Condoms and diaphragms can't always protect us.  Sometimes we need an umbrella:

From Prezi

 

Their Trouble With Harry

The other day,  I posted a video of an interview in which Janet Mock turns the tables on Alicia Menendez.  It shows how, too often, we are trivialized by those who see us only in terms of our surgeries, treatments and "the moment".

(Is it any wonder that many of us have body image issues?)

Well, obsession with the fact that we're trans--or whether or not we fit into someone's idea of what a trans person is--also leads others to be trivialized, in life and in death.

Almost nobody has heard of Annie Burkett.  Although she was the victim of one of the most brutal murders committed in Australia, people heard little about her even in the days immediately after her death.  Instead, the focus turned on her killer.

Or, rather, the Australian press paid attention to the fact that the killer, born in Italy and named Eugenia Falleni, lived in Australia as a man named Harry Crawford, and so became Annie Burkett's husband.

You can read more about it here.

To be fair, one reason why the gender identity of the killer was so sensationalized was that, in the 1920's, members of the Australian press--like most other people, including those in the medical professions--lacked a context for thinking about, let alone a vocabulary for describing, gender variance.

Police cited Crawford/Falleni's "deception" of living as a man as proof of an immoral character, one capable of such a horrible murder.  Unfortunately, too many people today would see it the same way.  They do not realize that people like Crawford don't commit crimes because they are transgendered; rather, they are trans people who happen to commit crimes.  And the victim is forgotten while the victimizer is trivialized.

Crawford/ Falleni was condemned to die for the crime.  But the sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.  After serving eleven years, Crawford/Falleni was released on the condition that he lived the rest of his life as a woman.

Of course, this story begs the question of the circumstances under which Ms. Burkett married Mr. Crawford.  If she didn't know about his identity when she met him, she must have found out in fairly short order.  And, if she knew, it begs another question:  Could their marriage have been a cover for a lesbian relationship, which surely would have brought them more opprobrium than it would today.

Why Do We Need A Parade For Our Journeys?

Is Brazil one of the world's most progressive countries when it comes to attitudes about gender and gay rights?  Or is it a conservative Catholic country that's just another fuel shortage away from returning to the military dictatorship it endured for two decades?

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, it's both.

As Taylor Barnes points out, drag shows were popular in Rio de Janiero during the 1950's and 1960's.  However, as we have seen, people's willingness to go to shows in which drug-addled men don garish clothes and layer crude makeup on their faces has little, if anything, to do with how much those same people would accept their children if they "came out" as gay, lesbian or transgender.  In fact, sometimes the same people who go to drag shows commit violence--whether or not it's physical--against people who don't fit their culture's gender norms.

Then, of course, there is Carnival, which may well  be the greatest concentration of men in drag as well as flamboyant gay men in the world.  (Interestingly, in celebrations like Carnival or the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, one rarely, if ever, sees women dressed as men or butch lesbians.)  And, as Barnes points out, the careers of transgender models are prospering in Brazil, perhaps more than in anywhere else in the world.

Same-sex marriage is legal in about half of Brazil's states, and laws about gender identity, while not quite as advanced as those in nearby Argentina or Uruguay, are still more in line with current knowledge about gender identity and expression than the laws in most US states.  However, those states that allow same-sex marriage are--not surprisingly--the ones that include the country's largest metropoli.  On the other hand, more rural areas still hold to their conservative beliefs (often based on the local priest's or politician's interpretation of faith) about sexuality and gender.

Now, I've never been to Brazil, so I can't tell you whether it's "better" for trans people than other places.  However, at every Transgender Day of Remembrance commemoration in which I've participated, a fair number of the victims' names we read were Brazilian.  To be fair, plenty are Americans, too.  But I can't help but to think that transgenders face as precarious a situation in Brazil as we do anywhere.

And I don't know how much things will improve if people continue to associate us with the gross misinterpretations--or perhaps unintentional parodies--of womanhood exhibited by the drag "queens" of Carnival or Mardi Gras--or, for that matter, the Pride March.  As long as we're seen that way, we are in the same situation of African Americans in the days of Sambo.

What Do You Call Us?

