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.  

Exceeding Their Grasp

Although the day was almost as mild as yesterday was, I didn't ride.  In fact, I barely got out of my apartment at all.  I wasn't the only one who stayed indoors:  The driving rain that began some time early this morning seemed not to let up.

As much as many of us would like to think Spring has sprung, some things tell us otherwise:

Stretching toward the light of a sun that is beyond them, their wizened fingers must weather the wind and rain, for now.  They remind me of what Robert Browning wrote in Andrea del Sarto:  "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's heaven for?  All is silver-grey/Placid and perfect with my art:  the worse!

Charlie and Max on DOMA

I am not, and have never been, a bleeding-heart liberal.  Everything I believe and know to be true is based on empirical evidence and my own expereince.

So now I'll show you why I'm against DOMA.  

They are adults.  And they are harming no one.

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! ;-)

The Look

I can tell them from a mile away.  They're the ones who want to take you aside to talk to you.  They think they're doing something wrong, and they're waiting for--and fearing--your reaction.  And that's exactly the reason why they talk to you, and hope that you don't react the way others have screamed at, scolded or even beat them.


I first noticed that look--They're looking to you even when they can't look into your eyes, and they won't look into you--in a woman I dated a long time ago.  I was about 24; it was not long after I returned from France and my grandmother had died, and not long before an uncle would die and a friend would commit suicide.  She was a dozen years older than I was, and had divorced a few years earlier. For me, that was an eon:  I was still in high school when her alcoholic husband was beating her.  


We got into an argument about something I've long since forgotten.  Having almost no coping skills for such situations, I suggested that it might be better if I left.  "No," she insisted.  "At least you didn't beat me."


"Well, that just makes me a human being."


"That's not true.  Besides, you don't use sex on or over me.  You don't use sex, period."


I didn't quite understand what she meant.  I take that back: I knew full well what she meant, but I was sure that I couldn't have learned it in the same way she did.


Or did I?


Over the years, before and since I became sober, before and since my transition, females have come to me with that same look.  One was eight years old; another was seventy-nine and others were ages in between.  Of the in-betweens, I dated a few and had long-term relationships with two.  In the words of one, "My brothers used me for sex."  A student who talked me today said the same thing about her father.  Somehow, I knew, before she opened her mouth.  Another student, who did a tour of duty in Iraq before taking a class with me last semester, had that same look and confided a similarly appalling and terrifying story.  She and the student with whom I talked today spent time in foster care as a result of their sexual abuse and, in their new homes, were subject to more and new kinds of sexual violation.


I was spared the foster-care experience; my family was actually  stable, though it had its tough times.  And I was not abused by any family member.  However, I was molested by a close family friend.  Even when I wasn't consciously thinking of it--which was most of the time, for many years--the echoes of it still muttered like thunder through my sleep.   I can think of no other reason why other females wanted to talk about their experiences with me long before I was conscious of my own, and my own experience.  It seemed that wherever I looked, I saw their look.

Carved In Granite?

Two years ago, New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Now state Representatives David Bates and Leo Pepino are sponsoring a bill that would repeal the same-sex marriage law.  According to surveys, voters in New Hampshire oppose a repeal by a nearly two to one margin.

Now, I must say that I got a chuckle out of something in this story. When I went to Catholic school, the nuns used to refer to the boys as "Master" followed by their last names.  So, as an example, I was Master Valinotti.

Because the neighborhood surrounding the school was mainly Italian and Jewish (though not many of the latter went to our school), there weren't many kids named Bates.  I can't recall any.  So what would the nuns have called David Bates?

I'm sure someone must have asked this question.

Anyway...You know how some things and people don't go down without a fight.  (If you read a sexual connotation into the previous sentence, it's on you!)  Well, it seems like any laws that protect LGBT people or give us the same rights as everyone else don't come up or pass without a fight.  The moment any such law is passed, the opposition is ready to do battle.

