It Took 30 Years, But They Found A Way To Fire Him

In the winter class I'm teaching, the students are about to read Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

It seems like an amazing coincidence, if not a synchronicity, given something that's just happened in a school directly between the one in which I work and my apartment.

St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows, Queens has--justifiably or not--an excellent academic reputation.  However, according to a few acquaintances of mine who happen to be alumni, it's as big and impersonal as any city public high school, and people of different races and cultures coexist but don't really interact with, let alone accept, each other.

So far, it doesn't sound too atypical for a high school in that part of Queens.  However, the fact that it is run by Franciscan brothers means that some people will most likely never be allowed as students, let alone teachers, there.

It doesn't matter that someone has taught there for more than three decades. If that teacher changes him or her self in form, his or her excellence as a teacher will not be enough to keep him or her on the school's faculty list.

That is what Mark Krowlikowski has discovered.  In his 32 years of teaching at St. Francis Prep, he has received numerous accolades for his work, which has included leading students in a musical performance for Pope Benedict XVI.  But, last year, the parents of a ninth-grader complained about him.

Specifically, they took issue with his appearance.  He was always neat and well-groomed and routinely wore suits and neckties to work.  However, he started to wear earrings and nails manicured in a feminine style, according to court documents.  

He was summoned to the office of the principal, Brother Leonard Conway who called the transgender identity Krowlikowski revealed to him "worse than gay."  During their meeting, Conway told Krowlikowski he could no longer appear at public events if he came dressed as a woman.

The school's lawyer claims that Krowlikowski was fired for "appropriate non-discriminatory reasons".  Interesting that it took the school 30 years to find such reasons.

Transgender Day of Remembrance: For The Truth About Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance.  For those of you who are just learning about it, this day commemorates those who met violent deaths on account of their actual or perceived gender identity and expression.  It commemorates the 1998 murder of Rita Hester in the Boston suburb of Allston.  


Like so many murders of transgenders--and that of Matthew Shepard, which preceded hers by a few weeks--it was notable for its gruesome overkill.  For all of those who think that we're trying to make our deaths, and the ways in which we are victimized, seem more important than crimes against everyone else, I want to say just a couple of things.


First of all, murders of transgender (and other gender-variant people) have some of the lowest "solve" rates.  When I wrote an article about the issue five years ago,  92 percent of such murders committed during the previous 30 years hadn't been solved, according to Interpol. That has much to do with the fact that they are not taken seriously by authorities in many places; among those in law enforcement and criminal justice, there is too often the attitude that we "had it coming" or that no one will miss us.  The latter notion is, too often, true, for many of us have been cast aside by the families into which we were born or the ones we made.  (In that sense, I am luckier than most, as my parents have been supportive even though they don't entirely approve of what I've done.)


Second, as I've mentioned, our deaths are some of the most gratuitously violent.  In those cases in which investigators actually investigate our deaths, much less take those investigations seriously, police officers and coroners as often as not say that our murders are the most horrible they'd seen.  As an example, just two weeks ago, a cross-dresser and a eunuch were tortured--Their eyes and nails were removed--and burned beyond recognition.  


You might be tempted--as I would have been, not so long ago--to say, "Well, that's Pakistan.  Things like that happen there."  Indeed it is a conservative Muslim country.  But there, as in India, there is a class of people--of which the two murder victims may have been part--called the hijra. They have been tolerated if not afforded equal status, but they have been increasingly marginalized, and even stigmatized, during the past sixty years or so.  Still, the fact that they were even tolerated--if only for their usefulness as sex workers--makes them without parallel in most of the Western world.


(Ironically, "Hijra" is also the migration of the prophet Mohamed and his followers to the city of Medina in C.E. 622.  Most Americans and Europeans know of that journey by its Latinized name, "Hegira." )




To his credit, the Police Superintendent Syed Amin Bukhari has actually formed separate investigative teams for each murder.  And while some people still seem to think that they brought it on themselves by "bringing misery to the streets," as one commentor said, others have lamented the brutality of those slayings.  


However, to find any of those attitudes expressed, or to know how brutal the murder of a gender-variant person can be, one needn't go to Pakistan.  At least, I don't need to.  All I have to do is ride my bike about half an hour from my apartment to Ridgewood, Queens, where Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar lived and died in March.  Hers is one of the (too) many names being read at Transgender Day of Remembrance events this year.   


Somehow, I don't think this will be the last time I mention her name.  I know that there are others--some of whom I saw at the vigil held in front of her apartment--who will also keep her name, and thus her memory alive, for themselves and in the minds of those who investigated her killing.  Even though they made an arrest and are to be commended for their work, I don't want them to forget, for her sake as well as that of anyone else who meets a fate as terrible as hers.  