From Rebloggy

Umbrella Term

People often conflate the terms "transsexual" and "transgender".  As I understand it, I am transsexual, and what differentiates me from a transgender is that I actually live, and have lived, as a woman and have taken hormones and undergone surgery.  A transgender person, meanwhile, is someone who crosses gender norms.  A drag queen or king is an obvious example of that, but as one infographic tells us, most of us are at least a little transgendered.  It's kind of funny to think that, as a transsexual woman, I can also be transgendered (at least, according to society's norms) because I fix my bikes (and, sometimes, other people's) and don't always dress or act in feminine ways.

Anyway, here's the infographic, which originally appeared on Flux:

 

A Transgendered Bicycle?

Mixte bicycles are often referred to as "unisex".  Although the top tube, which is horizontal on a diamond or "men's" frame, slopes downward (and is sometimes split into smaller twin parallel tubes), it doesn't tilt as far downward as the top tube of a traditional "women's" bike.  Also, the top tubes of  traditional women's bikes are often curved near the point where they meet the seat tube.  

Whatever the designations and nomenclature,  the truth is that, at least here in the US, female cyclists are much more likely than males to ride mixtes.  And one rarely, if ever, sees a male cyclist of any age on a traditional female bike.

Some comedian--I forget who--once joked about getting hand-me-downs, and his older siblings were all girls.  I wonder how many boys have gotten bikes their older sisters rode before them.  And, of course, some girls received bikes their older brothers rode.  Believe it or not, one girl I knew was gifted with her older brother's Columbia diamond-frame (a.k.a. "men's") after its top tube was removed to turn it into a "girl's" bike!

But I never heard of anyone turning a female bike into a male one--until I saw this:

From Bicycle Shaped Objects

 As a result of "surgery" performed on it, this vintage Schwinn cruiser no longer has a down tube.

I have to admit:  I love the style.  But I'm not so sure I'd want to ride it!

Reporting On An Attack Against One Of Us

I guess we should be thankful for small things...as in, news coverage of the attempted murder of a trans person.

Normally, it seems as if we're vampires:  We're noticed only if we're dead or demons.  In either case, the truth is not told about us.

So it seems almost like progress when a murder attempt is made against one of us and it's reported without the implication that we "had it coming" to us.  That's what almost--almost--happened today.

An Associated Press story in the Naples (FL) News reported that 16-year-old Tavares Spencer was found guilty of attempted murder.  According to Tampa police, he met up with--and shot--23-year-old Terrience Mc Donald in April.

So far, so good (at least from a journalistic point of view).  However, the first paragraph AP story said that Spencer was found guilty of murdering a "transgender man".  Then, later in the story, the AP described Mc Donald as a "man who dressed like a woman".

In other words, the AP contradicted itself, probably without realizing it.  And, one might argue that there was an implication, however subtle, that Ms. Mc Donald brought her attack on herself.  

Still, the report is better than most others we see.  

Keeping The Faith

Like most other transgender people, I have experienced discrimination, shame, rejection and even hostility for living in accordance with my true self.

Now, as to whether I've experienced more or worse ostracism than others, I don't know.  I have lost longtime friendships, relationships with relatives and professional colleagues as well as access to people, places and things that were once part of my life.   

By the same token, I have been more fortunate than many other trans people--and many other people, period.  I have been welcomed by people and into places when I expected no such hospitality, and at times I have had glimpses into worlds I would not have considered in my old life.  

I'm thinking now of the first time I entered a mosque.  After I took off my shoes, a caretaker directed me into the area in which women prayed.  We sat on wooden chairs behind a partition about three feet high.  The other women prayed, some audibly.  A few retreated to a more private but still-visible area (from which they could have seen the rest of us), removed their headscarves and washed themselves.  

Granted, we were in the Sultanahmet or "Blue" Mosque in Istanbul.  But I had similar experiences in other Turkish mosques, in the countryside as well as the city, some of which were not visited by tourists or other foreigners.  While those visits, and the hospitality of both the women and men, left me with no desire to become a Muslim (or, for that matter, an adherent to any other religion), I felt privileged to be allowed to partake of what, for some people, is the most sacrosanct part of their lives.  

I hope that Lucy Vallender will have such experiences one day soon.

