A Band Of (Trans) Brothers--And Sisters

While the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been applauded, mostly for the right reasons, transgenders are still not allowed to be uniformed members of the Armed Forces.  

Meanwhile, civilian employees of the Armed Forces are allowed to transition if they are already employees.  What's not widely known is that Amanda Simpson, whom President Obama appointed as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department shortly after he was elected to his first term, is a civilian military employee.  She had transitioned years before her appointment to that post.

Another civilian employee, not nearly as well-known, is in the process of transitioning.  However, that employee also happens to be an Army Reserve sergeant. 

But there's another twist that few anticipated:  As a civilian employee, this person is male.  However, for Army drills and physicals, it's necessary to bring out "whatever I can muster that's feminine".   So, while his civilian colleagues relate to him as the man he is, he must--as he admits--lie to his fellow soldiers.   

Now, some might say that he should be content with being a civilian military employee.  However, he says, "My father was a soldier.  I wanted to come home in a uniform like him".  He was able to do that after a deployment to Iraq.  While "coming home in a uniform" (Thankfully, it wasn't a body bag!) fulfilled one dream, it left him with the yearnings of another:  He realized he had to "come out" and transition.

He hopes that one day soon the Armed Forces' ban against transgenders will be lifted.  In the meantime, he says, he has a network of about 300 female-to-male transgenders who are a "band of brothers" supporting each other "in a battle nobody knows we're fighting".

While I don't generally encourage young people to join the military unless they, well, want to be in the military (and aren't enlisting merely to "pay for school", learn a trade, "see the world", please members of their families and communities or fulfill some vague notion like "serving my country"), and wouldn't join the military even if I could, I think the ban against trans people is absurd.  After all, the traits that make a person good soldiers, sailors, flyers or officers don't change as a person transitions from one gender to another. A male-to-female might lose some physical strength, but--let me tell you--you've got to be pretty damned tough to make the transition.  Also, while a certain amount of stamina is necessary, today's military doesn't depend as much on brute strength as the forces of old.  And, if someone could hack the physical training and the rigors of combat as a "woman", I don't see why he couldn't as a man.

Most important of all, though, is something the female-to-male civilian employee/reservist mentioned:  integrity.  In battle, or in any other stressful situation, people who are fighting or simply working together toward the same goal will not succeed unless they can trust one another.  I should think that someone who is completely honest about him or her self is more likely to deserve and gain the trust of the men and women by his or her side, or under his or her command.

Trannies, Trains and Creativity

Today my long-lost cousin called. Well, actually, he's newly-found, as I am to him. You see, near the end of August, he and I met for the first time since I was about ten years old and he was in his 20's. So you might say that each of us changed a bit. That tends to happen to people when you don't see them for 40 years.

Ironically, through all those years, he'd been living just a few neighborhoods away from where I live now. In fact, I pass his house, more or less, on my way to work.

Anyway, he made an interesting proposition: In late March and early April, he's driving to Nevada. Like me, he won't be working during that week, which is Spring Recess for the school system and the college. So, he thought, I might be interested. And he'd like the company.

So far I've enjoyed his company. And, after all, he's a relative. Also, I've never crossed the continent on the ground. I sometimes think I'd like to pedal coast-to-coast, but I never had any fantasies of driving across the country. Then again, I might enjoy the ride with him.

He's going to Nevada, so it won't quite be a coast-to-coast trip. His mission: To retrieve a set of electric trains that he had as a boy. It's currently with another cousin who lives out there. They found out that to properly pack and insure the trains and related accessories for shipping, it would cost several hundred dollars. So, my cousin reasons, it makes sense to go out there and fetch them. Plus, he doesn't have to worry about whether my other cousin will pack them properly or what will happen to them in transit. They probably would be worth something to a collector, but the sentimental value is equally important.

Well, I said, I'm happy he asked. But Marilynne and her daughter have talked about coming up this way during that time. And, if they didn't, I was thinking of going to see my parents. But if it doesn't look like either of those things will happen, I'll go.

I don't recall the train set he's talking about, but if I saw it, I might. It seems that when I was growing up, everyone--or at least my relatives--had electric trains snaking around Christmas presents and dioramas of Currier and Ives-like Christmas Village scenes. Young boys always seemed to be fascinated with the trains: putting them together, assembling the track and all of the stuff that went with them, and of running the trains. I was, too. There was even a time I wanted to be a train engineer. But I think it had as much to do with those cool caps the engineers always wore, and the places those trains went, in the movies or on TV as it had to do with actually piloting a train--which was appealing in and of itself. I used to love riding trains with my grandfather, and he was always happy to take me for a trip on one.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my desire--however naive--to become a train engineer and my fascination with electric trains. In fact, I sold the set of Lionels I had as a kid to help pay for my first year at Rutgers. Kids who keep their fascination with model railroads and grow into men who keep up their boyhood train fantasies almost always become interested in the mechanical and engineering aspects of trains and railroading. I never did. In fact, I wasn't terribly technically oriented: I can fix bicycles but I never could handle anything much more complex. And, these days, with my limited time, I'd rather pay someone to do a major repair. I also don't tinker with my bikes the way I once did: When I have time, I'd rather ride, write, read or meet a friend.

A lack of interest and aptitude for mechanical and technical things is supposed to be a female trait. So is a lack of interest in, or even a fear of, math and science. I'll admit that somewhere in the morass of trigonometry and calculus, I was left in the digital dust. I find science interesting to the extent that I understand it, which was less and less every year that I was in school.

