A White House Engagement Leads To...A Second-Wave Marriage?

You probably heard that back in June, a transgender man who goes by the single name of Scout proposed to Liz Margolies during the LGBT pride month celebration at the White House.



Well, the other day, they got married.  Actually, they eloped, more or less.  The only people on hand were the rabbi who officiated and two friends who served as witnesses and signed their marriage contract.  Some of their friends and family members disapproved of their union, they said.  I also have to believe that had their wedding more public, it could have been turned, possibly by uninvited guests, into something they never wanted it to be.

Here is an edited copy of their ceremony:



While I am happy for them, I have one question for Liz (assuming, of course, she reads this blog!):  You describe yourself as a "second wave feminist."  Every second-wave feminist whom I've read, or of whom I've heard, has been transphobic.  Some even deny the existence of transgenderism or transsexuality.  So I wonder how marrying a trans man fits into your views?  Or have they changed?  

If she still thinks herself a "second wave" feminist and is marrying Scout because, in spite of what she thinks, she's madly and irrationally in love with him...well, then, what can I say?  Maybe that's true love.  If it is, that's all the more reason to be happy for them!

National Coming Out Day

Today is the 25th National Coming Out Day.

When the first such day was held, "coming out", even for white lesbians and gay men and lesbians who were secure in their jobs and lives, was a risky proposition.  The so-called "Gay Liberation" of the 1970's boomeranged into a conservative backlash during the 1980s.  (I apologize for the mixed metaphors.)  

One reason was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Of course, the election didn't happen in a vacuum:  There was a counter-revolution to the Gay Rights movement, just as there was for the Women's and Civil Rights movements.  That counter-revolution was not always visible or audible:  Most of the time, it was more like a series of tremors that one only felt when one happened to be in its path.  Those tremors culminated in the earthquake of Reagan's election.

Perhaps even more important, though, was the outbreak of HIV/AIDs.  In the early years of the epidemic, all of its known (or, at any rate, recorded) victims were believed to be gay men, intravenous drug users, Haitians or West Africans.  The last three groups I've mentioned were near the bottom of the American socio-economic ladder; the early path of the epidemic caused many Americans to lump gay men with them.  Naturally, that only helped to inflame existing prejudices against gay men.

Another reason, I believe, why "coming out" was difficult during the 1980's was that many people associated lesbians with the most shrill and hateful kinds of feminists (or pseudo-scholars who called themselves feminists, anyway).  The conservatives and religious hatemongers who were spouting anti-gay rhetoric tended to look none too kindly on feminists anyway; the association those conservatives made between feminists and lesbians surely made things worse for both.

If it was difficult for gays and lesbians to come out in 1988, you can only imagine how much worse things were for trans people.  Of the trans people I've met (which include everything from those who haven't yet begun-- or who have chosen not to-- to transition, to post-ops), it seems that there are, chronologically, two groups: the ones who transitioned during or before the early 1980's, and the ones who transitioned during or after the early 1990's.  

If my observations in any way reflect what has happened throughout the trans community, there is a "lost generation" of trans people--the ones who didn't transition during the decade or so between the two groups I've mentioned.  That period almost perfectly coincides with the conservative backlash I've mentioned against gays and lesbians, and that "lost generation" includes many who took their own lives or who died slower deaths from drug and alcohol abuse, as well as those who simply didn't transition and those--including yours truly--who transitioned later in their lives than they might have otherwise.

So, even though we have a long way to go, things are certainly better for us, in many ways, than they were in 1988.  National Coming Out Day is one reason for that.

The Supreme Court, Immigration And LGBT people

Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's immigration policy got me to thinking about someone in a weekly support group I attended early in my transition.

Fahrida (not her real name) had a smile that made people feel that everything was going to be OK.  As I came to know her, I realized that her smile didn't belie her experiences; rather, it was a kind of reward, like the rays of sun you see after a terrible storm.

No one who met her outside of that group would have guessed she had ever lived as male, or that she ever had so much as a male cell in her body.  She was so beautiful that when we were shopping, two other women sighed about what kinds of clothes they could wear if they had her body, and about what their lives would be like if they had her face.

I always wondered why someone with her looks, and her mind, was driving a gypsy cab.  Don't get me wrong:  I don't look down on such work.  But it's not work that many other women do, and I worried about her safety.  Then again, at least she wasn't doing sex work, I told myself.

Well, after knowing her about a year, I found out why she was driving that gypsy cab:  Her pay was "off the books."  That meant, of course, that she didn't pay taxes.  But more important, it meant that she didn't need a Social Security Number or any other documentation certifying that she could work in this country.

The next-to-last time we met, I found out why she needed such work.  You guessed it:  She entered this country illegally.  She couldn't have afforded to enter any other way, she told me:  She was so poor that she couldn't afford the papers she needed, which cost about half a worker's yearly pay in the country of her birth.  She got to this country, she said, by hitchiking across a two continents and stowing herself away in a transoceanic freighter. 

By the time of our penultimate meeting, she was facing deportation.  Going back to the country of her birth would have been, in essence, a death sentence:  She had no way of supporting herself there, save through sex work, and she would have faced almost certain violence.  Plus, all of her family had disowned her.

The last time we met, she told me she was going to a third country.  She hoped to re-apply for asylum in the United States, she said, because she had found a "community" here.  However, if that failed, she said, she believed that she could stay in the third country, where she had some ties and laws about immigration and LGBT people are, arguably, less restrictive than they are in the United States.

I mention Fahrida because I suspect that there are many other cases like her. Contrary to what people think, not all LGBT people are rich.  In fact, very, very few T's are.  That is one reason why they, like many other immigrants, come to this country illegally:  They can't afford to do so legally.  So they are forced to live "in the shadows," doing all sorts of low-paid work that doesn't offer any security:  that is, if they can get such work.  Others, who are less lucky, end up in sex work and other kinds of illegal and dangerous occupations.

