Off-Limits To Christians. And I'm Responsible.

I suppose that if I were a different sort of person, I'd be amused when I hear second-wave feminists (and their acolytes) making the same sorts of false, desperate claims as the LGBT-phobic Religious Right.

But such people affect my life and those of friends, allies and peers of mine.  So I am not amused. 

Someone who was once a really good friend but who later saw fit to disavow me--and claim that she never wanted anything to do with me in the first place-- said that I was "changing" genders so I could go to some university and get a job teaching Gender Studies (or Women's Studies) that should rightfully go to a "real"--that is to say, genetic and cisgender--woman.

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She also asserted that I and other trans women are trying to usurp the other roles and jobs women have available to them. She never specified what those roles and jobs might be, but I don't recall trying to take any job away from any woman, or applying for one in the hope that I would displace what someone like her would deem a "real woman".

Of course, such facts will not dissuade her any more than any other relevant fact would cause American Family Association President Tim Wildmon to rethink his claim that LGBT folk are keeping good Christian people like him from making a living.

(Don't you just love it when hate groups use "family" in their names?)

According to him, the LGBT community seeks to "destroy the personal business and career (sic)" of Christians who don't support same-sex marriage and other forms of equality for LGBT people. (Of course, he doesn't think of them as "equality"; to him and his ilk, such things are "special privileges.) He cited such examples as Vermont's Wildflower Inn, which no longer hosts weddings after it was fined $30,000 for turning away a same-sex couple and Washington florist Baronnelle Stutzman, who faces a lawsuit from her state's attorney general after she refused to create the floral arrangements for a same-sex couple. He also referenced Oregon bakery Sweet Cakes By Melissa, whose owners cited their religious beliefs in their decision not to prep a cake for a gay couple's wedding.

He uses such examples, and others, to claim that seven common careers have become off-limits for Christians. They include those of the photographer, baker, florist, broadcaster, counselor, innkeeper and teacher/professor.

It sounds like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," from the way Wildmon tells it. All right, I confess: I am here to take over your career!"

All right, so that was a joke. To me, anyway. But not to folks like Wildmon--or that erstwhile friend of mine--who, apparently, has been teaching Gender/Women's Studies at the College of Staten Island in the City University of New York. What's really scary about that was that I teach on the premise that knowledge is power and that my budding faith is showing me that I don't have to be beaten down by this world. Yet that old friend of mine--her name is Elizabeth Pallitto--and Mr. Wildmon are painting themselves and those who listen to them as victims.

To be fair, I have to say that Wildmon's rhetoric is more reprehensible because he is, in essence, using his and his followers' privilege (which, of course, they don't see as such) as members of what is considered the mainstream in America to push members of minority groups back into the margins. In other words, he's inciting bullying. All Professor Pallitto and her ilk are guilty of, really, is that they stopped learning after they read Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire.

That's How I Am Now

I was just like I am now.  The only difference is, I was a guy then.


Sometimes I think that's what I'll answer if anyone else asks what I was like when I was the "before" photo.  During the first couple of years of my new life, people would ask to see a photo of me from before my transition.  Sometimes I would show an old passport; according to one person, I looked like a terrorist in it.  Other times, I'd show my "Hemingway" photo, in which I sat in a writerly pose at my desk.  And then there was my "Amish" photo, in which I stood in front of a stone farmhouse.


No matter which photo I showed, people said I looked angry or simply unhappy.  That perception is accurate, mostly.   I didn't show the photos I mentioned to highlight that fact, or anything else: I just don't have a lot of photos of myself, particularly from the time before my transition.  I didn't destroy or discard any old ones:  I merely managed to keep myself from being photographed very often.  And I think I made one self-portrait, which I call my "Death Row" photo.


The thing is, I was just as much of a woman in that photo--in which I had close-cropped hair and a beard, and sat clutching the arms of a chair--as I have ever been.  Around that time, in fact, a woman with whom I'd been going to movies and restaurants said "no" when I expressed my wish to make our friendship into something else.  "You're too much like a woman," she said.  "You think the world is all about feelings and refinements.  That's what I like about hanging out with you.  But in that kind of relationship, I want a man."


