Walk In Our Shoes



From Visual.ly



How To Be A Trans Ally

I am a transwoman. And a writer.  And an educator.  Yet I'm still trying to figure out what to say to people who really want to know me, and other trans people as people.

This infographic has some interesting and useful ideas:

From Rebloggy

Brendon Ayanbadejo Gets It--Almost

Kelli Busey's Planet Transgender has become one of my favorite transgender-related blog.  Actually, it achieved that distinction not long after I discovered it.  She's usually on the right track and on point, and manages to be both assertive and gentle.

She shows all of those qualities in her most recent post.  In it, she mentions the support  Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo's attempt to express his support for transgender rights, as he understands them.  The only problem is that he understands them in the same way too many other well-meaning but misinformed people understand them:

If a woman wants to wear a man's clothes or if a man wants to wear a woman's clothes or you feel like you're a woman on the inside and you're really a man. Who cares? Let's just treat everyone equally. Let's move on. Let's evolve as a culture, as a people.”

My impulse is to be charitable with him. Some of us who are members of the gender-variant community, and some who spend a lot of time around folks like us, would excoriate him for showing that he seems not to understand the difference between a cross-dresser and a transgendered person.  Perhaps he doesn't understand such a distinction:  Somehow I don't think he doesn't know a lot of trans people or cross-dressers and doesn't spend a lot of time around people who are familiar with us.  That's all right:  Most people probably don't know any trans people, either--or, at least, they don't know that they know us.

Plus, I somehow get the impression that his heart is at least in the right place.  Basically, he's saying that we should try to get along and to realize that we're all in the same world, in the same struggle, together, and that we can and must move forward.

I don't go to Facebook very often.  However, I'm going to post a comment on his fan page.  In it, I will praise him for saying that we should treat everyone equally and "evolve as a culture", while pointing out the difference between transgenders and cross-dressers.

Stories of Men And Women

Nobody's a hero; nobody's decorated.  Nobody's remembered...at least not the men, anyway.  Now that everybody who was related to me--that I know of, anyway--is gone, I hope nobody on this block remembers me, either.  It's a privilege I could've claimed for myself the day I left, no matter where I went next.


But of course I didn't have to.  That may be the one advantage I have as a result of growing up here:  I've never had to claim privilege; I've never had to pull rank on anyone.  At least, I've never felt any such need.  You might say that I'm not impressed with people or with anything they do; I'm even less awed by men and their stories.  That isn't to say that I fear no one:  I simply have a pretty good idea of who can or can't, or who will or won't, do what, and to whom or what.


So there're lots of things I've never had any use for.  Like most of the things they tried to teach me in school--or, more precisely, most of the things they were supposed to make gestures of teaching me and I was supposed to make them think I'd learned--and everything I heard in church.  The canons of the academies and monasteries echo thousands of lies and even more exaggerations and misrepresentations.  No one you will ever meet is like anyone you read about in any history book or any epic tale, whether it's Beowulf, The Deerslayer or All Quiet On The Western Front.  The ballads I had to hear and the paintings we looked at in textbooks and school trips to museums were all about generals, emperors or mystic visionaries:  all about solitary men leading lonely young men to their deaths, in the fields or in the trenches, or at their own hands.  No man like any of those characters or figures ever came from this block--or, for that matter, any other blocks like this one that I've seen or heard about.


Who's ever written an opera about a woman and her cat?  Or a woman and another woman, or a woman and her children?  About the latter, there's the story of Mary and Jesus.  Of course!:  two people who never could have existed on this block.  Not only is he too good to be true, she...well, let's say she contradicts one of the few relevant facts that's ever been taught in any science class!


Why can't we have a religion--if we have to have one--based on the story of a woman and her cat?  At least someone could get that one right, I think.  I don't believe anyone could set down the story of a woman and her child, and whenever anybody's set down the story of a woman and a woman, it sounds like a man's fantasy.  (Trust me.  I know the difference:  I've had lots of time--and more opportunities than anyone should have--to learn.)


