Transgender Dysphoria Blues

There will probably be a lot of reviews of Against Me's new album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues.

Ryan Russell - Inge Johansson, Laura Jane Grace, Atom Willard
and James Bowman of Against Me!.

The link is to the Washington Post review, excerpted here:

Against Me! tells an intensely personal story on ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’

In 2012, Tom Gabel, frontman of the long-running punk outfit Against Me!, came out as transgender to Rolling Stone. The Florida band’s new album, “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” is its first since Gabel, now Laura Jane Grace, announced her intention to transition. (Its title refers to the official term for Grace’s condition.) It is a lacerating, powerful work that is universal in its sweep and wrenching in its detail.

In the broadest sense, the album wrestles with topics that are the bedrock of punk songs everywhere — alienation, self-loathing, a longing for acceptance and love — interwoven with pointed, and occasionally clunky, political commentary. On a micro level, it’s a dark and very specific recounting of a very specific kind of misery. Frequently profane, defiantly clinical, fraught with sadness and relief, it’s the sound of a dam breaking. “You’ve got no hips to shake / And you know it’s obvious,” Grace sings on the opening title track. “But we can’t choose how we’re made.”

In retrospect, no one should have been surprised. Gabel had hinted for years at a roiling, fundamental internal dissatisfaction. The 2007 track “The Ocean” (“If I could have chosen / I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura”) laid that struggle bare for those who were paying attention. 

Until the 2012 announcement, Against Me! was a well-liked, top-of-the-middle-tier punk band that survived a brief flirtation with major-label stardom. Grace is now almost certainly the highest-profile musician to transition, and her new album is part manifesto, part open letter to fans, her wife (to whom she plans to stay married) and her remaining bandmates (two members left after Grace’s announcement, for possibly unrelated reasons).

Read the rest here.

The Tom's They Are A-Changin'

I guess this is news because....  I don't know why.  Shock value?  Oh My God!  Someone is changing their sex!  Wow!

I'm sure it's a big deal for Tom, the same way it was for James (Jan) Morris and Richard Raskin (Renee Richards) and the now Jillian Page, among others.

The headline on the print Washington Post gossip page was

It's Tom for now.  Soon: Laura

and I had no idea what that meant.

The on-line version read:

Against Me! singer Tom Gabel plans to become a woman

and that made more sense than another on-line story that said he plans to "change genders."  I think I need to find the story editor and whack him several times with The Post style manual.  I'm sorry.  I'm not trying to pick a fight with those who call sexual reassignment surgery, gender reassignment surgery.  I just see gender as how you see yourself, and sex as what you are.  I know, others disagree.  I'm open to persuasion.  Until then... Whack!

The story in a nutshell: Tom Gable, lead singer for the band Against Me!, plans to take action on his transsexuality; he's not sure how far he will go at this time.  He is not attracted to men and plans to remain married.

I say "he" because I haven't seen any self-reference as she.  I mean no disrespect to the future Laura Jane Grace.

The Washington Post story can be found here, and an AP story, reprinted on The Post website is here.

But also take a look at Aeify's blog where she found a link to the band's The Ocean, and she includes the video and lyrics.  She also links to an MTV story.

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