On top of what I've mentioned, there's another issue:  Many LGBT couples are split up because of immigration policies.  I know of illegal immigrants who entered into sham heterosexual marriages so they could stay here, but why should anybody have to resort to something like that?  Even if they live in states that allow same-sex marriages (including New York, where I live), they could still be split up if one of them is here illegally because same-sex marriages are still not recognized under Federal law.

In fact, even if both members of the couple are here legally, immigration policy can still split them up.  That is what happened to my former doctor:  Her partner, a native of Scotland, came here to study and eventually started a business that employed other people.  She paid her taxes and never ran afoul of the law.  However, four years ago, the State Department would not renew her visa and the United Kingdom (of which Scotland is a part) is not eligible for the so-called "Green Card Lottery."

My former doctor went to Scotland with her partner.  She has since earned an additional degree in public health policy and has attained a position with a local ministry.  She says she and her partner are happy there, although they think about what could have been. 

To me, it seems such an appalling waste.  Think of the education, skills, talent, experience and ambition my former doctor and her partner have.  What country wouldn't (or shouldn't) want those things?  I could say similar things about Fahrida:  Though she doesn't have the formal education or credentials of my former doctor, she is very intelligent and self-taught in a number of areas.  And she's more than willing to work.  Plus, any country would be graced by her sheer presence. 

Her story, and that of my former doctor and her partner, show how immigration policies are inequitable on so many levels--particularly for LGBT people.

To Tell Or Not To Tell?

Last night, while in a coffee shop, I saw the 60 Minutes segment in which correspondent Lara Logan recounted being sexually attacked and nearly killed while she covered the uprising in Egypt.

Having survived molestation during my childhood, I could empathize with her, at least somewhat.  Actually, more than somewhat, and not only because of my experience with a family friend (who was, by the way, straight and married with children of his own).

Hot tears rolled streamed down my face when she talked about her decision to publicly tell her story.  On one hand, she said, she wanted others who have been sexually assaulted to know they "aren't alone" and to help educate the public about sexual violence.  On the other, she wrestled with that "voice" that told her not to talk about it because some people, upon hearing about it, would take it as proof that women are not fit to do the sort of work she's doing. 

I might've added that every time one of us speaks up, some people brand us as "complainers" or imply--or say outright--that we brought the violence on ourselves or, worse yet, "had it coming" to us.

I speak from experience. During my second year of living as Justine, I was sexually harassed by a campus security officer.  I was new to the job--the main job I have now--and had no idea of where to turn.  So I went to the administrative offices and talked to someone--I don't recall his name; he was gone only a few months later and  hasn't been heard from since--who told me not to report it.  "This campus can't help you," he said. "And the police won't," he said.

Later, I realized this college administrator was simply trying to prevent negative publicity for the college, which had seen a nearly complete  administrative turnover, and three different Presidents, during the previous five years.

The interesting thing was that I didn't get pressure from other trans, or even L, G or B, people to keep quiet about my experience, as sexually assaulted women get form other women.  If anything, all of the LGBT people I know wanted me to speak about it publicly, and even to write about it.  All of the pressure I experienced to keep quiet came from the college's administration and my supervisor.  

Any such pressure is bad for the morale of the person receiving it, as if he or she weren't having a tough enough time.  Lara Logan seems like a tough woman, but even she needs support when she's been violated.  And, too often, that's what we don't get.  

At least I didn't have Ms. Logan's many injuries or fear of disapproval from my own community.  

Carved In Granite?

Two years ago, New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Now state Representatives David Bates and Leo Pepino are sponsoring a bill that would repeal the same-sex marriage law.  According to surveys, voters in New Hampshire oppose a repeal by a nearly two to one margin.

Now, I must say that I got a chuckle out of something in this story. When I went to Catholic school, the nuns used to refer to the boys as "Master" followed by their last names.  So, as an example, I was Master Valinotti.

Because the neighborhood surrounding the school was mainly Italian and Jewish (though not many of the latter went to our school), there weren't many kids named Bates.  I can't recall any.  So what would the nuns have called David Bates?

I'm sure someone must have asked this question.

Anyway...You know how some things and people don't go down without a fight.  (If you read a sexual connotation into the previous sentence, it's on you!)  Well, it seems like any laws that protect LGBT people or give us the same rights as everyone else don't come up or pass without a fight.  The moment any such law is passed, the opposition is ready to do battle.

You might think this is paradoxical, but I think that it's important to have laws that allow gay marriage for exactly the same reasons why I oppose them in principle.

I believe that the government should not be involved in any way with marriage, and that no one should get tax or any other benefits for being married.  If the government is to be involved in deciding whose marriages are legitimate, it should simply give the equivalent of a Domestic Partnership Agreement to any two people over the age of 18 who want to hook up.  Then, if they want to legitimize their relationship as a marriage, they should go to their church, synagogue, mosque or whatever so unites people in their communities.

However, I am enough of a realist to know that probably won't happen, at least not in my lifetime.  So I think that the best we can do in terms of equality is to make same-sex marriages legal.

The funny thing about New Hampshire is that it was always considered a "conservative" state.  Yet there has always been a very strong tradition of minding one's own business--which, by the way,  isn't the same as "live and let live."  While it was one of the most reliably Republican states (even as it was surrounded by some of the "bluest" states in the nation), it has never completely embraced some of the most reactionary notions espoused by the Far Right.  That may be because Christian Fundamentalism wasn't part of the mix, or at least wasn't as much a part of the mix, as it has been in some of the Southern states.

I don't know much about Bates and Pepino.  So I can only wonder on what, exactly, are they basing their opposition to the same-sex marriage law.  If they not motivated by religious beliefs (which, I'm discovering, actually plays less into anti-gay legislation than I'd previously assumed), what else motivates them but pure and simple bigotry?  From what I know about New Hampshire natives from the few I've known and the little time I've spent there, I don't think such prejudice will move them:  If nothing else, how much can they hate (or, for that matter, love) someone whose business they're ignoring?  Plus, a lot of Bostonians have moved to the state, at least along its coast and in its southern part.  Combine the tolerance they have developed simply by living in a metropolis with the native propensity for not interfering in other people's lives, and it's hard to see how the law is going to be repealed.

