A great, much-needed and overdue article on the intersections of transness and race by Daisy Hernandez at ColorLines:
Louis Mitchell expected a lot of change when he began taking injections of hormones eight years ago to transition from a female body to a male one. He anticipated that he’d grow a beard, which he eventually did and enjoys now. He knew his voice would deepen and that his relationship with his partner, family and friends would change in subtle and, he hoped, good ways, all of which happened.
What he had not counted on was changing the way he drove.
Within months of starting male hormones, “I got pulled over 300 percent more than I had in the previous 23 years of driving, almost immediately. It was astounding,†says Mitchell, who is Black and transitioned while living in the San Francisco area and now resides in Springfield, Massachusetts.
This essay might be an interesting read to compare to Jacob Anderson Minshall‘s essay in “The Enemy Within: Becoming a Straight White Guy” which details what it’s been like for a feminist to transition to male. It’s in the new anthology Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power.
(via Feministing, where you will also currently see a blog ad for She’s Not the Man I Married)
Another instance of how racism is FAR from dead, no matter the protestations from the Right. Racial profiling is a reality for many folks. I knew a young Latino man in grad school who used to get pulled over frequently. And when the cops would find out that he was from Colombia then he really got harressed. And regarding the intersections of transness and race, trans women of color are much more likely to be assaulted than white trans women (just one example).
They gave him more hassle when they found out he was a Columbia student? Why? I would think that a Columbia student might be the son of someone rich and important who could make the cop’s life difficult.
Who knew?
That would be Colombia (the country in South America) not Columbia (the university in NYC). They hassled him because they thought he might be a drug dealer. Neither he nor I ever attended Columbia. Just to clarify 🙂