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I realize that when I'm not talking about my own experience on this blog, I'm as likely as not to be talking about male-to-female transgenders and transsexuals and their experiences. That's natural, I guess, though I am trying to give some time and space to female-to-male trans people as well as others on the gender identity and sexual orientation spectra.
After all, FTMs experience many of the same things we, as MTFs, live with and through. There is, of course, the joy of being ourselves. But there is also the risk of incurring prejudice that can lead to anything from losing one's friends to losing one's life.
Tristan Broussard now understands this all too well. Two years ago, he was working in the Lake Charles, Louisiana of Flowood, Missisippi-based First Tower Loan LLC. That is, until a company executive found out that on his driver's license, he was listed as female. That executive then demanded that Broussard sign a document promising that he would dress as a woman on the job and when out of town on business, he would stay in rooms with other female employees.
That document included a statement that his "preference (italics mine) to act and dress as male, despite having been born a female, is not something that will be in compliance with Tower Loan's personnel policies".
Broussard would not sign the statement. That refusal cost him his job.
Yesterday, with the support of the Southern Poverty Law Center (a great organization!), he filed suit against the company. The National Center for Lesbian Rights is also backing him.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had previously reviewed his case and on 2 December 2014 ruled that discrimination had indeed occurred. However, the EEOC decided not to pursue a case against Tower Loan.
I know I shouldn't generalize, but here goes: The trans men (a.k.a. female to males or FTMs) are all really nice, interesting, smart people. Some of them are really cute, too.
Perhaps one day I'll date one. In case that happens, I'll be prepared, thanks to this comic I found:
While the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been applauded, mostly for the right reasons, transgenders are still not allowed to be uniformed members of the Armed Forces.
Meanwhile, civilian employees of the Armed Forces are allowed to transition if they are already employees. What's not widely known is that Amanda Simpson, whom President Obama appointed as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department shortly after he was elected to his first term, is a civilian military employee. She had transitioned years before her appointment to that post.
Another civilian employee, not nearly as well-known, is in the process of transitioning. However, that employee also happens to be an Army Reserve sergeant.
But there's another twist that few anticipated: As a civilian employee, this person is male. However, for Army drills and physicals, it's necessary to bring out "whatever I can muster that's feminine". So, while his civilian colleagues relate to him as the man he is, he must--as he admits--lie to his fellow soldiers.
Now, some might say that he should be content with being a civilian military employee. However, he says, "My father was a soldier. I wanted to come home in a uniform like him". He was able to do that after a deployment to Iraq. While "coming home in a uniform" (Thankfully, it wasn't a body bag!) fulfilled one dream, it left him with the yearnings of another: He realized he had to "come out" and transition.
He hopes that one day soon the Armed Forces' ban against transgenders will be lifted. In the meantime, he says, he has a network of about 300 female-to-male transgenders who are a "band of brothers" supporting each other "in a battle nobody knows we're fighting".
While I don't generally encourage young people to join the military unless they, well, want to be in the military (and aren't enlisting merely to "pay for school", learn a trade, "see the world", please members of their families and communities or fulfill some vague notion like "serving my country"), and wouldn't join the military even if I could, I think the ban against trans people is absurd. After all, the traits that make a person good soldiers, sailors, flyers or officers don't change as a person transitions from one gender to another. A male-to-female might lose some physical strength, but--let me tell you--you've got to be pretty damned tough to make the transition. Also, while a certain amount of stamina is necessary, today's military doesn't depend as much on brute strength as the forces of old. And, if someone could hack the physical training and the rigors of combat as a "woman", I don't see why he couldn't as a man.
Most important of all, though, is something the female-to-male civilian employee/reservist mentioned: integrity. In battle, or in any other stressful situation, people who are fighting or simply working together toward the same goal will not succeed unless they can trust one another. I should think that someone who is completely honest about him or her self is more likely to deserve and gain the trust of the men and women by his or her side, or under his or her command.
When people ask how I came to be the person I am, I tell them that the process of my gender transition was as much a spiritual as a physical or emotional experience.
Sometimes I'm still surprised at just how many people understand what I mean. Perhaps I shouldn't be: After all, a spiritual journey--whether or not it's what you intended--involves learning your true essence. For some of us, that means--among other things--that we really aren't the genders to which we were assigned at birth.