Three years ago, she had gender-reassignment surgery.  Before that, she'd been a soldier in Her Majesty's forces.  After her surgery, she met a Muslim man on an online dating site and became his second wife.  She is believed to be the first transgender Muslim woman in the United Kingdom.

Although she says she's happy with her marriage and new-found faith, she was upset witht the way her local mosque, in the southwestern city of Swindon, has treated her: She's not allowed to pray with the other women and, she says, worshippers have asked her rude questions about everything from her bra cup size to whether or not she has a period.  They've even asked to see her birth certificate.

When I took my trip to Turkey, I had been on hormones for nearly three years and had been living full-time as a woman for just over two; about three and a half more years would pass before my surgery.  I don't know how long Ms. Vallender had been living as female before her surgery or marriage but, from what I've read about her, I probably had more experience, if you will, than she's had so far.  Also, I was nearly two decades older than she is now, which may have given me some social and other skills she has not yet acquired.

I hope that nothing I've said seems condescending toward Ms. Vallender.  I suspect (or, at any rate, hope) that her faith, her love for her husband and his for her will give her the strength she will need to develop the patience she will need until people in her community understand (to the degree they can or will) and accept her. I believe that she will find such acceptance, and even the hospitality I've experienced, because in my travels and in my work I have met very, very good Muslim people--and, most important of all, because she has accepted and embraced herself. 

Hung In The Middle

One of my comments on my Huffington Post article about Don Ennis came from Alana Sholar.

It just happens that she's written a book, "Hung In The Middle", about her own story as a transgender woman in rural Kentucky.

She is a great example of something I've long said:  Nothing will do more to help people understand us than hearing our stories, whether in person, in print or elsewhere. Even the least articulate among us can, I think, have a greater effect (if a person is open-minded) than taking, as someone else so eloquently put it, "Remedial Trans 101 for the eighth time".

I intend to read Ms. Sholar's book.

Not A Luxury

Being transgendered is not a luxury.

To some of you, such a statement may seem so self-evident that it doesn’t need to be said.  To other people, it may be frivolous, blasphemous or worse.

Let me put it another way:  Living as one’s true self—that is to say, living with integrity and dignity—is not a luxury.

Likewise, loving whomever one loves, and being loved by that person, is also not a luxury.  Nor is having the ability to build a life around one’s relationship with such a person.

The notion that the right to  be ourselves and to love whomever we love are luxuries is, however, deeply ingrained in people’s psyches—not to mention our legal, social and economic systems.  I say this as someone who, until the time of her transition—and, in fact, well into it—thought that living as Justine was not as important or necessary as going to school, having a career, building a family or meeting all sorts of other expectations that had been placed upon me.  

The truth is, of course, that I was never terribly successful at school, work or life itself because I was spending so much of my time trying to live without what I needed, and in alienation from the person I am.  I wasn’t more studious or ambitious than I was because I figured that the grades, the accomplishments, the accolades and everything else simply weren’t going to matter.  Degrees, titles, careers, money, beautiful lovers and spouses, and all of the other accomplishments, accolades and trophies simply wouldn’t mean a damned thing because they wouldn’t make life worth living. 

I am trying not to turn this into a hateful, resentful rant against heterosexual and cisgender people.  What I am trying to do, among other things, is to point out that people who never felt any reason to question their gender identities or any inclination to love anyone who isn’t of the “opposite” gender—or not to marry—are not treated as if their identities and proclivities must be earned, if they are allowed to exist at all.  Of course, we tell people that it’s best to be established in a career, or at least to have a stable job, before marrying someone of the “opposite” gender and having children.  However, if they are having difficulty providing for their kids, or are going through “rough patches” in their relationships, nobody questions their right to be married or have kids.  If anything, they often find sympathy and even help, even if they were “too young” or “too poor” when they got married and had kids.  If one or both members of the couple has a reasonably good insurance plan, it will pay for the hospital stay and most other costs related to giving birth. And, as we all know, there are tax benefits (at least in the US) for being a married heterosexual couple and having kids. 

