformed the conversation around trans women and sex, to the extent that her zine has attained mythic status among us: We tell each other about it as though we are passing on community lore to one another." [7]

Riggs et al.'s December 2023 editorial in Women's Reproductive Health highlights the "outpouring of tributes" for "the late and great Mira Bellwether" as showing "how her words gave trans women and their lovers a voice to speak about desire and pleasure, when no one else outside of trans communities was speaking about trans women as desirable". [25] Holzer's profile in Them, published several months after Bellwether's death, begins, "Few people have done more to expand our understanding of women's sexuality than Mira Bellwether". [4]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Bellwether gave the full name Miranda Darling Bellwether on the inside back cover to Fucking Trans Women, [1] but otherwise, including on the zine's front cover, [2] went by Mira; she is referred to as Mira in coverage of her death. [3]
  2. ↑ Some sources, including Burns 2017, Hill-Meyer 2022, and Valens 2022a, discuss Fucking Trans Women in the context of transfeminine people more generally, rather than only trans women.

Related Research Articles

Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zine</span> Collection of self-published work reproduced by photocopying

A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A fanzine is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and popularized within science fiction fandom, entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transfeminism</span> Branch of feminism

Transfeminism, or trans feminism, is a branch of feminism focused on transgender women and informed by transgender studies. Transfeminism focuses on the effects of transmisogyny and patriarchy on trans women. It is related to the broader field of queer theory. The term was popularized by Emi Koyama in The Transfeminist Manifesto.

FTW or F.T.W. may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attraction to transgender people</span> Romantic or sexual attraction to transgender people

Sexual attraction to transgender people has been the subject of scientific study and social commentary. Psychologists have researched sexual attraction toward trans women, trans men, cross dressers, non-binary people, and a combination of these. Publications in the field of transgender studies have investigated the attraction transgender individuals can feel for each other. The people who feel this attraction to transgender people name their attraction in different ways.

Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transgender sexuality</span> Sexuality of transgender people

Sexuality in transgender individuals encompasses all the issues of sexuality of other groups, including establishing a sexual identity, learning to deal with one's sexual needs, and finding a partner, but may be complicated by issues of gender dysphoria, side effects of surgery, physiological and emotional effects of hormone replacement therapy, psychological aspects of expressing sexuality after medical transition, or social aspects of expressing their gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Serano</span> American writer and activist

Julia Michelle Serano is an American writer, musician, spoken-word performer, transgender and bisexual activist, and biologist. She is known for her transfeminist books, such as Whipping Girl (2007), Excluded (2013), and Outspoken (2016). She is also a public speaker who has given many talks at universities and conferences. Her writing is frequently featured in queer, feminist, and popular culture magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transmisogyny</span> Intersection of transphobia and misogyny, experienced by transfeminine individuals

Transmisogyny, otherwise known as trans-misogyny and transphobic misogyny, is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. The term was coined by Julia Serano in her 2007 book Whipping Girl to describe a particular form of oppression experienced by trans women. In an interview with The New York Times, Serano explores the roots of transmisogyny as a critique of feminine gender expressions which are "ridiculed in comparison to masculine interests and gender expression."

Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Lewis (journalist)</span> British journalist (born 1983)

Helen Alexandra Lewis is a British journalist and a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is a former deputy editor of the New Statesman, and has also written for The Guardian and The Sunday Times.

Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues of relevance to transgender and gender variant populations. Interdisciplinary subfields of transgender studies include applied transgender studies, transgender history, transgender literature, transgender media studies, transgender anthropology and archaeology, transgender psychology, and transgender health. The research theories within transgender studies focus on cultural presentations, political movements, social organizations and the lived experience of various forms of gender nonconformity. The discipline emerged in the early 1990s in close connection to queer theory. Non-transgender-identified peoples are often also included under the "trans" umbrella for transgender studies, such as intersex people, crossdressers, drag artists, third gender individuals, and genderqueer people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TERF (acronym)</span> Acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist

TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term TERF was originally used to distinguish transgender-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists and social conservatives who reject the position that trans women are women, including trans women in women's spaces, and transgender rights legislation. Trans-inclusive feminists assert that these ideas and positions are transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender people. The use of the term TERF has since broadened to include reference to people with trans-exclusionary views who are not necessarily involved with radical feminism.

Mirha-Soleil Ross is a transgender videographer, performance artist, sex worker and activist. Her work since the early 1990s in Montreal and Toronto has focused on transsexual rights, access to resources, advocacy for sex workers and animal rights.

Andrea Long Chu is an American writer and critic. Chu has written for such publications as n+1 and The New York Times, and various academic journals including differences, Women & Performance, and Transgender Studies Quarterly. Chu's first book, Females, was published in 2019 by Verso Books and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In 2021, she joined the staff at New YorkMagazine as a book critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magdalen Berns</span> British YouTuber and campaigner (1983–2019)

Magdalen Berns was a British YouTuber, boxer, and software developer. Berns, a lesbian radical feminist, produced a series of YouTube vlogs in the late 2010s focusing on topics such as women's rights and gender identity. Berns's vlogs attracted attention from transgender rights activists, some of whom characterized her as being transphobic and a TERF. Berns co-founded the non-profit organisation For Women Scotland, which campaigns against possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004, among other things.

<i>Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars</i> 2016 novel

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir is a 2016 Canadian book by Kai Cheng Thom. A surrealist novel, it follows an unnamed transgender woman protagonist who leaves home at a young age to live on the Street of Miracles—where various sex work takes place—with other "femmes". After one of them is killed, others form a gang and begin to attack men on the street.

