What If I Were A Black Trans Woman?

I do not believe that I am boasting or exaggerating when I say that I encounter more black men than most white women of my age and level of (formal) education.

Of course, that is largely a consequence of living in a large urban area in the United States and doing the kinds of work I do.  But I can also say, in all honesty, that I try to be an open-minded person who is a good listener.  I guess some of the black men (and women) I meet sense that, which may be a reason why some of them will tell me, a complete stranger, about their experiences and feeling.

I had one such encounter last week.  I'd ridden my bicycle to the Borough of Manhattan Community College.  I was astounded to find an indoor parking facility in Fitterman Hall that rivals the emenities found in many gyms in the surrounding neighborhood, where Robert De Niro and other celebrities live.

As I was locking my bike to the rack, a black man, whom I guessed to be about ten years younger than me, wheeled in his machine.  We exchanged greetings and small talk about the weather, the changes in the neighborhood and other things.  

"Can I ask you something?"

I was wondering whether, at this late date, he'd "read" me or , perhaps, seen me somewhere before.  In spite of my anxiety, I said, "Sure."

"Did the guard ask you for ID?"

"No."

"Well, he stopped me and asked for it.  And I'm a student here--I come here every day."

"Was he a new guard?"

"No, he's seen me before."

"That doesn't sound good."

"Maybe it shouldn't bother me."

"Don't apologize.  If I were in your shoes, I'd probably be upset, too."

"Why do you think he stopped me?"

"And he didn't stop me?  Well, I can think of one thing."

You probably know what that thing is:  He is black and rather young-looking.  On the other hand, I'm a white woman in late middle age.  I told him as much.

"So you feel the same way?," he wondered.

"Listen, I've heard plenty of DWB (Driving While Black) stories.  If even a fraction of them are true, I have reason to be upset, and you have reason to be outraged."

"The worst thing of all," he explained, "is that the guard is black."

"Talk about internalized racism!"

"Yes.  We even get it from our own!"

At that moment, I realized that in some ways I am very fortunate:  I rarely, if ever, am looked at with suspicion.  As I once joked to somebody, "Security people look at me and think, 'Grandma doesn't have a bomb in her bag'."

I didn't mention any of that to the man I encountered in the bike parking room.  He thanked me for listening and "understanding," as he said.  What he probably doesn't know is--as I've mentioned in other posts--some experiences I had during my transition helped me to understand the bigotry and hostility people of color face.

The more likely one is to face prejudice and other forms of hatred, the more likely one is to become a victim of violence or other kinds of crime.  In other posts, I've talked about the dangers trans people face every day:  We are sixteen times as likely as anyone else, and twenty times as likely to experience a violent assault.  We are also far more likely than other people to encounter harassment, and even violence, at the hands of police officers.

So I can only imagine what my life would be like if I were a trans woman of color.  When I think of the times I've been harrassed by police officers--once on the street, the other time in my local precinct station--I imagine how much worse those encounters could have been were I Black, Hispanic or even Asian.

What I didn't tell the black man I met last week at BMCC is that, because I've had the experiences I've described, I was able to give him at least some of the "understanding" for which he thanked me.  I gave him my e-mail address "in case you want to talk," as I told him.  Whether or not I can help him, I can at least sympathize.  I think he knows that, even if he doesn't know why.

Man Charged In Murder Of January Lapuz

Many of us in the US see Canada--and Vancouver in particular--as a safe, tolerant haven. After all, it was the first country outside of Europe to legalize same-sex marriage, and Toronto and Vancouver are reputed to be among the world's more trans-friendly cities.

Even in those places, though, trans people are apparently not immune to violence and worse.  On 30 September, January Lapuz was found stabbed in her New Westminster, BC home.  She later died in the hospital.   Now a 20-year-old man has been charged in her slaying.

If it's not disturbing enough that the social coordinator of Sher Vancouver (a South Asian gay, lesbian and transgender group) was murdered in metropolitan Vancouver, it would come as another shock to most people to realize that the arrest in her case represents more police work than is done in most other places on most other cases of murdered transgender (or otherwise gender non-conforming) people.   

Sher Vancouver founder Alex Sangha correctly sees Ms. Lapuz's murder, and that of other trans women, as part of an even larger problem.  "There's violence against women, period," he explained.  "[A]nd, if you're different, you're even more vulnerable."

Perhaps that is one reason why there were people who sought to minimize this tragedy.  Although British Columbia isn't Brazil, there is still enough ingrained misogyny that some people sought to, in essence, blame Ms. Lapuz for her stabbing.   When some of the local media reported that she'd been a prostitute, one commenter even said, of her murder, that he was "relieved" for his family.  "I don't have room in my heart to love a gangsters (sic), or a crackhead or an alleged hooker," he explained.