The fact that there is such approval and support for a man and a woman who have kids tells us that the so-called nuclear family is seen as a foundation of society and, therefore, not a luxury.  The legal, social and economic arrangements I’ve described also allow people in heterosexual marriages, especially if they have kids, to feel secure in themselves in ways denied to those of us whose sense of ourselves and who we love is not condoned, let alone supported, by society in general.  A number of studies show that married people (particularly men) make much more money than single people, and that their kids do better in school.

Now, of course, social conservatives would take that last statement as evidence that marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman, and that only people who are so married should be allowed to give birth to, or adopt, children.  But what it shows me is the importance of having a positive (though not overly egoistic) image of one’s self in attaining loce and other kinds of success.  To understand what I mean, all you have to do is to look at how much more likely despised or disapproved-of people are to be depressed, or to abuse substances, attempt suicide or harm themselves in any number of other ways.  I know this as someone who has done those things and was depressed for about 35 of the first 45 years of her life.  Now, I’m not saying that my gender-identity issues were the sole cause of those problems, and I’m not using the fact that I had to live as someone I’m not as the excuse for underachieving and other failures.  After all, some people have had the same problems as mine and attained success in one way or another.  But even those people—including a few I know personally—wonder how much more they could have achieved, or what different choices they might have made, had they been able to live and love their entire lives as the people they truly are.

Almost nobody denies that those who grow up poor and, as a result, attend bad schools or get substandard nutrition will have a more difficult time in realizing his or her potential.  I think that most of us would want to see talented, sensitive or simply ambitious kids get the kind of education that will help them realize their potential and dreams.  I think most people would also want those kids to get the help they need in overcoming the emotional difficulties they may have as a result of growing up in a fractured environment.

In other words, I don’t think that most of us would regard what those kids need as “luxuries.”  Why, then, shouldn’t we see someone’s need to be true to him- or her- self, and to love and be loved, as anything but necessities?

Why Should A 100-Year-Old Art Show Matter To Transgenders?

I believe that one reason why so many transgender people are involved with, or at least interested in, the arts is that envisioning and re-envisioning ourselves is not merely an intellectual exercise: it is an act of survival.

Through the years that we spend living in the "wrong" bodies, in whichever sex is indicated our birth certificates, we keep ourselves together with the hopes and dreams of the people we know ourselves to be, no matter how much they're buried in the costumes we don to get through our days.  Those visions might change over time, especially for those of us who do not begin our transitions until our fourth, fifth or sixth decades.  It's one thing to imagine yourself as a woman who looks like Rihanna when you're in your twenties; such a fantasy is silly or worse after we mature and encounter new definitions and images of womanhood.

In other words, we start to understand the essence or life force of the gender in which we want to live.  The great artists, I think, have always seen people in terms of such forces.  That is the reason why, I believe, photographic "realism" is not always the best depiction of a human being:  You might say that I'm one of those people who believes that an artist's job is to reveal, not to depict or represent.

Such notions have made one art show in particular controversial, even one hundred years and a day after it opened.  When the works of some 1200 artists--most of whom are familiar to us today, but of whom few Americans had heard up to that time--exhibited in the 69th Armory Regiment on Lexington Avenue in New York City, spectators were confronted with depictions of the human body that some thought shocking or even obscene.  And it had nothing to do with nudity.

You see, at the Armory Show, as it's now called, people were confronted with such works as Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending A Staircase", Henri Matisse's "Blue Nude" and Pablo Picasso's "Head of A Woman."  None of these works reflected, in any way, classical depictions of the human body seen in the Renaissance (or, of course, ancient Greece and Rome) or the more symbolic representations seen in, say, medieval art. Instead, artists like the ones I've mentioned and sculptors like Rodin were more interested in the ways human bodies move and change across time and space, and how certain energies possessed by the people who inhabited those bodies changed, or didn't.

In other words, the people in those artists' works weren't static, in the spiritual as well as the physical sense.  They were moving toward something or another; they were in a state of becoming--or, if you like, evolving.  And, really, what better describes the process of transitioning from a life in one gender to living in another?

