NCTE’s 52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality:
#10 Donate money to an organization providing direct services for transgender people.
Worried Like This Forever
I’m generally having a problem with the way things are going these days, what with the South Dakota bill and the news that the US Government didn’t only fuck up New Orleans and the other areas that got hit by Katrina at the time but are continuing to fuck it up now, & that Paul McCartney is trying to keep people from beating baby seals to death. It’s the last one that got to me the worst – I mean, didn’t we highlight how barbaric that crap was like 20 years ago? I was almost surprised to find out it’s still happening; I thought Canada was cooler than that. Then Megan delivered the news that increased air travel – accelerated by cheap fares – will eventually guarantee that we can’t see the stars.
I keep hoping we human beings take ourselves out before we wipe out every other species that calls this planet home.
But something Sandy posted made me feel a little better:
I sometimes feel so weighed down by everything that is so wrong, and so bad, about how we humans treat each other and the world.
I worry.
I worry about an all-out, probably nuclear, war between the Muslim world and everyone else. I worry about bird flu. I worry about resistant strains of bacteria (and would everyone PLEASE quit using “anti-bacterial” soap, you’re making the problem worse, and gaining no benefit in the meantime). I worry about overpopulation and food and water supplies. I worry about the crazy rise in the incidence of all types of cancers in our country. I worry about plastics and pesticides and volatile organic compounds. I worry about all the no-money-down mortgages and credit card debt that people are getting into and not out of. I worry about the incredible, collossal amounts of waste in every aspect of our fat American lives. I worry about how stupid and sinister our government is, and how just plain stupid we citizens appear to be. I worry about the dubious role of huge corporations in society. I worry about children whose parents are mean to them. Now too, I worry about the demise of astronomy as we know it. I’m not being facetious. I care about all of this stuff.
My husband even worries about living on the East coast, downwind of all the air pollution in the rest of the country. I don’t go quite that far. But if we moved to the west coast, I’d probably worry about missiles from North Korea.
There’s no automatic healthy dose of “fuckit” attitude in my life anymore, that feeling that used to kick in when the world looked too cruel. All I can do these days is limit the amount of news I take in. (Ah, parenthood. It takes away some humor, for sure; thank God it installs some new kinds as well.)
One thought that eases my mind a bit is that people have worried like this forever… and life continues, and it’s mostly really, really good.
Thanks, Sandy.
Five Questions With… Arlene Istar Lev
Arlene Istar Lev LCSW, CASAC, is a social worker, family therapist, educator, and writer whose work addresses the unique therapeutic needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. She is the founder of Choices Counseling and Consulting (www.choicesconsulting.com) in Albany, New York, providing family therapy for LGBT people. She is also on the adjunct faculties of S.U.N.Y. Albany, School of Social Welfare, and Vermont College of the Union Institute and University. She is the author of The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide (Penguin Press, 2004) and Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and their Families (Haworth Press, 2004). Additionally, she maintains a :Dear Ari” advice column, which is currently published in Proud Parenting and Transgender Tapestry. She is also the Founder and Project Manager for Rainbow Access Initiative, a training program on LGBT issues for therapists and medical professionals, and a Board Member for the Family Pride Coalition. Her “In a Family Way” column on LGBT parenting issues is nationally syndicated.
< Arlene Istar Lev
1. You work a lot with LGBT parenting issues. What do you see as the major differences between LGB parents and T parents?
Lesbian and gay parents deal with numerous issues of oppression, and depending on the state or locality in which they live, this can be minor issues of societal ignorance, to huge issues of public and legal discrimination. However, as difficult as the issues facing lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may be, they pale in comparison to the blatant oppression transgender and transsexual parents face.
In many states, lesbian and gay people can now jointly legally adopt their children as out same-sex couples; this provides their children with many benefits and protections. However, transgender people experience discrimination in all routine areas of family life. Judges determining parental custody will rarely award custody to out trans people, except possibly in cities like San Francisco that specifically offer transgender protections. Trans people are viewed by the courts as unfit by the virtue of their (trans)gender status. Additionally, adoption agencies do not see transgender people as “fit†to be parents, and the obstacles faced by transgender people wanting to be parents can feel insurmountable.
