The Albany Speech: Building Alliances and Community

This is something like an approximation I’m giving of the speech in Albany. Like I mentioned before, I can’t memorize, so I often end up writing a speech, then outlining it, and then speaking from my outline and notes.
But I think you’ll get the gist of it.
Thank you so much for inviting me up here. I’ve only been to Albany a few times, and this is much nicer than freezing on the Capitol’s steps. Much, much nicer.
I want to thank all of the groups who brought me up here, with an especial thanks to Rhea, who did so much of the legwork. I think by now she’s discovered that if you want to see something happen, you usually have to do it yourself. I had to warn her that if she kept on, she’d end up having herself whisked away to State Museums to speak to people, since that’s how it happened to me. Writers generally like the company of cats and computers, and I think it’s a mean joke that after you actually get a book published, the first thing that happens is you get yanked away from your cats and computer and told you need to stand in front of a room full of people and talk.
But still, that’s how it happens. I never intended to be writing or talking about trans subjects at all; after all, I’m not even transgendered, and I’m only honorarily GLBT. I ended up here because I wanted something that didn’t exist, so I had no choice but to create it. That something was a community – a community that Betty and I would belong in, where – when people saw us together, hand in hand – we wouldn’t have to explain who or what we are. I went online and found stuff for transpeople, but little for partners. There were places reserved for crossdressers’ wives, but only ones that implied I should be unhappy. When I went to the Manhattan GLBT center I was asked what exactly I was doing there, and I didn’t really know the answer, except to say “because I need help, and friends, and people who understand.”
Those of you who have been involved in support groups or organizations know what I’m talking about. If everything that needed to be done, was, we could spend our time discussing the finer points of medieval art, or fly fishing, or collecting miniature railroads. But in the meantime, there’s too much to be done.
When I hear about a transwoman who doesn’t want crossdressers in her group, or about crossdressers who don’t want to hang out with gay men, or lesbians who won’t let transwomen into their spaces, I always remember that old joke about academia, where the politics are bitter exactly because the stakes are so low. I worked in environmental politics for a while in my early 20s, and it was true there too. Likewise for third parties, and sadly, it’s true for the trans community as well. There are arguments online and in person about how to define transgender, who is transgendered, who in the trans community suffers the most or the least. There is gossip, naysaying, and a lot of holier-than-thou attitudes. When one person says “we should protest” there are three who say, “if we protest they’ll think we’re crazy.”
Well, they already do.
If there’s one thing the trans community can be clear on, it’s that society thinks transpeople are either invisible, crazy, or perverted. Sometimes all three at once.
In some ways, what we have is a luxury of lack. There is so much to be done, so many to be educated, so much ignorance to enlighten. Transitioning, or living openly as genderqueer, trans, or as a crossdresser requires a PhD in gender, practically. We learn to teach, to explain, to show. We grit our teeth and explain ‘trans 101’ over and over and over again. Betty and I can’t go to a party without knowing that at some point in the evening, we’ll be cornered by someone who just wants to ask questions. We try to ignore what it feels like to be poked with sticks, to be looked at as if we just landed from another planet.
And yet as a community we still have time to argue with each other, to tell someone she is not transgendered, to gossip that so and so isn’t full-time, to ask – like the ignorant do – who’s had surgery and who’s on hormones.
It’s no wonder then we never get to talk to others, or that we get angry when others get the pronouns wrong. We go out in the world to fight the good fight, but we do so already worn out with the in-fighting, the gossip, the insecurities of people who not only have to explain themselves to the rest of the world but to their sisters, their community, their potential allies.
We can’t afford it.
We’ve got trans teens being thrown out of their homes, and young transwomen and men being killed. We have closeted crossdressers who are about to lose their wives, and maybe custody of their children, if they come out. We have transitioned people who fear that someone will notice a larger-than-average hand or a smaller-than-average one. We lose our jobs to discrimination, have to rewrite resumes so they pass, spend our lives saving money just in case. We live with ridicule, open hostility, and little legal protection. We are not considered the same as other American citizens, and our love is the target for groups that find us immoral.
And yet we talk about whether or not he’s really transgendered, or if she is.
And what I’d ask you is: will the bullies care? When some ignorant fool with a violent streak sees me and Betty walk down the street hand in hand, is he going to stop to ask me if I’m heterosexual, or if we’re legally married? When he sees a crossdresser coming home from her local support group, is he going to wonder if there’s a wife and kids at home? Is he going to wonder whether or not some other trans person considers that trans person legit or not? Will he ask a gay man if he’s got a 401K plan, or if he’s legally unioned? Will he bother to ask a lesbian if she birthed her own children?
You know the answer. We all do. Bigots don’t see a difference between the white picket fence GLBT and the queers. But we still fight amongst ourselves, wearing each other down with criticisms and oughts. We go out in the world wounded and full of pride, and we’re already exhausted when our partners, mothers, clergy, coworkers make jokes about faggots. Who has the energy to fight the good fight with genuine energy after spending all day fighting a useless one with someone who should be a friend?