I'll end this post with an interesting historical note:  World War I broke out the year after this show.  The US got involved in it three years later, and the Versailles Treaty was signed a year later.  Mustard gas and other chemical weapons were used for the first time, which led to some never-before-seen neurological as well as physical disorders. (In the years after the war, medical journals were full of references to "shell shock," which is more or less what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.)  These developments led to a lot of research in neurology and endocrinology, which were new sciences at the outbreak of the war. One of the researchers who started to work in those nascent fields around that time is someone you've all heard of:  Dr. Harry Benjamin.

Brendon Ayanbadejo Gets It--Almost

Kelli Busey's Planet Transgender has become one of my favorite transgender-related blog.  Actually, it achieved that distinction not long after I discovered it.  She's usually on the right track and on point, and manages to be both assertive and gentle.

She shows all of those qualities in her most recent post.  In it, she mentions the support  Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo's attempt to express his support for transgender rights, as he understands them.  The only problem is that he understands them in the same way too many other well-meaning but misinformed people understand them:

If a woman wants to wear a man's clothes or if a man wants to wear a woman's clothes or you feel like you're a woman on the inside and you're really a man. Who cares? Let's just treat everyone equally. Let's move on. Let's evolve as a culture, as a people.”

My impulse is to be charitable with him. Some of us who are members of the gender-variant community, and some who spend a lot of time around folks like us, would excoriate him for showing that he seems not to understand the difference between a cross-dresser and a transgendered person.  Perhaps he doesn't understand such a distinction:  Somehow I don't think he doesn't know a lot of trans people or cross-dressers and doesn't spend a lot of time around people who are familiar with us.  That's all right:  Most people probably don't know any trans people, either--or, at least, they don't know that they know us.

Plus, I somehow get the impression that his heart is at least in the right place.  Basically, he's saying that we should try to get along and to realize that we're all in the same world, in the same struggle, together, and that we can and must move forward.

I don't go to Facebook very often.  However, I'm going to post a comment on his fan page.  In it, I will praise him for saying that we should treat everyone equally and "evolve as a culture", while pointing out the difference between transgenders and cross-dressers.

A Transgender Storm?

Well, so far, it looks like I've weathered Hurricane Sandy.  The lights flickered a couple of times but never went out.  In my neighborhood, about the worst damage I have seen is the awning that was blown off a Brazilian barbecue restaurant and landed in front of a housewares store two doors away.  A few trees lost limbs; millions of little yellow leaves are scattered everywhere. 

Max and Marley have been exceptionally cuddly. It seems that they simply haven't wanted to be away from my side.

They look the same as they did before the storm.  So, amazingly, do these plants in front of an apartment building at the end of my block:

Here's what they look like close up:

Even Hurricane Sandy was no match for them, which is said to be the most intense storm ever to strike this city.

It occurs to me now that this tempest, with all of its fury, had one of the most androgynous monikers of any named storm.  Could it be that the most potent, most destructive, natural event to hit this city in a long time, if ever, is a transgender storm?

If it is, it's further proof of what I sometimes tell people:  Don't mess with a trans person unless you want to incur the wrath of both genders! 

The Rabbi Says We're Not Ill

A British rabbinical student is on a crusade.

All right.  You might think I'm getting my medieval history mixed up here.  But I assure you that, in fact, a young Londoner studying for the rabbiniate is indeed a man on a mission.

I'm not talking about his efforts toward ordination.  He is asking the contributors to, and editors of, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual to change something they've done since the third edition of said manual came out in 1980.

In DSM-III, transsexualism was included for the first time.  It was classified as "Gender Identity Disorder," the first known use of that phrase.  In DSM-IV TR, a revision of the fourth edition, GID was placed in a category of sexual disorders.  

DSM V is in the works.  Maxwell Zachs, the rabbinical student in question, wants to see the de-classification of transsexualism as a mental disorder in the new edition of the manual.  "Gender is not an illness," he explains.  "It's just a part of who I am, like being Jewish or a vegetarian or sometimes talking too much!"

While re-classifying people like me and him might remove some of the stigma and alleviate some of the prejudice we can experience, it is not as simple a choice as one might expect.

You see, medical practitioners and administrators, public health officials and even pharmaceutical companies rely on the DSM to help them set priorities and policies.  So do insurance companies.  

