Inadvertent Commemoration

Today, without thinking, I wore a purple overshirt atop a magenta blouse that coordinated with a like color in the print of the skirt I wore.  And I covered myself with a shawl in a sort of burgundish purple.  A couple of people told me I looked nice, but one woman--a stranger--said, "So you're wearing purple for this day?"


"What?"


She explained that it was Domestic Violence Awareness Day.  Also, she said, people were wearing purple to commemorate the victims of anti-gay violence.  It turns out that there has  been an epidemic of both lately.


I've read a few reports in which social workers and researchers attribute an increase in domestic violence to the recession.  People are spending more time at home, they explain, in relationships they may no longer want to be in because they can't afford to go anywhere else.  And people--men, mainly--are frustrated over losing jobs and, in some cases, being supported by the very wives and girlfriends they're beating.


Purple has long been my favorite color, but today that woman I met confirmed something that I've always suspected: it's a color of survivors:  of people who've had to be creative simply to survive, much less to live life on their own terms.  It's certainly not a color of the status quo.


As I was going home tonight, I saw that the Empire State Building was lit in dark red and purple.  You can't get a much clearer sign than that!

Galloping Against Their Bodies

What is it about October?


I know that it's fall and leaves are dying and, oh, they look so beautiful doing it.  And I'll admit that I've taken trips just to see vast tableaux of that happening.  Well, I did other things, too--like biking and, um, visiting Ben and Jerry's and Chabot's.


Those of you who know me well might say that the way I feel about October is my personal reaction to the deaths I've experienced during this month:  my grandmother and an uncle.  And a few other things have ended for me in October.  


On the other hand, I feel energized, even if I get sick or some other inconvenience or a tragedy befalls me.  There must be some weird dialectic (I hate that word, but it's apt.) between death and creative energy.  I can't think of things that have begun for me in October, but there were times when, in October, I realized that I was into, or on my way to, something I'd wanted.  Seven years ago, I was a month into living full-time as Justine.  There was something about that milestone; I guess a month is a fairly significant amount of time.  Plus, it represents a cycle of the moon.   According to much in religion, mysticism and even some more empirical pursuits, the moon is a source of creative energy.  And, of course, the tides--and, for some of us, the cycles of our bodies--are tied to the lunar waxings and wanings.


The flip side of creative energy is whatever causes people to do stupid, crazy or terrible things.  Why else do young men risk their futures and lives to play a game?  I really hope Eric LeGrand recovers and lives a wonderful life.  But, really:   Why risk one's self in such a way for...what?...the glory of your team?  Your college?  Your country?


I think James Wright put it best at the end of his poem Autumn Begins In Martin's Ferry, Ohio:  "Their sons grow suicidally beautiful / At the beginning of October / And gallop terribly against each other's bodies."


I know, I'm un-American (and, as some of my peers and colleagues used to tell me, not "one of the guys") because I just don't get what's so entertaining about guys hitting each other as hard as they can to move a ball a few yards down a field.   


Anyway...Could it be that a certain kind of guy really has to "prove" himself at this time of year.  Everything around him says "fall;" that's exactly what he doesn't want to do.  He wants to show he can stand tall; that he is indeed "the man."  But even if he is, he won't be forever.  So he needs something to assert himself.


Maybe that's the reason why there's so much violence against LGBT people at this time of year, and why the perpetrators of them seem to be trying to outdo each other in viciousness and brutality.  I've mentioned some of those crimes--Even those few I've mentioned are too many!--in previous posts.  And, it seems, there's a new one, if not every day, at least every other day.  


One result is that, even with anti-discrimination laws and even with workplaces and other settings where people make the effort to understand people who are different from themselves, there are still unspoken, unwritten versions of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, as "Diana" relates on her blog.  And for everyone who is silenced by such practices, many more--especially young people-- will silence themselves out of fear.  After all, if you saw your teacher or some other adult in your life lose his or her livelihood--and suffer other kinds of grief-- simply for being honest, what would you do?


I can tell you this:  It does nothing to stop the cycle of hate and violence.  After all, we know that people gallop most violently against the bodies of the enemies they find within themselves.

I Wanna Get Better Already!

I can't believe I've been home, not working, for a whole week.  Not that my "time off" has been fun and games, or whatever cliche you care to use.  