I have a weird lens on some of this stuff because I used to be heterosexual. I say “used to” because people just do NOT see Betty and I as straight, anymore. But I used to be, and I remember what it felt like to receive the validation, and status, and approval of being in that world. The loss I’ve felt has been keen, noticing that lesbian couples aren’t physically affectionate in public spaces, that gay men might kiss in the West Village but have to look around first before they kiss anywhere else. Aside from my own sense of anger at feeling restricted, it makes me sad. Sometimes I don’t think we even realize the ways we hide ourselves. And sometimes I think we’re so busy worrying about gay marriage – which is worth worrying about – that we forget that the goal is to be able to have our love be socially acceptable. Right now, it’s still rough going. There’s a reason transsexuals go stealth and that crossdressers stay in the closet. They don’t want to lose that, because it’s a lot to lose. I know a little too well how much it is to lose.
If gays and lesbians could marry legally I wouldn’t have to worry about Betty changing the gender marker on her license, because then it wouldn’t matter if people saw us as two women or not. But the reason the trans community needs to help make gay marriage legal is because it’s the right thing to do. Too often, trans people live in the loopholes, and that’s no way to live. Focus on the Family wants to tighten those loopholes: they’re disgusted by people like me and Betty being legally married, as disgusted as they are by Vermont and Massachusetts and New Paltz.
But there are other things too: employment discrimination and child custody issues and higher risks of suicide in our teens. We have to worry about harassment, physical violence, and – according to Amnesty International – we even have to worry about whether or not the police will hurt us when we look to them for help.
Plenty to do, indeed. But to me some of the most important stuff we have to do is not just GENDA – but we have to change the hearts and minds. And that’s the hard part, isn’t it? It’s so vague, so much less countable than 32 pieces of legislation nationwide. I get exhausted thinking about the very idea of it – all the Americans who voted for gay marriage bans out there, hating. Politicians who play their fear, their moral superiority. But the same as we don’t have time for infighting, we don’t have time for exhaustion, either.
Like I said before, I ended up here accidentally, looking for community where there was none. Because I was okay with my husband being trans didn’t mean I had friends who understood one iota of what our life is like. I wanted to find other people like me to talk to.
The first people in our lives who knew were gay and lesbian and bisexual. It wasn’t an accident or a coincidence, either. We were given Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg by one lesbian friend, The Drag Queens of New York by another. One friend who’d been active in the early days of Act-Up told us not to come out over the Thanksgiving holiday, that “mom, please pass the stuffing to the homosexual” was inappropriate and ineffectual. We found guidelines for coming out on the HRC website, GLBT legal history on the Task Force’s, and a model for friends and family on P-FLAG’s. What we found is that the GLB is not just it’s organizations, but it’s resources, the gay and lesbian and bisexual people we already knew, who knew themselves what it was like to be in the closet, what it was like to be misunderstood, what it’s like to be told you’re immoral because of who and how you love.
We came to understand that we were in the same boat and had been all along. We’d been sitting up front watching the spray while others were minding the course. But slowly, as we came out to others, we realized that we already had a crew, we were already onboard, and that all we had to do was say “Is there anything I can do?” for us to feel fully welcomed. And boy were we welcomed! Because all the people on that boat knew too that plenty of the world was out to sink it.
To me, that’s the nature of community and alliance. Not sitting back and saying “what have you done for me lately?” but saying instead, “tell me about what you need.” When disparate groups do that for each other, something really remarkable happens. I’ve found it amazing at how easy it can be, by just wanting to know someone else’s story, someone else’s struggle. And yet, it’s like we have trolls at the foot of the bridge. And we have to be wary of the trolls.
Not very long ago, Betty and I were out with a friend at a very trans-friendly, gay business, a bar and restaurant. It had gotten a boost when it had first opened by having a drag queen and some friends of hers throw weekly parties in their largely unused upstairs room. The people came, because drag is hip again, isn’t it? And the business grew, and being right near a movie theatre, it drew a diverse crowd. But it was always trans friendly; the T-girls would gather at the bar every Saturday for dinner or drinks or both, and then head off to a somewhat infamous trans night at another bar. This one night when we were there, the bartender, a gay man – pulled one of the transwomen aside and told her that the T-girls were becoming a problem, not by being there, but because they’d started to use the place as a community center: changing in the bathrooms, bringing their own flasks of alcohol to cut down on costs, etc. The brouhaha that ensued was remarkable for its sound and fury but made almost no sense. The bar, the bartender, and anyone who sided with THEM were accused of being transphobic. After the trans contingent huffed away, Betty and I wandered over to the bar to hear more about what the fuss had been about, and what we heard was that transpeople were behaving badly. After talking to the bartender for a while we found out he didn’t really know much about transfolk. He told us what it was like to grow up a bear in the mid-west and we told him what it was like to be trans. And we talked about why transwomen might use the bathroom to change in, and why they might get a little too drunk too fast (because they’re nervous as hell), and he nodded, and we nodded, and then we came home to find out that some of the transwomen were involved were talking about a lawsuit, and stayed up until a very late hour writing emails to any of the local community leaders who might be able to put a stop to their foolishness.