But about a woman-and-her-cat tale:  If someone could write it, that person is not me.  I've never kept a feline, at least not long enough to have such a relationship.  The one time I had one--a gray, smoky shadow I never named--I ended up giving him to an old woman.  It just didn't seem fair to make that cat dependent on someone like me; it was no more fair to the cat than my dependence on my mother, for so many years, was to her.  Since then, I've done my best to avoid creating any need for me in any other living being.


Even if I'd had a cat, a child, or any other permanent companion, I couldn't have written about me and him, her or it.  Maybe, as people have told me,  if I'd stayed in school, I'd've learned how to put some experiences--my own and those of others--on a page, or even between the covers of a book.  There's so much I never learned.  As a kid, I asked myself, "Why should I?"  "So I could write the kinds of things they made us read?," I wondered.  "Or to play what they taught us was music, or how to say their prayers?"  


So now I have practically no education and, as far as most educated people are concerned, I'm illiterate, or close to it.  Still, I've managed to read a bit since I stopped going to school.  I've even finished a few books, a couple of plays and a whole bunch of poems:  something I never accomplished when I was in school.  I'm not going to explain or analyze anything I've read:  Anything I could say about them isn't that important and probably has already been said.  I don't know.  Maybe I'd've stuck with school or "done something with" myself if I'd've known, while I was still in school, that such pieces of writing existed.  Let's just say that they're not about war heroes, and they're not the sorts of things that give men excuses for belieiving that women are neurotic.


I don't think anybody on this block has read them.  Living on this block isn't like being in one of those neighborhoods where people spend their Sundays talking about what was in The Times Book Review over brunch.  (I had never heard of brunch when I was growing up!)  I don't think even Mrs. Littington--who'd seen more of the world than most of us and spoke at least two languages--had ever read them.  (I can only hope that she didn't have to read some of those really awful books and even worse translations they tried to shove down my throat:  their Bible, for instance.)  


As far as I know, the male gender has produced three real poets--at least, when it comes to writing about other men.  One of them--who actually could create convincing female characters, too--wrote Othello, The Tempest and Macbeth, and of course a whole bunch of sonnets.  Another wrote some fine poetry and Les Miserables. And, finally, there's the one who wrote about Don Quixote.  I'll pass on the rest.  Just for once, I want a story about a woman opening--or closing--her window.

What Motivates Him To Learn?

One thing I have to say for my students is that they have almost uniformly been good to me. My identity is known, and I think I'm no longer a curiosity:  I don't think anyone is taking my classes so they can find out what it's like to have "the tranny prof."  Now I'm just another boring professor--which, I believe is what they expect, and even want.


Anyway, one of my courses includes readings from science and history as well as a memoir.  Of course, the subject of gender has grown prominent in our discussions, especially in light of some of the writing we've read by female historians.   That leads the class, at times, into discussions of the differences between male and female.


One student seems particularly interested.  Other students have taken notice and have even wondered aloud why he's read as much as he has on the topic.  "How can you not be interested in it?," he implores them. 


He is a bit different from the other students.  For one thing, he's older than most of them.  For another, he's lived in a few more countries, and even served in the armed forces of one of them (not the US).  And, he has other experiences most other students don't have--and some that I may never have.


However, I rather doubt he is thinking about a gender transition.  It would even surprise me if he were gay, although I think he might have an issue or two when it comes to relationships.  (He's mentioned two marriages and children.)  Still, he is  better-versed in gender transitions and surgery than most lay people I've met, and seems interested in knowing even more.   


I wonder whether he's found this blog.  Actually, it would surprise me if he hasn't.  After all, if you type my name into a Google search bar, you'll find an entry to at least one entry of this blog on the first page of search results.  If he's curious enough to learn what he's learned, I'd guess that he'd also be curious enough to do a Google search on me--and to check out this blog.


This could be interesting--for me and for the class, as well as for him.  

A Surprise In One Of My Classes

In one of my classes, students have been reading various essays and articles about gender and sexuality.  I've assigned them a paper based on those readings.  

