Doing It (What?) Over Again

Today Millie asked me what I'm doing for the Fourth of July.  Whenever she asks what I'm doing on any particular day, she has something planned and wants to invite me.  For the Fourth, she's having a barbecue, as she's done just about every year that I've known her.  She didn't have one two years ago, even though the Fourth fell on a Saturday, because that was the day I left for Trinidad.

So, in two weeks, my birthday (the 4th) and the anniversary of my surgery (the 7th) will come.  It's hard to believe that two years will have passed since the latter event.  And I'm not going to tell you how many years have passed since the day I was born!


As for the passage of time:  My mother and I were talking about I-forget-what-topic, and the subject of aging and wrinkles came up.  Mom said she'd like to look, not the way she did when she was 20 or 30, but the way she did when she and Dad moved to Florida nearly eighteen years ago.  I said that I'd like to look better, but I don't really have the same anxiety about looking younger that many other women have.  "That's because you don't have any memory of yourself as a younger woman," she said.  


Mom was being her usual perceptive self.  It's in contrast to an article someone passed on to me.  David Brooks, one of my least favorite commentators (which is saying a lot, considering how much disdain I have for much of the mass media), said something to the effect that no thinking middle-aged person would turn down the chance to be 22 years old again.


That means I'm either not a thinking person, or not a middle-aged person, according to Brooks.  He might be right on one or both counts.  But I really think that, to be fair, he's simply not aware of the realities of life for people like me.  Really, about the only way my past could have been much different is if I had been born female, or had transitioned at an earlier age.  And, since I have no memory of myself as a woman (though I was one then, just as I am one now)--or, more accurately, I have no memory of having lived as a woman--I really have no way of envisioning how my life could have been different.  After all, you can't wish to be 22 all over again so that you can make a few different choices if the life you're re-envisioning wasn't your own.  

Who Is Passing Whom?

I was starting tow write an e-mail to a colleague at my second job, which may become my primary job.  I haven't sent that e-mail, and am not sure I will.  If said colleague reads this post, I probably won't need to send that e-mail.

In it, I described a bit about my experience in that place this year.  In one sense, I would like to make that place my new professional "home," so to speak.  In that place,  I haven't experienced the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination I've encountered on my primary job.  Plus, it doesn't seem to have the dysfunction, the corruption or just the pure-and-simple pettiness that do so much to define the atmosphere, not to mention behavior and relationships, at my other job.

Still, I can't say that I felt "at home" at that second job, and somehow I don't expect to.  That is in no way the fault of anyone I've encountered there--at least, not anyone I've encountered in person.  (In fact, the colleague to whom I was writing the e-mail is one of the nicest co-workers I've had in a long time.) Perhaps it is not fair to say such things, as I started to work there less than a year ago.  But I have noticed that there is a fundamental way in which I am different, which may or may not have to do with my experiences of gender identity and transition.

I think that if I had to choose one word to encapsulate that difference, it might be "innocence."  There really seems to be a belief that if they work for and with the system, it will work for them.  Whatever remnants I may have had of such a belief were destroyed on my primary job; I don't know whether anyone ever regains such a sense, or gains it after not having had it in the first place. 

What that means is that they trust authority in a way that I can't, and perhaps never will.  The interesting thing is that it's the most "liberal" people there who seem to have that faith (I can't think of a better word for it):  They still think that governments and administrations can be moved to act in enlightened ways.  I'm thinking in particular of one prof--whom, actually, I like personally--who wants me to become an organizer for the union.  It is the same union to which faculty members at my main job belong; both colleges are part of the same university system.  The prof says he "admires" my "intelligence" and "courage."  (Little does he know!)  However, I would have a very hard time in helping out a union that said it couldn't help me in what was a blatant case of discrimination.  

And--let's face it--after an experience like that, and of being "used" by various people and organizations, you tend to become a bit wary, to say the least.  Sometimes I don't simply feel I can't, or am not sure I can, trust certain colleagues and superiors:  I'm not even sure that I want to trust them.  Having been brought up on trumped-up charges, and being blamed for sexual harassment I experienced, may simply have made me less capable, and less desirous, of giving trust, at least on the job.