And it was foolishness: not because gay people can’t be transphobic (or trans people be homophobic) but because if we can’t figure out how to be accepted, and acceptable, to one another, then we don’t have a shot with the rest of the world. And as much as we all can be self-ghettoizing, the rest of the world is still out there: discriminating employers, judgmental pharmacists, and of course the Federal and State governments, who still don’t seem to understand why gender markers are about as valid now as race markers are.
And then there are the groups like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America. They have our number now. They know about couples like me and Betty who slipped through a loophole in the ‘legal marriage’ debate. We watched with millions of other GLBT Americans as state after state voted in the last election to make our love and commitment illegal. We know what Fred Phelps thinks of us. He doesn’t care if you played Sulu or have your own television show or play Pro Ball. You know what a bigot calls a gay doctor? I’m sure you do.
But still we fight amongst ourselves about whether or not crossdressers and transsexuals have anything in common. They do, folks. They’re all in the same boat that lots of people want to sink. Passing transwomen are embarrassed by the “man in the dress.” Crossdressers think transsexuals have just gotten carried away with themselves. And every single minute that we make these accusations of each other, the Religious Right find a few hundred more people who are willing to boycott a company for hiring gay men or funding a pride parade. They’ve got money and power and membership and visibility and politicians’ ears.
And we can’t sit together in a room long enough to even hear about pending legislation.
The thing is, there’s a lot to be done. If you don’t like to deal with politicians or don’t like the kind of legislation that’s being sponsored, do something else. You don’t have to be a lawyer or a politician – just a citizen, just a person. If you don’t like the way a group is run, volunteer to run it instead. Start a second night of a group you’re in if you’re having debates about whether or not talking about hormones is okay or not. If you think others are cheap, spend your time fundraising instead of complaining. If you’re lonely, go answer the phones for a GLBT suicide prevention line. You could print out a ‘trans 101’ flyer and put it under every windshield wiper of your local mall. Every time you want to say something mean about someone else, donate another $50 to a GLBT organization for the privilege of having a computer and a safe place to start a flame war from, instead.
No matter how you do it, find a way to cut it out. Because there’s really way too much to be done. We don’t have time for your ego. What we need is hands, legwork, and someone to answer the phones.
I canvassed for the NY Public Interest Research Group. Door to door, forty doors a night. It’s an eye-opening experience. I had one woman thrown a nickel at me, and I had one quite superior type ask me bluntly how much it would cost him to get me off his doorstep. “Just tonight or all week?” I asked. He wanted me gone all week. And he paid, in cash, to get me gone. But I’d also have the people who wanted to argue with me about how I was wasting my time, that politicians were all crooked, and that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. Others wanted to debate me on the finer points of third parties or recycling programs. And what I found was that the people who wanted to debate me, or the people who slammed the door in my face, were better off left alone. Because for every five of them, there was one person who would invite me in, and offer me tea if it was cold, and give me a check or sign a petition. I would go back to work the next day instead of feeling burnt out and exhausted. I’d get to tell people a few things they didn’t know, and they’d get to tell me their concerns, for their children or their neighborhood.
And what I realized was that that is the nature of community, that shared conversation, that intent to find commonality. Politics is as much about the way people share their lives as it is about the laws that get passed; it’s about how people understand what they share, what their common goals are, what makes their own lives and the lives around them a little easier. It’s what I was looking for when I showed up at the GLBT center’s doors. It’s what I was looking for when I went online. And I found that I could spend all my time getting into arguments, just as I could have done canvassing. But I wouldn’t be here tonight if that’s what I’d spent my time doing. Instead, I listened to stories and told mine. I asked questions. I learned, I read, I looked for a commonality of experience. And what I found was this community – not just the trans community, but the whole of the GLBT. It’s a remarkable community. Sometimes others tell me they can’t see it, that they don’t believe in it, that we’re not unified. My feeling is that we don’t all have to agree. We have different priorities, different causes, different experiences and world views. But what we can do is talk to each other, offer each other a safe place in a world that is not really that safe for any of us.
After that, it’s hard not to see how much has to be done, and how much disagreement, and gossip, and nitpicking, comes out of our fear, our insecurities; how much comes out of the very fact of how unsafe and unvalidated GLBT lives are. This life isn’t easy on any of us, and although we have differences, we can only work for common goals if we can see past our differences, and focus on the issues that concern all of us. Right now, the choice is quite simple: we need to learn about each other, to talk about how we are. We need to educate others that we exist. We can’t do that when we’re exhausted from hearing gossip or arguing as to whether we’re transgendered or not. We need somewhere to come home too, a safe place where we can recharge and commiserate.
Mostly what we need is to be gentle with each other, so that we go back out there and fight the good fight.
Thank you.