You might think this is paradoxical, but I think that it's important to have laws that allow gay marriage for exactly the same reasons why I oppose them in principle.

I believe that the government should not be involved in any way with marriage, and that no one should get tax or any other benefits for being married.  If the government is to be involved in deciding whose marriages are legitimate, it should simply give the equivalent of a Domestic Partnership Agreement to any two people over the age of 18 who want to hook up.  Then, if they want to legitimize their relationship as a marriage, they should go to their church, synagogue, mosque or whatever so unites people in their communities.

However, I am enough of a realist to know that probably won't happen, at least not in my lifetime.  So I think that the best we can do in terms of equality is to make same-sex marriages legal.

The funny thing about New Hampshire is that it was always considered a "conservative" state.  Yet there has always been a very strong tradition of minding one's own business--which, by the way,  isn't the same as "live and let live."  While it was one of the most reliably Republican states (even as it was surrounded by some of the "bluest" states in the nation), it has never completely embraced some of the most reactionary notions espoused by the Far Right.  That may be because Christian Fundamentalism wasn't part of the mix, or at least wasn't as much a part of the mix, as it has been in some of the Southern states.

I don't know much about Bates and Pepino.  So I can only wonder on what, exactly, are they basing their opposition to the same-sex marriage law.  If they not motivated by religious beliefs (which, I'm discovering, actually plays less into anti-gay legislation than I'd previously assumed), what else motivates them but pure and simple bigotry?  From what I know about New Hampshire natives from the few I've known and the little time I've spent there, I don't think such prejudice will move them:  If nothing else, how much can they hate (or, for that matter, love) someone whose business they're ignoring?  Plus, a lot of Bostonians have moved to the state, at least along its coast and in its southern part.  Combine the tolerance they have developed simply by living in a metropolis with the native propensity for not interfering in other people's lives, and it's hard to see how the law is going to be repealed.

Not Moving After All--Not Yet, Anyway

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was thinking of moving in with a woman I know.  Well, at least I thought I knew her.  Or, more precisely, I actually knew her better than I was willing to believe.


She didn't steal my boyfriend (or girlfriend!).  In fact, she didn't steal anything, except for some time.  


Instead, she asked me out to dinner with her.  "My treat," she said.  But even if it weren't, I would've gone to dinner with her because she said she wanted to talk.  I assumed that she meant a conversation about the prospect of my moving in, or about other circumstances in her life.


But we didn't talk much.  Instead, she downed martinis--five, to be exact.  She chased them with shots of vodka.  And  I'm sure she'd been drinking before she saw me.


By the time she finished, she couldn't stand up straight,let alone walk.  So I had to get her back to her apartment.  She wanted me to stay, though she was barely conscious. let alone coherent.  I couldn't, because I had early classes and a presentation the following day,  She knew that, just as she knew that I don't drink.


I guess it was better to have had that experience a few nights ago han to have had it after I moved in with her.

Subduing Corruption and Vice

We never get a break, do we?


First we're blamed for leading men into perdition, or simply making things complicated.    That's how guys use the stories of Eve, Pandora and other women of myth and religion. 


But when those stories are used as rationales for subjugating women, the results can be really strange, if not offensive.

This is called "The Triumph of Civic Virtue," was created by American sculptor Frank Mac Monnies about 100 years ago.  A nearly nude man is standing, and dangling a sword over, two female sirens representing Corruption and Vice.


It stands in front of the Queens Borough Hall.  But the Borough President and other local politicians want to get rid of it.  Rep. Anthony Weiner even suggested selling it on Craig's List.


They are not the first people to find this statue offensive.  It stood in front of City Hall in lower Manhattan until 1941, when then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia deemed it offensive and ordered it banished from the premises. 


I've seen the statue before and I must say that I find it offensive, too.  Yes, the sexism and violent sexuality bother me, but I also remember that such blatant misogyny was perfectly acceptable in public art (and much else) to an even greater degree than is allowed today.


