A Black Woman--Like Me? Like You?

You may have noticed that, until today, I hadn’t commented on the woman of Czech, Irish, Swedish and Native American ancestry who claimed she’s African-American and became the president of an NAACP chapter.  Frankly, I haven’t been thinking much about it, partly because I think the whole idea of classifying people by race is silly.  We’re All African; Get Over It!

But this morning I heard someone echo the canard conservative talk-radio personalities have been parroting:  If she wanted to portray herself as Black, it must mean that there’s no such thing as “white privilege”.  (If anything, those talk-radio guys show us that there’s no such thing as “white superiority”.)  People like them believe that laws to protect people of color, women, LGBT people and others are “special privileges”; never mind that white men have enjoyed such privileges since the day this country was founded.

It reminded me some things a few people told me when I was starting my transition.  “Oh, you’ll have it made,” said one.  “Men are going to hold doors open for you.”  Oh, sure, I transitioned for that.  And it more than makes up for the times I’ve been slandered (in particular by Dominick, but also by others) , accused of things I didn’t do, rejected and passed over for jobs. 

And then there was Elizabeth—who, I have since realized, resents anyone who is happier than she is—who accused me of transitioning so that I could “go to the top of the Affirmative Action food chain” and get a job that should go to her or some other “real” (Yes, she used that term!) woman. 

Uh-huh.  I took hormones and abuse, and underwent surgery, just so I could teach gender studies or gender theory or some such thing.  I can just imagine what someone like Elizabeth—who, I also realize, wants to be a Second Wave Feminist with a man who will support her—would, if she were black, say about Ms.

What I’m saying is that I made my transition so I can live my life—which, I suspect, is the reason why Caitlyn Jenner made hers.  In fact, I’d say that’s the reason, or at least an important reason, why most trans people go through their process of becoming who and what they are.  Really, there aren’t many—perhaps any—other reasons.

I suppose Rachel Dolezal  is claiming blackness for the same reason.  However, contrary to what some believe, that is about the only comparison that can be made between her and transgenders.  I’m not saying that a person couldn’t have been born in the “wrong” race; it’s simply something I don’t understand because I’ve never experienced it (though I’ve often felt I should have been French, which is a cultural—for me, anyway—rather than a racial identity).  On the other hand, I understand how it feels to have been born in the “wrong” body—which is still how most people define transgenderism.  More important, I understand what it’s like to be brought up, educated and acculturated in the “wrong gender”.  Most important of all, I have experienced growing up with the mind and spirit of a gender different from the one in which I was living and presenting to the world every day for the first 44 years of my life.

Hmm…Maybe I do understand a little more of Ms. Dolezal's dilemma than I thought.  But just a little.  Whatever the case, I find no reason to worry about whether she claims she’s black, white, Martian, Tralfamadorian or whatever.  All I can say is that it’s very, very unlikely she’s claiming blackness just so she can teach Black Studies or be the President of an NAACP chapter.  After all, as a white woman, there are all sorts of other things she could do—even though she wouldn’t have the same access and other privileges white cisgender men enjoy. 

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.

How Many Stereotypes Can You Maintain With $200,000?

Sometimes you can tell that someone just had to get a grant--whether to secure tenure or some other kind of promotion, justify his or her (or his or her organization's) existence--or get another grant.

Actually, sometimes it seems as if at least half the grants in this world fall into that category.  Perhaps I'm cynical from having spent so much time in the academic world, but I have heard of more than a few studies or projects and wondered, "The world needs this...how?"

I found myself asking that question when I read that the National Institutes of Health are  spending nearly $200,000 ostensibly to study how transgender women use social networking sites like Facebook, and how said use affects their chances of getting HIV.

What have the folks at NIH learned?  Well, they say, transwomen use Facebook and the like to "develop social support structures, connect with members of their community, receive positive and re-affirming perspectives on their gender identity and inform behavioral norms."

No!  Really?

I mean, couldn't the same be said of any member of an isolated, discriminated-against community...or any number of teenagers?  Or Goths? Or anyone with a hobby, a fetish or any interest, whether or not it's in the mainstream? Isn't that one of the reasons why people--especially the young--use Facebook:  to engage with people they can't meet in person or to enter worlds they're too shy to encroach upon?

The study also says trans women use social media to find illegal hormones and sex-work partners.  I mean, really:  This reinforces stereotypes about us that, really, are just exaggerations of the worst characteristics of the most deviant members of any group of people-- the ones who want to use engage in illegal or un-approved behavior.