And I want to remember, and be sure they remember, her and the others because of what Voltaire said:  On doit egards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la verite:  To the living we owe respect; to the dead, we owe nothing but the truth.

Palm Sunday During Wartime

Yesterday I took a walk "around the block" that turned into an eight-mile trek.  I started out late in the afternoon, knowing that there were still a few hours of daylight remaining and the possibility of more rain looming.  But the rain held out until I was literally around the corner from my apartment, and then the soft cascade turned into a torrent literally as I entered the doorway to my building.


Some girls have all the luck, eh?  


My walk took me through past the quiet facades of brick houses.  Inside many of them, families--some consisting of two or three people who may or may not have been related to each other by blood, others that were, in essence, miniature villages--were eating those Sunday meals that are neither lunch nor dinner because they encompass and eclipse both.  Nobody partakes in such a repast if he or she is living alone, and not many young couples or roommates do it.  In other words, it's not for those who "do brunch." The sort of Sunday meal I mean is, almost by definition, a family affair. And, as often as not, it follows said family returning from mass or some other religious gathering--especially one of a Sunday like yesterday, which happened to be Palm Sunday.


Even when the bustle spilled out of doors, the streets were still enveloped in that silence--proscribed and followed as if by some unseen, unheard command--that has sealed the people inside those houses away from the cries that, perhaps, they don't or can't see.  Or, by now those voices may be, as far as most people are concerned, mere background noise, like the shows that blare from their televisions during their meals.   


I first noticed that silence--that of damp Sunday afternoons--some time during my childhood.  It seemed to grow more intense, somehow, a year or so into the USA's invasion of Iraq.  By that time, armed Americans had been plying the valleys of Afghanistan for a few years, though it and the Iraq invasion seemed to have endured for far, far longer.  


Some of the funerals that resulted from those imperialist misadventures have, I'm sure, taken place in some along some of those streets I walked.  I saw more than a few flags and banners--and bumper stickers on the parked cars--that read "Support Our Troops" or "Semper Fi."  


What's interesting is that in those working-class Queens neighborhoods--home to many immigrants, some of whom are Muslims--one doesn't find the more overtly aggressive and violent messages (e.g., the bumper sticker that's a "license" to hunt terrorists and features a photo of Bin Laden with a target drawn over it) one finds in other areas.  Instead, people in the areas I saw today seem to have the idea that by "supporting" the troops (whatever that means) or "remembering" 9/11, they are showing that they are loyal Americans.  Given the political and social climate--and what it could become if the economy worsens--I can understand why they'd feel the need to do that.


So why am I talking about the wars or immigrants now?  I don't know.  I just got there somehow, just as I somehow ended up four miles from home on my walk yesterday.


Well, all right:  I think about those wars a lot.  The invasion of Iraq started not long after I'd begun to take hormones and was preparing myself to live full-time as Justine.  I recall understanding, for the first time in my life, that invading another country--especially if no citizen of said country has ever done anything to harm any member of the invading country--cannot be anything but an expression, on the part of the invaders, of profound disrespect for people who just happen to be different from themselves.  I understood, for the first time, that up to that point in my life, I had been part of the very structure--even if I were at the bottom-most rung of its ladder and owned almost nothing of its spoils--that not only carries out such invasions, but doesn't see them as such.


Of course, I wasn't thinking that during my walk--at least, not consciously.  There were only the silence of those streets, the dampness of the air and the rhythm of my steps, all of which somehow kept me walking.

Leslie Mora and Jackson Heights

As much as my life as a woman has brought me so much more joy than living as a man ever did, I realize there is a risk of violence that I never faced when I was a man. Part of that has to do with the dangers that any woman faces.

For example, when I was living as a male, I almost never thought about where or when I was going. I walked through abandoned alleys in the wee hours of morning; I stayed out late for parties and such and never worried about getting home safely, even when I lived in a couple of urban combat zones.

But now I am more careful. When I'm riding my bike, there are places I avoid. And, when I teach night classes, if I miss the bus after getting off the subway, I don't walk: Along one stretch of the route from the subway station to my place, there's a stretch of auto body shops and such that's deserted after sundown. Other women advised me not to walk through that area late at night.

I was reminded of the perils we face when I received a message about Leslie Mora from an organization in which I volunteer.

