Tag: trans partners

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More About First Event

One of the revelations I had at First Event came as a result of talking to one trans woman after I did my talk and she ripped me a new one about partners needing more support, precisely because hers was a wife who refused to learn anything & refused to accept anything & left. She spoke to me from a place of pain & I appreciated her honesty. Later, someone else told me that her wife requested a divorce & the date of separation listed on the decree was the day she told her spouse she was trans. Those two experiences explained the resistance I feel sometimes when I talk about having partners become more involved in the larger trans community, or even when I speak as an advocate for partners at all: there’s just too much pain for a lot of trans people around the subject of relationships, that too many trans people don’t think partners need support because their own partners didn’t want it, didn’t look for it, and just wanted out.

The second half of that revelation is that partners really do need the support. The group I hosted was varied: some lesbian-identified partners of FTMs, mostly wives/girlfriends of crossdressers and transgender and transsexual MTFs, and one male partner of a younger MTF. We didn’t always share outlooks, or life experiences, or even attitudes about transness (though we did agree that nobody knows what causes it). But the one thing that came up over & over again was the sense of isolation we all experience, of not knowing others like us, of not having anyone to talk to about the most intimate parts of our lives.

What occurred to me is that I feel like I have to stand up, & want to keep writing & being visible. I thought later that trans people have so many role models, so many sources of (various forms of) success: the Christine Jorgensens and Virginia Princes and Jenny Boylans and Kate Bornsteins and Robert Eadses and Jamison Greens and Leslie Feinbergs. So many I can’t even list them all. But is there any partner of a trans person whose name people know? Is there anyone partners can point to and say, “She did it”? There isn’t, not one. & I don’t really want to be that person; I’d argue that I’m NOT that person. But in some ways I want, at least, to keep talking about partners and partners’ issues not just because partners need the role models, but because trans people should know that they can and will be loved for who they are. I want trans people and partners alike to be able to see that trans people do not exist in a void, that they have lovers and spouses and children and parents and siblings.

Sometimes I don’t think trans people realize just that simple fact of it. You all may have paths that are difficult to find, that leave off just when you think they’re going somewhere, or that stop cold, but partners are still standing at the edge of the jungle, machete in hand. There isn’t even a bad path visible.
But mostly I don’t think the pain of how badly things have gone for some people should dictate all our lives, which is why I keep talking, and keep pushing therapists and the trans community at large to find ways to support the partners who have at least made a commitment to try. What I want to see is not for all couples to stay together, but more that couples separate without the kind of bitterness & hostility I’ve already seen too many times.

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First Event

We leave for First Event today, and are really looking forward to experiencing this legendary trans conference. Just so you know – and because I probably won’t be answering emails for a bit – this is what I’ll be doing at First Event:

on Friday:

  • a reading from She’s Not the Man I Married during the luncheon
  • a trans sexuality workshop open to all

on Saturday:

  • a workshop for partners/SOs only
  • the keynote speech during the Awards Banquet

Betty will be with me, and we’ll otherwise be around, so do say hello if you see us.

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Trans Partners Drop In Group

This month’s Trans Partners Group topic is family. You’ve all gotten back from holiday trips you may have taken, or you’ve stayed in your home and wondered why you feel so estranged for your family – or your partner’s.

The meeting starts at 7:30PM, lasts until 9PM, on Wednesday, January 3rd (that’s tomorrow if you’re reading this when this post goes up!), and meets at the LGBT Center on West 13th Street.

I’ll be co-facilitating the group just as I did this past fall, and the next one isn’t until February 7th because of the new monthly schedule, so do come! The upcoming themes are as follows:

  • January: family
  • February: community
  • March: the partner’s gender identity
  • April: sexuality
  • May: free-form/bring your own topic

(& Tonight, of course, is the monthly meeting of the mHB group, with a special guest visit from Marlena!)

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Five Things

Apparently I’ve been tagged for a blog meme, by Debra over at Tragic/Beautiful.

I’m supposed to come up with Five Things You Don’t Know About Me. I’m going to hope that none of my very old friends are reading, since what they know about me may be very different from what a more generic “you” might know.

(1) I have always worried that all of my eccentricity is really driven by a niggling fear that I am painfully mediocre.

(2) I started my undergraduate career as a Theology major at Fordham University. I wanted to be a priest when I was a child and often wonder if I won’t end up some kind of monk/nun by the end of my days.

(3) My first boyfriend’s name was also Jason. (My friend Ming took to calling him “the wrong Jason” when I met the person who you all know as Betty.)

