Michelle Dumaresq: 100% Pure Woman Champ

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance.  

This day was first observed in 1999, one year after Rita Hester was murdered in her Allston, Massachusetts apartment.  She was killed just two days before she would have turned 35 years old.


Her death came just a few weeks after Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die on a cold night in the Wyoming high desert.  Their deaths helped to bring about the hate-crime laws now on the books in the US as well as many state and local statutes.  Moreover, Hester's killing--while not as widely publicized as Shepard's--galvanized transgender activists all over the world.

Because I am--at least to my knowledge--the only transsexual woman with a bike blog, I am going to use this post to honor one of the greatest transgender athletes of our era.

Michelle Dumaresq was born in 1970.  In 2001, she entered and won her first competitive mountain biking event--the Bear Mountain Race in British Columbia, Canada.  After she won two more races, her racing license was suspended in response to complaints from other female riders.  The cycling associations of British Columbia and Canada, after meeting privately with race organizers, tried to pressure her into quitting.  Of course, she wouldn't, and after a meeting with UCI officials, it was decided that she could continue to compete as a female.

Other female riders felt she had an unfair advantage.  Their resentment was, not surprisingly, based on a common misunderstanding.  Dumaresq had her gender reassignment surgery in 1996, five years before her first victory, and had been taking female hormones--and a male hormone blocker--for several years before that.  By the time she started racing, she no longer had any testosterone in her body (Biological females have traces of it.) and she had lost most of the muscle mass she had as a man.

I know exactly where she's been, as I also had the surgery after six years of taking hormones and a testosterone blocker.  A few months into my regimen, I started to notice a loss of overall strength, and I noticed some more after my surgery.  Trust me, Ms. Dumaresq, as talented and dedicated as she is, had no physiological advantage over her female competitors.

I remind myself of that whenever another female rider (usually, one younger than I am) passes me during my ride to work!

But I digress.  Michelle Dumaresq had the sort of career that would do any cyclist--male or female, trans or cisgender, or gay--proud.  She won the Canadian National Championships four times and represented her country in the World Championships.  That, of course, made the haters turn up the heat.  When she won the 2006 Canadian National Championships, the boyfriend of second-place finisher Danika Schroeter jumped onto the podium and helped her put on a T-shirt that read "100% Pure Woman Champ."

Ms. Dumaresq would have looked just fine in it.

It's Not About Privilege. It's About How She Uses It.

OK, I'll admit it: I haven't watched "I Am Cait."  Then again, I haven't watched anything on television in a while because I almost never watch TV.

That said, I want to address remarks I've heard about it, and about Caitlyn Jenner's very public journey.  Those remarks have a common denominator:  privilege, or at least the word "privilege."  As in, "She's exploiting her upper-class privilege."  A few others have said she is using her "male privilege":  in essence, denying her transition and current life.  

The "male privilege" accusation comes mainly from TERFs and their allies:  After all, any man or any conservative who refused to see Caitlyn as female wouldn't see males as having privilege.  And, perhaps not surprisingly, the "white privilege" or "class privilege" whine doesn't emenate from the lips those who are darker or poorer than Caitlyn:  Those echoes of resentment come mainly from rich white cisgender heterosexuals who took a gender studies course or two.  Ironically, they are no different from white male conservatives in that they cannot see themselves as having privilege, but they can find it in a millisecond in someone else, whether or not that person actually has it.

There is no question that Caitlyn Jenner's celebrity--garnered mainly during her life as a man named Bruce--gives her more privilege than most people will ever enjoy.  And, if she's not part of the "one percent", she's close to it--which, of course, is another source of privilege.  Of course, being white doesn't hurt her standing, either.

Every male-to-female transgender I have ever known--I include myself--has lost some sort of privilege she didn't know she had when she was living as male.  This is especially true if said trans person is white:  As one black trans woman told me, "I don't feel I lost privilege because I had so little to begin with."  Whether the same thing will happen to Caitlyn remains to be seen.  Many of us are rightly celebrating her courage and integrity and, not surprisingly, some are mocking and hating on her.  Some of the haters probably own, or run, the companies that sponsor the programs on which Caitlyn has appeared, so it's hard not to wonder whether, after the attention she's now receiving has shifted elsewhere, she will lose some of her television work or be asked to make fewer public appearances in other venues.