Perhaps the particulars of what she said were not quite right. But she got the most important part right:  Emotionally and spiritually--as well as intellectually--I have always been female.  Even buying a pair of corduroy pants and flannel shirt--let alone a bike jersey-- became an emotional, esthetic experience for me:  I wanted colors and patterns or designs that not only looked good, but felt right to me.  I was the same way (and still am) with my bicycles, even when I was beating more "macho" guys in races.  It wasn't enough for something to fill a function or to look right:  They also had to feel right to me.


Now, in some ways--including some of the worst ones--I was both a stereotypical male and female.  I was able to navigate through strange cities in countries where I could barely, if at all, speak the language.  On the other hand, I couldn't do math worth a damn.  I can fix nearly anything on a bicycle, and I can fix some small appliances, but I never learned how to fix cars, planes, air conditioners or televisions, and I learned how to use a computer only when I absolutely had to.  I always felt that the only way to relate to people was emotionally; yet it was the very reason I withdrew and lived much of my life alone.


I think that everything I've said in the previous paragraph still holds true, if in different degrees and different ways from before.  But now that I am living as a woman, and my body mostly conforms to my gender identity, I feel complete, whole, in ways that I never did before.  That means I'm happier, if not necessarily more cheerful.  Flipper's trainer says the dolphin's smile is deceptive, especially if she is in captivity.  Cats don't smile, but you know when they are happy.  Sometimes I feel like I've become a cat!


Anyway, now that I've written what you've just read, something else makes sense to me:  why I have so little interest in Gender Studies or any other academic area ostensibly related to questions of gender identity and sexuality.  Even when they're practiced by people who aren't cisgendered and heterosexual, they seem simplistic at best and trivial at worst.  That's the reason why, inwardly, I winced the other day when a new fellow-faculty member said, "Well, you know, gender is performative" and all of those other things they say in graduate seminars.

Avoiding the "G" Word

On my second job, I find myself avoiding the "g" word.  If you've been reading this blog, you know which one I mean:  gender.  


It's not that anyone there would be offended.  At least, I don't anyone would.  I've simply made it a point--at least to myself--not to talk about my identity, or the life I lived as male.  I simply didn't want to be known only for that or, worse, to have people encourage me to talk about it and have the same people use it, and the fact that I talked about it, against me.  Finally, I got tired of people trying to push me into doing another degree--in gender studies, a field most of them don't actually respect.


But it's getting harder not to talk about those things when I'm teaching.  When reading Othello, as my class at that college is doing now, the discussion always seems to get to the "g" word.  And I'm not the one who brings it up.


I guess students, particularly the younger ones, are accustomed to thinking about it.  They've probably had teachers and other professors who've taught them various subject from a women's, gay or gender studies point of view.  Plus, they all know they have gay friends, relatives and co-workers.  Some of them might even know trans people.   Certainly they know we exist, and some of them have even have see us without the blinders of the stereotypes that shaped the views of people from my generation, and earlier ones.


But I find now that I can say so much more about gender, and how gender roles and expectations shape the way we live and the things we read.  One student asked, "Professor, do you think this is a man's world?"  I could only tell her that she needs to answer that question for herself.  Then there is another student who continues to bring up the idea that Iago was not really trying to wrest Desdemona from Othello; instead, he really wanted Othello.  I don't disagree with that idea, but I try not to talk about it because there are just too many things I could say and that student, and others, would--rightly--want to know why I think what I think.  


Now, I don't think of myself as a transgender first and foremost. But I can't deny that it's shaped, wholly or in part, my views about many things.  There are times when I'm tempted to mention it, simply because it would make explaining some things easier.  But then I wouldn't be explaining those things anymore; I'd be talking about my past and my identity and answering all of those questions we get when people realize who we are.  


Sooner or later, I will tell my students.  Or I will stop teaching anything that might lead to a discussion about gender. That would include, oh, about 95 percent of the plays, poems and stories I've ever taught.  And it would probably include about 90 percent of literature.