Last year, I had a self-imposed moratorium on such readings and assignments.  I wanted to teach things that had nothing to do with those topics.  I started this year with the same moratorium but I found that, ironically, my students led me back to them.  They wanted to express their thoughts about gender identity and sexuality. Some of those thoughts included were about the inseparability of gender and sexuality from many other topics, including some that I hadn't anticipated, such as science.

Anyway, in the class in question, one student whom I thought to be a cocky teenager, expressed the opinion that "everyone has rights."  At first I was skeptical; I thought he was saying what he thought I wanted to hear.  However, as I read on, I realized that he had been thinking a lot about the issues in the reading.  He said, in essence, that he'd be disappointed if he had a son who expressed interest in "changing" genders.  However, he said, he would support that son's right to do so if he made that choice as an adult.

But what came after that assertion was, perhaps, the most interesting and gratifying part of all.  He wrote about one of his school-mates, with whom he had been friends since both were five years old. This friend had a brother who was several years older, and whom my student saw almost as often as he saw the friend.  This friend's older brother, according to my student, was sullen and testy (Those were his exact words.) and had a few incidents with cops and authority figures.

However, my student noticed a change in him.  This friend's brother began to "mellow" out, and even volunteered his time.  My student, of course, had no idea of what brought about the change--that is, until one day, when he noticed other changes.  "His face looked different.  His body was starting to look different."  What my student was describing, of course, were the effects of taking hormones.  

This friend's sibling has since had gender reassignment surgery.  My student says he can't imagine such a thing for himself, and he hopes that any son he may have wouldn't want to do the same thing.  However, he says, "it just might be necessary.  And that is why I would support his right to do it."

I wonder if his buddies in the class--who seem like even cockier teenagers than I thought him to be--saw that paper.  Actually, I hope they did, and that he's talked about it with them.   

You Can't Get An Education From Anyone You Don't Trust Or Who Doesn't Trust You

I am thinking again about yesterday. Perhaps that's not a productive thing to do, but I'm prone to that sometimes.

Anyway...I find myself reflecting on what I've been learning during these past few months. So much of it comes down to trust. And now I realize that the trust I'm learning is not only toward those who can actually give me the care and education I need. It's also a trust in myself.

When you don't feel whole, complete or simply right-- whatever that means to you-- how can you trust yourself? What can you trust if your body is lying to you and in order to survive, you have to tell-- or worse, perpetuate-- lies of one sort and another? And how can you hope to get an education of any sort if even your name is not your own?

James Baldwin once wrote that a child cannot learn from a teacher who despises him. That's more or less right. But I think that it would be more accurate to say that no one can get an education from anyone he or she does not trust, and who does not trust him or her. All you learn is a sort of defensive deception: You lie, dodge or commit whatever other subterfuge is necessary in order not to be harmed. And, of course, if someone is telling you the complete truth about something, it cannot be anything but a falsehood in such circumstances.

You go to a doctor because you think you've cracked your ankle in a fall. If the doctor, or his or her screener, asks if you've felt depressed, you say "no" because you want your ankle fixed, not to raise suspicions that you harmed yourself on purpose.

Something like that happened to me. And to practitioners I've previously used, I've said that I had sexual fantasies about women, and even talked about wanting to marry one or another, just so that I wouldn't get locked up somewhere that couldn't offer me what I needed, much less wanted.

How many times do we get through a situation, a day or a period of our lives by saying what someone else wants, or seems to want, to hear? Or worse yet, what we wish were true?

When I saw Mom back in August, I said that my years at Rutgers, where I was an undergraduate, were the worst of my life. She asked what I would have done differently: Would I have gone to another school? Studied different things? Or delayed going to school?

I might have done all of those things, I said, but I probably still would have been miserable. She cringed when I said that last word. "Oh, you were!," she said. "I haven't seen very many people who were more unhappy than you were in those days."

