50 Years After Malcolm X

On this date fifty years ago, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom.  Today the site of the Audubon, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, is a laboratory for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  I have ridden by it many times and, in fact, once went inside the Ballroom.  Every time I passed or visited the site I thought, however briefly, about his importance, not only to the history of the US and the world, but in my own life.

I first read Malcolm’s autobiography when I was about twenty.  It was around the same time I discovered African-American writers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston—and when I first heard Bob Marley.  In one way or another, they all not only expressed the burning desire to be free, but also made oppression—which is to say, the things that turn people into slaves of all kinds—clear and vivid.

I identified with their wishes and feelings for, as it turned out, reasons very different from theirs.  How could mine not be different?  After all, as difficult as my grandparents’ lives were, nobody brought them here in chains.  Even more to the point, I knew who my grandparents and their grandparents were, even though I had never met the latter.  So, even though I knew that so much of what I learned in school was a whitewashed (Yes, I am conscious of that word choice!) version of the truth, I wasn’t—couldn’t be—conscious of it in the profound way that Malcolm and all of those black writers and artists were. 

So, in my own clumsy way, I reacted to the injustices that persisted long after Malcolm’s murder and the deaths of the others I’ve mentioned though their polemics, rhetoric, rhythms, intuition and sense of irony.  What I did not understand was that they could use those tools or gifts or whatever you want to call them because they mastered them in ways that exact terrible, terrible costs.  (Baldwin has written that any people who has a language of their own has paid dearly for it.) What I could not understand was that I was paying my own dues, as it were, but I did not yet understand what I was paying for.  So I borrowed anger, grief, pain and a very dark kind of humor in my own feeble attempts to come to terms with why I could not live the kind of life for which I was being trained—or why anyone should want that kind of life.

So why am I mentioning such things on this blog?  Well, for one thing, being a cyclist has freed me from a lot of things.  I think of all of the time and money I didn’t have to spend on buying, fueling, maintaining and parking cars.  That is part of the reason why I have been able to live in New York and spend time with things I love:  I didn’t have to work in some job or in some business that would have destroyed my psyche or other people’s lives.  Being a cyclist when it wasn’t fashionable also, I think, has made me less vulnerable to propaganda and groupthink, if it hasn’t made me a better critical thinker or more creative person (though I think it’s done the latter for me).  

Of course, for me, freedom has meant living as the person I am.  Anyone who cannot live with integrity and with dignity is a slave or a prisoner or worse.  One way I identify with Malcolm is that it took him as long as he did to truly come into his own, even if he accomplished a lot else before doing so.  His descent into slavery, as it were, came when, in spite of his academic success and oratorical skills, his eighth-grade teacher mocked his dream of being a lawyer. When he, as an inmate in the Charlestown (MA) Penitentiary, became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, he found a voice.  However, it took him much longer, I think, to find his voice.

Our voice, if you will, is how we express our authentic selves in the world.  For some, it is in their careers or vocations.  For others, it is in creative work or performing:  I think of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar as his voice.  Others express it through a passion or relationship.  Actually, I think that for most of us, our “voice” is a combination of the things we do and are.  Whatever it is, if it isn’t authentic, we’re still slaves or prisoners.  For me, that is the real importance of Malcolm X’s life and work.

Backlash Against Whom And What?

What I said yesterday about the un-funny Saturday Night Live sketch brings to mind a conversation I had with a colleague.


She remarked that she sees more violence against women in the media as well as in the real world.  While I could say that I'm simply noticing those things more, I would have to say I agree with her.  And, according to her, pornography has also grown more violent against women.  I'll take her word on it, if for no other reason that it makes sense.


Some would call the violence a "backlash."  Against what and whom?  I guess some people (mostly men but, surprisingly, some women as well) think that women who assert themselves and do the things they want to do are somehow transgressive.  Transgressive against?--I could insert the usual suspects here:  the established order, the boys' club or any number of other manifestations of the same thing.  But, also, it violates some ideas some people still hold, however covertly, about family structure and roles.  


Calling it a "backlash" implies somehow that the women who chose to become engineers and lawyers are in the wrong.  It certainly is a reaction--almost a Newtonian one, really.  It's true that any time someone tries to push forward, someone else pulls back.  Beatniks and hippies came to be during the repressive social and political atmosphere of the 1950's, and the first feminist movement came to be during the Victorian era.  And the Tea Party gained steam, if not traction, as the first black President and Hispanic female Supreme Court justice were being sworn in.


Substitute "transgender" wherever I've used the word "woman," and you'll understand why, although there is greater and broader acceptance of transgenders than there was in my youth (one reason why I'm glad I made my changes during the past few years rather than in my youth), there also is, or seems to be, more violence against us.  And we're being ridiculed more and more in the media as well as in person-to-person encounters.  Some would argue that it's a good thing if for no other reason that it means we're more visible.


Yes, we're more visible.  But too many don't see us as people; we're still seen as trans or, worse, guys in dresses or women in overalls and flannel shirts.  So, in that sense, we're as invisible as the man in Ralph Ellison's novel.  That's how the SNL producers make things like that sketch I talked about.

Invisible In The Same Fight?

This is a first for me:  I haven't posted on this blog for four days.  The bike ride (which you can read about in my other blog, Mid-Life Cycling) is part of the reason why:  I focused on that, and on cycling generally.  


But something else is going on.  You might say that now there's less to write about my transition, or my gender identity generally.  Frankly, I simply don't find myself thinking about it much unless someone brings it up in conversation.  That's probably a good sign.  At least, I'm happy about it:  I don't want to spend all of my time thinking and talking about it.   And why should I, really?  After all, I just took a bike trip and even when I was grungy and sweaty, and not wearing any makeup, I was taken for the woman I am.  


It's not just about other people's perceptions, though.  In previous posts, I've mentioned that whenever I think of an event from my past--specifically, one that I experienced  "as" Nick--I see myself as Justine in that event. I did nothing to alter my thought processes:  I've simply come to see myself as always having been Justine.  I must admit, though, it is rather strange to think of Justine as a Boy Scout or altar boy!  


In some weird way, I've been rendered invisible.  In some not-so-weird way, I'm happy about that.  At least some of my physical safety is predicated on that; so is the courtesy and respect I experience.  


What's odd about my invisibility, and my satisfaction with it, is the way it contrasts with the invisibility of a man I talked with last night.  All right, I didn't talk to an invisible man:  It's been at least twenty-five years since I've taken any substances that would give me the ability to do that!   What I mean is that the man in question feels that he has become an invisible man, like the one Ralph Ellison depicted in his novel by that same name. 


(By the way, I just happen to think it's one of the best novels written by an American.)


He made a very interesting comment to the effect that after 9/11, it seemed that white men and women retained their dominant status in American culture, but that Asian women joined them.  Black men , he said, fell by the wayside and it seemed that Asian men were simply forgotten.  He has a Korean girlfriend and says that "all the Asian women are going out with or marrying white men--or, if they're very young, they might "go for a Rastafarian, or at least some young guy who looks like one."


So here is the dilemma:  My invisibility helps me, while his hurts him.  It's enough to make me wonder whether being transgendered has anything in common with any other oppressed minority group, save for the fact that we experience prejudice and even violence simply for being who are.