Now, some would argue that someone who follows his or her spiritual calling won't want to "alter" what God made. For a long time, I thought the same way while, ironically, denying that I believed in God or anything beyond the physical realm.
What that meant was, among other things, that I had not freed myself from conflating belief and spirituality with the trappings (and traps) of organized religions as I'd known them. It also meant that I was not accepting the fact that circumstances are not destiny. After all, we have the means to change at least some of our circumstances. One could say that God (or whatever one believes in) gave us the means as well as circumstances.
So it is with gender idenity. Now we have the medical science and practice to help our bodies more thoroughly express what we know in our minds and spirits, just as we have the means to treat diseases or enhance life in other ways. Using them, I believe, has to involve spiritual engagement, which can only bring us closer to that which is infinite.
So it has been for the Rev. Cameron Partridge. He was assigned to a female identity at birth and, after graduating Bryn Mawr--where he came out as a lesbian--and, as he says, a religious person. As I understand what he says, they were inseparable.
Now he is the Episcopal chaplain at Boston University and the husband of a woman he married when he was still living as a woman. What his journey underscores, I believe, is that gender identity is, like our "callings", not something that can always be readily categorized by the people in our lives, and society as a whole. What made it unclear for so many of us--especially people of my generation--is that we felt, and sometimes acquiesced, to the desire to fit into the gender binary we learned while growing up. And the notions we learned about God and spirituality were expressions of those notions.
I'd bet that Rev. Partridge is an excellent teacher. Some of the people who posted comments after the article I linked could use a lesson or two from her, and others--as well as the God some of them claim to worship.
Keelin Godsey wants to make the US Olympic team in the hammer throw, and compete in the Olympics in London this summer.
Normally, that would not seem like such a remarkable story. However, Keelin is trying out for the women's team. But wait: It's not what you think. Keelin was born female, and named Kelly, at birth. He has been living as male but does not plan to take testosteone, or undergo any of the other medical aspects of his transition, until some time after the Olympics.
His dilemma is the exact opposite of what we're used to hearing: a male-to-female who wants to compete as a woman. Also, the MTF athletes of whom I'm aware didn't begin competing as females until their surgeries were complete.
So, in essence, Keelin is competing as a female, and once he stops doing that, he is going to live the rest of his life as male.
There doesn't seem to be quite as much of a fuss over Keelin as there has been over the MTFs I've mentioned. That may be, in part, because he is not considered a favorite to make the team. But I think that, even discounting that, his situation isn't deemed as controversial as the MTFs who want to compete as female. One reason is that because, as a female-to-male who has not begun to take testosterone, he is not perceived as having an advantage over other female contestants. That perception is probably accurate: If Keelin has any advantages, they would have to be in superior training or native ability.
On the other hand, some female athletes--as well as many fans--believe that male-to-female athletes shouldn't be allowed to compete as females, even after they've had SRS/GRS. Of course, some hold such a belief because of their general perceptions about gender. However, many more believe, somewhat erroneously, that a MTF athlete has physical advantages over those who were identified as female at birth.
It is true that on average, males are taller and heavier than females. While I was average on both counts as a male, I am probably around the 80th percentile in both categories (although I mate be in a somewhat higher percentile in the, ahem, weight category!)for women my age. But my transition had one very typical effect on me: I continuously lost strength, muscle mass and physical endurance from the time I started taking estrogen and anti-androgens. And I know that even if I were to ride and train as much as I did in my hyper-male days, I would not be as strong or fast, or have as much endurance, as I did in those days.
There is medical and other literature to corroborate what I've just said. The changes I have described happen with remarkable consistency. So, one doesn't need semantics or any other fancy rhetorical footwork to argue that MTFs have little, if any, advantage over most females in most sports. Conversely, because the changes FTMs experience are even more dramatic and consistent, it's easy to see that because Keelin hasn't begun to take testosterone, he has no advantage over the other female contestants.
Personally, I hope Keelin makes the time. His mother says it's been a lifelong ambition of his. I'm guessing that he has wanted to live as male, if not all of his life, then for a long time. Lots of people don't even get to live out one dream; I will be happy to see him live out both.
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