I hope that nothing like that happens to Caitlyn.  As much as I'd like to have some of her privilege, I don't begrudge her for it.  If anything, I think she is using it well to call attention to such things as the suicide of a transgender teenager no one would have heard about if Caitlyn hadn't mentioned him.  Perhaps someone could knock her for taking a cross-country trip with her own entourage but, hey, if it helps to make us and our stories and struggles more real to the public, I have no problem with it.  If nothing else, such actions--and almost everything else she's done from the time Diane Sawyer interviewed her--has helped to break some of the old stereotypes about trans people.

If you're going to denigrate someone for having privilege, go after someone who's using it to bully or exploit people--especially if he's running for the Presidential nomination of his party.  But don't knock someone like Caitlyn, who's been using it for our betterment. 

Some Respect For India Clarke

Some people suffer violent deaths.  Worse yet, they suffer other kinds of violence after their deaths.  Such is the case for too many trans people, like India Clarke.  

Yesterday morning, a park employee found her battered body just outside of the University Area community center in Tampa Bay, Florida.  While her death has been ruled a murder, officials are not calling it a hate crime.  

Given the way, and by whom, most transgender murder victims are killed, it's hard not to think Ms. Clarke's death was motivated by bigotry. Still, I can understand why officials won't come to such a conclusion just yet:  More than likely, they can't, until they at least have a suspect.

But I can't understand why, in this day and age, some journalists and public officials don't identify victims like India Clarke by the names they used and the genders by which they idenitified.  In fact, some make it a point of misgendering victims or identifying them by the names assigned at birth. 

The Tampa Bay Times--which proudly announces that it has won ten Pulitzer Prizes on its front page--identified India as Samuel Elijah Clarke and said "the victim was dressed in female clothing".  And Hillsborough County spokesman says officials will not be identifying her as "transgender." 

What most people don't realize is that referring to trans people by the names or gender assigned to them at birth doesn't only hurt the feelings of other transgender people.  It can also impede an investigation.

I hope never to meet a fate like India Clarke's.  But let's say someone was to find me lying on the ground somewhere, beaten up or otherwise hurt.  If an investigation were to begin by identifying me as male and by my old name, some of my records wouldn't turn up, as all of my records now identify me as a female with my current name.  Mis-identifying me could keep someone from accessing my medical and insurance records, which could result in my not getting care--or, if I were identified as male, in getting inappropriate treatments.

Misidentification could have even more dire consequences for those who are in the early stages of transition:  Such people might be living in their true gender and chosen name, but their records might still be in the gender and name assigned to them at birth.  I know:  I was in that situation for about two years.  But even then, some people knew me only by as a female named Justine; they did not know my former name or, in a few cases, even that I had lived as a man.  Asking such people about me under my old name and gender would have drawn blanks--as they would from most people who know me now.

So, identifying us by the names and genders in which we live isn't just a matter of respect or dignity:  It can also be a matter of our lives. 

India Clarke, I hope that, wherever you are, you're getting the respect and dignity--and have the peace and security--you didn't experience in your death.

The Most Transgender-Inclusive Companies

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report, 90 percent of trans people have reported experiencing harassment, mistreatment or discrimination on the job--or hid who they are in order to avoid those things.  That same survey found that 47 percent of trans people experienced an adverse outcome--such as being fired or not hired, or denied a promotion--because they are gender non-conforming.

They're the lucky ones:  They actually had jobs.  We are more than twice as likely to be unemployed--or, worse, never to have had a job--than other people are.

In such a climate, it almost seems contradictory for someone to make the list of "the most transgender inclusive companies".  But that is what the Human Rights Campaign has done.

To be fair, there are companies that are making efforts to foster transgender inclusion in their work environments.  Some have gone as far as to create protocols to help workers transition while working for them.  

Some of those companies are the ones we might expect--like Disney, which has made great efforts to be LGBT-friendly before other companies thought of doing so.  Other such companies on the list are Nike and Starbuck's.

However, some are surprising--at least to some people.  Eastman Kodak has long been known for its efforts at inclusivity, which is surprising until you realize it's in Rochester, NY, which was one of the first cities to add language to include and protect transgenders in its human rights laws.  Then there are companies like Apple, Microsoft and other tech firms.  I'm guessing that they're "early adopters", so to speak, of trans-inclusiveness because to be technological innovators, they have to "think outside the box".  