I explained that I was, by any definition of the term, deeply depressed. I felt as if I had nothing in common with anybody at the college. In part, it had to do with the fact that when I was young, I tended not to make friends among my peers. What friends I had were, for the most part, women older than I was.

Also, I felt more hostility toward who and what I am than I ever felt in high school, or before that. For many years afterward, I accepted the standard explanation: that I was noticing it more. And, being the sort of person I am--one who just wants to live her life--I trusted other people's opinions before I trusted my own experience.

The thing is, the higher you go in education, the more you encounter that mentality. If you experience something, it doesn't count for as much as what some "expert" says about it. I have come to realize that such an "expert" is more than likely to be self-appointed and gains his or her authority because so many people are, for whatever reasons, too cowed or indifferent to challenge it.

But there was another dimension to the conditions that made me so unhappy: I was in a residential college. So I was living with other students, whom I saw every day. They included various jocks or jock-groupies and frat guys. Living among them meant that I had to keep my acts and my defenses up at all times. I played the drinking games with the guys and feigned more interest in "banging" women than I actually had. Worse, I not only went along with the "fag" jokes, I made a few myself.

And, because I engaged in such mendacity, I came to despise everything about the college, college generally, the people in it and what I had to do to keep myself there. Today, of course, none of that surprises me--or, for that matter, the people who've heard this from me--because I had, by that time, learned to so thoroughly despise myself.

I fell into such an awful state because I could not articulate what was happening to me. I tried to fit into the labels: I was "straight;" I was "gay;" I was "bi" (whatever those terms mean! ); I was a guy with a "feminine side." And, of course, I kept that side as far from view as I could.

The result was that I never did anything more than half-heartedly. I was present only physically in my classes and in other college functions; when I reached out to others (Yes, I got very lonely sometimes!) I could only do so from behind a wall. And even in that relative safety, I was still in a mask and costume, whether or not it was Halloween.

So I could never ask the sort of questions I wanted to ask, or do anything that would allow me to get the sort of education that stays with a person: that which teaches a person by expanding his or her self-definition. This means helping that person to learn how to do what he or she is capable of doing, and to expand that person's range of what is capable.

Maybe this is the reason why, in spite of all the time I've spent in a classroom as a student and teacher, I have never quite trusted Education (with a capital "E"). Even when I enjoy teaching (which, these days, is most of the time) and otherwise helping students, and when I enjoy an exchange with a colleague (a more frequent occurrence these days), I still sometimes feel as if I cannot trust it. Perhaps I am still carrying a lot of residual damage.

I am interested in helping people gain an education, whatever that means for them. And most people go to school for that, and we are--at least in theory--charged with that role. But I often feel that my own education bears only an incidental relationship to the time I've spent in school.

In brief, I felt a little sad after leaving Dr. Jennifer's office yesterday for the same reason that I shed tears upon leaving Marci, Nurse Phyllis, Robin and all of those other people I met in Trinidad: From them, I was finally getting an education--a real education.

Now I'm wondering whether it's the only education I've ever had.

Stories: The Assumption and Woodstock

Today is the Feast of the Assumption. Having gone to Catholic school, I should know what's celebrated on this date.

As it turns out, the Assumption refers to the Virgin Mary's physical ascencion into Heaven at the end of her life. Some churches teach, and people believe, that Mary never passed through death; she entered Heaven body and soul. But others believe that she died and, three days later, she was resurrected and assumed into Heaven. This is seen as an homage or precursor to the death and ascenscion of Jesus or as a preview of the Final Judgment, when all of the dead will be resurrected and, along with the living, judged.

I must say that the Final Judgment seems immensely unfair to whoever may be living at the time it happens. After all, the sins and misdeeds of the long-dead will be forgotten by that time, or the memories of them will not be fresh. Then again, I recall what Shakespeare's Antony said upon the death of Caesar: "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." So maybe it all evens out...