So, if we are re-classified as "normal," that might actually make it difficult for many of us to get treatments and therapy.  While very few trans people have insurance policies that pay for surgery, many (myself included) were able to get our hormones and visits with doctors paid for, and psychotherapy partially covered.  And I have been able to get mammograms and, since my surgery, gynecological care.

If transgenderism is no longer considered an illness or disorder, insurance providers might decide not to pay for those things.  And some practitioners might not provide their services.  

Plus, I have to wonder whether it would make it more difficult for someone to file a complaint of discrimination, much less a lawsuit.  Could some judge or lawmaker decide that because a transgender is not ill, he or she doesn't need legal protections and is simply pursuing a "lifestyle choice"?

This is very interesting and controversial, to say the least!

A Double-Bind For Transgenders In Malaysia

In some predominantly-Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, there are, in essence, two sets of laws.  Sharia is Islamic law, which applies to people who are Muslims.  Then there are secular laws, which apply to all citizens and, in some cases, even to visitors who aren't Muslim.

As it happens, Sharia law includes a ban on transvestism.  In Malaysia, men who wear women's clothing can face prison sentences and/or hefty fines, depending on the Malaysian state in which they are convicted.

On the other hand, Malaysia's ban on homosexual acts applies to everyone in the countries.  Those who are charged with violating this law can be punished by caning and prison sentences of up to 20 years.

So, in Malaysia, cross-dressers--four of whom recently lost a court challenge to the country's ban--are in a real quandry.

Not only do they dress in women's clothing, they also take hormones and go by female names.  However, their identity cards and other documents identify them by the male names and gender assigned to them at birth.

The four trans women argued that the ban on cross-dressing voilates the protections for freedom of expression and against discrimination based on gender identity codified in the Malaysian constitution.  They also pleaded, unsuccessfully, for identity cards that identified them by their female names and gender--which, in essence, would allow them to live more or less fully as women--because of the discrimination transgender people face in their country.

Said discrimination may turn out to be the lesser of their problems.  Now that their identities are known, they are subject to the risk of harassment and violence.  And, because the Malaysian courts still categorize them as men, they run the risk of being prosecuted under the country's laws against homosexual acts should they have sex with men.

Voter ID: A Transgender Issue

You know it's election season when the issue of voter IDs comes up.

As you've probably heard by now, a federal court has struck down a Texas law that would have required voters to present government-issued photo IDs before casting their ballots.

In its ruling, the court cited the "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" that would be imposed by the law.  The fees for obtaining such documents can be a deterrent to the poor.  Also, for some, the logistics--such as transportation and, in the case of those with disabilities (who make up a disproportionate number of the poor), facilities--can keep people from getting passports, drivers' licenses or other such photo IDs.

Critics of the law saw it--rightly, I believe--as a very thinly-disguised attempt to suppress the turnout of "minority", particularly African-American, voters.  Another minority in particular would have been greatly affected by such a law.

I am talking, of course, about transgenders.  We all know how difficult it can be for us to obtain documents that allow us to go about our lives.  In most places, a person is identified by which he or she was identified at birth until he or she undergoes gender reassignment surgery.  (In some places, even that is not enough to gain legal recognition of one's true gender.)  As you can imagine, this is quite a problem for those who are living in their psychological and spiritual (i.e., true) genders in anticipation of their surgeries.  It's an even bigger problem for those who are living in their true genders but, for whatever reasons, can't or won't have the surgery or take hormones.

It's even more of a problem, I think, for someone who's changed his or her name, is living as his or her true gender but still has identification that identifies him or her by the sex assigned at birth.  Many trans people are in such a position because, while they are living for all intents and purposes in their true gender, it is not recognized as such because they have not had surgery.

I am not describing a hypothetical situation:  It was mine during the 2008 Presidential election.  And it is the current situation of a few people I know.  Fortunately for me, I wasn't required to show ID; I merely had to sign the roll book.  But others are not in such fortunate circumstances.

Now, I'll admit there are not nearly as many trans people as there are, say, African-Americans, Latino(a)s or even lesbians or gay men.  So some political strategists and everyday citizens may not believe that this is a "big" problem. Anyone who thinks that way should ponder these questions:  What if my right to vote were taken away?  Or, what if I still had that right but other conditions made it all but impossible to exercise?