A few days ago, someone at my main job remarked that I am "outgrowing" that place.  I don't think I've been at my second job long enough for that to have happened.  But I sometimes wonder if I'm "outgrowing" the academic world entirely.  Or, perhaps, it is leaving me in some way.  

Same-Sex Marriage In New York: Just One More Vote...

The buzz has been about marriage, at least here in New York.  The bill to allow same-sex marriages has been approved by the state Assembly, and is said to be a mere vote away from being voted in by the state Senate.

Actually, we've been here before.  Four years ago, the Assembly, which had and has a Democratic majority, voted for the bill.  However, the Senate, which has had a Republican majority for decades, voted against it.  But a year later, David Paterson, who became Governor after Eliot Spitzer resigned, directed all State agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, and in Canada, for the purpose of determining benefits.  So, for example, the partner of a lesbian working in the Department of Motor Vehicles would be entitled to the same health insurance and such as the wife or husband of a heterosexual employee.


Once again, though, the state Senate blocked the bill allowing same-sex marriage.


This battle between the Assembly and Senate is the reason why the State's human rights laws include no provisions for transgenders (i.e., language that protects "gender identity and expression").  What's worse it that the Senate has prevented the inclusion of such provisions for the past forty years.


As I understand it, some state Senators are willing to vote for same-sex marriage as long as there is no protection for transgenders.   And others want exemptions for religious institutions. So a program that was funded by the Catholic Church, or any other, could refuse to recognize same-sex marriages and grant benefits to the spouses of their gay employees.


The Legislature will hold its last session on Monday before going into recess.  Some Assembly members are trying to get an extension for the bill that would allow for a vote after the Legislature returns.  Otherwise, the bill would be shelved and would have to be re-introduced in future sessions of the Legislature.

The Gay Girl In Damascus: An American In Scotland

By now, you may have read reports that the Gay Girl in Damascus blog has been revealed to be the work of an American man studying in Scotland.


Predictably, many people have expressed outrage.  Some of them, I believe, were acting out of anger that throbbed when their egos were bruised from the blow of realizing they'd been had.  But others, I feel, have more legitimate reasons for their anger.


While it could be argued that the plight of gay people and activists in Syria was accurately portrayed, it's equally true that the revelation will make such people targets, if they are not already.  Worse, it strips them of their credibility in they eyes of many people.  So, the next time some gay activists writes of being harassed or tortured, some will dismiss it in the same way people in Aesop's fable dismissed the boy who cried "wolf!"


 I had a hard enough time getting the attention of anyone who could help after two cops ran me off the street, and nearly ran me over, after I ignored their calls of "Nice legs, honey.  Imagine how much worse it could have been if some blogger claimed a similar experience but turned out to be an investment banker living with his wife and kids in a gated community in Connecticut.  Forget about me, if you want to:  What would it be like for the next person who was subjected to homo- or trans-phobic violence?  Imagine trying to get help from people who'd just been spoofed with a story similar to yours.


The unfortunate thing is that the guy who posed as the Gay Girl in Syria will probably get of scot-free (no pun intended) while gay people and activists may suffer some of the things recounted in Gay Girl's blog. And no one will heed their calls for help.

Illegal Immigrants=Drunk Drivers? According to Fattman, Yes.

Time was when even the most open-minded of people used to say that rape victims were "asking for it" or "must have done something" to provoke the attacker.



I'm sure there are still people who still think that way.  But at least no public officials who want to get elected to, or stay in, office would say such a thing.  And they certainly wouldn't equate a rape survivor with a drunk driver.


Or would they?


Well, believe it or not, a state representative in Massachusetts--yes, Massachusetts--actually said that.  Well, he didn't say it directly.  Instead, he used some of the most tortured syntax and logic to come to that.


Steve Fattman (Does he have a brother named Jake, by any chance?)  said that  rape victims who are illegal immigrants "should be afraid to come forward."  In Massachusetts, there is a program called "Safe Communities" which requires both perpetrators and victims to be fingerprinted so that authorities can check the prints against immigration databases.  Whoever designed the program probably thought that he or she was indeed making the community safer.  However, I don't think anyone thought of this consequence:  Many immigrants are now afraid to come forward.  I'm not talking only about illegal ones, now, either:  Many come from places where, in essence, the cops and the military are one in the same and have free rein to do what they want to people.  That makes them afraid of authorities generally.