Even if she had been a "hooker", how in the world could he compare her to a gangster, or even a crackhead?  One reason why a larger percentage of trans people than other kinds of people are involved in sex work is that too many of us have no other way to make a living.  Even in a relatively trans-friendly city like San Francisco, in the relatively good economy of 2005, it was estimated that half of all trans people didn't have legitimate paid work.  Much of that, of course, has to do with discrimination.  But many other trans folk--especially the young ones--were bullied out of their schools or kicked out of their homes.  They have no credentials and, too often, lack skills because they've missed so much school and have had chaotic home lives.   So few, if any, legal jobs are available to them.

Even in the unlikely event that she became a prostitute by choice, it is no reason to dismiss the tragedy of January Lapuz's death.  If any other woman--someone's mother, wife, daughter, sister, niece or friend--had been stabbed to death, someone would, rightfully, mourn her.  Ms. Lapuz deserves no less.

More About Kitty Genovese

I realize now that yesterday I overlooked something very important when I was writing my post about Kitty Genovese:  the gender power structure that existed at the time of her murder.

Why is that important?, you ask.

Well, while I have my doubts that 38 (or whatever the number) people witnessed her murder and did nothing, and even graver doubts that anybody saw the incident from beginninng to end, I do think that some who heard the screams may have reacted from the (mis)conceptions that existed at the time.

At that time, it was commonly assumed that if a man attacked a woman--whether physically, verbally, emotionally or financially--"she must have done something to deserve it." 

According to the attitudes of the time, if a woman was raped, her skirt must have been too short, her heels too high or her blouse too revealing of cleavage.  Or, she was someplace where she shouldn't have been, or been there when she shouldn't have been there.

In line with that way of thinking, if a man yelled at or beat his wife or girlfriend, she must have done something to make him unhappy.  Perhaps the meal wasn't to his liking or the house wasn't tidy enough.  Or, maybe she withheld sex (although nobody would come out and use the word) when he was tired and needed to "get his rocks off."  There was also the possiblity that she "didn't know her place," which meant that somehow she didn't bolster his sense that he "wore the pants" and was therefore in charge.

Just today a colleague at work told me that after her first marriage ended--not long after Genovese's murder--people, including family members and people she beleived to be friends--echoed the things I recounted in the previous paragraph.   Nobody talked about "domestic abuse" in those days, and those who were subjected to it faced ostracism and sometimes even legal troubles, and often medicated themselves or did other self-destructive things.  Even clergypeople and psychotherapists, to the extent that they knew or discussed such problems, advised battered women to try to "make amends" with their husbands, and to try to please them more.

All of the notions and attitudes I've mentioned were voiced by adults I knew during my adolescence, about a decade after Genovese was left to die in a Queens doorway.  In fact, well into my adulthood, I heard people who urged sensitivity and understanding when it came to other issues echo the notions I've described.  I even heard women voice their support for men who abused their significant others, and denigrate those who were battered.

Now, I don't want to insinuate that all of Kitty Genovese's neighbors were misogynistic, any more than I'd want to portray them in the way they have been by the media, and even in academic journals.  Rather, I think that if some of them heard those screams--and it's entirely possible that they didn't, or they mistook them for those of a lover's quarrel or rowdy bar patrons--they may have been acting, or basing their inaction, on assumptions they didn't even realize they held.  In fact, almost nobody who held such assumptions would have recognized him or her self as having an internalized misogyny because most people had it, to one degree or another, at that time and long after.

I know I had it, too, and it was entwined with my internalized homophobia--or, more accurately, internalized phobia about anything that wasn't heterosexual and cisgendered.  They are among the factors that prevented me from transitioning earlier in my life than I did.  At least I got to live a life, at least more than poor Kitty Genovese did.

The Childhood We Always Wanted

The other night, when Pauline and I were scavenging the racks at The Strand bookstore, I found a copy of "Blinded by the Right."  In it, author David Brock tells the story of how he sold out his principles to become the one who wrote "The Real Anita Hill," among other things.  


But what's truly heartbreaking about it is that he was, from his early adolescence onward, a closeted gay male.  His father was even more conservative (in the truest sense of the word) than his colleagues and bosses in the right-wing publications and think tanks for whom he worked.  As he became more and more enmeshed in the world of right-wing punditry (I was tempted to write "puppetry."), he became more and more fearful. As you might imagine, the circles in which he traveled were inhabited mainly by men who wanted to be, well, men, at least by their definitions of the word.  So homophobic and misogynistic epithets were as much a part of their vocabulary as the names of tools are in the language of a construction worker.


At times, Brock says he was trying to gain approval from his father, who never wanted to hear about his boyfriends or any other aspect of his homosexuality after he "came out."  You might say that he was looking for surrogate fathers among his editors, coaches and others who mentored him.  He also felt as if he were always the "outsider" and could operate in no other way. That is the reason why his first political hero was Robert F. Kennedy, but by the time he was a sophomore in college, he was hanging out with the Young Republicans.