Lesbian and gay people have fought for the right to become parents. I remember a time when simply being an out lesbian would bias a judge’s custody decision. Although there are some localities where this still would be true, even in upstate New York in rural communities, judges minimize the issues of sexual orientation in making custody decisions. However, I cannot imagine the same being true regarding gender transition. In my book, The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide, a transwoman tells the painful story of losing custody of her son after her crossdressing was used to “prove” that she was a deviant and a pervert. The legal status of trans people, regarding their rights to their children, is reminiscent of LGB legal rights 40 years ago.
However, there is good news to report. Trans parents are coming out of the closet in increasing numbers. Many trans people who have positive relationships with spouses and ex-spouses are finding ways to parent together and address the issues the gender-transpositions can have on family life. Increasing numbers of people are choosing to have children as out trans people. Some FTMs are getting pregnant, placing medical personnel in a position to work with pregnant men, creating a radical and challenging new phase of queer parenting. Additionally, many MTFs are storing sperm before transition, so they are able to have biological children as the sperm donor/father with a female partner. Clearly, LGBT people have developed innovative family-building forms, and I suspect we are only at the beginning of this process.
There is, of course, no reason that a trans person could not be as competent a parent as any other person, but like LGB people, they will likely have to “prove” that to the powers that be. In my experience, children take gender transitions in stride; it is adults who find the whole issue confusing and shocking. Older children might have more difficulties accepting gender changes, particularly as they near their own puberty. It is my contention however, that families can weather many challenging issues, and transgender status is no more, or less, challenging then other issues that families face.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Arlene Istar Lev”
Out of the Freying Pan and Into the Fire
Oprah just said that she doesn’t want kudos for admitting she was wrong because it was the only thing to do, and that was after cutting off Nan Talese mid-sentence. (Nan Talese is not the kind of person who is used to be cut off mid-sentence – she’s a Senior VP of Doubleday and owns her own imprint there). But Oprah is angry, and James Frey is starting to feel like the meat industry, I bet.
Frank Rich is angry, too, and just pointed out that being honest is usually the first step in any addiction recovery journey.
Stanley Crouch wants to know how much Doubleday had to do with coercing Frey into publishing it as a memoir.
And Maureen Down suggested Oprah cast Frey out of her kingdom.
A journalism professor (whose name I didn’t catch) just pointed out that when you doubt one memoir, you start to distrust them all; as someone who has put the truth of my life on the line, I really resent James Frey and even more the slick rationalizations of Nan Talese. Her attitude is exactly what sucks about the publishing industry.
Granted, our whole culture cries out for sensationalism: they don’t want to hear one woman’s story of pregnancy and childbirth; they want the post-natally depressed nearly-killed-her-baby mother. More than once members of the media (okay, including a producer from Oprah) stopped being interested in our story because Betty hasn’t had “the operation.”
So this is what I think: Nan Talese and Frey should figure out how much money they made from bullshitting everyone, and they should give it back. There are definitely 12-step programs that need funding and tons of individuals who could use some money to re-start lives that addiction has made a mess of.
And I know there are memoir writers out there that could use a grant. I just know it.
JT LeRoy: Will the Real Tranny Please Stand Up?
I was recently asked a few questions by Ron Hogan (of Beatrice.com and GalleyCat.com) about the news that JT LeRoy is a sham.
He asked:
As a writer in a relationship with a transgendered person, what is your reaction? Have you and Betty ever wished you could simply send a “stand-in” to deal with all the hassles of going out in public, let alone the threat of attack? And what’s your take on “Leroy’s” taking up an identity which, for Betty and other transfolks, is a real day- to-day struggle and, apparently, using it as a cover for a pseudonym?
For that matter, I should ask: Did you have any awareness of/contact with JT Leroy prior to these revelations? If so, have your feelings about his writing/your acquaintance changed?
It turns out that JT LeRoy is not only not trans, but she was never a he in the first place. (NY Times, New York magazine, SF Chronicle).
“‘As a transgendered human, subject to attacks,’ the statement read, ‘I use stand-ins to protect my identity.’ In the past, JT Leroy has invoked transgenderism to explain confusion over his identity.”
I’m not sure if I’m more frustrated as a writer or as a transgender educator – probably a combination of both. That JT LeRoy used transness as an excuse for this sham just adds to the heap of misinformation about transpeople. The association of transness and ‘big fat liar’ – when transpeople are everyday accused of being deceitful, and often harmed as a result of that perceived deceit – is supremely irresponsible. I think once the dust settles, some of the money she collected from celebrities should go to organizations like NCTE and the IFGE – organizations that help diminish the myths surrounding transpeople and work on legislation that makes harming transfolk hate crimes.