What I find offensive about the statue is that it's just plain hideous, at least to my eyes.  And, it nearly two stories tall, it's all but impossible to ignore.

Where Is Kye Allums?

It occurs to me just now that I haven't heard anything about Kye Allums in a while.  


Perhaps you haven't heard anything about him, either.  That's not surprising, because his story got play, but not prominence in the media back in November.

He made history then by becoming the first openly transgender player to suit up for a men's NCAA basketball team, namely that of George Washington University.  


While there were some controversies, they paled in comparison to those generated by Lana Lawless.  I guess that makes a certain amount of sense because nobody expects someone who's natally female to dominate a men's game in the same way they think someone with XY chromosomes will have unfair advantages in women's competitions.


To their credit, his teammates have treated his openness about his gender identity as a non-issue.  However, some people--including Allums' mother--- are accusing the GWU administration of discrimination because he's not being allowed to play in spite of being cleared by a team doctor. 


If and when he comes back, it will be very interesting to see how he fares.  Before his injuries, his scoring average and other statistics were typical of other players in his position.  


But now the university wants not only to keep him from playing, but also from talking openly about his identity and experience.  He has said that one of the reasons why he "came out" publicly is that he wants to help educate people about transgenders and what we're capable of.

No Move, At Least Not Now

I've decided that I'm not moving in with her after all.  She did a couple of things that confirmed a couple of things I'd suspected about her--and can't live with, for health and other reasons.


She'd asked me to come and talk with her.  But she, knowing full well that I don't drink, swallowed five martinis as I was eating.  And we hardly talked at all.  

And that was the least objectionable thing she's done lately.


On top of what I can't live with for health and logistical reasons, I noticed something else about her:  That she wanted me in her apartment, and in her life, because she liked the idea of having someone as exotic as I am around her and her friends.  


Just what I need, right?

DOMA: Defense of What?

Imagine this: According to the laws of your state, you are married.  But, according to the Federal government, you're not.

For anyone caught in that predicament, it's more than an inconvenience.  It could mean, among other things, a denial of benefits to the one who's committed his or her life to you.  

That is exactly the bind in which some people have found themselves for years.  While a few states have legalized same-sex marriages, most haven't.  Nor has the Federal Government.  In fact, homophobia is, in essence, encoded in Title 3 of the odious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  It specifically does not recognize unions between people of the same sex.

Now Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Department of Justice will not defend that statute of DOMA.  While I applaud him on his stance, I wonder how much effect it will really have.  After all, Congress can still uphold it.  And that's what the House of Representatives will almost certainly do.  

So, while I hold out hope, I won't hold my breath.

A Day For Celebrating Our Real Beauty

The college in which I've been moonlighting is going to have an event called "Beauty Day," in conjunction with Women's History Month.  I and others have pointed out that it's, at best, an odd strategy.  At worst, it can be seen--at least to some people--as "belittling women's accomplishments," as one prof put it.


To some degree, I agree with that prof.  But I also have a personal interest in the question I didn't discuss with anybody there. As I said to that prof, people are indeed judged that way  (The student-run "Rate My Professors" site has a category for "hotness.")  And, sadly enough, members of the dominant culture judge those who aren't part of it by how well they fit that culture's standards, in beauty as well as in other areas, without threatening the hierarchies that are built upon those standards.  


I never would have understood what I have just described in the previous sentence had I not undertaken my transition.  Most people would not say that I am a beautiful woman; not very many, I suspect, would even say that I'm terribly attractive.  But, at least, I seem to fit (more or less) into some ideas that people have about women who are around my age.


Then again, there is something else I never would have understood had I continued to live as Nick.  I am now ashamed to admit that I used to think that some people were simply wasting their time with beauty culture, or even basic grooming, because they weren't attractive and couldn't be made so.  
But now I see why women who are even more overweight than I am and don't seem to have other redeeming features will spend time making themselves up or putting together an outfit.  