At times like this, I understand why doctors refer to us as "patients":  They're just as prone to wishful thinking, or simply being unrealistic, as the rest of us.  We have to wait until we're better to do all of the things we normally do; some of us are better than others at waiting.  Me, I'm not so good at it.


The funny thing is that I don't recall being this impatient when I was recovering from my surgery. Then, I couldn't stretch too far, lift anything more than a few pounds or, of course, ride my bike.  But I could take walks, at least, and I could spend lots of time reading and writing.  During those first three months, I had to dilate three times a day and soak twice.  That limited my travels a bit, but I hadn't expected to be a globetrotter during that time anyway.


Also, it was actually easy to see the progress of my healing.  It was exciting, too:  After all, I was healing to complete a process that gave me something I always wanted.  On the other hand, I didn't ask for this eye infection.  And, even though my eyes look better than they did the other day or a few days before that, they still have a pink hue.  Now, I have nothing against the color per se, but I didn't want it in my eyeballs.  Besides, there are other shades of pink on other parts of my body that look a whole lot better!


At least my eyes aren't as irritated as they were.  They're still not entirely comfortable:  Reading or writing for more than a few minutes at a time is still difficult. But they don't feel like they've been sandpapered and torched.  


I have said that I was beginning my life over again--or beginning it, period--with my transition and surgery.  I hope it doesn't mean that I'm going to get all of the childhood ailments now, at my advanced age.  (From what I've seen and read, it's usually kids who get "pink eye." )  What next?  Measles?  Does that mean I'll get acne in a few years?  Or is it like those other childhood diseases to which you're immune if you've had them before?


Hmm...I haven't been depressed since I started my transition.  I still experience temporary bouts of sadness--who doesn't?--but nothing like the decades-long trough I had to trod through. Maybe all those years immesed in the abyss have given me immunity.  

Growing Old As We're Starting To Live

I've been asked to co-facilitate a transgender forum on aging at a conference for LGBT older adults next month.  I've agreed to do it, knowing that my qualifications to do it consist of the following:

• I am trangendered
• I am aging.  (Then again, I guess we all are.)

The invitation got me to thinking, though, about what aging means for us in the LGBT community, and for transgenders in particular.

So far, the most trenchant thought that has emenated from my pretty little head (ha!) is this:  Aging in the LGBT community has everything to do with its youth-centeredness.  In fact, the way we age is the very reason why the LGBT world is as youth-centered as it is.  It's not so much that we're trying to avoid or fight back our aging; it's the fact that we--most of us, anyway--only get to live as who and what we are at a realtively late age that causes us to live in such a youth-centered milieu.

Even with the increased acceptance of LGBT people (the recent hate crimes notwithstanding), very few bisexuals, fewer gays and lesbians , and even fewer transgenders, have the opportunity to spend our adolescence and early adulthood as the people we actually are.   Most gays and lesbians live closeted lives until they are old enough to move out of their families' homes, and some continue to deny their need to love and be loved in their own ways long after they have become independent of the families, communities  and schools that gave birth to and reared them and inculcated them with their communities' and cultures' values about families and other sorts of relationships--including the kinds of relationships people should have with themselves.  

Even gays and lesbians raised in the most loving of families and in the most accepting communities face hostility somewhere, some time. The result is something I've seen in those students of mine who grew up with violence, whether it was physical, verbal, mental, emotional or spiritual, and whether it came from their peers, members of their families or communities, or their governments and their agencies of enforcement.  Some people come out of those experiences shell-shocked; others are very canny or what people would call "street-smart", and still others are formed or deformed by their anger and resentments.  But nearly all of them do not have the opportunity to learn how to develop or maintain relationships in ways that their peers from more secure and stable environments learn.  And, because so many of them also come from homes that are dysfunctional in one way or another, they may know that they want something different but have not had any models from whom they can learn how to build it in their own lives.

Most gays and lesbians don't grow up with any models of how they can build their relationships and their lives.  All most of them see when they're growing up are heterosexual relationships, and some of those aren't very nurturing of the spirits of the people in them.  And, of course, nearly all of the love and familial relationships depicted in popular, and even higher, culture, are of that variety.

