It's All Good, But We Need More!

Over the past few days, I’ve written about the most transgender-inclusive companies and the events that seem to be leading toward ending the ban on transgenders serving in the US Armed Forces.

While those are welcome developments, they also indicate how much more needs to be done to approach equality.

For one thing, not everyone—trans or cis, straight or gay, male or female—is suited (pardon the pun) to work in a large corporation or to be in the military.  Even those who have the skills, education, talents and temperament to work in such environments may not want to do so.  I think that anyone who has something to contribute should find the best avenue for it.  And I think that many of understand that not all necessary change comes from working within established institutions or power structures.

Perhaps more to the point, though, it seems to me that the changes corporations are making, and the ones the Armed Forces seem to be in the process of making, will benefit those who are already in those organizations and are embarking upon a gender transition.  I’m not sure that much will change for those who have lost jobs, or never had jobs in the first place, because of gender identity or expression.  How does the new protocol at Company X or in the Army help young trans women or men who are homeless or doing sex work because their family disowned them or bullies drove them out of school?

Also, I can’t help but to think that most trans people who will benefit from the latest developments are white and come from at least middle-class backgrounds.  To be fair, this is probably more true for the corporate world than for the military.  But even in the uniformed services, most who would be in a position—that is, those who have attained enough seniority and rank—to serve openly without reprisal are white college graduates.     

So, while I am glad that corporations and the Armed Forces are trying to be more open to diversity, I don’t think those who are making the decisions realize how their efforts are skewed—and how much more needs to be done.  For that matter, I don’t think most of the public does, either.

Two Words

The English language is wonderful. Really.  

After all, it takes only two words to save trans or gay kids from getting the shit kicked out of them in the schoolyard--or trans or gay adults from getting fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes or denied health care or other services.

Just two words.  Deux mots justes.  

On the other hand, those two words are so powerful that they would make some parents pull their kids out of a school--out of fear of the  trans students their kids are bullying.

Two cheap, measly little words.  They're so little the local school board can slip them right past the parents.  Or so those parents fear--because, as little as they are, they could expose their kids to "she male" teachers.

What are those two words?

Hold on to your hats:  Gender identity.

All someone has to do is add those two words to a non-discrimination policy.   Two words, mightier thant the two hydrogen bombs Barry Goldwater  wanted to drop on Vietnam.

That's why some folks in Fairfax County, Virginia are trying to stop them.  Gender identity.  Those words could end the world as they know it.

They could also end the world that those bullied kids know.  

Rachel Bryk: A Trans Woman Driven To Suicide

As I have mentioned in other posts, friends and acquaintances of mine have committed suicide.  Although I have felt--and sometimes still feel--sadness over losing them and anger over their absence, I never could condemn any of them.  For one thing, I went through years--decades--in which not a day passed without my contemplating my own self-inflicted end.  So I understand, at least somewhat, despair.  For another, I have learned that just about everybody has a limit--almost never self-imposed--on how much physical or emotional pain or anguish he or she can endure.  Of course, some people have more tolerance for such things than others, but some people are also given burdens to bear that most other people can't understand.

For some, no amount of love and support from family, friends and others can ease the suffering.  That is the reason why, so often, when someone takes his or her own life, there seems to be a chorus of people lamenting how esteemed or even loved that person was.  Those very same mourners wonder what they did or didn't do for the one who just ended his or her existence.

But then there are the ones who, knowing someone else's vulnerability, will do whatever they can to push that person over the edge.  It can be simple harassment.  Or it might be something more serious, like spreading false rumors about the person to cause him or her to lose a job, housing or to experience some other kind of life disruption.

Then there is the lowlife who wrote, "DO IT, if you're such a weak willed thin skinned (sic) dipshit, then fucking do it" in response to someone who wrote about killing herself in an online forum.  "Good riddance," responded another alleged human.

The woman who wrote about killing herself was in constant, intense pain from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis.  And she was transgendered.

Although Rachell Bryk's mother believes that the constant pain and the rejection she received as a result of her disabilities are what drove her to jump off the George Washington Bridge, messages found on her computer described some of the online bullying she experienced.

Now, I've experienced online bullying from Dominick, who--among other things--sent me an e-mail that said he would make my life so miserable that it would "make living in a cardboard box seem good".  And he sent out e-mails claiming that I committed all of the crimes transphobes and the simply ignorant believe trans people do as a matter of course.  He did other things, too, because he was angry over ending a relationship he always claimed--while we were together--meant nothing to him. 

All of that was bad enough.  But how much more difficult would it have been for me to deal with those things had I been in constant physical pain?

Whatever the truth is about Rachel's situation, I can only hope that if there is indeed anything after this life, that it does not include the pain and torture she experienced while she was here.

 

Was He Taunted Into Killing?

