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The death of a small child is, of course, a tragedy. It's all the worse when the child died in some brutal, painful way--particularly if he or she was abused by someone who was trusted to care for him or her.
Such is the story of Myls Dobson, a four-year-old boy found dead in a Manhattan apartment a month ago. Shortly thereafter, Janaie Jones--his babysitter--was arrested and charged with his murder.
The police weren't sure who his legal guardian was: His mother lost custody of him, which was granted to his father, who was in a New Jersey prison at the time of Myls' death.
Aside from the boy's death, the facts in the previous paragraph are--to me, anyway--the saddest part of this case. However, those details have been, for the most part, lost in what has passed for reporting on his case.
Every story I've read in print or online, or heard over the radio, regarding Myls' death has led off with this: The babysitter is transgendered.
She was born in Jamaica as Christopher Jones and, since coming to New York, has worked as a performer under the name Kryzie King. Little else is known about her, except that she was, apparently, the girlfriend of the boy's father.
In the month that has elapsed since they found Myls' battered body in a bathtub, I have heard almost nothing else about him, his parents or the case. Moreover, about all I know, to this day, is that Janaie Jones/Kryzie King was a transgender performer. And all almost anybody else knows is that she's a transgender who killed a child--which, in many people's minds, makes the incident all the more lurid and sensational.
When I was growing up, one rarely saw an LGBT character in a movie or TV show.
In fact, one almost never heard about "queer" people or characters in the news or other parts of the media. On those rare occasions when one appeared, he was almost invariably a gay man. And, if his sexual orientation was not denounced, there was an implication that it defined--in overwhelmingly negative ways--every other aspect of his character and life.
So, the few gay men we saw or heard about were shadowy, sneaky figures. They were seen as vaguely--or not-so-vaguely--dishonest. They were often double-agents or simply double-crossers, or their homosexuality was used to depict them as such.
One example is Clay Shaw, who according to his onetime lover (and male prostitute) Willie O'Keefe, discussed the JFK assassination with Lee Harvey Oswald and others believed to be involved in the killing. All of this is depicted in Oliver Stone's film JFK. Stone, of course, does not imply that either man's proclivity or interest in each other was a root cause of their involvement in the killing. But he shows how people commonly believed that such a thing was possible--and that O'Keefe's and Shaw's preferences and relationship (as well as the prison sentence O'Keefe served for solicitation) was used to discredit them.
Although some people have moved away from such attitudes--or, at any rate, wouldn't publicly express them--about gay men, transgender people are being portrayed as devious in almost exactly the way gay men were not so long ago. (Interestingly, there doesn't seem to have been a similar stereotype about lesbians.) Even people who have gay or lesbian family members, friends and colleagues--or who themselves are on the "spectrum"-- may hold or express the notion that trans people are fundamentally dishonest. In fact, I have talked--before, during and since my transition--with gay men and mental-health professionals who said, in essence, that trans people "just don't want to admit they're gay," as a onetime friend of mine put it.
So, although I was upset, I was not surprised to learn that Caleb Hannan had not only "outed" Essay Anne Vanderbilt; he used the fact that she was born male--something, apparently, only a few people knew--to explain her true dishonesty: lying about her academic credentials and work experience as a scientist, much of it as a private contractor to the Department of Defense. She apparently used those fictions to convince someone to invest in a new golf club she'd invented.
About all I know about golf is that Tiger Woods plays it (and the field). So I couldn't tell you whether Vanderbilt's club was everything she claimed, and her investor believed, it to be. But, apparently, some swear by it. Even Hannan acknowledged that he played a better game when he used it.
Now, if people like the club, they're probably not going to care whether she actually worked for the DoD or went to MIT or whatever. On the other hand, I can understand that someone would hold her, as a person, in low regard for lying about her credentials and just generally being a difficult person, as many have testified. After all, great ideas and creations don't always come from good people: Wagner was one of the greatest composers and most detestable human beings who ever lived. I'm not so sure I would have wanted Bach as a father, husband, brother, friend or neighbor, either. And T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Fernand Celine were notorious anti-Semites. Still, their flaws don't degrade the quality of their work, any more than Vanderbilt's fabricated resume makes her golf club less of a marvel than its enthusiasts say it is.
However, to imply that someone who was born with one of the most fundamental conflicts a person can live with cannot be anything but inherently dishonest as a result of that conflict, as Hannan does, is simply ignorant at best and vicious at worst. I can't help but to tend toward the latter interpretation: He portrayed Ms. Vanderbilt as one born to manipulate even though he knew about her suicide attempt--which he uses to further the idea that she was congenitally unstable.
But the real reason I am so upset at Hannan is that while he was "researching" his article, Ms. Vanderbilt took her own life. Now, I realize that it's probably not possible to "prove" that his outing her caused her to off herself. Still, I think he should be taken to task for "outing" someone who has the sort of history she had--or, for that matter, anyone who does not disclose that information about herself.