Plus, as Kelli Busey of Planetransgender, points out, plenty of trans people have no access to the Net because they're homeless or simply too poor to afford a device or connection, or even time in an Internet cafe. We are disproportionately poor and homeless, and many spaces are off-limits to us, especially if we are, or are perceived as, poor, homeless or sex workers.

So what, exactly, is the NIH trying to accomplish with the study?  Kelli and others have suggested that it might be a way the government is spying on us.  I wouldn't discount that idea.  But I stick to my theory about needing a grant for the reasons I mentioned.  When people and organizations get and use grants for those reasons, they've already made up their minds about their subjects and the conclusions they will reach about them.  

Beside Themselves

A friend of mine read the article I posted the other day.  She was involved in the struggle to legalize same-sex marriage in New York State.  Several years before that legislation passed, she was married to her longtime partner in Canada.

This friend and I were talking about what’s happened in Utah, and about civil rights in general.  She reminded me of something which—surprisingly, given that the legislation in New York passed only two and half years ago—I had forgotten.

Here it is:  One of the arguments made against passing the same-sex marriage law was that it would discriminate against straight people, as it would not guarantee their right to marry gay people.

I wondered what it is about same-sex marriage that drives supposedly well-trained and talented legal minds to such contortions of logic as the one she recalled-- or the argument, made by same-sex marriage foes in Utah, that if diversity is a valid criterion for college admissions, it should also be a criterion in deciding whether or not people should be allowed to marry.

My friend had an explanation:  When people who don’t have much else, they will grasp onto whatever it is that (at least in their minds) separates them from people who are even lower on the socioeconomic ladder than they are.  Politicians like George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan exploited this; folks like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are trying to do the same.  How else can they consider poor and working-class white people in the South and Midwest to vote for candidates like themselves:  the ones who align themselves with the plutocrats who imperil whatever separates those white people from the perpetually destitute blacks and other members of “minority” groups.

It sounds, to me, like a good explanation of why, in spite of the gains we’ve made, the condition of transgender people is still like that of gays and lesbians thirty years ago.

Reality=Porgography?

I found this great infographic that expresses some of the stark realities of transgender life:

However, when I tried to access the site on which it appeared--transfeminism.tumblr.com--it was blocked as "pornography".

Hmm....

The George Zimmerman Verdict

Being a trans woman, I know what it's like to be presumed guilty simply for being who and what you are.  And i have had people--including someone I mentioned recently on this blog--use that aginst me.  And he got off nearly scot-free.

When a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin, the storyline included everything in the previous paragraph, except for the trans part.  Zimmerman saw a black kid in a hoodie and figured he must have been up to no good.  And he knew that in an almost entirely white and very conservative part of Florida, many people would share his assumption of Martin's gullt.

To be fair, the jury--which consisted entirely of women, some of whom were mothers--expressed justifiable doubts about what they were hearing in both sides of the case.  Beause Trayvon Martin is dead, there is much that we will never know; whatever happened, George Zimmerman was probably not in a normal state of mind, so even if he was being entirely honest, his testimony (let alone his lawyer's) could not be entirely accurate.

Even if he were in a "normal" state of mind--which would have been all but impossible in such circumstances--I would still have doubts about his account of events. However, even if I or anyone else were to discount such doubts, I still believe that Zimmerman should have been indicted for something, if only manslaughter.

When I was in ROTC (!) a long time ago, I underwent firearms training.  The instructor--who, I was convinced at the time, could have ended up in prison instead of the Army had the screw been turned just a little differently--told us something I never forgot:  "If a gun is in your hand and a bullet comes out of it, you are responsible for where that bullet goes and what it does."

In other words, he said, if your gun fires "accidentally", you are responsible for whatever damage or loss of life results.  "If the bullet from your gun hits me, it'd better kill me," he warned.  "Otherwise, I'll find you wherever you are and finish the job."

That is not only the best (well, only)  instruction I ever got on firearms safety; it's one of the best lessons on personal responsibility anyone ever gave me.  

And so, whether Trayvon Martin was on top or on bottom, or wherever George Zimmerman aimed or didn't, he was responsible for Trayvon Martin's death. Perhaps the jurors didn't understand that, or whether or how they could have voted for a manslaughter convicion.  Or they may have simply been exhausted.  Whatever the case, justice was not done for Trayvon Martin and his family.