(4) I spent a good chunk of my 20s traveling:

  • in 1991: to San Francisco (I was 22)
  • in 91/92: to India
  • in summer 92 I drove across the USA with a friend
  • in 1993 I went to New Orleans
  • in 1996 to Singapore, Bali (Indonesia) and Burma (Myanmar)
  • in 1997 to Singapore and Viet Nam (then later in the same trip, to Chicago, Nashville, and Charleston)
  • in 1998 to London
  • in 1999 to Sao Paulo and Rio in Brazil and later that year to London and Paris (we were in London for the Millennium changeover)
  • in 2000 to London and Scotland (our engagement tour, as it were)
  • in 2001 to Hawaii (for our honeymoon)

As a result of the books and my lectures, after I turned 30, I have since seen, all stateside: Eureka Springs, AR; Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Hammond, IN; Provincetown, MA; Las Vegas, NM; Albany, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Sherman, TX, and Burlington, VT. As a result of being keynote speaker at First Event this year, I’ll finally get to see Boston!

(5) I am allergic to almost everything a person can be allergic to (dogs, cats, mold, dust, etc.) with the bizarre exception of cockroach poop.

& Now I will tag three other bloggers to list five things we don’t know about them: Betty Crow, Caprice Bellefleur, and John.

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So It’s Begun

I’m starting to get emails from people asking about the new book and whether or not I’d be willing to come to one trans conference or another. Likewise, the “call for presenters” emails are also showing up.

This year, for obvious reasons, Betty & I would love to go to all the conferences we’ve attended before – to celebrate the new book, to help more people, to dispel what rumors we can and to share what we’ve learned in the years since we’ve been to them.

But the same old problem stands in my way: we can’t afford it. My publishers don’t pay for conferences, and a physical book tour, per se, isn’t financially feasible. And as per usual, unless I’m to be the keynote speaker – such as at First Event – I’m told over and over again that the conferences do not help presenters get to these conferences or even waive conference fees, much less pay for hotel rooms or travel costs or the like. I say “I’m told” because that’s what conference organizers tell people when they have requested my attendance – and yet that’s not what I hear from other presenters.

Interestingly, I’ve been told that because I’m selling books I’m a “commercial interest,” which amuses me, considering that even if I sold a book to every single person who came to these conferences – which is far from likely – I still wouldn’t make enough money to break even! But of course I don’t actually sell my own books at these conferences: IFGE does.

So my response to everyone just now is that I honestly don’t know if we can come. We can’t afford to put out the $1000-2000 it costs for us to go to a conference, but we certainly can’t do that several times next year. It costs us more of course because there are two of us – and people always want Betty to come, because she’s Betty.

Mind you, I’m not asking to make money going to these things. I just don’t want to have to spend my own money working for a conference that is – from all reports – making money. I’m happy to donate my time and costs to conferences that are non-profit and have done so in the past. It would help if I felt any of these conferences had a clear-cut policy on these issues. But beyond all that, I know I can draw an audience because I’m told I make a decent advocate for partners, and that a lot of what I have to say is very different from what you hear in the rest of the trans community, and that that difference is useful.

Unfortunately, then, I can’t go unless my expenses are covered, and that is up to the organizing committees of the various conferences.

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Rock & a Hard Place

I’ll admit that I find it incomprehensible to remain part of a Church that didn’t want me as a member or that felt I was “less than.” When I found out at a young age that I wouldn’t be “allowed” to be a priest, I washed my hands of the Church, and while I still consider myself culturally Catholic*, I’m also an agnostic and don’t miss mass. & I was always allergic to the incense, so I don’t miss that either. But I do still go to Saint Patrick’s to light candles in my grandmother’s memory, and I like to think she’d be quite pleased knowing that she – even from the grave – gets me into a church at all. I still read The Lives of the Saints, and I love the peace I can achieve, easily, when I’m sitting in a Church between masses. The quiet, the art, the ritual, the iconography: all these things make me feel at home.

But queer folks often don’t feel at home if they actually believe in their faith and want to be committed members of a faith-based community. One of my fellow Catholics has joined the UU but I think misses something of the aesthetics of Catholicism (one of the few things, imho, the Catholic Church did right. If you don’t feel a sense of awe entering Saint Patrick’s, I’d be very surprised).

One of the things I see Betty struggle with is how the faith she was raised in might condemn her for who she is, and she’s the one who brought this article to my attention.