Of course, if I follow that second course of action--censoring what I teach--I would eventually stop teaching, in fact or in effect.  


At times like this, I wish that I'd been a math whiz or a technical person.  A surprising number of male-to-female transgenders are engineers.  Why couldn't I have been one of them? I mean, how does gender come up when designing a circuit or writing code?

Freedom In Anonymnity

Young people sat on the cinderblock benches, leaned on the edges of some kind of concrete sculpture and stretched, nudged and nuzzled each other, and sauntered all over the ground in between.  Some were eating slices of pizza from paper plates, French fries from boat-shaped paper trays and fried chicken and burgers from styrofoam plates.  The refulgent late-summer sun engulfed the radiance--and heat--of their youthful bodies and faces in anber rays refracted off tan and yellow bricks of the surrounding buildings.


It was late afternoon.  I sat among them, sipping an iced tea.  My class had just finished at my new part-time gig.  Today marked the third time I met that class; the students in it are--along with a few faculty members and the office staff of the English Department--the only people on campus who know even my name. 


Oddly--or not?--I don't feel lonely, much less isolated or alienated, when I am there.  The students on the terracce outside the school cafeteria seemed not to notice me at all.   That is, I think, as it should be:  They were talking with and nudging each other.  Some were with boyfriends or girlfriends; others were looking to find one or ther other.  So they didn't notice me, and I didn't mind one bit. 


The only person I've met so far who knew me is an adjunct instructor who was also an adjunct in two other schools in which I worked.  As a result, he knows about my transition. But we ceased to talk about it after a while.  It wasn't that he was hostile; rather, we simply started to talk about other things.  And that's how things stand now:  We talk about our jobs, the places where we live and such.  I may tell him that I've had my operation, should a conversation warrant it.  If I do, it probably wouldn't make any difference to him, although he may feel happy for me for finally getting what  I craved for so long.

But no one else there knows my history--at least, as far as I know.  And nobody's asked.  That's nice, actually.  I really don't want to talk about my views of gender.  In fact, today I submitted my syllabus for the class.  I broke up the readings into thtree different topics.  Gender wasn't one of them.  If students start to talk about gender roles and such during one of our discussions, I won't sidestep it.  But if I can help it, I won't talk about my own exprience or inject talk of gender into a discussion of literature.  

To be honest, I still don't have any interest in teaching or taking a gender studies class.  And I certainly don't want to be pigeonholed into a field that is evanescent or to be known only for my surgery and what preceded it.

You might say that I want to continue the honeymoon in my new surroundings.  I get the feeling it will last for as long as I can remain anonymous, at least most of the time.

The Choice: Intellectual, Not Academic

I'm still thinking about the conversation I had last night with the "invisible man."  He said it was one of the most intelligent conversations he's had in a long time, and he is about my age.  He is certainly a very intelligent person who, lately, has had to answer a lot of questions for himself.  That's the key, I think:  He's had to answer them for himself.  No one else could have given him the answers he found for himself; without aggrandizing myself, I can say I understand what an excruciating process that can be.  I am lucky in that sometimes it has been exhiliarating, or at least a relief, to have come up with the answers I've found, or at least to have found my own way, wherever it might lead.


Now I am starting to understand why, although I often enjoy teaching, I find myself hating the academic world and, even more, its institutions.  I can say, in all honesty, that every year I have taught has left me hating the military/industrial/educational complex even more than I did the year before.  And, during the past few years, I wondered how in the world anybody could want to become a gender studies professor--or, for that matter, a professor in almost any area called "studies."   


What I am realizing is this: I had assumed that I could never fit into the academic world because I'm not an intellectual.  At least, I was loath to call myself one.  Isn't that ironic?  For so long, I was completely unwilling to acknowledge that in my heart of hearts, I am not a straight male.  Actually, I didn't have to acknowlege or indulge it; it was simply a fact of my life, just as the sun rising and setting are facts of this world.  And how foolish would anyone look in denying them?