What's truly surprising, though, is how many financial-services and insurance companies are on the list.  i guess they're realizing that it's best to recruit and retain talent, no matter what body it comes in or how it identifies itself.  At least, I'd hope that's true.
 

Karis Ann Ross: Bullying, A Sucide And A Cover-Up

Ever since Bruce Jenner "came out" as transgender in an interview with Diane Sawyer and introduced herself to the world as Caitlyn in Vanity Fair, many people have lauded her for "having the courage to be who she is".  Some commentators have been touting this time as a "new day" for trans people.  Indeed, they may be right.

However, I know from experience that once you've been praised for living as the person you are, there are people--sometimes the very same ones who praised you--who are looking to use your transition against you, or simply hold you to standards to which they would hold no one else.  And then there are those who are pure-and-simple bigots, or merely ignorant, and don't change.

Worst of all, the bullying doesn't end. Or, if you hadn't experienced it before, it will start.  A lot of people still associate bullying with kids in a schoolyard, but supposedly-educated adults can be just as vicious, perhaps even more so, to colleagues and neighbors.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an expiration date on hate:  I recall the time an African-American firefighter found a noose near his equipment in the Brooklyn firehouse where he was based.  And that was nearly a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation.  

Karis Ann Ross would have been 38 years old last Sunday.  She didn't reach that mark because she killed herself over the most recent Thanksgiving weekend.  Her mother has just gone public with the contents of a note Ms. Ross left, in which she named people--in particular, three aides who worked with her--who bullied the lead special education teacher in the Milwaukee German Immersion School.

All told, the bullying went on for more than a decade.  Ms. Ross and her mother, Jill Greinke, as well as other family members and friends, complained to Milwaukee Public Schools officials about the treatment she endured.  According to Ms. Greinke, those complaints were ignored, even when Ms. Ross and members of the medical community sent numerous e-mails to school officials, warning of a crisis.  The school prinicpal downplayed the situation rather than intervening in, or mediating, the conflict.

Worse, Milwaukee Public Schools made no attempt to contact her family for two weeks. The principal sent flowers and a card, but made no announcement to the school's faculty or staff. Instead, they learned of Ms. Ross's suicide from her uncle when he came to collect her belongings.

Ross's mother co-wrote an open letter to the schools superintendent with her friend, Madeleine Dietrich.  They expressed hope  the superintendent "will move forward with a renewed awareness of the grave responsibilities held by public schools in our society, not only in teaching our students, but in setting an example for our population through modeling tolerance for individual diversity and empathy for the plight of our neighbors".  

And Ms. Ross ended her suicide note with, "Love to everyone, even the rotten apples." 

 

Defending Wendy Williams, Sort Of

Today I am going to do something I never imagined I would do:  I am going to defend Wendy Williams.  Sort of.

All of the fans of hers I've met are--how can I put this?--the sorts of straight men who think that anything with 42DD cups can do no wrong.  All right, I don't know WW's bra size, but you get the idea.

The few times I've ever seen her show--which were purely by chance--she struck me as vulgar, obnoxious and ignorant.  And that's when she wasn't making transphobic or homophobic comments. 

Lest you think I am not being fair to her, I will now disabuse you of that notion--at least somewhat.  I don't know exactly what she said about Caitlyn Jenner and, honestly, don't care to know.  But after the Vanity Fair photo of Caitlyn appeared all over the Internet even before the issue of the magazine saw the light of day, someone used it to treat WW in a way nobody deserves:


I am Walter.  Now, if she were "coming out" as a man--as she has been rumored to be--why would she wear that dress?  Why would she wear her hair that way?  I don't think she's an attractive woman (What do I know?), but a woman she is unless she tells us otherwise.  

Some might say, "She had it coming to her."  No.  As tempting as it is to give a hater "a taste of her own medicine", it doesn't solve anything.  It certainly doesn't do anything to vindicate what Snoop Dogg and other transphobes said about Caitlyn, or any other trans woman.  It also doesn't bring back any trans woman--or man--who was murdered simply for being.  

More to the point, whatever one thinks of Wendy Williams (and I think I've made it abundantly clear that I don't think much of her!), she has the same rights as anybody else. One of those rights is to not be slandered or demeaned.  Or to have assumptions made about her identity.  