And, of course, illegal immigrants would be even more afraid to come forward. That is what Rep. Fattman wants.  "If someone is here illegally, they should be afraid to come forward because they should be afraid of getting deported."  While explaining to a reporter that he was quoted out of context, he said, "If someone got into a car accident, it's obviously a tragic event. But if they're drunk and they crash, it's a crime. If that person was drunk and survived the accident they would be afraid to come forward."  Likewise, he said illegals should be afraid to come forward.


I won't rant and rave about how that statement is offensive on so many levels. Instead, I will talk about a Barbadian student I had a few years ago. I'll call her Charlene.  One evening, she came to class wearing big sunglasses.  I think she knew that I knew why she was wearing them, and she asked to see me after class.


Even though I knew nothing about her life, I knew--even before she opened her mouth--that the black eye and other bruises were caused by her husband.  Don't ask me how--I just knew.  In fact, almost everything about her story was sadly predictable--except for one thing.  Yes, she was here illegally.  So, for that matter, was her husband.  In fact, he wanted to come here and insisted that she did.  And, in her community, everyone took his side because they are all religious conservatives who believe that a woman is supposed to be subservient to a man.  They also believe, after the Apostle Paul, that women are essentially a necessary evil for marriage and making children.  According to what Charlene told me, even the women in her family and community believe this way. 


Of course, I talked to her about leaving him.  There were churches, safe houses and other places where she could go, I told her.  That wouldn't help, she protested:  Her husband, as well as many other people in her community, would look for her.  One or two might even try to kill her, she said.


And, on top of that, she had to worry about Immigration and Naturalization!  That's not what a battered woman--or anyone suffering a trauma of any sort that isn't of his or her own doing--should be worrying about.  


But worry she did.  After all, in the minds of such as Rep. Fattman, she is on the same moral level as a drunk driver.  

Chaz Bono and Me: Hey, You Never Know!

I'm thinking now of a man who was a colleague of mine back when I was the "before" photo.  Tall, portly and with an easy manner, he's one of those guys who's avuncular at 50 and is now almost grandfatherly.  I'm guessing that he's about 65, give or take a few years.


Anyway, back in January, I bumped into him.  We hadn't seen each other in about a dozen years.  He had heard about me because I stopped at the college where we used to teach and where his brother was still teaching.  His brother seemed more bemused, but he--I'll call him Jimmy--was actually quite sympathetic when I bumped into him.  "I was surprised, really," he said.  "I thought you were straight, you seemed pretty masculine and you were so athletic."


He thought for a moment and added," I guess you just never know who is."


I thought of that when I was talking with my mother today.  She saw Chaz Bono on a program--I forget which--on a cable network.  "She, I mean he, has such a big neck," she said.  


"I know.  It's a linebacker's neck."


"Yeah, you're right.  She, I mean he, really changed."

I then explained some of the effects of taking testosterone, and the fact that, because it's a stronger hormone than estrogen, the changes in female-to-male transsexuals are usually even more pronounced than those in male-to-females who take estrogen.


"But he really looks different from when he was Chastity!," my mother exclaimed.   Then, she paused in a way she rarely does; I guessed that she was trying not to mix up the pronouns.  "You know," she said, "Chastity was really cute."


"Yes, I remember her from those old Sonny and Cher shows."


Chastity, as I remember, really was cute, in an almost Shirley Temiple-ish sort of way.  But even then--about four decades ago--I saw something unusual in her.  I couldn't articulate what it was, but I somehow had the feelng it had to do with whether or not she would like boys when she got a little older.



And now he's one of them.  As they say in the old country, "Hey, you never know!"

Meeting The Past, Again

This summer, I'm teaching a class on the campus where I worked my primary job this year. Something odd is happening:  Even though I have only taught that class for a week (It runs for seven and a half weeks.), I feel closer to those students than I have to any I have taught at that college in some time.  Yesterday, I--and they--realized that I knew all of their names!