Sean Avery Speaks (Up) For Us

It's been said that politics makes for strange bedfellows.


Well, let me tell you, I've had some pretty strange bedfellows.  And I've never been (and don't intend to be) in politics.  


But I digress.  I can think of something else that makes for some really strange, or at least unexpected, alliances:  the issue of LGBT rights.  Barry Goldwater, that bastion of conservatism, supported them.  A couple of years ago, Dick Cheyney came out in favor of allowing gay marriage.  


Now a hockey player who once described his ex-girlfriend as "sloppy seconds" says he's willing to support any player who's gay and is worried about the consequences of "coming out." 


In a news conference, Sean Avery, whose behavior has caused a couple of teams to trade him in spite of his talents as a player, said, “If there’s a kid in Canada or wherever, who is playing and really loves the game and wants to keep playing but he’s worried about coming out, I’d tell him to pick up the phone and call (NHLPA executive director) Donald Fehr and tell him to book me a (plane) ticket.”


Now, if he's sincere--and somehow I suspect he is, believe it or not--I think that it's an example of what will really propel acceptance and rights for LGBT people.  When a macho-guy hockey player like Avery is willing to stand beside a gay player, that just might influence others to do the same.  We need him for the same reasons why we need the support of conservatives and of what is sometimes called "Middle America."  When some churchgoing parent accepts his or her--or someone else's--gay kid, that example resonates more powerfully for most people than it does when it comes from some former ACT-UP member.  


Of course, I don't mean to say that we don't need the support of our more traditional allies.  But when the Sean Averys and Dick Cheyneys of the world put in a word for us, they're not preaching to the choir.

Protesting Undercover in Egpt

According to Scott Long, the LGBT coordinator for Human Rights Watch, "a large number of LGBT Egyptians have joined the protesters who want to end Mubarak's rule in their country.


Long was quick to point out that they weren't marching and demonstrating as lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgenders.  Indeed, they aren't marching under a rainbow flag, or much of anything else that would identify them by their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.  That's not surprising because Egypt, like most countries in that reason, isn't exactly known (at least not officially, anyway) as a bastion of tolerance for LGBT people. 


So, while they are taking part in the protests and are often welcomed by the protesters and their supporters, they aren't doing so because they are LGBT people.  At least, the would never state publicly that they are.  But I can't see how an LGBT person can fight for human rights without making his or her identity or expression a part of it.  After all, if you're working for human rights, you're working for everybody, including LGBT people.  And we are affected as much as anyone by those rights we have and which are taken away from us.


But that's not the reason for my admiration of their courage or ambivalence about their role in the protest.  Nearly all are anti-Mubarak.  As well they should be:  Not only does he have a terrible (though not the worst) human rights record, he is basically a puppet of this country.  And this country's de facto colonialization of the country and the region are not going to win him any friends, particularly among the young.


What happens if or when those young people, like so many of their peers in other countries of that region, express their anger and disdain for "The Great Satan" of America by joining groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or immersing themselves in the more fundamentalist or militant sects of Islam?  Or, if they become so radicalized if only because they're young and have nothing to lose?  (Egypt has the highest percentage of unemployed college graduates of any country in the world.) Just as Communism can be very appealing to hungry people, so can any doctrine that posits itself as the foe of that which is destroying young people's dreams.


Remember, Egypt is in the heart of that part of the world where people believe that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.  So they'll work with the Muslim Brotherhood or some other such organization if only for their opposition to the US.   


And if groups like those gain power, where does that leave LGBT people?

He Had No Future; I Have No Past

Not long ago, in the course of a conversation, I recalled something I hadn't thought about in a long time.  During my senior year in high school, I was on the committee that planned and arranged our class's senior prom.  I think I got involved with it because the faculty advisor taught a course in which I needed a grade I couldn't earn otherwise.  

That class wasn't required for graduation.  However, doing well in it might have helped me to get into a few schools and programs other people wanted me to get into.  I had no other reason to take that class or, truth be told, to be on that committee or to do almost anything else I did that year.  

I knew full well that once I graduated, I probably wouldn't be back.  My guidance counselor, who might not have been useless if he hadn't tried to drown sorrows that could swim, said as much.  It probably was the one useful or relevant, let alone prescient, thing he said to me.

What I also knew, somehow, was that I wasn't going to the prom that I was helping to plan.  Of course, I didn't tell anyone that; it wouldn't have made any more sense to them than it did to me.  If nothing else, I was learning one of the most important lessons of my life:  What makes sense and what's true are not always the same thing.

And the most essential truth--or so it seemed-- about me made absolutely no sense to me at that time.  I'm referring, of course, to my gender identity.  Nearly every day, I had to play that mental game of ping-pong:  "Your'e a man.  No I'm not.  You have a penis.  It's really a big clitoris.  You like girls.  Yes, but not only in that way.   You're an athlete.  Just like how many other women?

My understanding of gender and sexuality was so primitive--though not any less advanced than that of most people in that place and time--that I simply could not even think of showing up at the prom with another girl.  No girl in that milieu would have done that.  And I couldn't have gone with a boy, either:   No boy, no matter his identity and orientation, would have gone with another boy, even if he was really a girl who just happened to have a boy's body.

That, by the way, is the main  reason I didn't date when I was in high school, in spite of my father's and other adults' efforts to hook me up with someone or another's daughter.  My status as dateless became my ostensible reason for not attending the prom I helped to plan.  In addition, I told myself that it was silly to spend lots of money and energy over people and a place I would never, and had no wish to, see again.

I am just starting to realize how that experience affected me.  It's a reason why there are so many things to which I woulfddn't commit myself: I so often feel as if my efforts were for things of which I could never partake, and that I was always serving people who were living lives completely different form any I could, or wanted to, live.  