Laughing On His Way To The Dustbin Of History

In 1975, Minneapolis became the first US jurisdiction to ban discrimination "based on having or projecting a self-image not associated with one's biological maleness or one's biological femaleness."

In other words, four decades have passed since that language was added to the city's human-rights laws.  In the meantime, hundreds of other municipalities and thirty-two states (as well as the District of Columbia) have passed similar legislation.  Moreover, same-sex marriage is now legal in three dozen states; in 2003, none allowed it.

I like to think that these facts indicate a sea-change in attitudes about LGBT people.  I also would like to believe that they show--as the reversal of Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination, and the appearance of black faces on prime-time television, courtrooms, executive offices and operating rooms showed us--the homophobes and transpohobes, as well as racists and other haters, are losing the battle.  

Their time is running out and they know it. I read somewhere that within twenty years from now, non-white Hispanics will no longer be the majority in this country.  By that time, we will also have a generation of children raised by same-sex parents and, I hope, LGBT people in places in roles where they've never been before.  And most people will find same-sex couples and trans people no more noteworthy than a white American marrying an Hispanic, or a black to an Asian.

The prospect of such things, of course, infuriates the haters.  But, as I said, they know, deep down, they're losing the battle.  So they're becoming desperate--which makes them say ever-more ridiculous, stupid, disgusting and mean things.

Case in point: Mike Huckabee.  This Neanderthal Faux, I mean, Fox News commentator wants to be President.  So, not long ago, he said something very, very Presidential: If there were more transgender acceptance when he was in high school, he joked, "I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, "Coach, I think I'd rather shower with girls today".  

Ha, ha, ha.  One day the joke will be on him--and such luminaries as Ann Coulter and Matt Walsh--when they are relegated to the dustbin of history.

Can't Escape From Hate, Even In Death

On Thursday the 14th, Rachel Bryk's body was recovered.  She was found floating in the Hudson River, near the spot where she jumped from the George Washington Bridge three weeks earlier.

Seeing at least one of the comments in response to an article about the recovery of her body, it's easy to see why she killed herself.  In addition to the daily pain she experienced from her medical conditions, she put up with bullying and harassment.  Some even taunted her to kill herself.

Now she is no longer in physical pain (or so I assume).  However, as the comments indicate, she is still being tormented by haters. 

What ever happened to respect for the dead?
 

He Crashed The Train Because He's Gay

A few weeks ago, Time magazine's cover trumpeted a "transgender tipping point".  Indeed, more and more people are starting to understand--and accept--us.  Some of this, of course, has to do with celebrities like Bruce Jenner "coming out" as trans.  And I think it also has to do with the fact that more and more people are simply aware that some neighbor, co-worker, friend or even family member is trans.

As happy as I am about this development, I have also seen a dark side to it.  Those who hate us are becoming more virulent and, in some cases, violent.  They are going to more extreme methods to oppose us in whatever ways they can.  Those who don't have the means or wherewithal to do such things are coming up with ever-more-implausible and simply loopy notions about us and the terrible things we're responsible for.

All of what I've said also applies to gays and lesbians. As more states and countries legalize gay marriage, homophobes attribute everything from natural disasters to security breaches--and the old favorites like paedophilia--to gay people.

Add the recent Amtrak crash to the list.  Sandra Rose--who can actually make Ann Coulter seem like Stephen Jay Gould--claims that Brandon Bostian, the engineer of that train, crashed it because he wanted media attention.  He had been campaigning for the government to adopt greater rail safety marriage--and legalize gay marriage.

Now, how she can conflate his advocacy of gay marriage with his rants about the government's inaction about rail safety--and how she can say that he crashed the train to call attention to them--is something that, perhaps, takes a mind greater than mine to comprehend, let alone explain.  If you can walk me through Ms. Rose's logic, please do so.

A Trans Man Is Attacked: It's All About Misogyny

I realize that in this blog, I have recounted many--too many--stories about harrassment, assaults and even killings perpetrated by haters against trans women.

While we are certainly more likely to be the victims of hate crimes than other people, I don't want to give the impression that all transphobic violence is committed by cisgender men against trans women (or males who violate societal gender norms).  Indeed, too many trans men also are abused, beaten or worse by those who simply cannot abide our existence.