<i>Fucking Trans Women</i> Zine about sexual activities involving trans women

Fucking Trans Women (FTW) is a zine created by Mira Bellwether. A single 80-page issue, numbered "#0", was published in October 2010 and republished in 2013 as Fucking Trans Women: A Zine About the Sex Lives of Trans Women; further issues were planned, but none had been published as of Bellwether's death in December 2022. Bellwether wrote all of the issue's articles, which explore a variety of sexual activities involving trans women, primarily ones who are pre-op or non-op with respect to bottom surgery. Fucking Trans Women was the first publication of note to focus on sex with trans women and was innovative in its focus on trans women's own perspectives and its inclusion of instructions for many of the sex acts depicted. Emphasizing sex acts possible with flaccid penises or not involving penises at all, it coined the term muffing to refer to stimulation of the inguinal canals, an act it popularized. The zine has received both popular-culture and scholarly attention, and was described in Sexuality & Culture as "a comprehensive guide to trans women's sexuality" and in Playboy as "widely considered" the "most in-depth guide to having sex with pre- and non-op trans femme bodies".

Cotton ceiling is the purported marginalization of trans women in queer sexual spaces.

A bellwether is an indicator of trends, often in the context of politics. The term is derived from the practice of placing a bell on the neck of a wether at the head of a herd of sheep.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Bellwether 2010, inside back cover.
  2. ↑ Bellwether 2010, front cover.
  3. ↑ White 2022; Kish 2022; Thom 2023; Holzer 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Holzer 2023.
  5. ↑ Rosenberg, Tilley & Morgan 2019, p. 965.
  6. ↑ Variously:
    • Pfeffer 2014 , p. 597. "Fucking Trans Women (Issue #0) broke ground by centering trans women's perspectives and experiences around sex and sexuality—including instructional guides on actual sexual practices."
    • Zaber 2015. "Originally published as a zine FTW was the first book (or at least the first I can find that gained wide recognition) to address the sex lives of trans women."
    • Burns 2017. "Fucking Trans Women [is] widely considered to be the first and most in-depth guide to having sex with pre- and non-op trans femme bodies."
    • Thom 2023. "When Bellwether first published [Fucking Trans Women], there were virtually no sources of sex education devoted to trans women's unique needs and experiences."
  7. 1 2 3 Thom 2023.
  8. ↑ Bellwether 2022; Riedel 2023.
  9. ↑ Bellwether 2010, p. 61.
  10. ↑ Bellwether 2010, p. i.
  11. ↑ Bellwether 2010, pp. i, 70.
  12. 1 2 Tourjée 2017.
  13. ↑ Fielding 2021 , p. 77, citing Bellwether 2010 , pp. 7–8. See further Bellwether 2010, "Soft Science/Soft Bodies", pp. 26–32.
  14. ↑ Fielding 2021 , p. 77, quoting Bellwether 2010 , p. 7.
  15. ↑ Nadler 2013. See also Burns 2017 and Holzer 2023.
  16. ↑ Rosenberg, Tilley & Morgan 2019, pp. 964–965.
  17. ↑ Fielding 2021, pp. 77, 93.
  18. 1 2 Burns 2017.
  19. ↑ Fielding 2021 , p. 93. "Folx have probably been muffing each other for ages, but the term was coined by Bellwether in Fucking Trans Women and popularized through her extensive guide to the practice therein." Citing Bellwether 2010 , "An Illustrated Guide to Muffing and the Inguinal Canals", pp. 15–25.
  20. ↑ Hill-Meyer 2022.
  21. ↑ Valens 2019a.
  22. ↑ Fielding 2021, pp. 93–94.
  23. ↑ Stoya 2022.
  24. ↑ Nadler 2013; Burns 2017.
  25. 1 2 Riggs, Rosenberg & Ussher 2023, p. 493.
  26. ↑ Phillips 2020.
  27. ↑ Chu 2018, p. 53.
  28. ↑ Chu 2018, pp. 50–51.
  29. ↑ Chu 2018, p. 51.
  30. ↑ Chu 2018 , p. 53. "In [Bellwether's] version of the story, feminism excluded trans women in the past, is learning to include trans women now, and will center trans women in the future. ... The ... problem with an epithet like TERF is ... the erroneous implication that all TERFs are holdouts who missed the third wave, old-school radical feminists who never learned any better."
  31. ↑ Kellaway 2015; LGBTQ Nation 2015.
  32. ↑ White 2022; Kish 2022.
  33. ↑ Riedel 2023.
  34. ↑ Specter 2023.
  35. ↑ White 2022.
  36. ↑ Valens 2022b.

Sources

Academic sources

  • Fielding, Lucie (2021). Trans Sex: Clinical Approaches to Trans Sexualities and Erotic Embodiments. New York City, N.Y., U.S.: Routledge. ISBN   9780429318290.
  • Pfeffer, Carla A. (May 4, 2014). "Making Space for Trans Sexualities". Journal of Homosexuality . Routledge. 61 (5): 597–604. doi:10.1080/00918369.2014.903108. PMID   24717171. S2CID   32349953.
  • Riggs, Damien W.; Rosenberg, Shoshana; Ussher, Jane M. (October 2, 2023). "Trans Reproductive and Sexual Health". Women's Reproductive Health (Editorial). 10 (4): 493–495. doi: 10.1080/23293691.2023.2279896 .
  • Rosenberg, Shoshana; Tilley, P. J. Matt; Morgan, Julia (September 2019). "'I Couldn't Imagine My Life Without It': Australian Trans Women's Experiences of Sexuality, Intimacy, and Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy". Sexuality & Culture . Springer Science+Business Media. 23 (3): 962–977. doi:10.1007/s12119-019-09601-x. S2CID   151062873.

News sources and magazines

Sources by Bellwether

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.