Now I realize that, in some way, I had no other choice but to be an intellectual.  I can no more deny or suppress that than I could my femaleness.  All of us, even those of us who have been considered "stupid" or otherwise "less than," have had to think our way through some situation or another when our physical abilities, no matter how great they were, would not have been enough--or simply would have been useless or unusable.  When your body fails, or is just inadequate, you have no have no choice but to become a creature, and creation, of your mind.


That is not the same as living in your head.  That is what many in the academic world do.  That is why there are so many petty, pointless arguments in meetings of almost any department or office you can think of.  There is seldom any discussion or even fighting about actual ideas.  The latter is something you do when you are really looking for answers; you fight over procedures and "stuff" to score points, which can feed only your ego rather than your mind.  That's just as dangerous as eating Twinkies when your body is crying out for vegetables and fruit.


In other words, when your life depends on it, you're looking for answers.  Whether or not you find them, the search will keep you going.  The problem with that is that when you're doing something because your life depends on it, those who don't have that sense of urgency and peril can't understand why you're thinking and testing everything they say.  


Now I understand why I have never wanted this site, or anything else I write, to be academic.  It's exactly the same reason why I hope I will challenge, or at least stimulate, people mentally.  And most important of all, I want to continue learning. 


 Really, I have no other choice.  I can no more pretend that I can live in a non-intellectual way than I could pretend that I could live as a man.

How Not To Get Lost

Today is Columbus Day. Some people had the day off from work, and kids from school--to celebrate a guy who got lost.

At least, if any man had an excuse for not asking for directions, it was Signor Colombo. I mean, whom could he have asked? Dolphins? Sharks? Seagulls?

You see, if there really is a master or creator, Columbus would've been wandering the ocean for forty years. And Moses would've made it to Israel in, what, a few weeks?

OK, now I've probably offended half of the Western world, and a good part of whatever readership I had. What'll I do now?

I can understand how difficult it must have been for Chris. After all, I've been in countries that spoke languages I didn't. And, as I like to tell people, I'm a direct descendant of Columbus and inherited his navigational skills!

All right, I'll admit: I have no connection to the one who "discovered" the "new" world--at least, none that I know of, anyway.

How could anyone say he "discovered" a place in which millions of people were already living meaningful and useful lives? In fact, I'd say that through most of the first millenium and a half, they were more civilized--in almost any way one defines that term--than the part of the world whence Columbus sailed.

And how could anyone say that what he found was the "new" world. Now, I know nothing about geological history, but I'd hazard a guess that the "new" world must be as old as the "old" world simply because they share the same planet.

Maybe I should become a geological historian. Then maybe I would stop whining about how old I'm becoming or have become.

So let's see--to become a geological historian, I'd have to take most of an undergraduate curriculum, as I never took a geology course and not a whole lot of science. Then I'd have to get a master's and a PhD. By that time, I'll be old enough that my professors will be studying me!

All to do what prisoners do: break rocks!

This day, at least here in New York, is a sort of Italian pride day. Isn't it strange that we come from a culture that gave the world Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dante, Petrarch, Bocaccio, St.Francis of Assisi, Galileo, Verdi, Vivaldi and Eleonore Duse--and we're supposed to feel pride in some guy who didn't know he landed somewhere near Port au Prince when he was trying to get to India?

At least Petrarch could make the quatrains run on time!

Anyway...I'm thinking now about Lindy, who had an orchiotomy a few days after I had my surgery. She hopes to have the full genital reassignment surgery in a few years, when she can afford it. But she needed that orchiotomy to save her life: Her male genitalia sealed off what turned out to be ovaries and a birth canal that were turning gangrenous and destroying her liver and kidneys. She confirmed what I'd suspected: that she and her wife spent all but their last dollar, literally, to get the orchiotomy. But I have no doubt that one day she'll have the surgery: she and her wife are committed to it, and to each other.

During our conversation, she quoted Oscar Wilde, articles from the New England Journal of Medicine and almost anything you can think of in between. She wasn't trying to impress me: She couldn't, because I was already in awe of her. Rather, those texts she quoted were as necessary to her survival as the air.