What happens, then, is that gays and lesbians start to learn how to express love and build relationships that suit them later--sometimes much later--than heterosexuals do those things.  Most teenagers have some experience of dating members of the other gender; many (I won't venture a guess as to how many) have sex and some actually learn what it means to love, and be loved, in an intimate way by a member of the "opposite" gender.  Most gay teens and adolescents don't have those experiences; those who do almost never have the opportunity to have those experiences publicly.  If you are a boy dating a girl or vice-versa, even if your family, friends and others in your community don't like whomever you're dating, they still support your urge to date members of the "opposite" gender, mainly because they're seen as stepping stones to marriage and family.

So, what a straight sixteen-year-old experiences is not a part of a gay person's life until he or she is in her twenties, thirties or even later.  And for transgenders--and, interestingly enough, bisexuals--that sort of experience may come later still.  I began to live as the woman I am in middle age, and I have been living my life only for seven years now.  That means I am just beginning to learn how to relate to people, and express love (which includes, but is not limited to, sexuality) as a woman, rather than as a female who had to channel herself through a filter of maleness.  

That, by the way, is the reason--I think--why one can't predict the sexuality of a person who transitions.  One of the reasons, along with finances, why I didn't start my transition earlier in my life was that I thought, as most people thought, that a true male-to-female transsexual was attracted to men.  It happened that the first male-to-females who had sexual reassignment surgery did indeed date, and in some cases married, men.  Christine Jorgensen comes immediately to mind, and it's hard to imagine how she, not to mention society, might have been different if she didn't fit into the roles that were considered acceptable for women in the 1950's, when she made her transition.

So I had to spend  a lot of years, not only alienated from my own sense of who I am, but also of how to relate to anyone else, whether in a sexual or more platonic way.  The sense of myself I could and would have formed in my teen years, and the kinds of relationships I might have developed as a result, are parts of my life I'm only beginning to discover--at an age when my parents were already grandparents.  

Of course, there are many other issues involved in aging for LGBT people, and transgenders in particular.  But I never realized until now that the youth-orientedness of our community was really a manifestation of the fact that we, in essence, start our lives later than straight people and cisgenders.

You Never Know Where They'll Find You, Or You'll Find Them

"Small world!," we exclaimed in unison.


"We" being myself and one of my students.


As you probably figured out, we bumped into each other outside the college.  The venue is what made our encounter really interesting:  We met in my doctor's offices.


I'd gone there for a follow-up to my visit of the other day.  I'm getting better, she said, though it will probably be a few more days before my eye infection totally clears up.  I don't know why my studnent was there; I was so shocked upon seeing her that I didn't ask.    She found out about my affliction only because I tipped my sunglasses upward as I was talking to her.  "No wonder you weren't in class!" she gasped.


I suppose that there is at least some chance that an instructor would have the same doctor as one of her students.   In the case of my student, it should not have been a great surprise, I suppose, if for no other reason that she lives literally around the corner from the doctor's office.  


The real surprise of meeting her there is that my doctor is part of the Callen Lorde Community Health Center in Chelsea.  They specialize in care for LGBT people and HIV/AIDS.  I started going to C-L when I had decided to embark upon my gender transition.   At first, I was going there for my transition-related issues, including my hormones.   But I decided to make the doctor I found there my primary-care physician because I figured, correctly, that it would be easier to have a doctor who already knew that about me than to discuss them with some other doctor who may or may not be understanding.


Now, I am going to reveal something about myself that some of you may find unappealing.  I was surprised to meet my student at C-L because, well, I didn't figure her to be part of the LGBT spectrum.  Actually, I didn't notice her actual or possible sexual orientation or gender identity. Usually, when that happens, it means that the person is cisgender and straight, or possibly bisexual-leaning-toward-straight.  I guess I still have what people in gender studies call a hetero-normative view of the world.


Of course, I didn't articulate any of this for my student.  But she probably could sense what I was thinking, as she is very perceptive.  "I come here because the people here are are really good.  And really nice."  I nodded agreement.  "A friend of mine told me about her," she added.


We talked a bit more.  "You want to get back to class, don't you?" she asked.


"Yes.  Being sick drives me crazy.  It wouldn't be so bad if my eyes didn't hurt and I could read--and write--more."


"That must really bother you. "


"It does.  So does not being in class."


"You enjoy it, don't you?"  Again, I nodded.  "And you like us."


"Of course!"  That is the truth, even if the college (It's the one where my main job is.) exasperates, frustrates and infuriates me at times.


"Well, I hope you're back next week,"


"I probably will be."

Beryl Burton and Lana Lawless

I am going to mention Lana Lawless and Beryl Burton in the same post. Why?, you ask.