I now think that a person who is not affirmed or supported by those in charge of whatever hierarchy rules his or her life has to find his or her own beauty, whether it is on the outside or inside.  Of course, that does not always mean beauty in the sense people usually mean it.  Your real beauty comes from the love you give to, and inspire in, yourself and other people.  And that power can come from any number of sources, including spiritual and intellectual ones.


Knowing that, for some of us, that power is the key to our survival, let alone the hope of any sort of prosperity, we not only feel the need to nurture it; we need to honor and even celebrate it.  That means being our best selves--which, for many of us, means wearing the clothes, accessories and cosmetics that most flatter the light of our eyes as well as the lines of our faces and bodies.


It's not merely a matter of making ourselves attractive for someone else.  (I've come to realize that almost everyone is attractive to someone else, or can be made so.)  Instead, it's a way of highlighting the beauty we hold simply in living through, and sometimes overcoming, the belittlement, condescenscion and harassment--not to mention the heartbreaks and other disappointments-- too many of us face.  


This isn't just about vanity or making ourselves pretty.  It's a matter of survival.  If anyone wants to have a Beauty Day during Women's History Month, he or she should understand that. 

A Victim Or An Accuser?

When is a victim an accuser?

She is when the crime against her is rape, stalking or domestic violence.

At least, that will be the case if a bill introduced by Georgia State Legislator Bobby Franklin is enacted.

I used female pronouns in the second sentence of this post because the vast majority of victims of those crimes are females.  For that reason alone, the bill is terrible.  

I am not the first person to report on this bill and its consequences for women who are victimized by sexual violence.  But so far, I haven't seen any comments on how much the bill reflects biases against class and lifestyle.  Given the nature of socioeconomic status and politics, those biases also are ultimately biases against women.

Franklin says that as long as there is no conviction, he wants people who report that they've been raped, stalked or battered to be classified as "accusers" rather than "victims."  For one thing, getting a conviction in such cases requires a lot of time and other resources of the victim as well as from law enforcement agencies.  Calling someone a mere accuser when she's a victim means that her complaint has less credibility than that of someone who reports, say, a burglary.  This would make getting a conviction an even longer, more difficult and more expensive process than it already is.  As women who are victims of such crimes tend to have fewer resources and are typically in more precarious work and domestic situations than other people, the changes Franklin wants will ensure that fewer victims will report such crimes against them.  

As it stands, the crimes that would be covered in the bill are among the most under-reported crimes.  According to a report from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, 60 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are not reported to the police.  And, if unreported cases are factored in, only 6 percent of rapists ever spend a day in jail, according to the RAINN report.  People who say that they were victims of a crime that they didn't report, when asked, say that they didn't report the crime against them because of the logistical barriers involved in doing so and because they didn't feel that their complaints would be taken seriously.  Both of those factors would worsen if anything like Franklin's bill passes.

Sometimes I'm not optimistic about the course of events.  But I never expected to see, even in one of the reddest states, an attempt to re-create law based on notions about rape and the value of one gender vs. the other that people were starting to abandon during my adolescence.  In other words, it seems that Franklin still believes that women who say they're raped are simply fantasizing and "had it coming" to them.  Also, he's saying that our pretty little heads aren't capable of reason.  So, whatever we say is less credible than what men say.

African-Americans and members of other "minority" groups have similarly been seen as less credible.  That's a story unto itself, but it also relates to the story at hand.  Anyone who's seen as a "minority" by those in the power structure is believed to be less than credible:  childlike, or simply incapable of seeing things "clearly" and telling the "truth."

In other words, the bill that Franklin proposes is as much an attempt to disenfranchise people who only recently began to win and exercise the rights Georgians and other Americans have.  In that sense, he's the spiritual descendant of those who levied poll taxes and "grandfather rule"s against newly-freed African Americans during the Reconstruction.