Every LGBT person has felt, at some time or another,  something like what I've described.  We are paying for, and in other ways serving, a society and economy that supports institutions--including marriage, as the law and most people define it--in which we cannot participate.  And I have often felt that my job as an educator is to prepare people to live in that sort of familial and societal arrangement.  

It's difficult to be involved in organizations and institutions when you know that you cannot benefit from the fruits of the labor you put into it.  It's impossible to have any enthusiasm for more than a relatively short period of time when you don't even have the right to be yourself as you're helping others to realize their dreams.  And it's none too encouraging when you can't get the people with and for whom you're working that they are operating from, and their expectations of you are therefore based upon, privilege and a sense of entitlement that they very often don't even realize they have.


I'm thinking about all of this now after learning that someone with whom I spent some time--a friend of an ex--died recently.  He was smarter, and far more creative, than I or almost anyone else could ever hope to be.  Yet he never went to college, in spite of offers of full-ride scholarships from very respected institutions.  He did well financially, and in other ways, and he wasn't boasting when he said he succeeded without much planning.  In fact, very little in his life was premeditated.  


The reason, he once told me, is that he knew that, for one thing, as a gay man, he wouldn't be able to live the sort of life for which schools and other institutions would have prepared him.  (That, interestingly enough, is the only way in which I ever heard him talk about his sexual orientation.)  And, for  another, he knew--not expected, knew--that he wasn't going to live to be fifty.  All of the men in his family had a congenital heart condition that killed them before they finished their fifth decade.  That condition is one of the few things, along with bloodlines, that he shared with them.  


So he knew that he wasn't going to be part of a nuclear family and collect Social Security in addition to a pension.  You can imagine how he must have felt about paying into that system, especially because he always was a business proprietor or an independent contractor of some sort.  


Why should I prepare for a future I won't have?, he asked.  Had I been more aware and articulate, I would have been asked that same question.  Why am I helping to plan a prom I won't attend?  


The difference, of course, is that I did have a future.  It just wasn't the one anyone was planning for me, or preparing me for.  Some of what I did to prepare that future has been useful to me; so much else wasn't.   But I can say that I do have a future of some sort, even if it isn't a very long one or one that nobody can predict.  Now, in some way, what I don't have is the past--or, specifically, my past.  Preparing for someone else's life, of course, meant that I was living someone else's life.  And there's never any future in that.

Not A Good Cultural Fit

Yesterday I was talking with an adjunct instructor at my main job.  He's a few years older than I am and completed his PhD several years ago after spending decades as a labor journalist.


If he knew then what he knew now, he says, he wouldn't have invested the time and money he spent in pursuit of that degree.  He knew the market for PhDs in English was tight even before the current depression hit; what he didn't realize, he laments, was just how competitive it is.


What makes things more difficult still for him is, in addition to his age, his race.  He's a fair-skinned black man and finds that he experiences prejudice, not only from whites, but from blacks who don't think he's "black enough."  


He said something I hadn't expected to hear from him:  that the so-called Affirmative Action laws aren't necessarily making things better for members of the groups they're supposed to protect.  It's almost a cliche to say that charges of discrimination are difficult to prove, as the interviewer or supervisor who commits the offense is most likely to do so in the absence of witnesses.  But what's even more pernicious is the "coded language" would-be employers employ.  They use terms like "cultural fit" , or say that someone "wouldn't fit into the culture" of the organizartion when they can't come up for another legal way to exclude someone who looks, or is in some other way, different from what they expected to see.


When you get past a certain age, it becomes more difficult to fit into the culture, whatever that means, of any organization. And having certain life experiences--like the ones that so often accompany being a person of color or a member of the LGBT community.  


It's not that we don't want to learn or adapt.  We don't even get the chance to do that because some would-be employers are convinced, or convince themselves, that we ca't do those things.  Or they don't want to know that we're capable, possibly because it might challenge that upon which they have based their careers and lives.


Now, as for which culture I or my colleage would fit into...

Growing Old As We're Starting To Live

I've been asked to co-facilitate a transgender forum on aging at a conference for LGBT older adults next month.  I've agreed to do it, knowing that my qualifications to do it consist of the following:

• I am trangendered
• I am aging.  (Then again, I guess we all are.)

The invitation got me to thinking, though, about what aging means for us in the LGBT community, and for transgenders in particular.

So far, the most trenchant thought that has emenated from my pretty little head (ha!) is this:  Aging in the LGBT community has everything to do with its youth-centeredness.  In fact, the way we age is the very reason why the LGBT world is as youth-centered as it is.  It's not so much that we're trying to avoid or fight back our aging; it's the fact that we--most of us, anyway--only get to live as who and what we are at a realtively late age that causes us to live in such a youth-centered milieu.

Even with the increased acceptance of LGBT people (the recent hate crimes notwithstanding), very few bisexuals, fewer gays and lesbians , and even fewer transgenders, have the opportunity to spend our adolescence and early adulthood as the people we actually are.   Most gays and lesbians live closeted lives until they are old enough to move out of their families' homes, and some continue to deny their need to love and be loved in their own ways long after they have become independent of the families, communities  and schools that gave birth to and reared them and inculcated them with their communities' and cultures' values about families and other sorts of relationships--including the kinds of relationships people should have with themselves.  

Even gays and lesbians raised in the most loving of families and in the most accepting communities face hostility somewhere, some time. The result is something I've seen in those students of mine who grew up with violence, whether it was physical, verbal, mental, emotional or spiritual, and whether it came from their peers, members of their families or communities, or their governments and their agencies of enforcement.  Some people come out of those experiences shell-shocked; others are very canny or what people would call "street-smart", and still others are formed or deformed by their anger and resentments.  But nearly all of them do not have the opportunity to learn how to develop or maintain relationships in ways that their peers from more secure and stable environments learn.  And, because so many of them also come from homes that are dysfunctional in one way or another, they may know that they want something different but have not had any models from whom they can learn how to build it in their own lives.