Well, I just happened to read about both of them today.  All right, you say, but what else do they have in common?

Not much, I'll admit.  But Beryl Berton is relevant to a question brought up by what Lana Lawless has done.

Ms. Lawless has made the news during the last couple of days because she's suing the Ladies Professional Golf Association because they won't let her play in their tournaments.  Why is that?

The LPGA is excluding her for the same reason they would probably exclude me, even if I met the organization's other requirements.  Yes, Ms. Lawless (Don't you just love the name?) is transgendered.  She had her sexual reassignment surgery in 2005. 

The LPGA, and much of general public--even some who are fully willing to accept that Ms. Lawless is as much of a woman as Lisa Ann Horst--argue that Lawless and other transgender women have advantages conferred upon them as a result of their XY chromosomes.  Although I don't have any statistics handy, I'd bet that, on average, we are taller and heavier than most women born with XX chromosomes.  Also, we have broader and denser bone structures (which is the reason why, even after years of taking estrogen, which weakens bones, osteoporosis is all but unknown in male-to-female transgenders) and, usually, more muscle mass. 

Now, it's easy to see how such differences would confer advantages on us (well, not me, given  my age the shape I'm in!) in sports like American football--or in basketball, where height makes right.  But even in the latter sport, mens' (or trans-women's ) advantage isn't as great as one might think, since basketball players of both genders are in the top percentile for height.  (I mean, really, how much advantage does someone who's seven feet tall have over someone who's six-foot-nine?)  And, while I admit I don't know much about golf, as I've neither played the game nor followed the sport, I still have to wonder just how much of  an advantage one gender really has over an other.  Some argue that someone with XY chromosomes can make longer shots, but somehow I suspect there's more to winning a golf tournament than that.  Otherwise, why would there be so much of an audience for it, and why would even social golfers spend so much time practicing.

My point is, it's commonly assumed that if a woman with XY chromosomes were to enter a women's competition, she would dominate it and eliminate the women's competition's/league's/race's raison d'etre--or, at least, eliminate its audience and sponsorship.

That brings me to Beryl Burton.  She dominated British women's cycling at a time when it was coming to its own.  In fact, she was arguably as well-known as the male racers of her time.

That's because, at one point, she held the 12-hour time trial record.  Not the women's record, mind you--the record.  Moreover, she held that record for two years (1967-69), and at 277.25 miles,  she had an advantage of five miles over the men's record.  

Think about it:  She was riding faster, over a distance, than most of the male professional cyclists of her time.  And her record still stands as the women's record; only a handful of men have beaten it--even though she was riding in the days before disc wheels, carbon frames and skinsuits.

You might argue that she is an exception.  She is certainly unusual, but she's not the only female athlete to have held  a record for both men and women. Such a thing is relatively common in swimming and a few other non-contact sports.  As an example, when Gertrude Ederle set the record for swimming across the English Channel, her time was a full two hours faster than the previous record, which had been set by a man.

So, the examples I've set out beg this question:  How much of men's dominance of sports is really due to men's actual or alleged superior athleticism?  Could it be that men's dominance in sports other than American football, basketball, or a few others, is really due to the facts that they've been playing longer and that there is more of an infrastructure, if you will, of sports for boys than there is for girls?  Even after nearly four decades of Title IX, it's a lot easier to find a team, league or program for boys than it is to find their counterparts for girls, particlarly in smaller and rural communities.  

And what does that portend for the future of transgenders in sport?

I Hate Being Sick

I should've known.  When I conked out halfway through an easy ride on Sunday, and had to bail out, I thought I was just having "one of those days."  When I felt aches and pains all over my body, I thought I didn't stretch enough before or after my ride.  And then I fell asleep not long after finishing my plate of ravioli.

When my eyes were oozing, I thought I had a low-grade case of the flu.  At least I had no classes on Monday, as it was Columbus Day.  But I wasn't getting any better.  Thought I could sleep it off.  That's what I used to do, unless I got one of my "epic" illnesses.

So I missed work yesterday.  Maybe some more sleep, and large doses of chicken soup and tea while I was a awake, would do the trick.  


I got to the doctor today.  Turns out, I have conjunctivitis.  So I won't be at work the rest of this week.  


Someone told me I should enjoy my "vacation."  Well, this isn't quite what I had in mind!  