On Current Events

I've been holding off on saying anything about the developments in Egypt, Bahrain and Wisconsin. There are more issues involved than the media is reporting, and while I do have my sympathies, I cannot unreservedly praise or criticize one side or another.  But I will certainly have more to say soon.

This Doesn't Change: Conflicting Advice

It almost goes without saying that a gender "transition" involves changes as great in number and degree as most people are likely to ever experience.  Still, there are some things that don't change.  Sometimes, thankfully, they are the things we hope not to change.  As an example, some people who were in my life before my "transition" are still in it. 


On the other hand, there are some things that don't change from the day a trans person first talks about his or her identity with someone through the days, months and years following surgery.  Here is an example:  We continue to find conflicting and even contradictory advice and mandates about the care we have to give ourselves.


Marci and Nurse Phyllis recommend that we dilate three times a day for the first three months after our surgeries, twice a day during the following three months, and once a day after that.  According to them, receptive intercourse can substitute for one dilation.  


I would tend to trust what they say, simply because they have more experience with transgender patients than almost any other health-care professionals.  And my gynecologist hasn't advised me to do any differently.  However, I've seen a few sources--purportedly written by post-op trans women and/or their health care providers--that say once a week should be sufficient.  I saw a couple of articles that recommended even less frequent dilation, or that say each trans woman will find out what frequency is right for her.


Does other medical advice vary so widely?

Finding Out About Lola

Today I heard the Kinks' Lola on the radio.  That, in itself, is not so unusual:  "oldies" and "classic rock" stations play it all the time.  


I heard it over the PA system in a cafe where I stopped for a cup of tea on my way to my part-time gig.  Two young guys were working behind the counter.  One of them nudged the other:  "Yo, ya hear this song?"


"Yeah, so?"


"It's about a cross-dresser!"


His nomenclature may or may not be accurate.  Some think that "Lola" is a pre-op trans woman.  How would we know, just listening to the song?


But I couldn't help but to wonder how many times that young man heard the song before it occured to him that it's about a guy's encounter with a girl who turns out to be a guy.  I've heard other people say they heard the song for years before they actually listened to the lyrics.  They can be forgiven:  The song has a catchy tune and opens with some pretty good guitar work.


What's interesting about the song is that, near the end, the narrator says "But when I looked in her eyes, I almost fell for my Lola."  But, in the end, he avers, "Well I'm not the world's most masculine man/But I know what I am and I'm a glad I'm a man/And so is Lola."


Given that the song was released in 1970, it's amazing that there's anything at all about a cross-dresser or a trans woman.  Still, it's hard not to notice that the narrator goes, in the space of a stanza, from an almost-tolerant attitude to   one who doth protest too much, perhaps.  

The Art Of Gender And Prestige

Writing about newsboys and news carriers (Carriers?  I thought they had to do with diseases!) got me to thinking about what happens to jobs when their titles are de-gendered.


Congressmen became Members of Congress.  For a time, there were Congresswomen (or, as someone I know called them, Lady Congressmen).  But I think that there wouldn't be more than a couple of women in Congress today if they were still referred to as Congresswomen.  


Something similar could be said about many job titles that used to end in "man."  How much of our mail would be delivered by females if they were referred to as "mail women" --or, worse, "mail ladies"?   Now, I've never worked for the Post Office, and probably never will.  But I've been referred to as a "mail woman."  Sounds like a bit of an oxymoron to me.


But, seriously, I can think of the status of one job that actually improved when its title was de-gendered.  I can still remember when hustlers were referred to as "con men," which is short for "confidence man."  "Con woman" wouldn't have quite the same ring, and would sound simply strange.  So, instead, people who gain your trust so they can hustle and swindle you are called "con artists."  


Hmm...Does that mean anyone or anything who leaves or changes gender is an artist?

Carriers Of News

Today I was drifting aimlessly in cyberspace when I really should have been doing other things.  And, somehow, I came upon this:

Someone rescued a few sets of bags like these from an old newspaper building that was being torn down.  Now he's selling them.