Most gays and lesbians don't grow up with any models of how they can build their relationships and their lives.  All most of them see when they're growing up are heterosexual relationships, and some of those aren't very nurturing of the spirits of the people in them.  And, of course, nearly all of the love and familial relationships depicted in popular, and even higher, culture, are of that variety.

What happens, then, is that gays and lesbians start to learn how to express love and build relationships that suit them later--sometimes much later--than heterosexuals do those things.  Most teenagers have some experience of dating members of the other gender; many (I won't venture a guess as to how many) have sex and some actually learn what it means to love, and be loved, in an intimate way by a member of the "opposite" gender.  Most gay teens and adolescents don't have those experiences; those who do almost never have the opportunity to have those experiences publicly.  If you are a boy dating a girl or vice-versa, even if your family, friends and others in your community don't like whomever you're dating, they still support your urge to date members of the "opposite" gender, mainly because they're seen as stepping stones to marriage and family.

So, what a straight sixteen-year-old experiences is not a part of a gay person's life until he or she is in her twenties, thirties or even later.  And for transgenders--and, interestingly enough, bisexuals--that sort of experience may come later still.  I began to live as the woman I am in middle age, and I have been living my life only for seven years now.  That means I am just beginning to learn how to relate to people, and express love (which includes, but is not limited to, sexuality) as a woman, rather than as a female who had to channel herself through a filter of maleness.  

That, by the way, is the reason--I think--why one can't predict the sexuality of a person who transitions.  One of the reasons, along with finances, why I didn't start my transition earlier in my life was that I thought, as most people thought, that a true male-to-female transsexual was attracted to men.  It happened that the first male-to-females who had sexual reassignment surgery did indeed date, and in some cases married, men.  Christine Jorgensen comes immediately to mind, and it's hard to imagine how she, not to mention society, might have been different if she didn't fit into the roles that were considered acceptable for women in the 1950's, when she made her transition.

So I had to spend  a lot of years, not only alienated from my own sense of who I am, but also of how to relate to anyone else, whether in a sexual or more platonic way.  The sense of myself I could and would have formed in my teen years, and the kinds of relationships I might have developed as a result, are parts of my life I'm only beginning to discover--at an age when my parents were already grandparents.  

Of course, there are many other issues involved in aging for LGBT people, and transgenders in particular.  But I never realized until now that the youth-orientedness of our community was really a manifestation of the fact that we, in essence, start our lives later than straight people and cisgenders.

Driven to Kill (Themselves)

I used to think that summer was the most dangerous time to be L, G, B, T or some combination or version thereof--or simply to be so perceived.  After all, the dense, sultry air is like alcohol:  Both are catalysts that stir up volatile, and often dangerous, reactions between hormones and hostility.  And, the most terrible and unspeakable of acts can pass, if they are at all noticed, like the most surreal, if lurid, dreams in the viscous, almost liquid heat that fills summer nights.


However as I continue in this strange journey of mine-- which led me to begin a new life as I entered middle age--I've come to realize that for LGBT teenagers and young adults, the first few weeks of the school year may actually be more dangerous than the summer vacation period that precedes it.


Much of what I've seen and heard, in regards to violence against LGBT people, has taken place on or near school grounds, and was perpetrated by students (or their friends or family members) against fellow students or peers.  And then there are those who've taken their own lives because the ostracism, harassment and violence they incur simply for being who they are--or because someone perceived them to be so.


In the latter category is Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who, it is believed,  threw himself  off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly videotaped him having sex with another young man and broadcast that tape over the Internet.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that even at this late date, some are calling Mr. Clementi a coward for ending his life.  Some of the people who are so judging him are not acting out of any of religious or moral objection; rather, they think he should have faced his dilemma "like a man" and that he should've "grown up" and "gotten over it."  


What they don't realize is the struggle of  so many young queer people (like Clementi) who are living, for the first time, in a wider world where the possibilities for love--but also the prospects of violent death-- are  expanded and deepened, leaves them in a vulnerable state.   It's not uncommon for straight or simply "normal" kids to fall into confusion or, worse, depression and despair, when suddenly  faced with the prospects of having to make decisions that will affect the course of their lives while knowing, deep down, that their inner resources have not developed in tandem.  Young men are particularly vulnerable at that time of their lives, for that is also when they are expected to become men, or at least to be well on their way to that goal.  Yet too many are not (if through no fault of their own) emotionally mature enough to handle what may be their first, or at least most visible, failings in their young lives.  Many "act out" through binge drinking and other kinds of compulsive acts; unfortunately, some enact their frustration and rage in more violent ways.


Ironically, that same insecurity and fear underlies the trepidation of a young gay person, particularly if he is a mild-mannered and sensitive male, who is faced with, for the first time, some freedom to love whom he loves but not the support he'll need for the wrath he may incur as a result of it.  And their surging hormones fill them with a sense of urgency about finding the love, or at least the sense of freedom, they may not have known before.  Some are having their first same-sex relationships, or at least the first ones they're not hiding.  That, at the same time some of their more testosterone-besotted peers are knowing their first failures and rejections, whether in the arenae of school or love.  Some need someone to blame, or at least to lash out against, for their loss of  or in those things about which they felt most confident in themselves.  Nothing is more of a recipe for anger and resentment than to see the ascent of someone who was thought to be an inferior; all you have to do is look at the so-called Tea Party movement to understand that.


If Tyler Clementi--who hasn't been seen since the videotape was posted, and whose car was found near the bridge--did indeed kill himself, then Dharun Ravi is as responsible for his death as the ones who bullied Seth Walsh and Billy Lucas (who was merely perceived as gay) are for the fact that those two teenage boys hung themselves.  Of course, Dharun Ravi is not wholly to blame, any more than the tormentors of Seth Walsh and Billy Lucas are:  All of them undoubtedly experienced difficulties from many other people and institutions.  However, it's difficult not to think that the bullying of Walsh and Lucas, and the violation of Clementi's privacy and personhood, could have "pushed them over the edge."