After talking with her, I realized why I didn't enjoy that course I took last spring, and why I don't think I'll take any more PhD-level courses in English--or, most likely, any more English courses at all. In fact, it helped me to realize why, as much as I love literature, writing and teaching, I can't stand most English departments--and, for that matter, much of Education with a capital "E." It also underscored why I won't ever go near Gender Studies, or any supposedly-intellectual endeavor with the word "gender" in its title, ever again.

Lindy wasn't trying to one-up me or anyone else by quoting what she read. She wasn't even trying to win an argument, if for no other reason that she has no reason to argue with me (at least not yet, anyway!). Rather, she was using those texts, which had been her guides, to better understand her own situation and to relate it to me.

In other words, she wasn't using those texts as ego-gratification in the guise of intellectual inquiry. Instead, she was using them to help her amplify some very hard-won truths. (If you want to get an idea of just how hard-won they are, check out this entry--and my comment--on Staci Lana's blog: http://www.femulate.org/2009/10/gender-on-my-mind.html)

When a person does what Lindy did in our conversation, there's simply no way he or she can condescend to anyone else. And there's certainly no need to do that after you've found your own truths rather than what merely gives you status. If nothing else, you understand that winning an argument--whatever that means--is nothing more, or less, than that: winning the argument doesn't mean that you're right.

Really, the only victories are in discovering the truth--one's own and that of the world. After that, the other "victories" are just so much ego gratification. If that's not a recipe for getting lost, I don't know what is.

At least Christopher Columbus had an excuse for getting lost!

The Body of Lessons

This is depressing. I get the feeling that nobody's been reading my blog lately: I didn't get any hate mail after yesterday's post. In fact, I didn't get any mail at all. Maybe everybody understood what I meant, and that I meant no harm. However, I will refrain from using the "f-word" again. Really, I will.

And guess what? I submitted my tuition waiver to the Graduate Center. That means the course is now paid for, and I'm in it. I also told my department chair and a couple of other people in my department what I'd done. So now I guess I'm committed.

It looks like I'm committed to that course--The Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-hop-- I'm scheduled to teach, too. Even Tom, my voice instructor, mentioned that he's heard about it. "I bet it'll be great," he said. Same sentiment, different words, from what my department chair said. And a few other profs, a bunch of students, Cady Ann and Sharon (the department secretaries), Dominick, Bruce and everyone else who's heard about it. And they all say I'm going to do fine in both of those courses.

OK. For the course I'm taking, I'll forget that it's the first class I'm taking in sixteen years and that it's on a topic--gender studies-- I once swore I'd never touch. And for the course I'm teaching, I'll forget that for half of that course's content, the students will know more than I do. So I won't introduce myself as Prof J-Val or Mizz J--at least not on the first day, anyway!

Today's session with Tom may be the last I'll have with him for a while. I wish that weren't so: The three sessions I've had with him have taught me so much. However, he's directing a play and is involved with another production that will keep him busy. I know I could take other voice classes, but nobody can top a teacher who's opened up a world to you.

In a way, Tom reminds me of Ray, the social worker I saw every week during the year before I started to live full-time as Justine, and for the first year-and-a-half of my current life. They both combine discipline and empathy: They have a clear sense of what they're guiding you through, but they also understand what you're going through. And, of course, Ray taught me all sorts of first lessons about one thing and another, while Tom taught me my first lessons about the way I carry my body and take my breaths.

I've talked to many women--and have read the words of many, many more--who look back in shock, anger, grief or frustration over the fact that they knew so little about their own bodies. Usually, they were in the dark because parents, teachers and other adults couldn't or wouldn't discuss those matters. Some of those women come from milieux in which such talk is taboo. For others, their lack of awareness had to do with the pure-and-simple misogyny of their communities or societies, some of which they internalized in much the same way that I internalized a lot of homo- and trans-phobia. I recall now an interview that some journalist--I forget who--did with an Afghani schoolteacher. She said that one result of the repressive regime that required all women to be covered from head to toe, save for a small grille around the eyes, was that women's bodies deteriorated. Worse, they were unable to pass on any awareness of how their bodies worked to their daughters, female students or any other girls or young women in their lives.