Yesterday, Paul Wettengel was charged with hate crimes for his alleged assault in a Boulder, Colorado bus stop last month.  His victim was a trans man.

According to a published account of the incident, a man asked Wettengel for a lighter.  Wettengel shoved him.  A third man--who would become the victim of the crimes for which Wettengel is now charged--tried to intervene by getting in between them.

Wettengel punched him in the face and, apparently realizing the victim is trans, grabbed his breasts and stomach while calling him derogatory names related to homosexuality as well as transgenderism.

The incident, if it was anything like it's been reported, shows that at the root of all transphobia (and homophobia) is misogyny.  Wettengel attacked the trans man whom he perceived as "a girl pretending to be a guy"; too many trans women are victimized because we are perceived as men who don't have the balls to live as men and who choose, instead, to be female.  Gay men are also perceived that way and similarly victimized, just as lesbians are attacked for being women who think they are men or who think they're too good for men.  

How can anyone hate women so much, knowing that we're all born from them?

Taking A Joke

How many times have you heard hateful, mean-spirited remarks punctuated with, "It's just a joke!"?

How many times have you been told you "can't take a joke"?


Well, most of us can "take" a joke.  But we can't--or shouldn't have to--take name-calling, misogynist or transphobic remarks or threats against us.  Those are not jokes.

From tumblr

The Third Law: What Haters Will Do Next

Newton's Third Law of Motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

There is a parallel to that, I believe, in the struggle for LGBT equality.

Now it is legal for same-sex couples to marry in 36 of the 50 US states and the District of Columbia.  People who, not long ago wouldn't be caught dead uttering the word "gay"--let alone "lesbian" or "transsexual" (most didn't know the word "transgender"--are now speaking up in support of gay family members, co-workers and neighbors.  I know, personally, two people who beleived that "the lifestyle" is against their religious beliefs and are now advocating for the rights of LGBT people.  One has even become a counselor to them--and to parents who face the same struggle she had when her daughter "came out".

According to every recent poll, the majority of Americans think that there should be no legal bars against same-sex marriage and that lesbians and gay men should be protected under civil rights laws.  Expressing hate against gays is taboo in many quarters; in others, people simply wonder whether the hater hasn't got better things to do and more important things to think about.


What this means--in keeping with Newton's Law, as it were--is that the remaining homophobes are becoming more virulent in their hatred or simply more ludicrous in their expression of it. For example, there are lawmakers--like one from Texas (who looks like she's having a fantasy or two involving Rick Santorum)--who want the "right" to refuse to do business with or employ, or other wise discriminate against, LGBT people.  Why?  They believe that anti-discrimination laws somehow infringe upon their right to religious freedom.

That argument's absurdity is equaled only by its lack of originality:  It was used as a rationale for racial segregation and slavery itself.  Oh, yeah, and discrimination against women, too, which makes it all the more ironic that it's being used by women.

The good news is that where laws like the one Donna Campbell has proposed in Texas have been put to the vote, they've failed--even in states like Kansas, which is about as conservative and Republican as they come.  That tells me that even those who don't care much about LGBT equality can see how ridiculous and just plain wrong (I doubt that even Antonin Scalia thinks it's constitutional!) it is.

What that means is that Campbell and her ilk will just become even more illogical and delusional until the campaign funds dry up.  Then they'll give up or get voted out of office.  

Even when that happens, though, we'll have another reaction to contend with.  You see, the non-officeholders who've been fighting against same-sex marriage and LGBT equality--I'm talking now about groups like Focus on the Family  and American Family Association (It's always about protecting "family", right?)--are turning their hatred, I mean attention, toward transgender people.  And they will fight us with the same virulence and belligerence they used against lesbians and gays.  

The bad news is that as our lives and struggles become more familiar to more people, those groups will become more truculent and, possibly, violent.  The good news is that it will last only for so long.  But we have to be prepared in the meantime--and to keep our allies close to us.

Labels Are For Soup Cans

I think Andy Warhol would approve:

From The Rising Hollywood

Transgender Doctor Leaves Selma For Seattle

In some ways, I've been luckier than other trans people.  I lost relationships, but am making new friends.  And my parents have been supportive.