Last time I looked, even minorities of one were entitled to the same rights and protections as everyone else.  Anyone who believes in fairness would want it for every one, every individual.

Then again, as small a minority as we may be, perhaps the folks who come up with voter ID laws want to suppress our votes as much as they may want to keep African-Americans away from the polling booths.  After all, we're probably just as likely as they are to vote for the President, even with the ways some of us have been disappointed with him.  I'm no political scientist and therefore have no numbers to back up what I've said, but I don't recall seeing any "Trans Folk for Romney" ads.  

Finding The Moves Within

A friend of mine is teaching me Tai-Chi.  

I'll admit I'm a terrible student--in most things, not just Tai-Chi.  Really, I am:  I'm a very slow and very poor learner.  I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that fact, for it is simply that: a fact.

Anyway, this friend has come to my place for the last couple of Fridays because, as small as my apartment is, I can clear enough space for us to have our "classes."  She cannot do the same in her apartment.

Notice that my instructor is female.  She's a trans woman.  I really don't think I could learn Tai-Chi any other way, at least not at this point in my life.  It's not that I think being a trans person makes her better than other instructors, although I think she's pretty damned good.  Rather, I feel that my ability to learn the moves, and the ways of thinking and visualizing that underlay them, could only be tapped by someone who has had to relate to her body in much the same way as I have had to relate to mine.

For all of the training I did when I was younger, and especially considering the high level of physical fitness I enjoyed for a time in my life, I really felt that my body was entirely graceless.  I have always felt clumsy, and believed that my ability to pedal or run fast (at least, relatively speaking) for long periods of time was in spite, rather than because, of my body's (in)abilities.  

My friend insists that Tai-Chi moves are "natural."  They don't feel that way to me.  Perhaps they will, with time and practice.  She says that the body, my body, really wants to make the kinds of moves she is teaching me.  I want to believe her--no, I do believe her.   I somehow understand that those moves, and the ability to move through the world with more confidence, is within me, much as Michelangelo's David was, as he said, already within the block of marble he sculpted and all he had to do was find and bring it out.

I can say something like that about my femaleness.  I am sure that no one besides Michelangelo saw David in that block of marble before he started chipping away at it.  In fact, I'd bet that no one could have seen David until Michelangelo's work on that piece of rock was well under way.  Likewise, only a few people would have guessed that I was about to undertake a gender transition before I started; and it took some time before strangers addressed me as "Ma'am" or "Miss" even when I wasn't wearing makeup or feminine clothing.

Perhaps those Tai-Chi moves are within me, and my friend is trying to help me clear away all of those things that are keeping them from coming out.  At least, that's what I hope.  Could it be that underneath everything, there's a Tai-Chi Tranny just waiting to enter the world?

Fading Away

Lately I find that this blog is about the only place in which I discuss my experiences of having transitioned and gone through the surgery, or my life since then.  It seems that the surgery itself is less momentous an event than it was at the time I had it, or during the days that followed.  And the transition that led up to it doesn't seem quite as important now.  Some might say that I'm starting to take those things for granted.  They may be right.


What I am noticing, though, is that there are things that I simply don't see the same way as other people.  As an example, I got into an e-mail argument/discussion with a couple of colleagues about bigotry against racial and ethnic groups.  Someone thought I was somehow implying that white people have never suffered discrimination.  I never said that; instead, I explained that indentured servants (to use an example said colleague mentioned) faced bias, but not on account of being white.  Furthermore, none were brought here against his or her will, as African-American slaves were.  And, I added, indentured servants could gain their freedom after completing their period of servitude, which was usually about seven years.  African-American slaves had no such option.


The colleague said that our conversation (which included other colleagues) was "strange."  I didn't ask her to elaborate, but she did:  "I never heard a white person say those things before."


What I didn't tell them was that now I understand what it's like to face bigotry over some congenital trait rather than something like class.  Plus, if I do say so myself, I have some idea of how fearfully complicated life can be.  People's actual or perceived identities are simply a reflection of that.  So it makes sense, at least to me, that I am seeing--and being seen, at least by some--as someone who's more than just a bunch of therapy sessions, a couple thousand doses of hormones and the surgery.  Somehow I think that's, at least in part, the reason why I find myself not talking about those things, and thinking less and less about them.  Now that I think of it, that was one of the goals of everything I did.  

