Abigail Garner is a writer, speaker and educator
who is dedicated to a future of equality for LGBT families and communities. She speaks from her own experience of having a gay dad who came out to her when she was five years old. Bringing voice to a population of children that is often overlooked, Abigail has been featured on CNN, ABC World News Tonight, and National Public Radio. She is the author of Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is (HarperCollins, 2004).
1) As a child of a GLBT parent, you’ve effectively become a ‘lightning rod’ for others children of GLBT parents. What has that been like?
It’s is really a joy to connect with “my people.” It’s really not what I originally set out to do, because I subscribed to many of the same misperceptions as the general public. Namely, that there are very few adult children of LGBT parents. My advocacy initially was to be a resource for younger children and their parents. In the process, however, I have been contacted by so many peers that I hadn’t let myself believe were out there — adult children in their 20s, 30s and older. I even chatted with a woman born in 1938 who had a lesbian mother and gay father. And despite whatever differences there are between us, when the common experience of having queer parents is reflected in another person, it’s exhilarating.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Abigail Garner”
Baby Bear
Tonight it was brought to my attention that a CD in the online group A Crossdresser’s Secret Garden had warned another CD that my book was too heavy on the issues surrounding transition, and so recommended Peggy Rudd’s book My Husband Wears My Clothes, instead. I have to start off by explaining that I don’t have an issue with some people preferring Peggy Rudd’s book over my own; we both have our audiences, and as Dr. Rudd once said to me, ‘it’s not like there isn’t enough room for two of us.’ (She also told me I didn’t have to answer all the email I’d get, which was sound advice I’ve mostly failed to follow.)
It’s funny that this advice should come just now, but not just because my interview with Melanie and Peggy Rudd is the Five Questions With… blog post that precedes this one, but also because – well, transition issues come up in exactly one chapter of My Husband Betty. I told the story I did because it was part of my own experience. When I was trying to reach out to other couples, especially other girlfriends of CDs, I happened to meet Katie, and we had an instant rapport. At the time we became friends, every crosssdressing website emphasized the fact that *crossdressers don’t transition.* I found out otherwise when I watched my friend Katie go through a painful divorce that was caused by her crossdressing partner’s transition.
And while I’m happy to report that Katie and Elle have both gone on to live happy, separate lives, it was precisely because of that experience that I included their story – and how it affected our story – in my book. Because I didn’t want to see even one other Katie get blindsided like that, not ever again.
In the warnings about how “scary” my book is, the CD pointed out once again that CDs rarely transition. Or that a very small percentage do. And the ironic thing is that I know the group, and I know that quite a few of their members were CDs when they joined who later transitioned. Some of them – gasp! – were even married. So it makes me wonder why this information is re-iterated over and over again, when no-one has any idea how many CDs eventually transition.
I certainly don’t know the percentage. I just wonder at what point people think it’s okay to mislead spouses like that. I mean, if you had a 1 in 100 chance of finding out that your marriage was going to be dead in the water in a decade, would that be a high enough risk for you to maybe warn your future partner? 2 in 100? 5 in 100? 10 in 100?
And while I understand the need to help wives who are already married keep their wits about them and not freak out, I cannot abide the idea that anyone is telling a girlfriend or a fiancee of a CD not to worry about it – especially if they’re under the age of 30.
And while I also know there are no guarantees in this life, I also know that plenty of crossdressers said they’d never transition and did. Wives or no wives, children or no children. And I wonder why this urge to reassure wives comes so fast. I know after I found out that all those people who had told me that *crossdressers never transition* were full of it, I held them accountable for having bullshitted me. Because even if the chance is 1 in 1000, a woman deserves to know the truth, especially if she’s about to make a lifetime commitment. Or have children. Or buy a house with her husband. Or work more to put him through school. Or start saving for retirement.