Folks like Jennifer Burnett don't have it so good. After announcing her intention to transition, she lost her house, spouse and job within less than 24 hours.  That, after putting off her transition for 19 years so that she could gain custody of the children she had by her first marriage.  She'd begun hormones and electrolysis when, she said, "God told" her to put her transition on hold for the sake of her children.  

Then, after her second child moved out, she met a woman who married her, knowing of her plans to transition.  But when she started, Wife #2 bailed on her.

Now she offers the kind of support she didn't have.  And, just as important, she provides something trans people to often have difficulty in finding, or never find at all:  medical care from a person who understands their needs and feelings.

That is especially powerful when you realize that she has lived and practiced in Selma, CA, a town near Fresno.  It's about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in the San Joaquin Valley (often called "The Inland Valley".)  That trans people from both metropoli would take the trip to Selma says something about her.  And the fact that she's been practicing there surely offered hope to LGBT people who were living in the area which, according to a native of the Valley, "produces more raisins and queer-bashers than anyplace else."

I'm sure that acquaintance of mine was being at least somewhat hyperbolic. Still, you have to wonder what sorts of trials Dr. Burnett have experienced.

Could that be a reason why she's leaving?  She says she's moving to Seattle to be closer to her children, which I don't doubt.  Still, it's not hard to think that she'll be in a more welcoming atmosphere than she's in now.  It's a loss for the folks in the Valley (She is also a general practitioner.) but surely a gain for trans people in Seattle.

Bri Golec: Murdered By Her Father, Misidentified By Him And Local News Media

People have told me that I'm a good storyteller. Whatever may narrative skills may be, I don't think they account for the tears some people shed when I told them about some of the young people who participated in a group I co-facilitated for two years.

They were young trans people, most in their teens but a few in their early 20's.  Some had begun to take hormones; others had literally just gotten off buses or vehicles on which they hitched (or performed acts no one should have to do to get) from Alabama and Nebraska and other places I can scarcely even imagine.

Some had been kicked out of their homes when they "came out" or simply were caught wearing clothes or engaging in behaviors not considered appropriate for someone of their birth gender.

And they were the lucky ones.  Others were assualted, raped or otherwise endangered by family members. One literally ran out the door steps ahead of a mother who chased him (a trans male) with a knife.

That is why stories like that of Bri Golec enrage, but do not surprise, me. The 22-year-old was stabbed to death in Ohio by her father, who told investigators that his "son" belonged to a cult and that members invaded his home and attacked.

But Kevin Golec wasn't the only one who misidentified the gender of his child.  So did every local media outlet, according to the Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents blog.

Murdered Trans Women Of Color Remembered On Valentine's Day

Depending on which sources you trust, a transgender person is anywhere from 10 to 116 times as likely to be murdered as a typical person in the US.

I don't know how likely the 116 figure is.  But I would bet that 10 times is a low number, given that crimes against transgender people are disproportionately unreported.

As if those numbers aren't bad enough, a trans woman of color is (again, depending on who you believe) anywhere from twice to twelve times as likely to be murdered as any other trans person.

One reason for the risks trans women of color face is that, in addition to bearing the double stigma of falling outside accepted gender norms and being of the "wrong" race, they disproportionately live in high-crime areas such as impoverished urban neighborhoods and parts of the South where there is easy access to guns.

Parts of cities like St. Louis and New Orleans happen to fit into both categories.  So it's unsurprising (though still tragic) that Penny Proud, a black transgender woman, was found shot to death early Tuesday morning in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.

Thus, it's heartening to see that yesterday, Valentine's Day, a group of people gathered in the Central West End of St. Louis to honor transgender women of color and denounce the violence against them.

Even with greater public acceptance of transgender people, the violence against us continues and, for trans women of color, seems to be escalating.  In 2014, thirteen transgenders were murdered in the US.  In the first six weeks of 2015, five transgender women of color have already been killed in this country.

Some might argue that the numbers are higher because more crimes are being reported, or because more of the victims are identified as transgender and not solely by their assigned-at-birth gender, as has been the tradition.  Even if that is the case, though, we are being disproportionately attacked and killed, and it's even worse for trans women of color.

I Hope It Doesn't Take This To Make You A Man (Or A Woman)!

In other posts, I have described how I, and other trans people, were motivated to transition by moments or incidents in which we realized that our only other choice was death.  