The odd thing is that there is no actual record of Mary's death, and people at the time did not know what happened to her. She was one of those people you see one day, and the next she's gone. Her assumption was essentially an apocryphal tale, a legend: Nowhere in the Scriptures does it specifically talk about Mary's fate. However, Pope Pius XII (who helped Nazis escape to South America) defined the Assumption as dogma for the Roman Catholic Church, and cited several scriptural verses as evidence of her corporeal and spiritual ascent. Sceptics have used those very same verses to discredit the notion of the Assumption.

Today's feast is actually a national holiday in several countries--including France, where laicite has been the official policy for more than a century. (I recall trying to cash a traveler's check once on la fete; no bank or exchange was open anywhere!) When I was in Catholic school, we were expected to attend mass on that date. I don't recall how or whether such a policy was enforced, as school was out for the summer.

Being the sort of kid I was, I wondered what people would look like when they were resurrected. Did those who lost limbs regain them? Or what about people who went blind or deaf: Would they be able to see and hear?

Now, if I believed in the story of the assumption, you know what I, as a post-surgery transgender woman, would ask!

Today, as it happens, is also the 40th anniversary of the first day of Woodstock. Now, I rather doubt that anyone consciously chose to start the world's most mythologized musical festival on the Feast of the Assumption.

So, other than for their coincidence, why should I talk about the Assumption and Woodstock in the same entry--one in a blog about my life as a transgender woman, no less?

Well...let's see...Half a million people went to the Woodstock festival. The youngest people who were there (save for the babies conceived during that heady time) are well into middle age, or even older. Some are already dead; in not too many years, others will die off in almost as rapid succession as World War II veterans are dying now. One day--most likely not in my lifetime--there won't be anyone left who was there, and there will be few people who could remember that time.

That means that Woodstock will become an event that will survive because of the stories told--in whatever ways--about it. Of course, we have film and video footage of David Crosby confessing to the crowd that he was scared shitless, as he and Stills, Nash and Young were performing together publicly only for the second time. We have the sounds and images of performers as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Melanie Safka, Joe Cocker and Elvis and pictures of long-haired young people, their tattered clothes soaked from rain that soaked but did not cancel the second day of performances, chanting, hugging, and smoking.

For people who weren't yet born in the middle of August, 1969, those images and the music of those performances are Woodstock. And those young people--and anyone else who wasn't there (including yours truly, who was, let's say, just a bit younger than most of the people who was there)--reconstruct, in their minds, something they call "Woodstock." Even though the name of that music festival has become a kind of shorthand for "peace, love, dope and music." or "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll," no two people have exactly the same story about it in their minds.

Now, as for the Assumption--if it indeed happened--there hasn't been anyone who was alive at that time, much less saw the event, for about two thousand years. And, of course, there aren't any written, much less audio or cinematic, records of the event. Even if someone had been there and written an account, or if video were available (Young people have a hard time imagining a world without cell phones, which was, of course, the world of Woodstock!), records would have been made from the point of view of whoever was recording it. You remember what Cicero said: Victor Imperatus, or the winners write the histories. When you consider that, even in the most powerful nations, the majority of people up to about 150 years ago couldn't read or write their names, any and all record-keeping, much less the stories told about events, were skewed toward a rather small segment of the population.

Anyway, even if there were record the Assumption, who would have written or painted them? And, as for Woodstock, most of the attendees as well as the performers came from some degree or another of privilege. The poor kids were working to pay for school or support themselves or their families--or were slogging through the jungles of Vietnam.

And so all we have of either event are stories--told by people who come from narrow segments of society.

And if you are reading this, you are reading the story of someone who, though not born to privilege and not living in luxuries, has had at least other good fortune that enabled her transition to the life she had envisioned for herself. I mean, I'm not exactly a salt miner or a field hand. I have some education, such as it is, which has allowed me to acquire, if not a lot of material prosperity, at least some choices in my life that my parents and lots of other people haven't had.

I mean, let's face it: In order to undergo GRS, you have to have a certain level of literacy and education in order to find, much less use, the relevant information. And you need the time and means to acquire it. Finally, you have to come up with a way to pay for the surgery and other expenses related to your change, and to be able to take time off from making a living so that you can recover from your surgery. As it happens, as a college instructor, I have that time off.