I'll bet that some of you have never even seen, much less used, an old-fashioned newsboys' bag like the one pictured.  In cities, home delivery of newspapers is all but gone.  And in some cities, newspapers themselves, at least the print versions, are a dying breed.

In fact, I haven't even heard the term "newsboy" in a long time.  I wonder if that job still exists.  And if it does, is it done only by "newsboys?"  Back in my day, it was.

Yes, it was a gender-specific job.  I don't think there was any rule against girls delivering newspapers; it just didn't happen.  Or so most people think.  Little did they know...

Yes, I was a newsboy.  At least, that's what I was called.  I started delivering papers a year after my family moved to New Jersey, if I remember correctly.  

And--again, I'm depending memories not only of a long-past time, but of someone I have not been in a seemingly long time--I was even named Carrier of The Month, or some such thing, by The Asbury Park Press.  After I was delivering for about a year, our job titles were made gender-neutral:  newsboys became newspaper carriers.  I could not show the sigh of relief I felt within me when that happened!

I don't think I've looked at the APP since I stopped delivering it.  I've found the online edition, which I've linked.  But now I wonder whether they still have a print edition.

If they don't, what are all those newsboys--er, news carriers--going to do?  After all, that experience must have something to do with the person I've become!

Another Disappearing Tranny?

My relationship to my past is changing.  I've been thinking of moving in with someone who's not a lover or relative.  And I notice my circle of friends and acquaintances is changing.  What's next?


Well...This may not be a change, really.  Well, it is, except that it has more to do with me than with circumstances.  I suppose the same could be said about the other changes I've described.


Anyway...I'm starting to become one of those post-op trans people who "disappears."  In other words, I'm living as a friend, neighbor and co-worker who just happens to be trans.  Some know about it; others don't.  I wouldn't mind if fewer people knew.  


Until recently, I've been willing to talk with people if they asked, or if they were willing to listen.  But I've gotten tired of it.  I know I could help to educate people and all that.  But I have had growing doubts about how much educating I'm actually doing by being open about what I am and have been.  Maybe some who've accepted me are more accepting of, or more willing to accept, trans people.  But I think they were and are willing to accept people who are different from themselves anyway.  


And now I find myself less motivated to be an activist.  Yes, my awareness of a number of issues--most of them not directly trans-related--has grown.  This has been causing me to question some ideas and notions that formed my outlook.  As an example, as much as I don't like lots of regulation and big government, I understand that "hate crimes," by their nature, have to be defined.  That doesn't mean they're more important than other crimes; rather, it means that those who arrest and prosecute the perpetrators of such crimes need to consider their bigotry.  Why else would, for example, someone who kills a trans woman take the trouble to stab her after shooting her, or to cut up her body and leave the parts in dumpsters all over a city?


I also have complicated feelings about laws intended to give us redress when we're discriminated against and the issue of same-sex marriage.  I think that, too often, the laws are doors that are closed after the horse has bolted from the barn.  Plus, discrimination cases are notoriously difficult to prove.  For every one that ends in a settlement for the victim, there are many others that don't end with a settlement for the victim or that the victim doesn't even report, for a variety of reasons.


Part of the reason I don't feel I could be an activist is that my views aren't in lockstep with the vast majority of LGBT activists.  And, quite honestly, I feel that I'd rather help individual people than to stage or participate in a demonstration.


If you're hearing echoes of disillusionment, you're hearing right.  It seems that every time I get involved with an organization, people in it try to turn me into some kind of activist.  I'd wanted to start a support group and perhaps a counseling service for trans people aged 45 or older.  I approached an organization for whom I've done a bit of volunteer work.  That was a mistake:  What they really wanted was for me to go to conferences and other gatherings to rally the troops.  


Maybe living the rest of one's life is incompatible with that sort of thing.  Of course, I never would have known that if I hadn't tried to do both.