A woman deserves to know – no matter what the situation – that there’s a chance her CD boyfriend may eventually become her ex-wife. I’m tired of no-one wanting to say it outloud. I’m tired of hearing how it’s a negligible percentage. I want to know who gave anyone the right to decide what “negligible” means when it comes to a person’s life. And I want to know too where they get the numbers that have convinced them it’s “negligible.”
Because I’d like to see them. And I know they don’t exist. My best guess why crossdressers think the number is so negligible is because transitioning women leave support groups intended for crossdressers when they transition, so crossdressers stop seeing them – a kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ phenomenon. Either that or they’re going by that whacked Tri-Ess logic, that says a CD who transitions was never a CD, anyway – even if they identified one for a couple of decades.
. . .
The even richer irony for me is that so many married transwomen and partners of transitioning women don’t read my book because the word “crossdresser” is in the title. Isn’t that rich? Sometimes I think I should find myself a small army of terrified CDs to go into the TS community and explain exactly how much My Husband Betty is about transitioning! Yet I had a partner in another group I’m in say – after having read my book – that there is nothing out there for spouses of transitioning people.
Papa Bear on one hand, Mama Bear on the other. Now both of them can’t be right.
It’s actually the partner of the transitioning person who’s right, in my opinion. My Husband Betty is not about transition; the story of Katie and Elle is a cautionary tale, only. It’s there so that others will understand it can happen. And it can happen even when the couple is deeply in love. I am hoping to write about what it’s like to live with someone who is considering transition in my next book, however, and I’ll certainly let you know if/when I do.
What I have always recommended is this: that any wife who is new to having a crossdressing partner read the first four chapters of My Husband Betty first, sit on them, mull over them, discuss them with her therapist and her partner. After a while, when she hits a certain comfort level, and she’s ready for more, she can read (the dreaded, terrifying, all-too-realistic) Chapter Five. She can read Peggy Rudd’s book(s) before or after mine – it’s not like there’s a whole slew of books by wives out there, is there? Some will prefer one over the other. Some will find them complementary in some ways. Others will hate and excoriate one and bless the heavens for the other. That’s not the issue for me; the issue is that sometimes CDs are so freaked out by the fact that I even talk about transition they remember the whole book being about it.
After my experience with Katie, and after doing all the research for My Husband Betty, I became convinced that if there’s anything a crossdresser’s wife needs to know, it’s exactly what crossdressers don’t tell her. You see, I didn’t write the book to scare anyone. I wrote it because I’m a wife, and I wish someone had told me everything I had to find out for myself. I wanted to spare any other wife the pain that Katie went through, and the fear I experienced. I wrote it once in the book, and I’ll write it again here: crossdressers do transition. Not all of them, not most of them, but some of them. And their potential spouses need to know.
Typical? Yes.
I received this email through one of the partners’ groups I’m in, and I thought it was a perfect articulation of the kind of thing I’ve heard happen over and over again. She called it “Bait and Switch” which is a term I’ve used more than once in describing what it was like to go from accepting Betty as a TG to watching her wonder if she would transition.
I feel deceived.
I met my husband online – over 4 years ago. I was looking for a BDSM relationship – I wanted to be dominated. Jack* responded to my ad – and with a few emails it seemed like we might make a good fit. A few long phone calls full of “me too’s” and giggles – and finally a real date. We really hit it off!
So, we share with each other, our fantasies, our wishes, our dreams. It’s all so lovely.
He liked to dress me. Take me shopping. Put me in clothes and shoes I’d NEVER have picked out myself. Made me feel sexy and admired… wow! I ate it up!!!!
He mentioned that he’d dressed up as a woman once or twice – but felt like he made such a horrible version of the female gender he’d not done it anymore.
So, once in awhile, when we’d feel like dressing up in some fetish wear – he’d slip into a skirt. Then he began to order high heel boots for himslef online. And, while shopping with me and in the women’s underwear department – he asked if I’d mind if he bought himself a pair or two of silky, ladies underwear. Of course I said “sure” – who could resist wearing such comfy silky things – more power to him.