Please Don't Approach Me As A "T"

Today two different people approached me to help with something called "Safe Zone" training.  And I reacted in two completely different ways.


No, I haven't suddenly gone bipolar.  At least, I don't think I have.


At my first job, I heard someone rasp, "Hey, Professor" a few feet behind me.  The voice belonged to a longtime prof who, a few years ago, swore me to secrecy when she told me what I already knew:  She is a lesbian.  Today she denied that she ever extracted that promise from me.  Well, whether or not she did, I assured her, whoever knows about her didn't learn about it from me.  She thanked me for that, and mentioned that she wanted to do the Safe Zone training.


"It's for the benefit of LGBT people," she explained.  "And we don't have a T."  


I explained--truthfully--that I couldn't do the training session because it conflicted with a class at my other job.  "Well, we hope to have another training soon after," she said.  "Hopefully, you can do that one.


I didn't respond to that.  Thankfully--for me, anyway--a student approached me to ask when I would be in my office.  Thank you, student!


At my second job, I met, for the first time, a prof with whom I'd had an "argument" on the online Community Dialogue for the college's faculty and staff.  Actually, he agreed with most of what I said, except for one point in which I compared the way the Democrats take "minority" support for granted to the way the faculty union treats adjunct instructors.  He admitted that he would like to convince me otherwise.  He also said he wanted to talk about the ignorance and hate that, he feels, are part of the faculty and staff culture.


"I've read your blog," he pronounced, "and it confirmed what I thought after reading your comments--you're a courageous person. And I'm drawn to corageous people."

After that, he mentioned the idea of Safe Zone training.  By that time, I had about two minutes before the start of my next class. "Let's talk some more about that," I said.


I'm not sure of whether I did the best or dumbest thing I've done since I started working there.  Or maybe I did neither.  All I know was that I felt less like I was being approached as a T and more as a W or F.  Or maybe as J.

Walking With Our Heads Up

After reading Diana's post today, I checked out one of the links she provided.

That there is discrimination against transgender people is not news to me. Nor is the knowledge that trans people of color experience even more discrimination than those of us who are melanin-deficient.   If those facts were all the survey revealed, I would not be thinking about it now.

However, the researchers who compiled the report Diana linked seemed to understand the limits of so many previous studies.  Those earlier surveys and reports indicated, for example, that we are much more likely than everyone else to be unemployed, experience harassment, try to kill ourselves or to be killed by someone else.  But they missed two other key elements of our lives that "Injustice At Every Turn" conveys about as well as anyone can with statistical narratives.

The first of those elements is the cumulative effect of our experiences.  According to the report, nearly two out of every three of us have experienced a "serious act of discrimination," which the authors define as "events 

that would have a major impact on a person’s quality of life and ability to sustain themselves financially or emotionally."  Those events include, but are not limited to:

• Lost job due to bias

• Eviction due to bias

• School bullying/harassment so severe the respondent had to drop out 

• Teacher bullying 

• Physical assault due to bias

• Sexual assault due to bias

• Homelessness because of gender identity/expression

• Lost relationship with partner or children due to gender identity/expression

• Denial of medical service due to bias

• Incarceration due to gender identity/expression.

Worse, nearly one in four of us has experienced "catastrophic" discrimination, which the researchers define as experiencing at least three of those life-disrupting events.  

The second dimension of our experiences that the researchers managed to convey was what we develop in part as a result of our experiences:  resilience. More than three out of every four of us report that we felt more comfortable at work and our performance improved after we began to transition, even in spite of the discrimination and even harassment many of us experience.

And we still manage to get hormones, as well as the other medicines and treatments we need, in spite of the discrimination or structural barriers we face in getting health care.  We lose jobs and aren't considered for others because of bigotry, but somehow many of us still find employment.  We find places to live after we've been kicked or kept out of other places because of bias, and we're three times as likely to return to school after the age of 25 even after so many of us were essentially bullied out of our high schools and colleges.

But, most important of all, we keep our self-esteem--which many of us found only upon coming to terms with who we are and deciding to live in accordance with it (whatever that may mean for us)--even in the face of rejection from partners, family members, colleagues and people who were friends.  As one survey respondent said, "I have walked these streets and been harassed nearly every day, but I will not change.  I am back out there the next day with my head up."