Through it all, he felt intense isolation and loneliness, to the point that he couldn't form relationships even if he'd wanted them.  That sounded all too familiar to me.  


I think of that now when I replay, in my mind, a conversation I had with someone who said that he felt gays were always "throwing their preferences in other people's faces."  Now I wish I had explained this:  When you're straight and cisgender, you don't really need to assert your desires:  People assume that you want to have a relationship--in whatever form it might take--with a member of your opposite gender, and that you want to, in some ways, fit collective notions of how members of your gender comport themselves.  When you don't have the same attractions the majority of the population feels or don't think you are the gender to which you were assigned at birth, you must speak up for yourself, especially if someone thinks he or she can "change" you by finding someone for you.


But this self-repression that so many of us practice, whether we are forced into it or feel as if we are, is inevitably self-destructive.  It leads some of us to abuse substances, and others (or sometimes the same people) into abusive relationships.


Some people, of course, want us to conform to their notions of gender identity and sexuality no matter how much harm it may do us. But there are others who simply don't, through no fault of their own, understand why  you cannot be a part of the gender binary or the heterosexual world.  In other words, they simply don't know how to support us in the ways we need.  


Now, at least there are more people who understand than there were when Brock, Pauline and I were growing up.  But I hope there will be more.

Recovering From An Earlier Season

Heavy rain continued to fall this morning, but it had tapered off to a drizzle by the middle of the afternoon. I went out for a walk; I actually rather enjoy the drizzle, even on a rather chilly day.

A few people strolled with their dogs. All of the canines seemed to know me, even though I couldn't recall seeing any of them before and I haven't had a dog in a long time. Do they know that I have two cats? Sometimes I think I should have been a veterinarian.

Anyway...Another season will soon have passed. In three weeks, it will be Easter. Mom and Dad plan to come up this way that weekend. As we grow older, they talk a lot about what could have been or, at least, what they wish the past had been like. I suppose just about everybody does that. And I suppose that the things they missed, or the things they would do if they could go back in time, aren't so different from what many other people would have wanted. He says he would have liked closer relationships with his family and wishes that he had more of a life outside of work. So many other men of his generation--who similarly devoted themselves, whether out of necessity or choice, to their jobs and careers-- say such things. She says that she would have married and had kids later than she did, after getting more education than she has. Other women--who, like her, followed the unwritten timetables women of their generation followed-- have told me similar things.

For me, thinking about what might have been becomes very complicated. On one hand, there are some aspects of my earlier life that were very good. For one, I had--and, thankfully, have--a great mother. A social worker with whom I talked as I was about to start my transition said that I was one of the few women, trans or otherwise, she met who didn't have "mother issues." And, I had the opportunity to travel and do some other interesting things. However, there is that one huge "what if"--about my identity, of course: What if I had been raised as a girl named Justine, or with any other girl's name? What if I could have experienced my birthdays, the holidays and the seasons as the person I actually am?

Even though the past few months have included a bit more drama than I'd anticipated, I still feel that in some way it's been a kind of hibernation. I don't mean that in a negative way: These past few months have been a time to recuperate. In the summer--or the part of it that remained after my surgery--and for the early part of the fall, I was recovering physicall. During that time, I also experienced another kind of recovery, which has continued: from my previous life, or more precisely, its effects.

Probably the worst thing about my previous life, and the thing that has made much of my recovery necessary, is a particular psychic scar that is just starting to fade. All of my life, I somehow felt "less than." Other people could find happiness and fulfillment in marriage and families; I could not. They could feel comfort in their own bodies and secure in their persons; I could not. They could love and be loved, by others and themselves; those things, it seemed, were not permitted to me. And, perhaps worst of all, they could be unselfconscious in ways that I could never be: They did not have to censor themselves in expressing their desires and dreams.

Now I realize why the college feels so oppressive to me: There are a lot of people there who don't--and possibly don't want to--realize that I am not "throwing my sexuality in anyone's face." For that matter, I'm not throwing anything in anyone's face. Other people can keep photos of their spouses and talk about their kids, and no one thinks it's "obnoxious." Or they can announce that their getting married or that a kid's on the way and no one expresses discomfort.

But when you're trans--or gay, for that matter--people ask, and then they're upset with you for answering--or not answering--them. Or else someone in a position of authority tells you "It's not an issue as long as you don't make it so," then treats you in exactly the kinds of ways that can lead you only to the conclusion that your "issue" really is the issue.

What they don't realize is how much privilege they have because their gender expression and sexual inclinations are so assumed to be the normal ones that they're almost never noticed, let alone mentioned. Shortly into my transition, I realized that privilege is something that you don't realize you have until you lose it.

Maybe that's why lately I've felt frustrated and drained when I'm at the college and not in the classroom: It's a reminder of the inferiority complex that I had internalized so thoroughly, from which I am only beginning to recover.