I’ve been openly accepting – encouraging even. Everytime he’s left alone in the house – he dresses up. Now he does it everytime we have the house to ourselves. Whatever… if it makes him happy – right?
But – then there’s me. He doesn’t dress me up anymore. He doesn’t admire me. He’s obsessed with shopping for his clothes, finding new outfits. He seems to think it turns me on – when it certainly does not! He doesn’t understand why I’ve lost my entire labido – I have NO desire for sex – because he does’t turn me on at all… I’m feeling more and more seperated, lonely, desprate, deceived.
Am I alone in this? Is his desire to dress as a woman more important than our relationship? should I accept that and move on… this sucks.
I posted it here because I want CDs to see it. I hear CDs bemoan the fact that they don’t have an accepting, supportive woman in their lives, and yet time after time, I see posts and emails like this from accepting, supportive women.
I’m sure a lot of people would just write it off as ‘gender euphoria’ or ‘being lost in the pink fog’ but I think that makes it the partner’s problem, something she should ‘wait through’ – letting ‘boys be boys,’ as it were, in the meantime. Some of you, no doubt, will say to yourselves, “Well if I had an accepting wife I’d never treat her that way” but then – why does it seem to happen so often?
Unfortunately, sometimes an email like this is followed up a few months later by the “Now he says he needs to be a woman!” email, too.
I wanted people to see this, so simply put, so heartfelt, so dejected, because these feelings are so typical of the kind of pain I see partners in, and the kind of pain I’ve felt myself. You give your CD partner some room to be himself sexually, to relieve himself of the shame and guilt he’s suffered with all his life, and for a ‘thank you’ you get neglect, a partner who seems more interested in ‘her’ than you, and an assumption that his crossdressing actually turns you on.
Pah. I’m never sure what to say, either, – especially if after I ask if she’s talked to him about it, she says “Yes, I have, in no uncertain terms.” Then what? A 2′ x 4′?!
* Jack is not his real name.
Five Questions With… Raven Kaldera
A female-to-male transgendered activist and shaman, Raven Kaldera is a pagan priest, intersex transgender activist, parent, astrologer, musician and homesteader. Kaldera, who hails from Hubbardston, Mass., is the founder and leader of the Pagan Kingdom of Asphodel and the Asphodel Pagan Choir. Kaldera has been a neo-pagan since the age of 14, when he was converted by a “fam-trad” teen on a date. His website, Cauldron Farm, contains extensive information about Pagan practice as well as his activist writings on transgender and sexuality topics.
Having met Raven and attended workshops he’s given, I’m always surprised that every time I see him I’m newly amazed by how much his presence is both strong and gentle. His answers, too, are of the ‘pulls no punches’ variety, without obfuscation, and he manages to explain complex ideas – about spirituality, sexuality, and identity – in plain language. Okay, I’m a fan! – I admit it!
1) I think the most vital thing I’d love for you to talk about is how most IS people view T issues, and whether or not they identify as T, and why.
Most intersexuals do not consider themselves transgendered, and are very uncomfortable being associated with the trans movement in general. I think a lot of this comes out of lifetimes of being shamed for being physically different; if it was a terrible thing that had to be medically corrected and then desperately hidden from the world, what’s up with these people with “normal” bodies who are seeking out changes? Not to mention that many IS folks view transpeople as freaks, and are desperate to be seen as “normal”.