Now, I am not an expert in bullying, teenage suicide or any related field.  So if you are willing to accept what I've said, you should, as the recipes tell us, add salt to taste.  However, I have been, in my own ways and circumstances, been in the shoes of the tormentors of those young gay men as well as, in some way, those of the young gay men, and any young man or woman who realizes he or she is not going to fit into his or her family's, society's or religion's ideas about love, sexuality and gender.    So, if nothing else, I know that it's not enough to simply condemn the perpetrators or pity the victims.  Nothing will change until more people understand that the perpetrators are not simply mechanisms of evil or bad karma:  They simply are reacting in ways that make sense, even if they're not to be condoned, for people who feel that the way of life they've come to expect is threatened, and who have simply nothing and no one else to blame but the nearest peer who is coming into his or her own.

On The Right: Wishing You Weren't There

One of the courses I teach is Writing for Business. The majority (though not all) of the students in the course are business or accounting majors. That has led me to do something I never would have imagined doing: I now read Business Week and The Economist and peruse various business-related website. Plus, the depression that no politician or banker wants to admit we're in has motivated me to elevate the level of my understanding of economics from non-existent to rudimentary. So I've been reading what I can of various economists and experts in related matters.

As a result, I get almost-daily e-mails from an organization called the Sovereign Society. Now, I haven't nearly enough money to follow any of the strategies they advocate. But their stuff is still interesting to read, for they have been studying and analyzing the situation in ways that nobody in the mainstream media--or in the old-boys' networks of government and finance--more than likely ever will.

One of those writers and advisers for Sovereign is a gent named Bob Bauman. I noticed something in his photos--a sort of body language, if you will, that is visible even in his head shots--that said "gay." (I also saw it in Jim McGreevey before he was "outed.") So I looked him up, and sho' 'nuff...my suspicions were confirmed, big-time.

About thirty years ago, he was one of the rising stars of the nascent modern conservative movement. He represented the Eastern Shore of Maryland in Congress. He played more than a bit role in helping Ronald Reagan win the presidency. But just a few weeks before the election, Bauman was caught soliciting a sixteen-year-old male prostitute. So, while other Republicans swept into office on Reagan's coat-tails, Bauman lost his re-election bid. He tried to withdraw from the race, but his party's leaders wouldn't let him.

In short order, he lost--in addition to his congressessinal seat-- his family, his historic home and most of his wealth. Onetime friend and allies like Richard Viguerie villified him; so did people on the left, including most LGBT activists.

He would become an advocate for gay rights--reluctantly, he said. And he claimed that if he had his "druthers," he wouldn't be gay. But, he realized, he had no choice in the matter.

If I had been paying attention to the story at the time it unfolded, I don't know how I would've felt about him or his actions. It's no surprise that, for a long time neither the conservatives who were once his fellow-travellers nor gay activists trusted him. Nor did anybody in between. Honestly, I couldn't blame any of them: I probably wouldn't have trusted him, either.

But, I must say, becoming a gay-rights advocate counts for something. And, I respect--greatly--that he would not "out" anyone.

Even more important, though, I can empathise with him, at least to some degree. Now, I am not sure that I would choose to be anything but what I am, at least in regards to my gender and sexuality. For a long time, I wished I could live as a heterosexual man, and I took a sort of behaviorist approach: If I acted like a straight guy, I'd be one. Or so I told myself. And nearly every gay man or lesbian who married someone of the opposite sex--as Bauman did--is engaging in the same sort of denial as I was. Now I feel at least some sympathy for anyone who feels the need to do similar things--especially for people like Bauman, who are about my parents' age. There simply was practically no other way for someone of that time to negotiate his or her sexuality.

Some might argue that his conservatism was a way of "butching up." Perhaps it was. So, for some gay men and trans women, was playing sports or doing any number of other "masculine" activities. But I think that it's not the whole story. Rather, I believe that Bauman's political conservativism was an attempt to integrate himself with mainstream Americans who want the house in the suburbs and the things that go along with it.

Plus, it's still difficult for me to believe that governments can actually make life more tolerable--by keeping people from expressing prejudices--when said governments have been the very agents, at times, of the violence and oppression we experience. Also, if you're anything like me, you simply have difficulty trusting anyone with authority.

That is one reason why I'm not sold on the new health care law and, in some way, I don't want to be. Likewise, I don't really like supporting gay marriage legislation because I really believe that the government shouldn't be in the marriage business at all. However, if the government is going to decide who is married and who isn't, I want gay marriage to be a guaranteed right if only so that gays will be that much closer to equaity with everyone else. It's probably the best we can do under the system we have. But I still don't think it's a great idea.

Oh...If only I were naturally inclined to be a liberal or progressive. Well, at least I'm not in denial about the woman I am: I've embraced it. After that, how hard can anything else be? Right, Bob Bauman?

Obliging Myself

Today I did a training with an organization commonly called SAGE. When it was founded, the acronym stood for Services and Advocacy for Gay Elders. But now "Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgeder" has been added to "Gay." But most people who know about the organization still call it SAGE.

It's headed by Tom Weber, whom I met on a retreat hosted by an organization connected to the LGBT Community Center of New York. That retreat took place a few months after I'd begun therapy and counseling, a couple of months after Tammy and I split up and, as I recall, less than a month after I underwent the first of a series medical tests that preceded my taking hormones and living full-time as a woman. It was one of the oddest times of my life: I was going to work and socializing, to the extent that I did, with family and friends as Nick but living another life as Justine. Even though I knew that I would soon start living full-time as Justine, and would come out to family and friends, I living in fear of, and doing everything I could to prevent, having my "secret" discovered by those same friends, family members and colleagues.

The retreat on which I met Tom marked the first time in which I "came out" to a group of strangers who weren't in a support group or some other similar setting. The facilitator of the retreat broke the larger group down into smaller groups of six for discussion and various role-playing exercises. Each group had to choose a leader; before I could say otherwise, the members of my group--Tom was among them--picked me for the job.