I realize that in writing this blog, and some of my other works, some people might think I'm giving them permission to "out" me to people who would use that information to portray me as a monster, criminal or worse. However, there are still many, many people who do not know my history and never will--unless, of course, someone "outs" me. As an example, I was renewing my state ID last week. The clerk did not know that, at one time, my name and gender weren't the ones on the card I was handing him. And, really, there was no need for him to know. I don't know whether knowing that aspect of my history would have changed the way he treated me (He was, in spite of the stereotype about Department of Motor Vehicle employees, friendly: Somehow we found ourselves talking about our cats!) or added another layer of bureaucracy to a transaction that, for most people, is routine.
I will probably never see that clerk again--or, for that matter, most people I encounter on any given day. They don't all need to know about my gender history and, really, have no right to know unless I disclose it (which, of course, I do on this blog). More to the point, neither they nor anyone else has the right to use it to paint me as anything other than I am, for better or worse.
Sometimes people don't understand why words are so important to us. Actually, they're not any more important to us than they are to anyone else. Some people think we're more "sensitive" to what we're called and the pronouns used to refer to us because they are not aware of the amount of respect for their dignity and persons they receive that trans--and, too often LGBT and other--people don't get.
An example of what I'm talking about can be found in a NY Times article about a fire that killed a trans woman on Saturday night. In the first sentence, Lorena Escalera was referred to as "curvaceous." These days, even the NY Post does better than that. I thought the Times stopped that sort of thing--if they ever did it--decades ago.
But it gets even worse. The article says she was "called" Lorena. Even the police report lists her name as Lorena; so did other documents referring to her. If she is not legally known by that name, she is, for all intents and purposes, Lorena. Why couldn't the Times recognize that? Or the fact that she was living as a woman--that, in fact, she is a woman. Al Baker and Nate Schweber, who wrote the article, simply had to say she was "born a male." No, they didn't even have the guts to say it themselves: They had to mention that "neighbors" said it.
Worse yet, Messrs. Baker and Schweber simply couldn't stop themselves from indulging in some cultural stereotyping. The noted that a debris pile outside of the apartment ravaged by the fire "contained many colorful items." They included "wigs, women's shoes, coins from around the world, makeup, hairspray, handbags, a shopping bag from Spandex House, a red feather boa and a pamphlet on how to quit smoking.
Baker and Schweber ended the article with a brief mention of another fire on the same night. In fighting that blaze, firefighters found the body of a man on whom the fire seemed to be concentrated. Around his charred remains, according to the reporters, were "a shopping cart, spackling buckets and clothing." Somehow I think Baker and Schweber made that list simply to highlight the "tranniness" of the belongings of someone "called" Lorena. And, oh yeah, we mustn't forget: This person called Lorena was curvaceous.
Not many people, it seems, are happy that Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her daughter. I am not quite happy about it, either. Well, to be precise, I'm not happy that a little girl died and the truth about her death may never be known. However, I am one of an apparently small minority who believes the jurors did the right thing in not charging Casey Anthony with the murder of her daughter Caylee.
One juror has said, in essence, that if you are going to sentence someone to die, you had better be certain that person is guilty of the crime for which you're condemning him or her. This, I think, is especially true in Florida, where the trial took place: Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia are the only US states to have executed more prisoners than Florida. This juror admitted that no one thought Casey Anthony was any sort of model citizen or mother: I don't know very many people who'd want their daughters to grow up to be like her. And I certainly don't, in any way, regard her as a role model for myself.
However, being an unsavory character and generally difficult to like (I have little trouble believing the prosecution's depiction of her as "shallow" and "egotistical.") doesn't, in itself, constitute guilt. Only evidence can, or at least should, do that, especially under the system of law that, thankfully, we still have in spite of some prosecutors', judges' and politicians' efforts to destroy it. While I'm willing to concede that the evidence might indicate that Ms. Anthony was a terrible mother and a not terribly responsible human being, that alone does not mean she is a child-killer, although my "gut" feeling is that if she didn't drown or suffocate or in some other way kill Caylee, she was probably responsible for her death through neglect, if nothing else.
Cops make arrests based on "gut" feelings all the time. Sometime those instincts turn out to be accurate. Whether they're right or wrong, though, juries aren't supposed to determine guilt or innocence based on them. Instead, jurors are supposed to make such decisions based on evidence. And, as the juror who was interviewed said, the evidence was inconclusive.
I think that LGBT people, and transgenders in particular, should be thankful for this decision and the system that allowed it. Too often, we are seen as guilty for one thing or another--usually some sexual offense--because of the images people have of us. What's even worse is that many of us have not done anything to merit the stereotyping and suspicion to which we are subjected. And, worse yet, there are some people who are willing to paint or simply use unflattering portraits of us--whether or not they're based on our behavior or characters--in their attempts to destroy us. I know: It's happened to me. All it takes is for one student who didn't like his or her grade, one person to whom one of us says "no," or one person who experiences any other kind of unfortunate and unexplainable event, and one of us can find him or herself fired from a job, evicted from our homes or even arrested or killed simply by painting unsavory pictures of us that others are all too willing to believe.
It doesn't matter that I don't drink or smoke, almost never party and have always been monogamous. It only takes one angry, vindictive person to use the stereotypes about trans people to "try" and "convict" me with people who have as much power over my life as those jurors and the judge had over the fate of Casey Anthony.
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