The problem is with the cross-section. I don’t know how big that cross-section is, but there are more and more of us popping out all the time – IS folks who decide that they’d rather be a gender other than what they were assigned, and get sex reassignment, transsexuals who discover that they have IS conditions in the middle of their changes, and so forth. We make it difficult for either side to separate from each other. Our bodies are spread across that gap between the two movements. It’s important for me as one of those bridgers to be sensitive to the needs of both sides, getting in the way of the IS folks assumption that we’re freaks; getting in the way of the transfolks’ attempts to colonize the IS struggles.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Raven Kaldera”
Five Questions With… Dallas Denny
Dallas Denny, M.A., is founder and was for ten years Executive Director of the American Educational Gender Information Service, Inc. (AEGIS), a national clearinghouse on transsexual and transgender issues. She is currently on the board of Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc., AEGIS’ successor organization, which lives at www.gender.org. She is Director of Fantasia Fair and editor of Transgender Tapestry magazine and was editor and publisher of the late Chrysalis: The Journal of Transgressive Gender Identities. Dallas is a prolific writer with hundreds of articles and three books to her credit. She recently decided to retire her license to practice psychology in Tennessee, since she seems to have found a permanent home in Pine Lake, Georgia, pop. 650, the world’s smallest municipality with a transgender nondiscrimination ordinance.
1) You’ve been a trans educator/activist for a long time now: what do you see as the biggest development in terms of trans politics since you’ve been doing this?
When I began my activism in 1989, the community was almost entirely about education– outreach to the general public and information to other transpeople. There wasn’t much information available, and much of that wasn’t very good or was outdated– and even the bad information could be almost impossible to find. The rapid growth of the community in the 1990s and especially the explosion of the internet made information much easier to find.
Somewhere around 1993, the community had reached a point at which political activism had become possible. Of course, some of us had always been doing that, but it hadn’t been a prime focus of the community, and what had been done had been sporadic and short-lived, often was done by a single individual or a small group, and tended to happen in places like San Francisco and New York City. This activism did give us some political gains– most notably in Minnesota, which adopted state-wide protections as early as, I believe, the early 1970s, but around 1993 there was a growing political consciousness in the community, and things just began to take off.
I can identify some important events of the 1990s– when Nancy Burkholder, a post-op transsexual woman, was kicked out of the Michigan Womyn’s conference, when people began to come together in Texas at Phyllis Randolph Frye’s ICTLEP law conference, when the March on Washington turned out to be non-transinclusive, when a bunch of us got together to form GenderPac (an organization which was promptly hijacked by the Executive Director)– but there were two biggies, in my opinion. The first was the first transgender lobbying, which was done by Phyllis Frye and Jane Fee. They couldn’t believe they had actually done it, then wondered why they hadn’t done it before. When HRCF (as it was then called) promptly went behind their backs and removed the transgender inclusions Phyllis and Jane had convinced lawmakers to put into the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, there was a sense of outrage. The news broke when Sarah DePalma got an e-mail.at the law conference. It happened to be the only ICTLEP I attended. We had a coule of strategy sessions and went back home and the next week did actions at at least six Pride events, including Atlanta, which I coordinated. You should have seen the jaws drop when I handed leaflets to the folks at the HRCF booth. The organization has, of course, done a complete turnaround since then, or so we hope.
The other big event was the muder of Brandon Teena; in the aftermath, we began to get media coverage that concentrated on our political issues and not just our individual psychologies or transition histories.
After that, things just exploded. Today many of us– as many as one in three– have some sort of legal protections– anti-discrimination, hate crimes, or both. My little town of Pine Lake, Georgia, population 650, even has trans protections– and I didn’t even have to ask for them. They were already in place when I moved here in the late 1990s.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Dallas Denny”
GE
GE is using the protest song “Sixteen Tons” for an ad about coal energy.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen something so disrespectful in my life.
“Sixteen Tons” was made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but it was written by Merle Travis, who was the son of a Kentucky coal miner. It’s not really difficult to work out that it’s about how much it sucked to be a coal miner, specifically in the time before the UMW (United Mine Workers).
CHORUS:
You load sixteen tons and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go,
l owe my soul to the company store.
Now, some people say a man’s made out of mud,
But a poor man’s made out of muscle and blood,
Muscle and blood, skin and bones,
A mind that’s weak and a back that’s strong.