Through that weekend, Tom and I talked quite a bit. He had just lost his father; for reasons that I could not understand at the time, he looked to me for support. I gave him the best I could; he would insist later that it was "very, very important and helpful" to him.

It was scary, yet exhilarating, to have Tom and a bunch of other people I didn't know looking to me for strength I didn't know I had.

He was the only person I knew when I walked into today's training, which will continue into tomorrow. Yet the people there looked to, and rallied around, me in much the same way as Tom and those other people I met at the retreat did so long ago. (It was seven years ago but somehow seems longer.)

What's interesting to me now is that in being the kind of ally, colleague and friend they want for the brief time we're spending together, I don't feel as if I'm obliging them. Rather, I feel as if I'm obliging myself.

That, I realize now, is what I have been doing for the past seven years. And today it led me to that training, and soon I hope it will lead to a project Tom and I discussed a while back. Perhps it will also lead to my making a new friend or two (or more!) this weekend.

From Wholeness to "Juvie"

Very few things in my life have felt better than getting on my bikes this weekend. I was talking with Charlie, the owner of Bicycle Habitat, about that. He said, "Well, it's the first time you've gotten on a bike as a whole person. Of course it's going to feel better."

Today I went to pick up the bike that's going to become my next commuter/errand bike: a Raleigh Sports ladies' three-speed. It's one of those classic English three-speeds, with fenders and a chainguard. I had them give it a once-over, as it's been a while since I've worked on a three-speed hub. Besides, would the great tranny goddesses if I got my hands dirty doing something like that? I guess they'd've understood: My nails are a mess anyway. Now, if I'd just had a nice French manicure or one of those nail-paintings and ruined it while working on machinery, well, that just wouldn't do, would it?

Anyway...I wish I could've ridden during the day today: The weather was even better than it was yesterday. At least I got to ride home from the shop, which is a distance of about seven miles.

And that ride came at the end of a strange day. Or maybe it wasn't so strange, given who I am. And its strangeness comes not from any paranormal activity or anything related to it. And nothing unusual happened in my classes. It was just the feeling that was odd, almost disconcerting. It was so, in part, because of my own doing.

I talked to two faculty members today. They've always been friendly toward me, and they were today. But I could see that they were being friendlier toward me than I was toward them. I wasn't upset at them: In fact, I hadn't seen one in a while, as he was at a conference. I felt a little guilty about not being more talkative with them, and I wonder if they're reading anything into it.

It had to do with the defenses I've built up since the goings-on of last week. I really didn't want to talk to any of my colleagues, even the ones who've been supportive. You might say I've gotten a little bit paranoid: After one person--Deena, the secretary--whom I thought was an ally treated me as she did and a purported feminist--Laura, the coordinator--accused me of something I didn't do, I'm starting to feel as if I can't trust anybody who works there. And, because the department chair seems all too willing to accept, at face value, what people like them say about me, I feel as if I don't have any support. That makes me question the value of the service (on committees and such) I've performed for the department and college.

Those very same defenses came down, or at least softened a bit, in my classes. The students seemed even more receptive to me and perceptive about what they've been reading than they usually are. We were doing fairly mundane material, but the classes were a joy to do.

Equally joyful was bumping into three students I hadn't seen since last semester. They seem to be doing well; of course, they all asked how "it" went. Not that they couldn't ask about my operation; it's almost as if "it" is a kind of shorthand in the way that "the big event" is for some other goings-on in other people's lives.

One in particular was happy to see me, as I was to see her. She's very overweight and has a harelip. One day last year (her freshman year), she told me she felt I was the only one of her professors who didn't look at her as a fat girl with a harelip. Why should I?, I wondered. She's a rather smart young woman who works hard and isn't afraid to try something new: What else should I, as her professor, have seen? Besides, I thought she was very nice. That she seems not to have trouble making friends, and even getting dates, with her fellow students is evidence of that.

So here's what's strange: When I'm around my students, I feel like I'm around grown-up people, or at least people who are in the process of becoming that way. Sure, some of them do things we would think are silly or irresponsible, but they also seem to learn when I or someone else points out the error of their ways and offers advice, if they ask for it. I also know that a few of them may have had non-existent "crises" or other "situations" that they used as reasons for missing a class or an assignment. Still, I trust them, not because I'm lenient or don't care, but because I know that the only way to help someone, especially a young person, to become trustworthy is to trust him or her. If that person knows her or she did something dishonest, I would hope that he or she would learn and do something better from the chance I give. On the other hand, if you treat people as if they're going to do wrong even if they haven't, they'll do something subversive simply because they don't trust you.

In contrast, when I'm anywhere on the campus but in my classrooms, or around many of the faculty members and administrators, I feel as if I'm in some place that's a cross between a junior-high school and a juvenile detention center. The same sorts of games that go on in those places are standard operating procedure at the college, or so it seems. There's the same sort of petty cliquishness, and the same sort of intolerance of people who are, or seem to be, different from themselves.

It's telling that every handicapped or LGBT student I've taught, advised or counseled at the college has transferred or dropped out of it. It's equally telling that Latino and Asian students don't stay, and the Latino staff members feel something one longtime administrative aide expressed to me: "more like a stranger here than I did on the day I started." That day was 24 years ago.

Furthermore, there is not a single "out" member of the faculty. Three profs told me, privately, that they are gay or lesbian and made me promise I wouldn't reveal their identities. Two of them got tenure before most of their students were born; the other, I suspect, fears not getting re-appointed. I think now of the time I went to Kingsborough Community College and New York University and saw lots of faculty members' office doors adorned with "Safe Space" signs. Students know that they can talk to those profs about their sexual or gender identity and not be judged, much less "outed." On the other hand, students know only by word of mouth that they can talk to me. And they probably don't even know about those other profs I just mentioned.