So...the Assumption and Woodstock are stories rather than events for most people. And so am I, dear reader (oh, how quaint!): If you are reading this, you know me by the stories I'm telling you about myself and the world around me. Now, I have never been anything but honest. But my point-of-view is not all-encompassing, as is the point of view of anyone else. And, of course, one day, I'll be gone, and so will anyone who knew me now or at any other time in my life.

So I know stories about the Assumption and Woodstock. And if you've been reading my blog, you know a few about me. If you know me, you know others. In the end, whatever believe in and whom we love (which are really all that matters in life, as far as I can tell), all we have are those stories

The Doctors

Another trip to the doctor's today. It seems that everywhere I go, I'm around doctors.

Of course, today I went to a "real" doctor for some testing. I say "real" in homage to something Jimmy, the owner/bartender of a place I used to frequent back in the day, used to say, "If he can't take our yer appendix, he ain't a doktuh."

The "real" doctor is part of the practice at Callen-Lorde, where my regular doctor practices. Today I went to be tested for STDs as well as Hepatitis A, B and C. I'm negative for HIV/AIDS and STDs. (That's because I'm such a goood girl!;-) Just ask Dominick. ) They'll know about Hep when they get the lab results. And I'll have to go for those same tests again as the date for my surgery grows nearer.

More testing. You'd think I was in school or something.

OK, so I am. Except this time I'm on the other end of the classroom. Karma is funny that way. I was once a student who dreaded, or was bored by, most of my teachers and profs. And now I'm that same object of fear and disdain--for some students, anyway.

I also think now of how, as a student, and throughout my life as a man, I dated women who were, with two exceptions, older than I was. And now I'm the older woman.

Does that mean that if I'm a patient for long enough, or if I'm a bad enough patient, I'll become a doctor, too? Of course that's a joke; I realized long ago that I don't have the temprament or aptitude for such things, or even for all the science courses I'd have to take.

These days, when I'm not around MDs, I'm around the other kind of doctor: the kind who can't take out your appendix. Of course, I'm talking about PhDs. The professors and administrators in question have earned them in all kinds of subjects: from English all the way to specialties of which I'm not aware.

And then there are the "Ed" doctorates. They've earned Doctorates in Education, which are called EdD's rather than PhD's. How they're different, I don't know. But I know this: No one is more adamant about being called "Doctor" than an Ed Doctorate.

At one time, I thought about going for a PhD. I went so far as to retake the GRE and to send out applications. Every one of them resulted in a rejection. I haven't subjected myself to that process again because, well, I only wanted the PhD for career reasons. At this point in my life, I don't think it will matter: If you want to become one of those professors who become monuments on campus, you have to start when you're young.

Plus, my two now-former friends are both PhDs. Each of them met my transition with a lot of verbiage that was both puerile and opaque, as so much of academic discourse is. And then they decided they didn't want me as a friend anymore. One has a PhD in Gender Studies (actually, Comparative Literature with a specialty in that area), the other's degree is in clinical psychology. So, as you can imagine, I'm not as impressed by such credentials as I once was.

Maybe that's all part of my karma, too. When I was young, I flaunted my reading and education--what little I had--totally convinced that I knew more than everyone else. Of course I do, but these days I don't say it out loud! And I also believed--as I still believe, in some way--that people become teachers and professors because they've failed at other things. I used to think there was nothing more pathetic than someone who grew up wanting to spend the rest of his or her life in school buildings.

Well, guess what? I'm teaching because I've never been able to sustain a living as a writer, and even when I accomplished other tasks in other jobs I've had, I never felt like I was successful. And I still don't feel that I'm a particularly good teacher, and I know I'm not meant to be a scholar. I mean, I'm having a hard enough time filling in the blanks for the course I'm scheduled to teach next semester: the one for which I was stupid enough to write a proposal.

I guess there are some tasks you have to leave to doctors. And I'm not one.