Well, I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine.
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mines.
I loaded sixteen tons of Number Nine coal,
And the straw-boss hollered, “Well, bless my soul.”
Well, I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain.
Fightin’ and trouble is my middle name.
I was raised in the bottoms by a mama hound.
I’m mean as a dog, but I’m as gentle as a lamb.
WeIl, if you see me a-comin’ you better step aside.
A lotta men didn’t and a lotta men died.
I got a fist of iron, and a fist of steel.
If the right one don’t get you, then the left one will.
I’ve always thought of the last two lines as pretty direct metaphors for the two industries coal mining hugely influenced in the US: the railroads and the steel industry.
You can read a little more about why miners and their families hated the company store if you can’t work it out, and check out other songs about life in the coal mines at this ‘History in Song’ site.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised. I just wonder if there’s anything that can be respected. I wonder if GE has any idea that miners are still killed and injured in coal mines around the world on a regular basis. On Tuesday, a mine flooded in China and 13 of the miners are still missing as I’m writing this.
Here’s an article about the same ad, in Slate.
(And if you’re wondering why on earth I’m blogging about coal mining at all, that’s simple: my grandmother’s family were Anthracite miners in PA at the turn of the century, and the history of the mines, the miners’ unions, and all things coal have been interests of mine for a long time. I was one of the few kids who did actually get coal in my Christmas stocking to remind me I wasn’t always an angel.)
A Day in the Life of HB: Part One
I thought this might amuse some of you, for whatever reason it would.
Wake up, slightly bemused at having dreamt I grew up with Sting living two houses away from me.
Put on tea water, weigh self (don’t ask!), turn on computer, light cigarette, say hello to Aeneas (who always greets me when I wake up), apologize to Endymion (who continues to sleep at my feet no matter how many times I kick him when I’m sleeping).
Go online, curse dial-up, delete pounds of spam. Do I really need to see ads for “young girls jerking you off†when I first wake up? No, I don’t. Do I even have a penis for these young sluts TO jerk off? No, I don’t.
Open the Animal Rescue site, tab to MHB, check stats, amazon sales rank, message boards. Tell someone to get bent and someone else to quit picking the same fights, already. Split threads, move threads, delete bitchy posts. Proceed to the Breast Cancer site, the Child Health site, the Hunger site, the Literacy site, the Rainforest site, which I let load in a background tab while I check out the boards.
IM Betty, who tells me about my email before most of it downloads. (We get cc:’d a lot of the same info.)
When the tea water whistles, if I hear it, pour tea; while tea is steeping, prepare a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Yes, I’m addicted. In a still-sleepy daze, wonder if I should let the Cheerios go soggy while I finish smoking the cigarette I lit, or put out the cigarette to eat the Cheerios. (It’s about 50/50, as far as I can tell.)
Bug Betty via IM about the eight things we’re supposed be doing, who she’s supposed to be calling, what events we’ve been invited to that she hasn’t gotten back to me about, which reminds me to open my calendar, and see that I’m supposed to work, so I speed up my tea drinking and emailing.
Answer ten emails in succession: one to a friend from my pre-tranny life, five to trannies currently emailing me regularly, two queries from people about info/resources, and one to someone I promised some bit of writing to. The tenth I forward to Betty about tech stuff on the site/boards.
Ignore the phone until I stop saying fuck under my breath when it rings.
Stop doing everything to give Aeneas his morning love-down.
Wonder if I have time to work out before I dress and bathe.
Answer five more emails: two responses that have already come back from the previous set, a third from a partner who’s freaking out, forward two other invites to Betty so she can not get back to me about whether or not she wants to go.
Read the new posts on the boards again, making sure whatever fights started have been dropped, then pick one myself about something feminist.
Remember to take my Zyrtec when I realize I’m itchy all over from the Aeneas love-down.