I'm starting to feel I am, on a smaller scale, like Dr. Stanley Biber (who trained Marci Bowers) when he started performing sex reassignment surgery in the days when it was still called "the sex-change operation." He had to "fly under the radar," for the nuns that ran Mount San Rafael Hospital would not have approved. And, in those pre-Internet days, people found out about him through a kind of "underground" network that consisted mainly of other transgender people.

So...I can get on my bike as a whole person now. But I can't be that way at the college--not even among colleagues who've known me since I started there, years before my operation. Or maybe now they resent me for being whole instead of just a label that they saw in one of their textbooks.

Why I'm Not Celebrating The "Hate Crimes Bill"

It seems that nearly everyone--at least everyone I know--in the LGBT community has been celebrating the inclusion of language that includes transgenders in the so-called "Hate Crimes Bill" and that it looks like the President will sign it this week. If there's any reason to feel good, it's that, if nothing else, public officials as well as other citizens are indeed acknowledging that we are indeed subject to violence simply because we are who we are. In fact, one study says that transgender people are sixteen times as likely to be murdered as anyone else.

I hate to be the one who dumps cold water on anybody, but I must say this: Passage of the bill is not quite the cause for celebration that some believe it to be, any more than gay men and lesbians gaining the right to marry will be. I mention the push for gay marriage, even though that's another discussion unto itself, because it, like the "Hate Crimes Bill," shows how both mainstream politicians as well as LGBT activists too often work for "victories" that have only symbolic value (and sometimes not even that) while missing the underlying issues. Also, I happen to think that more legislation is almost never a good thing, and neither the "Hate Crimes Bill" nor gay marriage changes my mind about that.

However, my chief objection to the "Hate Crimes Bill" what I call its "exceptionalism." In other words, it essentially says that a crime against gay or transgendered people is inherently worse than others because it was committed against a gay or transgendered person. Now, I will say that because I am transsexual, a murder of, or other crime against, an LGBT person affects me in ways that other crimes do not. That, I like to think, is natural: One feels the most for one's own people, whomever they happen to be. Also, I understand the particular dangers we face, having brushed up against them myself, so the poignancy of a person being murdered because she is transgendered or beaten because he is gay is magnified for me. Still, I don't think such a bias--for that is what it is--should be reflected in any law, any more than any other bias should be so encoded.

In other words, I think that if a person is to be punished for killing or beating someone, he or she should incur whatever punishment is meted out because he or she killed or beat someone, not because the victim happened to belong to one group or another.

Some people--again, I am thinking in particular of LGBT activists--argue "hate crimes are different from other crimes," or something to that effect. Indeed they are: When you come right down to it, every crime is different, at least in circumstances, from every other. However, the effect is the same: Someone's life, person or property has been taken away, or at least violated.

Now, I'm no lawyer or scholar of the Constitution, and probably never will be either one. But I know enough to know that under the criminal justice system, a perpetrator's motives are considered in deciding upon his or her guilt or innocence and the type of punishment he or she should receive. One person may harm me because I'm a trans woman; another might want to do the same because I'm ugly or--ahem--because I write posts like this one. Still someone else might hurt me to get the $15.23 in my purse; another, because her husband left her for me. Whatever the motive, the outcome is still the same: that I have been harmed.

In that sense, whatever a person's motive, isn't his or her harming me, by definition, a hate crime? To violate or take a person's life, liberty or property without his or her consent is, at best, enormously disrespectful and, more likely, hateful.

So why, exactly, does it take my being transgendered in order to make the crime worthy of the prosecution that it deserves? Or, even more to the point, why does it take someone's status, whether it's high, low or somewhere in between, to make legislators and the criminal justice system recognize his or her right to live as who he or she is and to be secure in his or her person or property?

In short, why does the fact that I'm transgendered trump the fact that I'm a human being (who happens to be a transgendered female) in some lawmaker's decision that I should have the same rights as anyone else, or that someone should be punished for violating those rights?

To me, prosecuting and sentencing a crime against me or any other LGBT person because of who we are is no different than mourning the death of anyone else who is in any other way "exceptional" over that of someone who is considered "normal" or "ordinary."

And that is exactly what happened after Matthew Shepard's murder. The media trumpeted his fluency in several languages and his leadership skills. Indeed, it's terrible to lose those things, but what would the media have made of him had he been of average IQ or was studying to be an accountant--or, for that matter, had he been a sex worker in Denver? By the same token, I can't help but to wonder whether the media would have paid any attention at all to the disappearance of Laci Peterson had she not been a pretty white woman from a tony Bay Area suburb who'd been a cheerleader at her college. What if she had a been a single mother and a Salvadorian immigrant living in Crocker-Amazon and taking English classes in the Mission district of San Francisco ?

While I don't expect much better from the media (I'm so happy not to have TV reception!), I do want to see respect for life as the fundamental underlying value of the society and culture in which I live. The "Hate Crimes Bill" is no more about that than the sensationalism surrounding Anna Nicole's death was. Instead, it tells judges and juries to evaluate a crime by the status of the victim rather than the life that was taken from him or her.

Doing that isn't going to cause anyone to respect the rights we have because they're the same as theirs. That, in turn, will do nothing to change the "status" we have: a status that leaves us, not only with a one in twelve chance of being murdered, but with a seventy percent chance of being unemployed or working in the underground economy. (And that's in San Francisco, mind you!)

The cynic in me says that the passage of the Hate Crimes Bill is not so different from John Mc Cain's request that Jack Johnson be pardoned. I doubt that he, at his age, will run for President again. However, I suspect that he's thinking about his legacy, especially because he represents one of the two states that does not observe Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday. And, he also knows that his party, the Republican, has about as much support among African Americans than Martin Luther had in the Vatican. Likewise, politicians of all parts of the spectrum realize that LGBT people vote, and that we're anywhere from one in thirty to one in five of the population, depending on which researchers you believe. Whatever the number, it's enough to swing an election.

And, as long as the public is swayed by gestures such as the passage of a "Hate Crimes Bill," it will.