I applaud the way these folks have stuck to a faith they believe in, that they feel comfortable in, and have not backed down or compromised their beliefs. But at the same time I find it quite baffling: if literal and conservative interpretation of the Bible yields the label of “sinner” for any gay or lesbian, yet you know you didn’t choose to be gay, why stay? Jesus’ advice, that those who are without sin cast the first stone, might be the key. Because we are all sinners, aren’t we? In one way or another, we are. The man who casts homosexuals out of his church or makes them feel uncomfortable has masturbated once in his life, at least. Or maybe he’s gambled, or coveted his neighbor’s wife, or over-eaten, or blasphemed, or doubted, or lied, or eaten shellfish. There are plenty of ways to sin – especially if one’s going to be strict about Old Testament restrictions – other than having sex with someone of your own gender, and I find the current Christian obsession with homosexuality as the sin that inspires Christians to act in decidedly un-Christian ways quite baffling. I still don’t remember anything in the Bible that says human beings should be judging each other’s sinfulness; last I checked, a sinner’s sins are between him and his God.

As someone raised Catholic I can’t help but find it tragic; after all, one of the huge reasons the Protestant religions happened was because the Church on Earth was interfering in the way a sinner might know his God, so for me, this current revival of people thinking they know the mind of God is a little bit of (the worst of) history repeating itself.
Continue reading “Rock & a Hard Place”

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Dr. Keith

We taped an episode of the Dr. Keith show last week, and I’ve been sorting out my thoughts since then. I found the experience exhausting. From all reports (Donna, my sister, another friend) we were good. But some days it’s hard to consider the toll that’s paid.

I’m not sure yet what that toll is exactly, but it feels something like a distilled version of all the other work we do for college audiences & at trans conferences except the audience is so different: at one point during the taping I looked at a woman in the audience whose jaw was literally hanging agape.

It doesn’t help that I’ve replayed it all a million times in my head, hoping I said things that make sense. Before that I worried for days beforehand about whether I could really get something across of what this life is like for both the partner and the trans person. It’d be nice to be able to shut off my brain, to stop wondering what the whole show will be like, since we weren’t on alone: we had the company of a trans man & his ex as well as an intersex person.

Overall, I liked Dr. Keith’s take: his general tone was one of “Wow, that’s one hell of a hand you’ve been dealt,” and although the show was a little too anatomically-focused for me, people DO want to know about body mods and I think it was handled about as well as it could have been. It couldn’t have been thorough – transition, transgender, and intersex are a lot to cover in an hour – but it wasn’t sensational.

So I can only wait to see what the rest of you think. It should air before mid-March, and of course I’ll post info about the airdate as soon as I get it.

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Guest Author: Katherine

There is a part of me that would like to rename this, “How to Estrange the Love of Your Life” or even “How Not to be Trans” but I think Katherine’s original title, “8 Easy Steps,” is a touch more delicate. Katherine is an mHB boards veteran.

I’ll teach you all this in 8 easy steps
A course of a lifetime you’ll never forget
I’ll show you how to in 8 easy steps
I’ll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best
–Alanis Morrissette

One: My trans-needs and experiences will always be more exotic, painful, and interesting than your existence.

Two: Excessive narcissism can look like, “Hey, I’m just finally taking care of myself here!” but is every bit about creating the I-It relationships that Martin Buber warned us about.

Three: “I’m trans. You don’t understand me. I am complicated and, like—for sure, you’re not,” so you don’t have permission to judge me even when I am fully deserving of your judgment, even when your life is equally if not more complicated. I scored the ultimate “get out of jail free card” in life’s version of Monopoly. “Do not pass ‘Go,’” etc., and get your ass back on Baltic Avenue. My life is Boardwalk and Park Place, special.

Four: My martyr complex is so much fun for others! Thank you for hating me and disapproving of what I am doing; it makes me so much more special than you and is the ultimate buzzkill toward having a meaningful conversation about how and what I am doing is scaring and confusing to you, is scaring and confusing me.

Five: Let me be wonderfully sympathetic about your weight gain, about your angst, about your doubts, about your sense that this isn’t right for you, but let me still manage to appropriate your feelings and help you feel guilty again for having them.

Six: Oh, you want something to say about how my identity change is affecting your identity too with our friends, family, and co-workers? How shallow of you. Let me make you in these matters too feel guilty about caring for such things.

Seven: Let me attempt to appropriate the womanhood experiences you spent a lifetime living, reacting to, and making peace with in this sexist culture and act as though your role no longer matters and that the space you earned as wife, daughter, and sister can be appropriated by the “How to be Transsexual for Dummies” manual.

Eight: Let me shirk my responsibility to you by spending more time online, on the phone, and in person with my trans acquaintances than I do with you, designing for example cutesy posts about eight steps, while you are in the other room alone and afraid, facing as you do so often another day with bravery and grace.

I’ve been doing research for years
I’ve been practicing my ass off
I’ve been training my whole life for this moment (I swear to you)
Culminating just to be this well-versed leader before you
–Alanis Morissette