Tyra Trent And The Violence of Poverty

I know it's the dead of winter and everyone's sick of it.  And some want to be cheered up.


Well, this post isn't going to do it.  But it won't contain any whining about my own issues.

Instead, it concerns something I thought about a while back.  Apparently, I'm not the only one who did.


The first time I attended a Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil--in 2002, if I recall correctly--I was shocked, but not surprised, by the number of trans people who met early and brutal deaths.  Nearly all of the victims whose names were read incurred multiple traumas, any one of which could have killed them. They were shot and then stabbed as they were bleeding to death, were bashed on the head with a baseball bat after being set on fire or chopped up after they were beaten, shot or bludgeoned.  In many of those cases, the investigators said they couldn't recall seeing any other crime so grisly.


As awful as those murders were, I thought, they were not the only violent ways in which trans people die.  There are the suicides--two of which I knew personally--and then the ones who die from the violence of drug addiction and homelessness.


Yes, I regard drug addiction and homelessness as forms of violence against those who incur them.  Some would argue that taking drugs is a choice and that anyone who really wants a job and a place to live can get them.  But things aren't quite that simple when you've been kicked out of your family after  "coming out"--after you stopped attending school because you've been beaten up too many times.  I know that almost anyone who becomes addicted to a substance--or to other things--is trying to deal with some sort of pain.   I also know that having no material resources, education or family (or some other network of people willing and able to give support)  is, too often, a recipe for homelessness.


What I have described is the reality for too many trans people.  That is something, it seems, people remembered as they were holding a memorial for Tyra Trent in Baltimore.  Her body was found in the basement of a vacant city-owned house in the Northwest part of that city.  She died of asphyxiation.


It's a terrible way to go.  So are drug addiction and homelessness, which have claimed too many lives--of transgenders and non-transgenders alike--in the area surrounding the house where Tyra Trent's body was found.  


All I hope is that if anything comes after this life, Tyra Trent will find the safety and security she couldn't have in this life.

Transgender Orthodox Rabbis?

Yesterday another prof in my secondary job told me about an interesting article she read in the Jewish Forward.  Given that the Socialist Party, once strongly allied with the newspaper, is all but non-existent in the US now and the overall rightward drift of popular discourse, the Forward remains a surprisingly liberal--and, at times, even balanced--newspaper.


Well, this prof--I can't decide whether she's maternal or friendly--had an adulthood epiphany that led to her living on a kibbutz and marrying an Orthodox man.  That, and motherhood, she says, have shaped her outlook.  The result of it is that she really does (or seems to) accept people who are different from herself as readily as she likes to believe she does.


And so I wasn't surprised at what she told me.  Actually, I'm not sure of whether it's what she told me or the fact that it was she who told me that I find less surprising.


According to the article she mentioned, there are now transgendered candidates for the Orthodox rabbiniate.  What's so intriguing about that, at least to me, is that it's happening in a segment of Judaism in which the sexes are segregated in many arenae.  I experienced one example firsthand when I taught in an Orthodox yeshiva.  It was an all-boys' school; in fact, the only female (if you don't count some guy named Nick who was years away from "coming out"  or any other woman manque who may have been there) was the secretary, who was the head rabbi's mother.


Every once in a while I think of what it might be like to revisit that yeshiva.  For all I know, the head rabbi and the other rabbis who were there when I taught may not be there anymore.  They may even be dead:   After all, they weren't young guys back then.  But if they're still there, I wonder whether they'd recognize me. 


What's really ironic is that, even though I'm not religious, much less Jewish, I can almost see myself as a rabbi sometimes.  In some ways, I teach like them:  I often answer a question with a question and show my students that the truth is not a destination; rather, it is something found in increments and pieces, and by degrees, along the way.


Plus, my students look to me for counsel on all sorts of matters, some entirely unrelated to the studies at hand.  It seems to me that rabbis do something like that, too:  they are counselors in things secular as well as spiritual.


But I assure you:  As exciting as the news is, I'm not going to rabbinical school.  Well, not yet, anyway! ;-)