Other trans people have been motivated to transition by near-death experiences:  They realized that they would have been memorialized and buried in the gender to which they were assigned at birth rather than that of their true selves.

But Thomas Page McBee's near-death experience caused him to "come out" as transgender.  As the author of Man Alive tells the story, he was mugged by someone who pereceived that he was presenting himself as a man.  But, in the course of the attack, the attacker came to believe that a then-pre-transition McBee was not presenting as a male and let him go.

"I had a gut feeling that this had to do with me not being perceived as a male," he says.  That sense was later confirmed for McBee when the attacker went on to kill another man in a very similar kind of incident.

That experience, terrible as it was, helped him to unravel his gender identity and masculinity. He soon realized that the way other people were perceiving him wasn't the same as the way he was perceiving himself.  Soon afterward, he came out as transgender.

Here, he talks about the experience with Ricky Camilleri:

Maybe He's A Cop In Ohio

Dominick used to talk about becoming a cop.   He was about as suited for that work as I am to be an accountant.  I always suspected that his wish had something to do with being bullied as a kid:  As a cop, he would've had a weapon and the authority to inflict on others what was inflicted on him.  

Maybe he realized that dream after all, though not in New York.  

In Lakewood, Ohio, a transgender woman was arrested for shoplifting. During her questioning, an officer played Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like A Lady."

Hmm...When I ended my relationship with Dominick, he called every day and played that song.  When I didn't pick up his call, he left the song on my voice mail.  In doing that, of course, he confirmed one of the reasons why I broke it off:  his immaturity.  And he revealed what I always suspected to be his real attitude about me, and trans people.

Everyone told me to ignore him.  I did, but he escalated his harassment for the next two years:  The dumb jokes and slurs turned into spreading false rumors about me and threatening that he would make my life so miserable that a refrigerator box would seem like the Waldorf-Astoria.

Well, if he's in Ohio or someplace else, I should count my blessings--but pity the next trans person who crosses his path.

Whatever He Is, He Isn't A Joke

For too long, too many people have seen transgender people as a joke.

Through my childhood, the punchline was "Christine Jorgensen."  Later, Renee Richards became the trigger to the laughtrack.  

By the time I started my transition, Michael Jackson would fill that role.  Even though almost nobody thought he was transgendered, the first thing most people think of when someone mentions trans people is "surgery."  Cosmetic surgery, to be exact, as if it were all about altering our appearance.  

Now, it seems, the new punchline is Bruce Jenner.  Rumors have swirled that the 1976 Olympic Decathlon champion and reality TV star has begun to transition.  Not surprisingly, entertainment and gossip magazines have published Photoshopped portraits of Bruce.  One such publication has a cover of him in pink lipstick  a blowout hairdo, a silk scarf--and former Dynasty star Stepanie Beacham's body--grafted onto his head.

I will not speculate on whether Jenner is actually going through a gender transition.  Whether or not he is, he needs and deserves to be left to live his life in peace.  And, even though he is the stepfather of children who have made a career of being famous for, well, being famous, he should not be the newest butt of jokes about transgender people.

(Please don't take my use of male pronouns in reference to Jenner as a judgment on whether or not he is transitioning or even transgender.  As long as he doesn't announce that he is trans or transitioning, or any intention of living as a woman, he should be referred to as "he" and "him".)

 

I Am A Crime With A Fine Of $2500

I am an offense that carries a $2500 fine.

No,  you didn't misread that.  It's true of me, and every other trans person--most of all transgender kids in the state of Kentucky.

How can that be?, you ask.

Well, Bluegrass State senator C.B. Embry Jr has just sponsored a bill that would allow a student to sue his or her school for $2500 if he or she were to encounter someone of the opposite biological sex in the bathroom.

It is intended as a way to enforce another part of the proposed law:  that students must use the bathroom designated for the sex indicated on their birth certificates, not the one by which they identify.

The bill would also allow students to ask for special accomodations such as unisex bathrooms.  But how many kids would actually do such a thing?  Some simply wouldn't know enough to do so; others would feel intimidation, especially if they are in hostile--or, at least, non-supportive--environments. Nothing is more humiliating and embarassing for a kid than feeling singled out, which is usually what happens when a kid gets "special" accomodations for anything.

So, in essence, the bill would criminalize trans kids simply for existing and fine their schools for it.  That is going to promote the safety and welfare of children...how?