IM Betty about how she slept, say hello, only to notice a “brb†about five lines up.
Wait for Betty to get back so I don’t forget whatever it is. Drink tea, play with Endymion. Take out yoga mat. Check answering machine for previous night’s messages because I didn’t want to answer the phone. Get back to find 10 lines of IM from Betty that end with another ‘brb.’ Completely forget what I was supposed to IM Betty about.
Check my to-do list, cross one thing off and add another.
Make a few phonecalls.
Finally, Betty gets back from lunch and tells me she has no idea if she wants to go to anything I’ve mentioned to her. I resolve just to tell her what we’re going to and quit asking her, then forward her a few more emails about events in the next half-hour after I’ve made the resolution.
IM Betty to tell her I’m working out. Work out. (Okay, so this doesn’t happen everyday.)
Take a quick bath, dress, check the boards one last time, IM Betty that I’m going to work. Smoke another cigarette. Wonder how long it will take someone to write their own version of this blog post on the boards.
Five Questions With… Loren Krywanczyk
Loren Krywanczyk is an undergraduate at Yale where he first organized Trans Issues Week in 2004, as a sophomore. The 2nd Annual Trans Issues Week took place in 2005, and Krywanczyk is currently planning the 3rd in the series.
< Loren (left) with his partner Vera
1) What encouraged you to start Trans Issues week at Yale?
I founded Trans Issues Week through my capacity as Special Events Coordinator of the Yale Women’s Center my sophomore year, a job that entailed putting together a speaker series during the spring semester. I was at the time purely woman-identified, and yet for some reason which I am still not entirely sure of I decided that it would be a good idea to devote the week to an exploration of intersections and tensions between feminism and trans/gender issues. I met with Jonathan D. Katz of the Larry Kramer Initiative for some direction in potential speakers, since I had very little knowledge of trans/gender issues or theory, let alone key visible figures in the field. Through contacting speakers and getting closer with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale, I received a one-month crash course in gender while throwing together what became the first annual Trans Issues Week at Yale. The week itself inspired me personally as well as academically, and shortly after the series my sophomore year I began incorporating genderqueerness and fludity into my own everyday life and intellectual pursuits. I guess you could say that a personal interest and activist/education-buildling initiative sparked my organization of the series, but even so I don’t know exactly where that personal interest stemmed from at the time.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Loren Krywanczyk”
Five Questions With… Interview with Jamison Green
Jamison Green is the author of Becoming A Visible Man
(Vanderbilt U. Press, 2004), which won the CLAGS’ Sylvia Rivera Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Finalist. He writes a monthly column for PlanetOut, and is a trans-activist of unmatched credibility. He is board chair of Gender Advocacy and Education, a board member for the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, and served as the head of FTM International for most of the 1990s*. He is referred to in many other books about trans issues, including Patrick Califia’s Sex Changes, Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, and Body Alchemy by Loren Cameron.
1. Betty and I often repeat your “there is no right way to be trans” idea, and I was wondering if any one thing contributed to you believing that.
I guess you could boil it down to the desire not to invalidate other people, but that desire has been informed by exposure to a wide variety of transgender and transsexual individuals of many ages, from many cultures, and many walks of life. Some people take it upon themselves to judge other trans people, to say “You’ll never make it as a man” or “as a woman,” or “you’re not trans enough,” “radical enough,” “queer enough,” whatever the case is. But I’ve known people who were told those things who went on to have successful transitions and generally satisfying lives, though they often felt burned enough by “the community” to stay away from it. I think it’s a shame that people cut themselves and/or others off from the potential for community, and I think that if we all truly believed there was room for everyone and we could learn to truly appreciate other’s differences and each person’s intrinsic value as a human being –and if we worked to make that a reality– then we, as collective trans people, might really make a positive difference in the world.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Interview with Jamison Green”
Cat Scratch Fever
Have a lovely weekend, all – and make sure you scratch whatever itches need scratching!