Because of stuff like this (& the various negative portrayals of transpeople, in general) Betty and I don’t have the luxury of sending someone else in our stead. As talented, reasonable people, we feel a real need to go out there and present any kind of example that isn’t so negative.
As someone who writes about trans subjects, it’s even more frustrating. So many good books about transness don’t get light of day – no reviews in the Times, no reviews in magazines, etc – yet people can’t stop talking about JT LeRoy because of her transnes. Believe me, the irony isn’t lost on me.
But then there’s the history of women writers and pseudonyms, and for that I can’t really blame her for using any kind of “cover.” Being reminded of being a “woman novelist” or a “woman writer” is enough to make any woman who writes borrow whatever front she might in order to stop hearing that. “Helen Boyd” is a nom de plume, after all, and I chose it in order to protect my family from the kind of transphobia that JT LeRoy claims she was protecting herself from.
Does being trans mean you’re subject to attacks? It can. Especially for less priveleged transpeople, trans people of color and those lower on the economic scale. None of us feel especially safe, but you take the risks you have to in order to educate people as fast as you can.
JT LeRoy certainly didn’t do trans people at large any favors.
Endymion, Parsing His List of Resolutions
So what are yours?!
-
Mine?
Sign new book contract.
Lose 25 lbs.
Be cool & groovy.
Learn to talk about things other than gender.
Have more sex.
Worry about money less. Or make more. Whichever comes first.
Workout 3x/week.
Stuff like that. But mostly:
Write a really great book.
Five Questions With… Lacey Leigh
Lacey Leigh is the authr of Out & About: The Emancipated Crossdresser as well as 7 Secrets of Successful Crossdressers. She moderates an online community, speaks publicly as a crossdresser, and helps a lot of CDs gain confidence as they take those first fledgeling steps out the (closet) door.
1. What do you think is the most important thing crossdressers need to know?
One of the major changes I have made is in my personal lexicon – my working vocabulary, as it were – is to eliminate the words that carry semantic undertones of judgement or personal imperative: should, must, ought, need, etc. We use them unconsciously, not realizing how such terms of absolutism color the message we’re trying to communicate.
People and friends, beginning with my wife, have reminded that while I have the zeal and passion of a recent convert to faith, there is also a frequent tendency to climb on the soapbox and get a little ‘preachy’. Mea culpa. I’m working on it. It’s especially difficult to keep the lid on it when sharing an attitude, a mindset that has provided such an empowering personal perspective – for me as well as everyone else who has tried it.
Terms that carry such cultural sovereignty are often reliable indicators of personal bias. Count the number of times people use similar words of subtle judgement, multiply by the frequency of the personal pronoun (I, me, my, etc.) and you’ll get a pretty good indicator of how deeply a person is into himself – and whether that person is operating with a closed or an open mind.
A favorite theme is “Why allow people to ‘should’ on you?”
Anyway, I would rephrase “need to know” with “might benefit from understanding.”
Back to your question…
You started with ‘the biggie’; a topic for which a glib reply can lead to greater confusion. To lend a perspective, it might benefit readers to jump over to one of the essays on my outreach website.
Clothing serves as a primary cultural communication. Absent that imperative, we might just as well wrap rags, moss, or bubble wrap around ourselves for protection and comfort. This point is essential in order to grasp a further understanding of crossdressing. We send myriad signals about ourselves through the medium of personal attire and decoration; our ethnicity, our religion, our social status, our allegiance, our mood, our gender, our fantasies, our ‘availability’, our mood – the list is infinite.
Crossdressing is communication.
Which leads to a plethora of additional questions. What, exactly, are we communicating? To whom are we sending the message (trick question)? Is it getting through or is it somehow garbled or confusing? Is the message content accurate at the source? Is the communication important in the first place?
Crossdressing is not about the clothing. Rather, the clothing is a conduit of expression – about our very essential, inner natures. Doesn’t it make sense to say positive, empowering things?
A famous Russian tennis player was once the butt of a locker room prank when his new ‘friends’ educated him with a few phrases in English to help him get by. When he thought he was asking, “Where is the men’s toilet” the words he’d been taught were more on the order of “I need to s**t, which way is the G**damn crapper?” As he became more fluent in English he didn’t appreciate the humor.