Of course, frustration over how little women understand their bodies--and one part in particular--is part of what motivated Eve Ensler to create The Vagina Monologues.

After my surgery, what will my vagina say? "Thank you for bringing me to light," or "Cotton only, please!"?

I'll soon find out. Meantime, I'm learning through other means.

Gender Studies Is For Faggots; Why's a White Tranny Woman Teaching Hip-Hop?

Don't ask how we got on the subject. But Dominick asked an interesting question: Since I began living as Justine, have I ever entered a men's bathroom by mistake.?

Actually, I haven't. I can confidently say that because if I did, I'd probably remember even though I wouldn't want to. Ironically enough, I can recall times when I accidentally (Yes, I'm telling you the truth!) entered women's bathrooms while I was in boy-drag. Some might argue that my subconscious was guiding me; I wouldn't argue. However, bathrooms for either gender, or both genders, never had any great appeal to me. Why would anyone want to be amid the filth and smell of most bathrooms for any other reason than to do what one needs to do? I mean, I never saw the appeal of "peeping" or having sex in bathrooms.

So what have I "accidentally"done since beginning my transition? Well, early in my life as Justine, I signed documents (including a newly-issued ATM card) and answered the telephone with my old name. Then again, I've always had lapses: I now recall the time early in my sobriety when I signed up for a workshop and gave a telephone number I hadn't had since I was twelve years old. Funny, I can recall it now: 212-435-0470. However, that number--or whatever phone number is assigned to that house--begins with "718" instead of "212" becuase it's in Brooklyn.

Wow! That alone is enough to date me: I can remember when all five boroughs of New York City used the "212" area code.

Anyway...Now that I think of it, I haven't really had many instances of gender spasmosis, if you will. At least not in logistical matters, anyway. But I've found myself lapsing into old ways
of thought and expression, and of acting on attitudes I'd absorbed, as Nick, by osmosis.

Why don't I want to teach that course called "The Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-Hop?" Well, for one thing, I got into it accidentally. (No, I'm not one of those people who thinks everything happens for a reason.) But more important, I'm exactly what some hip-hoppers despise: I'm a white professional and I'm a woman. But not just any bitch or 'ho: I'm one who used to be a dude, at least on the outside.

Now, I know that not all hip-hop expresses misogyny or homophobia. And hateful ideas don't necessarily make for bad art. (cf. Pound, Celine and goddess-knows-how-many-others) However, knowing that a number of rappers have expressed their disdain or outright disgust for me and my sisters, it's still odd for me to be the one who will not only present the music, but also help students build bridges between it and all those books written by dead white men and taught to me by old white men who are most likely, by now, dead white men.

Oh...So that's why I'm having trouble getting published? I'm not a dead white man. Nor will I ever be. Instead, one day, I'll be a dead white woman. Or tranny-girl.

So I'm all wrong for that course I've designed. That means I'm also wrong for the course I planned to take: Literature, Gender and Sexuality. I've always been wary of gender studies. I don't want to be just another LGBT person with a certificate or degree in gender studies. For one thing, I suspect it would close many more doors than it would open. Haven't you heard: Gender Studies is for faggots. The latter term doesn' t necessarily gay or effeminate men. Instead, it means people, usually men, who wimp out on commitments, or who just generally shrink away from life.

All of this could lead me to what I've been avoiding for so long: becoming a scholar, becoming the enemy, accidentally. I already feel as if I've become one of them, though I'm still not convinced that I could do much in the way of theoretical work.

Yet everyone tells me I'm going to do fine. I must be absolutely amazing and fabulous if I can inspire that kind of confidence when I'm abut to do things for which I have absolutely no aptitude, inclinaton or desire.

So what would I be doing in a class for faggots or about people who despise them? It's a matter of pure, dumb luck.