So, if those are such stereotypically female traits. why are so many male-to-female transsexuals --at least, so many of the ones I hear about--in scientific and technical fields? I've learned of transgendered rocket scientists (see Amanda Simpson and "A.E.Brain"), computer scientists and engineers. Rhiannon O' Donnahbain, whom I mentioned yesterday, is an engineer. So is Nancy Jean Burkholder, who was barred from attending the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in 1990. Another transgendered engineer is Sabrina Marcus Taraboletti, who started "Morning Glow" (the predecessor of The Morning After House in Trinidad, CO). Sabrina, for whom the room in which I stayed at the Morning After House is named, describes herself as a "gear head."

I don't know why so many male-to-female (MTF) transgenders are in scientific and technical fields. Some might say they were "overcompensating" or trying to show that they were "really men" until they accepted themselves. The same explanation is given for MTFs who were cops, fighter pilots and in any number of stereotypically masculine fields before transitioning. I even have explained my participation in sports in the same way. However, I think that even though it may be true for some MTFs, it's not the whole story.

I suspect that another reason why MTFs like the ones I've mentioned become rocket scientists and engineers and such is that such fields are, in their own ways, creative. In other words, they require the ability to solve problems by "thinking outside the box." That, I believe, is something women have to do more often than men realize and that we, as transgender women, have to do in order to become ourselves.

Also, because those fields are creative in the way I just mentioned, they encompass both "left brain" and "right brain" skills. If one continually has to bridge those parts of the brain, it's not a stretch, really, to transverse the gap between genders. In other words, if someone is female but has to live as male, it's not such a leap--for someone with mathematical and scientific aptitude--to be a rational, scientific person who operates, in effect, as an artist. Or vice-versa.

That makes me think of something Marci says: that she sees herself as an artist first. That, she believes, is what enables her to perform genital reassignment and reconstruction surgeries that result in such realistic-looking (and -functioning) genitalia.

Now, I'm not a scientist. So make what you will of the things I've just said. It's the best explanation I can offer for now. Meanwhile, I'm going to think about taking that trip with my cousin so that he can retrieve his electric trains.

Some Thoughts on Amanda Simpson's Appointment

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be true to yourself. But it can't hurt. Or can it?

That might be the underlying message of Amanda Simpson's appointment as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. As best as I can tell, you pretty much have to be a rocket scientist to understand what that job is!

Obama appointed her to the post. Some are saying she's the token "T" (sounds like something that might've been used on Boston's mass transit system) on his cabinet. It could be that Obama is trying to make nice with the LGBT community after refusing to support gay marriage during his campaign.

I have very mixed feelings about this appointment, to say the least. From what I've read about her, I have no doubt that Ms. Simpson is qualified for the job. And it may just lead to greater acceptance of transgendered people among the general public. After all, she is the first openly transgendered Presidential appointee, and now is arguably the highest-ranking, or at least the most visible, transgendered person in a public office.

And she seems eager to do the job. I can't help but to be happy for her.

But I also can't help to be disturbed by one aspect of the appointment--or, more precisely, its implications. It reminds me, in a way, of Harry Truman's racial integration of the Armed Forces in 1948, and how much African-American leaders advocated for it.

Ms. Simpson spent most of her career at Raytheon, a defense contractor. I guess most rocket scientists are working for the military (Yes, NASA is an arm of the military. Don't let anybody tell you any different!) directly or indirectly. I suppose one cannot fault someone for working wherever one can find employment in whatever he or she does best. That's pretty much what 99 percent of all humanities faculty members (including yours truly) are doing.

So I can't fault Ms. Simpson for working a company whose business model is often said to be "blowing shit up." But her extensive background in such endeavors could be a double-edged sword, both for her and transgendered people generally.

One of the reasons why African-Americans fought for the integration of the Armed Forces is that some of them fought in Europe during World War II and were not segregated when they entered cafes or other public venues in England, France and other countries as they were in fighting for their own country. But another reason that may have seemed even more important at the time was that leaders of the then-nascent Civil Rights movement realized that being integrated in the military would make integration--and, they hoped, acceptance--faster and more complete in the civilian world. In other words, if you were good enough to fight alongside your countrymen for your country, you had to be their equal. Or so the thinking went.

But, as much as this country makes grand gestures of honoring veterans, the truth is that most people who haven't been in the military don't want to be in contact with it. In a way, I can't blame them: After all, soldiers are reminders of war, and who wants to think about that? But there is also a hypocrisy involved: For all that this country's leaders like to make a show of honoring veterans, it also conscripts, de facto, many who are too poor or dark or uneducated to have other options. And, it also diverts technological and scientific talent and skill away from uses which might be of greater benefit to people: Amanda Simpson is a case in point.

Plus, the military and its contractors are not nearly as egalitarian, never mind progressive, as they like to portray themselves to the public. Most of the enlistees are people of color or poor whites from rural areas and the Rust Belt; most of the officers are not. And there is the military's odious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. I fail to see how anyone can use membership in such an institution to help whatever group ones belongs to.

What the appointment of Amanda Simpson accomplishes is to have a transgendered person in a high position in this country's military-industrial-corporate welfare system. While that, like the integration of the Armed Forces, may show that members of another group are just as up to their eyeballs in the muck as everyone else is. Maybe that's what we have to be in order to gain equality; if that's the case, it's not a good sign.

Plus, it--like everything else Obama has done so far--is ultimately about his image. Obama, I believe, is every bit as dedicated to creating and maintaining his image, whatever that may be, as Ronald Reagan was. His appointment of Ms. Simpson might make him look good to some in the LGBT community and may convince others that he's really trying to be inclusive.

But, whatever may come of this, I still have great respect for Ms. Simpson's intelligence--and the fact that she transitioned where and when she did. That probably took more courage than my own transition, and the transitions of many other people.