The doctor says all I can really do is to use the eyedrops she prescribed, and to rest and suck down a lot of fluids.  But, damn, if I have to be sick, why can't I be sick in a way that I can read and write without pain.  It's pretty difficult to concentrate when your eyes feel like as if they've been sandpapered.  


I know, patience is a virtue.  I never said I was virtuous.  

A Transgendered Dorian Gray?

Last night I had one of those dreams that both reflects and changes the way I see myself.  Those seem to be the only kind I remember. 


I was in a room, ready to get dressed.  It was bare and drab, seemingly devoid of windows or any other openings.  I was alone, or so I thought.  Even in those surroundings, I thought that all of the light and air of the world was highlighting every male feature I ever had.


But someone appeared in the room.  That's the only way I can describe what happened:  I didn't hear a door or window open.  The woman was something a cross between my mother and Dr. Marci Bowers, somewhere between the two of them in age. (Marci is about my age.)  She was beautiful, physically and emotionally, in all of the ways both women are.  


When she appeared, she handed me a dress.  When I woke up, I realize that it's a dress I actually own but have not yet worn.  I bought it at the Bell's outlet store near my parents' house the last time I was there.  I remember thinking that it would fit best after I lost a few pounds, but that I still looked better than I did in almost anything else I've ever worn.  


It's the sort of dress I might wear to a summer garden party or graduation:  A strap at the back of the neck flares open into strips of material that criss-cross over my breasts and flare into a skirt that falls to just above my knees.  All of it is made of a bright green crepe with white polka dots.


As I put the dress on, I noticed  a mirror in front of me, which I hadn't seen before.  "Take a look at yourself," the woman commanded.


After I put it on, in the dream, the woman brought me a pair of white rope-wedged sandals that went perfectly with the dress.  I don't have a pair of shoes like that in my waking life.  And, finally, that woman perched a broad-brimmed straw hat on my head.


"Take a look at yourself," she reminded me.


I stared.  "What do you see?"


I couldn't describe it.  Even though I was standing still, I felt as if my body were swaying fluidly.  I had never seen myself that way before, but, oddly, somehow I recognized it, as I did a grace in the outline of my face and my hair, which was almost a strawberry blonde.  


"Something's different," I said.


"What?"


"I don't know..."  The truth was, I was afraid to describe what I saw, even if I could.  I was beautiful in the way of that woman who was in the room with me and pretty in a way I had envisioned but could never imagine myself becoming.  And I had a mature, confident sexuality that almost nobody ever develops.

"What do you see?"


"Myself..but different."


"Yes, it's you.  Exactly as you are.  Exactly as you always were."


Now, it might seem conceited of me to say that I'm a pretty or beautiful woman.  But, even when I'm not feeling well, as I have over the past two days, I realize that I do have a beauty within me, if it's sometimes tangled up with anxiety and other feelings that may or may not be warranted.  People have told me this; it's almost scary to contemplate because, well, I'm not used to it.  


But I've learned that I can't escape from my dreams.  And, to tell you the truth, I don't want to escape from this one, or this one.

Zach Harriington: Another Victim of Hate

As I said the other day, tis the season.


Gotta do this shit again:  Report on another victim of homophobia.  Another one too young.


Zach Harrington, a 19-year-old gay man, killed himself in his hometown of Norman, Oklahoma.  Like many young gay men, he endured verbal and physical harassment while attending his local high school. 


 If it wasn't enough that he was a quiet, passive young man, he was also 6'4".  That literally made him even more of a target than he would otherwise have been.  I can tell you that for a fact because that's what happened to a classmate of mine in high school.  Louis was 6-foot-7, and completely without physical grace.  When a coach/gym teacher tried to help Louis develop his coordination and other skills in the hope of turning him into a basketball player--something he had no interest in becoming--it only opened him up to more ridicule and harassment when the experiment failed.  


Anyway, Zach Harrington killed himself after attending a local city council meeting, where as "Towleroad"'s blogger so eloquently said, "the same sentiments that quietly tormented him in high school were being shouted out and applauded by adults the same age as his own parents."  That doesn't surprise me, and not because Norman is such a conservative place.  (That's what I've heard, anyway; I've never been there or anywhere else in Oklahoma.)  Rather, his experience reflects an aspect of my own:  People often assume that kids or the "uneducated" will be the most intolerant and cruelest; too often, the ones we expect to understand--especially those who potentially have any power to help us as allies--can be the most intolerant and even hateful.