In the crossdressing ‘community’ there are many who start out the same way, attempting to communicate in a language they don’t really speak. Little wonder they don’t get much in the way of tolerance; they have made themselves (albeit unintentionally for the most part) intolerable, primarily from restating the messages they absorb from their less thoughtful sisters and from a sensational media that emphasizes the lowest common denominators.
It’s common sense that if we wish to earn respect, it’s a good idea to appear respectable. Our culture, while uncomfortable with nonstandard gender expression, is waaaaaaaaay more uneasy about things deemed overtly sexual. Thus, when crossdressers openly display as clueless Barbies, truckstop trannies, or BDSM submissives it’s understandable why the public at large react as they do. A natal female attired in the same manner would generate a similar reaction. Get a clue! As it harms no other, do as you will – behind bedroom doors, and keep them closed please.
At a recent Eureka En Femme Getaway it was an uphill battle with one middle-aged CD. When asked why she favored miniskirts and CFM strappy platform shoes she replied, “My legs are my best asset.” To which I replied, “Your legs are writing checks that your face and waistline can’t cash.” Her rejoinder was, “I don’t care – people will just have to deal with it.” Sure, a chip-on-my-shoulder attitude will win tolerance every time. Where is a good cluebat when you need one?
I finally got through to her by opening a side door; vanity. She was out on the street the next morning, blissfully displaying her butt cheeks to everyone in her aft quarter, when I walked up to her and in a conspiratorial whisper said, “One word – ‘cellulite’.” That afternoon, she was wearing trousers.
Just as with any language, there are blessings and curses; bold proclamations and subtle suggestions; the vulgar and the tasteful; the shout and the whisper; the symphony and the grunge. It’s helpful to keep in mind that we master a language through practice, total immersion, feedback, trial, and error. The kind of feedback we receive in an echo chamber (‘support’ groups, ‘trans friendly’ venues, and TG social circles) isn’t nearly as helpful as that which we gain by expressing among the culture at large.
Thus, my advocacy for open crossdressing.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Lacey Leigh”
Five Questions With… Vanessa Edwards Foster
Vanessa Edwards Foster is the board chair of NTAC (National Transgender Advocacy Coalition). A Houston-based activist, Foster is one of the people who lobbies the US Government every year on behalf of transgender people everywhere.
1. Why did you become an activist on trans issues?
Circumstances. Hormones took to me far too quickly, and I lost my job before I was ready to transition. This was back when I thought (having good natural features) that I’d have a seamless transition. It was the late 90s (greatest economy ever), and I was unemployed for nearly 21 months, so it was obvious what was happening. At the time, I led two other local groups and started thinking about what they were experiencing, and how bad it must’ve been for them. And I couldn’t interest anyone else in doing it for us, or for me. So I decided to bite the bullet and do what came unnaturally for me — political activism.
My heritage is heavily native, and my ancestors on all sides were part of the Trail of Tears, as it’s called. So I grew up like all of us were taught: we hate government, we hate politics and politicians (plastic people), we hate the manipulation, the deceit and the devotion to self-interest. Politics was the seamiest of trades, promises from them were made to be broken and any attempt to get involved politically was an exercise in futility and ultimate frustration. The only ones attracted to the political life were lusting for power and money. My parents initially thought me crazy to involve myself in this, then later seemed hopeful and proud of this actually making a difference. But as time went on, these last couple years have reaffirmed their warnings rather than disproved them. Politics, as it is today, is no savior. Quite the opposite.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Vanessa Edwards Foster”
Five Questions With… Caprice Bellefleur
Caprice Bellefleur, 57, got her BA in Economics at the U. Wisconsin @ Madison, and earned her JD. She’s been married 17 years, has no children, and is a member of the bar of the State of NY. She retired after 25 years as a computer programmer, and though she felt the urge to CD since she was a child, she didn’t – to any great extent – until she was in her mid 40s. She considers herself a person of mixed gender, and has presented as a woman in public for 7 years. Caprice is not only the treasurer of CDI-NY, but carries the special burden of being King’s Envoy on the (en)gender message boards – meaning, she’s a moderator. She handles both roles with class, culture, and enviable cleavage.
1. You do a lot with organizations for the larger GLBT, and I was wondering what kinds of things you do, and how/why you realized that service to GLBT orgs should be part of your life as a crossdresser.