The other day, I heard about it:   One 14-year-old boy stabbed a classmate in front of a Bronx junior high school.  Both were scheduled to step up to the podium and graduate this week.  Instead, the boy who was stabbed is lying in casket and the boy who stabbed him is in a jail cell.

I’d heard that the stabber was so bullied that, on the day he stabbed his classmate (who was once his friend and skateboard buddy), it was the first time he’d been to school in weeks.  He could barely leave his apartment; other kids—some of whom didn’t even attend the school—came to his building specifically to taunt him and even to make death threats.

Knowing nothing about him, or the other boy, I immediately thought the bullying had to do with his actual or perceived sexuality or gender identity.  I hope I don’t seem as if I’m gloating when I say I was right.  At the time, I don’t know why the thought entered my mind.  But now I think I know why it did.

You see, I experienced a pretty fair amount of bullying myself all through school, practically from the first day I can recall all the way through college.  Every single incident included homophobic and misogynistic taunts.  I was called “fag”, “queer,” “fairy” and all of the old standards.  Relationships were invented between me and shy, lonely boys who were not considered terribly masculine and with whom I just happened to talk one day or another.   Sometimes those alleged liaisons were also used to label me as a girl, or more precisely, a non-male. (Little did they know!)  Of course, when anyone was seen as female—whether or not he or she actually was—it was not in a flattering light, even if the girl was seen as sexually attractive, or at least available.   The “c” word was one of the nicer labels attached to those born with XX chromosomes.

And, I’ll admit, I did a bit of bullying myself, including one pretty serious incident.  I’ve told a few people about it; most explain it away as “self defense” or a reaction to peer or other kinds of pressures I experienced.  While their intentions might be benign or even protective, I have never tried to so rationalize the bullying I committed.  

By the same token, I will not try to use the bullying Noel Estevez   experienced to rationalize, let alone justify stabbing  Timothy Crump,  any more than I would accept the taunts, beatings and other harassment a former partner of mine experienced in his childhood and early adult life as an excuse for the abuse he committed against me.  However, my experience has also led me to understand, I believe, why Estevez  acted as he did.

So have the stories I’ve heard from friends, acquaintances, current and former co-workers and students and others who were taunted, threatened, beaten and otherwise harassed—sometimes to the point that they dropped out of school and ran away from home.  Every single one of their taunters was motivated by homophobia, misogyny (in the case of girls who were, or were perceived as, lesbians) or what we might today recognize as transphobia.  

Nearly everyone who has worked with or studied young people who’ve committed violent crime recognize that the stabbings, shootings, beatings or other forms of brutality they inflict on others are almost invariably impulsive and instinctive.  Those with a more scientific orientation than mine might accuse me of being over-simplistic, but I think there is a very common-sensical reason:  A fourteen-year-old simply doesn’t have the skills, emotional and intellectual resources—or, I suspect, even the body chemistry—to deal with blows, whether they’re physical or emotional, the way some of us learn to deal with assaults on our dignity and persons when we’re forty.  

That is the reason why I think it’s so wrong to charge Noel Estevez   as an adult.  I know lots of people will say, “Well, if he’s old enough to kill, he’s old enough to pay for it.”  I wholeheartedly agree.  However, locking up such a young man with older men who’ve killed more than once or who started their criminal careers before his mother was born will do nothing to make him pay whatever debt he can pay for taking a classmate’s life.  It will also do nothing to help him deal with the impulses on which he acted; in fact, being incarcerated with career criminals will only make him more likely to respond to the next affront with violence has as much chance of ending in his own death as that of his attacker.  

However, treating  Estevez as a juvenile might at least give him access to whatever help he needs in dealing with the traumas he’s experienced.  Some have said he acted in self-defense; I don’t think anyone portrayed him as a crazed homicidal maniac.  Given the sort of environment and treatments he needs, it’s unlikely he’d ever commit such an act again, even under the most extreme duress, including homophobic death threats.

The Effects of Bullying on LGBT Youth

This, from Telerik Kendo:

Can A Child Be "Outed" For Her Own Good?

I think that, by now, most people would agree that it's wrong to "out" an LGBT person who is harming no one else. 

But how do you discourage kids from bullying a trans classmate--or encourage those same kids' parents to be good examples of tolerance and honesty for their kids--without "outing" the classmate in question?

That's a question a school district in Missouri had to answer when someone who was born a boy was returning to school as a girl.  School and district officials said they were interested in ensuring the child's safety and ability to learn. 

Officials in Raytown sent a letter to parents informing them about the transgender child. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools are not allowed to release most information about a child without the consent of the child's parents. Exempt from this ban are "directory" information, such as a student's name, address, phone number and date of birth, which can be released without consent. However, the school or district must provide ample warning of the release to allow the parent(s) enough time to request that the information not be released.

However, as you can imagine, there's "gray area" in the law. While a student's name may fall under the category of "directory" information, it's not clear whether the student's gender--which, some would argue, is part of a student's medical history--also falls into that category.