Comments his sister and others made would have us believe that he went into that meeting with an unrealistic expectation.  That may have been the case.  But I suspect he may have gone in order to alert the authorities--who have the power to make policy governing the police and others entrusted with public safety--that the harassment we experience is not merely an inconvenience.  It is an infringement of the rights we have in common with everyone else--those oft-echoed Constitutional stipulations that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 


Why do so many of us have to face beatings and harassment--or even to put our lives at risk--simply to do with millions of other people do every day, namely, go to school and work?   That begs another question:  Why do some people seem to act as if we don't have the same right to protection other people receive from violence, and why aren't those crimes against us taken as seriously as the ones against other people?  After all, we (or, in the case of teenagers, their parents) pay the same taxes as everyone else.


Whenever a young person dies, people always wonder what might have been.  Could the young victim have become a doctor, artist, scientist or educator?, they wonder.  However, that misses the real point:  A young person lost an opportunity to which everyone has a right.  That is the right to live, to love and be loved.  And it deprives--as in Zach Harrington's case--parents, siblings and others of someone they loved.  


Did it occur to anyone at that city council meeting that Zach Harrington was one of their kids, and that one of their kids could have been Zach Harrington?

Beating and Killing Ourselves

Tis the season.


A couple of weeks ago, Tyler Clementi committed suicide.  Last week, in the Stonewall Inn, two young men shouted anti-gay slurs as they beat up a man.  And, this week, nine young men--who claimed to be part of a group they called "The Latin King Goonies"--beat up two gay men in the Bronx.


I used to think summer was the time when LGBT people had the greatest chance of meeting our end, or simply getting the shit beat out of us, by someone (or, more likely, a group of thugs) who hates us simply for being who we are.  But now, it seems, there are more--or simply more gruesome or pointless--attacks in the early fall.  I'm thinking now of Jack Price, who was beaten to within an inch of his life just a few miles from my apartment  at about this time last year. I also recall that last week, the third of October, was the date on which teenaged transgender Gwen Araujo was murdered in 2002 in Newark, California.  And, the other day--the seventh--marked a terrible anniversary:  that of the 1998 murder of Mathew Shepard in Wyoming.
AWhy is it that so many anti-gay or -trans attacks happen at this time of year?


I believe that it may have to do with a particular quality of the season itself.  On some level, I think that however much we may love the crisp air, the foliage and the sunsets that reflect them, we sense our own mortality, or at least vulnerabilities.  After all, those leaves turn all those beautiful colors because they're dying. Facing our own mortality causes us to realize that, perhaps, we weren't who we thought we were--or, worse, that we are something that we never wanted to believe we were.


Those Latin King wannabes in the Bronx found out that one of their recruits was gay. Gwen Araujo's was killed by someone who was attracted to her and, upon realizing that she was transgendered, said something like, "Shit! I can't be gay!" as he beat her.  Matthew Shepard's killer claimed that what is now known as the "gay panic" caused him to act as he did.


And what, pray tell, were those two young men doing in the Stonewall Inn? What kind of people did they expect to meet there?


Well, I think you know how I'd answer that question:  The same person Dante met in the middle of the journey of his life, or whom Marlow meets in "Heart of Darkness."  That is to say, the same person I met when I saw a middle-aged woman walking home from work in St. Jean de Maurienne.  


Yes, we all encountered ourselves.  And we were all, in David Crosby's immortal words, "scared shitless."  


I know I'm not the first to say this, but I'll say it anyway:  Crimes against LGBT people are particularly brutal because the perpetrators are flailing, beating, kicking, shooting, stabbing or hanging a reflections of themselves.  And they are attacking in the hope of extinguishing, in themselves, what they see--of themselves--in their victims.


A corollary of this applies to Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, who videotaped Tyler Clementi.  Why did they record him having sex with another man and post it for all the world to see?  Could one or both of them have been "coming out" in his or her own way?  Or, perhaps, were they simply doing what so many straight people do to LGBT people:  Assume that our lives begin and end with sex because they themselves can't think about anything else.


The reason I don't condemn them, or any of the other perpetrators, more than I do is that I understand the enormous, gnawing spiritual and emotional poverty of anyone who commits the kind of violence they committed.  In brief, if those people loved themselves, they never would have acted as they did.  That's the ironic thing about selfishness and self-centeredness:  They come from a sense of feeling worthless, or simply wishing they weren't so.