A week and half ago, on the night of the 19th, Leslie was walking home from a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Two young men called her "faggot" in Spanish as they beat her with a belt. This attack left her with bruises all over her body and stitches in her scalp, and ended only when a passing motorist threatened to call the police.

The stretch of Roosevelt Avenue where Leslie was attacked is about three miles from my apartment and bisects the neighborhood of Jackson Heights, which is believed to be the third-largest LGBT community in New York City as well as the largest or second largest Indian and Pakistani community. In addition, thousands of immigrants from various Latin American countries live there.

The #7 train of the New York transit system rumbles and screeches on tracks several stories above Roosevelt Avenue. One can take this train and, on a good day, be in Chelsea within half an hour. However, about the only thing Chelsea and Jackson Heights have in common is their large gay (male) population.

Not so long ago, Chelsea was a working-class Irish neighborhood. Today, it's not defined by any ethnic groups or races: Today, almost everyone refers to it as a "gay" neighborhood. You will find more rainbow flags in store and apartment windows along Eighth Avenue from 14th to 23rd Streets than you would find in most states or countries.

You will find scarcely a rainbow along Roosevelt Avenue, or along 34th or 37th Avenues, the other main "drags" (pun intended) of Jackson Heights. One reason is that most of the gay men are older than the ones living in Chelsea. They're also more likely to be in couples and many of them live in the garden apartments or the mini-Tudors that line many of the side streets. These houses are nowhere to be found in Chelsea.

And, as you may have guessed, the couples in Jackson Heights, for the most part, don't want to draw attention to themselves. Part of the reason for that is that like most heterosexual couples in their 40's, they want to live quiet lives. Many have dogs, and a few of the couples have children they've adopted.

But probably the larger reason gay couples in Jackson Heights seem to live an almost subterranean existence is the fierce and often violent claim each ethnic group--or, more precisely, its gangs--have staked in the neighborhood. Even on the major thorouoghfares, there's practically no mingling between each of the groups I've mentioned. The Indians "own" 74th Street; the streets in the 80's and 90's are the territories of people from one Latin American country or another.

In an eerie way, this mimicks the Jackson Heights in which my father's aunt and uncle were living around the time of the Stonewall Rebellion. Then, most people thought of Jackson Heights as a Jewish neighborhood, although many blocks were home to second- and third-generation Italian and Irish Americans. One almost never found an Irish person walking on an Italian block, or a Jewish person on an Irish block. And they practically never shopped in each other's stores or ate in each other's restaurants. Today, people like me who don't live in the neighborhood go there to eat, but one doesn't find Latin Americans in the Indian restaurants or vice-versa.

A foodie or other tourist is not likely to notice the tensions I've described. Such people also don't normally frequent Roosevelt Avenue, mainly because it's seedier and grittier than the other streets and avenues of the neighborhood. The stores, restaurants and even the bars and night clubs along Roosevelt are frequented mainly by local residents, and those who work in them are recent immigrants who speak little or no English.

When I was writing for a local newspaper, other journalists and cops referred to Roosevelt Avenue as "Vaseline Alley." It still has a mostly-deserved reputation as a little Times Square--or, at least, Times Square before it was Disney-fied. The sex trade is as strong as it ever was; as you might imagine, it exploits the most vulnerable people--namely, immigrant women who don't speak English and young transgender people, many of whom live on the streets.

Now, I'm going to convey one observation I made while I was writing for the newspaper: Exploitation and violence are each other's evil twins. First of all, there is the violence that is employed against exploited people by their exploiters. Second, those who are exploitable are, far too often, the victims of violence by those who are looking for violence. It's the same relation as the colonizer to the colonized: One sees the other as not quite human, only as labels (whore, tranny, puta, maricon), and can thus rationalize violence against them.

Worst of all, some people--mostly adolescent males and young men--go to places like Roosevelt Avenue (and parts of Chelsea or the Village) for gays and transgenders to beat up or even kill. Those same young males also go to places like Roosevelt Avenue and commit the same kinds of violence against immigrant day laborers. They are the people "no one will miss," so they are easy targets.

As was Leslie Mora. Any young woman leaving a club on a place like Roosevelt Avenue is vulnerable; that she is trans practically made her a target. Her attackers, who shared her ethnicity, didn't see her as one of their own; she didn't belong on "their" turf. And, ironically (at least to anyone who has not spent time in these communities), she also didn't belong in the "gay" areas: She is younger than they are; she is poorer. She is a woman--a transgendered woman. And she got caught in the middle of a ethno-socio-economic battlefield whose barbed wire and mines consist of sex and gender expression.

I hope you recover well, Leslie Mora.