I like to attend the meetings and functions of GLBT groups when I can–political, legal, social, all kinds of groups. I think it is important for trans people to be visible in the LGBT community, so that we’re not just a meaningless initial tacked on at the end. There is a lot ignorance about trans people among gays and lesbians–not all that much less than in the straight community, actually. I’ve given the “Trans 101” class to more gays than straights–especially if you count the “outreach” I’ve done in various gay and lesbian bars. And an important part of my “Trans 101” lesson is to explain how there is significant overlap between the GLB and the T segments of GLBT–many GLBs are gender-variant (“umbrella” definition T), and many self-identified trans people have G, L or B sexual orientation. When people understand that, they understand why the T belongs with GLB.
I am a member of several GLBT organizations, but I have really only been active in one: the LGBT Issues Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA) . Even that was something of an accident–though I now believe it to have been a very fortunate one.
I think I started with the Committee in 2002. I wanted to do something to advance the legal protections of trans people, and the Committee seemed like a good fit. (I would have gotten more involved in the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), but its Saturday afternoon meetings were very inconvenient for me.) I had been a member of NYCLA for many years, and I saw a notice in its newsletter for the Committee. The notice outlined the Committee’s mission, which included legal matters relating to all LGBT people (even though its name at the time was still the Committee on Lesbians and Gays in the Law). I e-mailed the chair, and found out that a) a trans person would be welcome, and b) the meetings were quite convenient to my schedule. So I went, and I joined. I was the first trans person on the Committee–and the only one until this year.
From the start I was surprised at how much of the Committee’s work was trans-related–close to 50% that first year. The main thing was the founding of the West Village TransLegal Clinic Name Change Project. This is an operation where volunteer lawyers help people obtain legal name changes, something very important to anyone who is transitioning, or has already done so. I attended a number of meetings where we worked out the logistics among the various organizations involved–besides our Committee, the Gender Identity Project (GIP) of the LGBT Center and the LGBT Lawyers Association (LeGaL) were instrumental. It was there I first met Carrie Davis of GIP, Dean Spade of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and Melissa Sklarz of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID). Melissa, in her role as co-chair of the LGBT Committee of Community Board 2, was very helpful in getting funding for the Clinic. What developed was a monthly non-representational drop-in clinic at the LGBT Center. We (the volunteer lawyers) interview the clients and complete the Petition for Adult Name Change, which the clients then submit to the court. I usually serve once or twice a quarter.
I also served on the Law Firm Survey Subcommittee. We developed a questionnaire about the policies and practices concerning LGBT employees and the LGBT community, which we submitted to the 25 largest law firms in New York City. Our primary goal was to create a resource for LGBT law students to help them decide where to look for a job. There was a section of questions about trans issues, which I largely wrote. We envisioned giving report cards to the various firms, grading them on how we thought it would be for an LGBT person to work there. We were pleasantly surprised to find that all of the 24 firms that replied were at least somewhat LGBT-friendly. For instance, every one of them offers benefits to the same-sex partners of employees. We decided to forget about the grading. The section on trans issues was not quite as encouraging as the rest, though. Only one firm explicitly included gender identity and expression in its non-discrimination policy. None had any procedures or specific policies covering employees who wished to transition–and none of them reported having had an employee who had done so. A substantial percentage of the firms had dress codes that were not gender-neutral. Next year I want to do a follow-up survey, to see if there have been any improvements by the firms. (The report can be found at www.nycla.org/siteFiles/Publications/Publications38_0.pdf. It won the award for the best committee report at NYCLA this year.)
Right now, I am working on getting NYCLA to endorse the New York State Gender Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). I drafted a report outlining the reasons why, which has been adopted by the Committee, and sent to the NYCLA board for its consideration.
I think my work on the Committee shows there are many gays and lesbians who want to help trans people achieve the legal protections that they have, or are still working to achieve. Most, if not all, of the other volunteer lawyers at the TransLegal Clinic are gay or lesbian. I am the only trans one. I have never seen any reluctance, let alone opposition, from any of the other Committee members to the Committee’s work in trans areas. The trans community is decades behind the gay and lesbian community in organizing to achieve its civil rights. We would be fools not to work with them.
Personally, I will continue with my work with the NYCLA Committee, perhaps in a leadership role next year. I also am being proposed for a position on one of the LeGaL boards for next year. One of my problems is not biting off more than I can chew, because I am also active in trans-specific organizations, such as the NYS GENDA Coalition (currently under construction), and Crossdressers International.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Caprice Bellefleur”
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.â€
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.â€
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.