I know that because I've been in their shoes.  At least I learned, however late in my life,  that I didn't have to walk the same path.  And, hopefully, others won't have their journeys end in the same way as the journeys of Matthew Shepard, Gwen Araujo or Tyler Clementi, or that it won't include what Jack Price or that gay recruit in the Bronx experienced.  

Tyler Clementi, Rutgers and Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driven to Kill (Themselves)

I used to think that summer was the most dangerous time to be L, G, B, T or some combination or version thereof--or simply to be so perceived.  After all, the dense, sultry air is like alcohol:  Both are catalysts that stir up volatile, and often dangerous, reactions between hormones and hostility.  And, the most terrible and unspeakable of acts can pass, if they are at all noticed, like the most surreal, if lurid, dreams in the viscous, almost liquid heat that fills summer nights.


However as I continue in this strange journey of mine-- which led me to begin a new life as I entered middle age--I've come to realize that for LGBT teenagers and young adults, the first few weeks of the school year may actually be more dangerous than the summer vacation period that precedes it.


Much of what I've seen and heard, in regards to violence against LGBT people, has taken place on or near school grounds, and was perpetrated by students (or their friends or family members) against fellow students or peers.  And then there are those who've taken their own lives because the ostracism, harassment and violence they incur simply for being who they are--or because someone perceived them to be so.


In the latter category is Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who, it is believed,  threw himself  off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly videotaped him having sex with another young man and broadcast that tape over the Internet.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that even at this late date, some are calling Mr. Clementi a coward for ending his life.  Some of the people who are so judging him are not acting out of any of religious or moral objection; rather, they think he should have faced his dilemma "like a man" and that he should've "grown up" and "gotten over it."  


What they don't realize is the struggle of  so many young queer people (like Clementi) who are living, for the first time, in a wider world where the possibilities for love--but also the prospects of violent death-- are  expanded and deepened, leaves them in a vulnerable state.   It's not uncommon for straight or simply "normal" kids to fall into confusion or, worse, depression and despair, when suddenly  faced with the prospects of having to make decisions that will affect the course of their lives while knowing, deep down, that their inner resources have not developed in tandem.  Young men are particularly vulnerable at that time of their lives, for that is also when they are expected to become men, or at least to be well on their way to that goal.  Yet too many are not (if through no fault of their own) emotionally mature enough to handle what may be their first, or at least most visible, failings in their young lives.  Many "act out" through binge drinking and other kinds of compulsive acts; unfortunately, some enact their frustration and rage in more violent ways.


Ironically, that same insecurity and fear underlies the trepidation of a young gay person, particularly if he is a mild-mannered and sensitive male, who is faced with, for the first time, some freedom to love whom he loves but not the support he'll need for the wrath he may incur as a result of it.  And their surging hormones fill them with a sense of urgency about finding the love, or at least the sense of freedom, they may not have known before.  Some are having their first same-sex relationships, or at least the first ones they're not hiding.  That, at the same time some of their more testosterone-besotted peers are knowing their first failures and rejections, whether in the arenae of school or love.  Some need someone to blame, or at least to lash out against, for their loss of  or in those things about which they felt most confident in themselves.  Nothing is more of a recipe for anger and resentment than to see the ascent of someone who was thought to be an inferior; all you have to do is look at the so-called Tea Party movement to understand that.


If Tyler Clementi--who hasn't been seen since the videotape was posted, and whose car was found near the bridge--did indeed kill himself, then Dharun Ravi is as responsible for his death as the ones who bullied Seth Walsh and Billy Lucas (who was merely perceived as gay) are for the fact that those two teenage boys hung themselves.  Of course, Dharun Ravi is not wholly to blame, any more than the tormentors of Seth Walsh and Billy Lucas are:  All of them undoubtedly experienced difficulties from many other people and institutions.  However, it's difficult not to think that the bullying of Walsh and Lucas, and the violation of Clementi's privacy and personhood, could have "pushed them over the edge."


Now, I am not an expert in bullying, teenage suicide or any related field.  So if you are willing to accept what I've said, you should, as the recipes tell us, add salt to taste.  However, I have been, in my own ways and circumstances, been in the shoes of the tormentors of those young gay men as well as, in some way, those of the young gay men, and any young man or woman who realizes he or she is not going to fit into his or her family's, society's or religion's ideas about love, sexuality and gender.    So, if nothing else, I know that it's not enough to simply condemn the perpetrators or pity the victims.  Nothing will change until more people understand that the perpetrators are not simply mechanisms of evil or bad karma:  They simply are reacting in ways that make sense, even if they're not to be condoned, for people who feel that the way of life they've come to expect is threatened, and who have simply nothing and no one else to blame but the nearest peer who is coming into his or her own.