Tyler Clementi, Rutgers and Me

Tyler Clementi's suicide prompted me to do something I don't do very often:  I found myself thinking about my own days at Rutgers.  I'm not going to express shock and disbelief, or murmur that what happened to him was inevitable.  However, I must say that even though I am upset, I am also not surprised.

When I attended Rutgers three decades ago, campus social life was still driven, to a very large degree, by the fraternities.  That might have been a consequence of the fact that Rutgers College (RC), the "original" school of Rutgers University (RU), was all-male for more than two hundred years and had begun to enroll women only four years before I started my freshman year.  So, by that time, there were only a handful RC alumnae, and nearly all of the college's faculty, administration and staff worked at the college when it was all-male.  

Then, as now, Douglass College (DC) was a school whose student body was entirely female.  It is to Rutgers as Barnard is to Columbia or Radcliffe to Harvard.   DC and RC students took courses on each other's campuses, though not as much as one might expect.  As a result of the small numbers of DC students, and even smaller number of female RC students, on the RC campus, women were still seen as the "other" --if they were lucky.  If they weren't, they treated as merchandise, especially if they were to go to, or even pass by, a frat house. 

I have been in environments that were even more dominated by males, at least in terms of numbers and male-to-female ratios.  But I don't think I've ever been in any situation in which as many men were as ignorant or contemptuous of women as the ones at Rutgers were in those days.  Because I was living as male in those days, male students often told me what they really thought about women, and referred to them by a few names I won't even soil my tongue by uttering.

In such an atmosphere, you can guess how gays and lesbians were seen.  (I don't think transgenders were even on the radar of most people.)   The term "hate crime" didn't exist in those days, but what we now refer to by that term happened with disturbing frequency.  I knew of a few gays who were beaten and a few more students who beat them up.  And I heard more than a few who bragged that they'd "beat the shit out of" some "gay-bird."

The gay-bashers, and more than a few who never would put a hand on anyone, made gays--whether or not they knew any--the objects of their prurient fantasies.  Some would follow gays, while pretending not to, and find out where they hung out. Still others posted placards or graffiti (We didn't have chat-rooms in those days.) on billboards, sign posts or other public places.  And, of course, speculation about some men's sexuality was scrawled inside bathroom stalls and over urinals.

From what I've heard, things haven't changed much at Rutgers, and I can say the same about the the wider world.  I know firsthand that if you don't fit into cisgender/hetero norms, people not only speculate, in ways they never would about straight people, they also think they're entitled to know, and to broadcast, the details of your actual or imagined sex life.  Why else would Dharum Ravi feel no compunction about secretly videotaping his roommate Clementi while he was having sex with another man?  And, worse, why did he think there was nothing wrong with posting that video on the Internet?

I'm glad that so many spoke up at the Rutgers rally today.  However, I'm sure that there are many more students who don't feel safe in letting their sexuality or gender identity become public knowledge.  Long before I got to Rutgers, I knew I didn't fit into any of society's notions about gender and sexuality.  However, I tried to fit into one or another of them; by the time I started my sophomore year, I was at my wit's end and thought, perhaps, that because I didn't feel the same urgency about having a sexual relationship with a woman as other males seemed to feel, I was gay.  

In fact, I "came out" to my mother and a few friends.  Ironically, those friends were in the campus Christian fellowship, which I joined (as I did so many other things) in desperation.  While some expressed disapproval, others said they "loved" me even as they "hated" my "sin," and still others told me to place my faith and trust in Jesus,  I actually felt safer there than I would have in almost any other venue in the university.  Part of that may have been a result of the esteem some of them--including the leader of the fellowship, who was my roommate for a year--felt for me personally.  It was such that, at the invitation of that leader, I was editing the fellowship's newsletter and leading a prayer and Bible study group, even though I hadn't been in the fellowship very long and, only a few months earlier, had never before read the Bible.

Although I am not religious--and, truthfully, never was--I can say that I graduated from Rutgers intact (more or less, anyway) in part because I was in that fellowship.  If nothing else, they encouraged me to study and even, at times, to stay in school. I was probably unhappier then than I've been before or since and, even though I was not reluctant to drink, I despised the frat parties and bars--and, in fact, pretty much the whole social scene, such as it was, that existed there. Even more important, I felt safer in that fellowship than I felt anywhere else in the university.  In fact, it was the only place where I felt safe at all.  The worst things I experienced there were somewhat sanctimonious or condescending lectures; elsewhere on campus, I could and did experience much worse.

Unfortunately, thirty years later, Tyler Clementi did, too--only even worse.