An ID For Her True Self

Every trans person I've known who began living in her or his true gender as an adult wished that she or he could have so lived as a child and as a teenager.  And each one of us has some thing or another we wish we could have done, or had, during those years.

Some of them are major, such as, well, getting to live in our true genders--or, more specifically, having relationships with family members and friends as the people we truly are.  Then there are those seemingly-trivial things that could have added to the quality of our lives.

Throughout my childhood and teen years--in fact, through most of my life--I hated to be photographed. I'm still not crazy about having my picture taken now because, well, I'm not terribly photogenic, to put it mildly. But in my earlier years, I felt that every photo of me was a lie, a deception, because it was an image of what I was supposed to be rather than of who I was.

Of course, everyone jokes about how terrible their ID photos are.  Some actually believe that the Department of Motor Vehicles requires their employees to be on psychosis-inducing medication before taking photos for drivers' licenses.  But those of us who wanted to live as the people we were--and tried to seize moments of doing so by "cross dressing"--knew that having the kinds of IDs we had, in essence, forced us to be the people depicted in them.

Chase Culpepper understands what I've just described.  The 17-year-old South Carolinan was forced to dress male for the drivers' license photo, even though she identifies as female.  The Transgender Legal Defense and Education fund filed a suit on her behalf.  As a result, a settlement--announced this morning--will allow her to wear female clothes and makeup for the first major piece of identification many young people receive--and the one some regard as a passport to adulthood. And now she gets to be a Southern Belle!

Turned Away By An LGBT Organization

Every time I think the world has become  a more hospitable, or at least a  less hostile, place for trans people, something happens to shake my faith.   

It's bad enough when hateful, ignorant or simply rude words or treatment comes from the sorts of people from whom we expect it.  At least then we can see it coming.  However, it's more distrubing, and more distressing, when we are treated badly by those whom we thought to be allies--or at least who previously seemed to be working on our behalf.

A friend of mine is having such an experience.  She went to an organization that is ostensibly dedicated to helping transgender people with various legal issues, including civil rights violations and access to health care.  In fact, that organization's founder litigated a case in which I had been involved, and was settled when the judge ordered the defendant to make contributions to LGBT organizations on behalf of me and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit.  After that, I would volunteer for that organization, join their board of directors and write a guidebook, which they distributed in print and online, to help transgenders gain access to the health care we need.

That organization--the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund--took over Lambda Legal's name-change project.  I used its free services and, even as a complete novice to the court system, I had no difficulty.  When TLDEF took it over, I thought it might be a good thing, as TLDEF is (or, at any rate, was) an organization centered on transgendered.  Plus, TLDEF's director, Michael Silverman is a first-rate lawyer. No less than the lawyers who opposed him, and a prosecutor, said as much.

In any event, my friend went to a TLDEF name-change clinic and was treated rudely, and with hostility.  Then the person who was supposed to help my friend instead invented a reason, called it TLDEF policy, and used it to keep my friend from using their services.

My friend, at least, is canny and persistent, although obviously upset with the treatment she received.  Now that this friend has found out that the rule that would have disqualfied her, had it existed, she is all the more upset, though still fighting.

Transgender Group Honors Former Governor

Yesterday the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund honored former Governor David Paterson. 

During his final year in office, he signed an executive order mandating some protections for transgender people in the workplace and in other areas.

Because he didn't serve a full term as Governor, and because he became Governor only because Eliot Spitzer resigned in the wake of a scandal, some say that Governor Paterson will be only a footnote in history.  However, I think that even if he doesn't become an icon, I think his time in office will be studied.  For one thing, he actually made more and greater efforts to advance the rights of transgenders, as well as others who have experienced discrimination.  For another, he did that at the same time he was cutting the State's budget. 

Now, I'm not an expert in these matters.  But I do believe that he is one of the few office-holders, if not the only one, in recent history who tried to expand civil rights at the same time he was shrinkng the budget of his government.  Most of the small-government conservatives (at least the ones I know about) see civil rights legislation as giving "privilege" to particular groups of people, and of costing the government--and society as a whole--lots of money not only to enforce the legislation, but also from the missed economic opportunities they claim to be the result of such legislation.

Of course, some will point out--rightly--that Patterson did what he did when he had nothing to lose (politically, anyway).  By the time he signed the executive order, he had already announced that he wouldn't stand for re-election.  Well, maybe there's another moral to that story.