What Do I Tell Them?

I had just left the allergist's office.  The rain had softened to a drizzle, and I was walking past the booths of some sort of craft fair or market that was set up in Madison Square Park.  I had walked past the last one, and was leaving the park, when someone said, "I've seen you on TV."

I furrowed my brows.  It's been several years since I did a community-access cable program, and I would be surprised to learn that anyone's still watching the show.  After all, I didn't do it for very long and, well, it was a local community access program.

"I know I've seen you before. Are you a lawyer?"

"Not the last time I checked." 

"Well, I've seen you somewhere before.  My name is Reeba."

"Hi. I'm Justine."

"Now I know...I've seen your blog."

She had just come from a session with her therapist she's been seeing for the past four years.  During that time, she began to take hormones and it shows in her breasts and in her facial lines.  But she still has a fair amount of shadow in spite of her electrolysis.

That may be a reason why she hasn't been feeling confident about herself lately.   Also, she said, she feels as if she hasn't "accomplished anything."  If I've learned nothing else, it's that life isn't about milestones; it's about what steps (or pedal strokes or paddles or whatever metaphor you want to use) you are taking on your journey.   So, I told her, the fact that she's taking a class online is worthy of respect.  It's her first class of any sort in decades, and she is looking at what might be a very long-term goal.  But at least she's doing something that will lead her there, or show her that she should take another path.

Still, I wish I could've given her better advice.  The truth is, much of what I've done has been as much a result of circumstance, necessity or luck--good or bad--as it was of any planning on my part. I could have done many things better than I did, and there are all sorts of things I would do differently.  And I will probably feel the same way some years hence, when I look back at some of the situations and choices I'm faced with now.

In thinking of her, I'm also thinking about Stana.  Coincidentally, her post today is about choices she has to make, and which could greatly affect the course of her life.  She's gotten the green light to work as the woman she is; her family is the only thing between her and her life as the woman she is.  On one hand, she believes they're not, and may never be, ready; on the other, she admits that she never asked them.   However, she adds, "Once that cat is out of the bag, there's no way to stuff it back in, so I am keeping that bag tightly shut."

She summed up part of our (I'm thinking of trans people who are deciding how to live, but I am referring to a lot of other people, too.) dilemma very nicely.  We want, we need, and there's no way back.  The thing is, once you make a decision of that magnitude, a multitude of other decisions will follow.   You "come out;" some accept, some reject; everyone is changed because his or her true self is exposed.  And, whether the outcome is happy or not, there is no way back.

My part-time job is offering me more work for next semester.  And I may have other work in another college.  Those of you who've been reading my blog probably know that I like the work I do, but I don't like my primary workplace.  I mean, I'm glad I have the job.  But it hasn't been intellectually or spiritually nourishing for me and, believe me, I seek those things actively.  That is not good for any educator or creative person, and I just happen to be both.  

Now that I think of it, it's not good for anybody.  I see it every day in the faces and bodies of many of the people there.  I think of the guest who, at a reception following a play at the college theatre,  remarked that he had never seen so many overweight people in one place.  And I've never seen so many people develop health problems in a workplace.  They include the former Director of the Office of Academic Advisement, who lost her gallbladder when she was there.  Others have died, in middle age, of the sorts of things usually suffered by older people.  As bad, or worse, are the truncated emotional and spiritual development I see.  One can see it in the duplicity, backstabbing and plain treachery one sees there. I see it in the faculty and administrators who encouraged me to make the effort to educate my students about experiences like mine, and denigrated or even complained to higher-ups when I did.

I wouldn't presume to tell Reeba or Stana what path they should take.  I would only advise them to consider what cats can't be put back in the bag once they're let out, and what kind of life they might live once the "cat" is gone.  While I would do my transition and surgery over again, I think I would do more and different things to prepare for them--including situating myself differently in terms of work and my  living situation, and even the way I "came out."  At least I am here, living with integrity. And I have a job, which is nothing to sneeze at in this economy.

So what do I tell Reeba and Stana?