What makes it so odd is that the school already feels like it's in the past for me.  That's how I feel when I'm anywhere on the campus besides my class.  I noticed that when I bumped into two women I hadn't seen, probably, in about two years.  Back when I was an academic advisor and, later, director of the tutoring center, I used to see them all of the time: One is a supervisor in the financial aid office, and the other directs the office of student services.  Both seemed happy, and surprised, to see me and gave me longer and more emphatic hugs than I could have anticipated.


They have never been anything but kind to me.  But, in some strange way, they felt like memories at the very moment I was talking with them.  Perhaps they were:  Perhaps I was talking to a memory I had of them, and they were talking to the way they remembered me.  Not that I disliked any of it.  However, I did have the sense that I might not see them again.  


The director of student said, "It has to be about two years since I've seen you.  Something about you has changed."  I mentioned that it's been almost two years--already!--since I've had my surgery. "Yes!  The last time I saw you, you were about to have it," exclaimed the woman from Financial Aid.


Now I am recalling the other times I felt as I did upon seeing those women:  the months, the weeks, the days before my graduations--from high school, from college, from graduate school.  In each of those situations, I had the feeling, as I did yesterday, that those situations were already in the past, that I had in a sense, already graduated--or left, at any rate.  


In high school and college, I knew I was just biding time:  In other words, I was warehoused.  In high school, I had to stay because the law said I had to in order to graduate; in college, I was merely getting enough credits to graduate, having already completed my major and distribution requirements.


On the other hand, as I neared the end of graduate school, I had the sense that I was beginning something that I couldn't have continued, much less completed, there.   Turned out, there were a whole bunch of things.  True, I was finishing some course work and my thesis.  But I didn't feel that those were, or had anything to do with, the tasks I could see before me.  


If anything, what I felt yesterday was more like what I felt toward the end of graduate school.  In other words, I feel more of a sense of moving on--and, hopefully, ahead--rather than leaving.  I have been at that college for six years --which, even at this point in my life, seems like a geological age.  When I entered, I had been living as a woman, as Justine, for not much more than a year.  I was grateful that I had a job and could work in relative peace, under a department head--I'll call her Claire--who was friendly and supportive.   Now it has been nearly two years since my operation.  Claire has retired and much in the college--and the department in which I've worked--has changed.  The charming, quirky dysfunction one finds in so many departments and colleges has turned into something that is more disorienting, and even vicious.  I've never been in any other place where people get as defensive when you ask a question, and I'm not used to people filing charges against people over a simple disagreement. 


I simply can't see how I can develop, personally or professionally, in such an environment.  At least, I can't see how that place can help me to become anything I'd want to become, as a woman or a professional.  


I feel more like a stranger in that place than I did on the first day I spent there.  The women I saw yesterday are not among the reasons why.  They are simply two more people there, and they are--from what I can tell--working for a pension.  The one from Financial Aid will probably get hers fairly soon; the woman from Student Services has at least a few more years.  They know what their futures will be; I am just starting to understand what mine could be.

Advice from Brian May

If you're of my generation--or a Queen fan (Come on, admit it, you loved Night At The Opera!)--you surely remember the Brian May song Fat Bottomed Girls.





Even though the song was recorded more than 30 years ago, it remains one of the few to celebrate those of us who aren't built like fashion models.


If you remember the song, good for you. If not, listen to it. And note that line: GET ON YOUR BIKES AND RIDE!


Would that Brian May weren't the only one giving that advice. I did find this entry on Women's Cycling.ca encouraging us to do just that. (The photo came from that site.) However, I find that as the cycling industry is taking more of its cues from the mass media, the cyclists portrayed in advertising, videos and films about cycling, seem to be more and more like those you see in ads for gyms and J.Crew.




And some bike shops perpetrate the bias against avoirdupois. One day, in the last shop in which I worked, a woman who was (at least by most standards I'm familiar with) at least seventy-five pounds "overweight" came in. She had been very athletic all through college, she said, but the detours of her life had taken her away from exercise and good eating habits. Plus, after a surgery she needed following an auto accident, her doctor prescribed a medicine with steroids in it, which put additional weight on her.



She wanted to get back in shape, but because of knee and other injuries, her doctor (who cycled and played tennis, if I recall correctly), advised her not to run or play basketball. Rather, he recommended cycling--an activity she once enjoyed--because it would put less strain on her damaged joints and ligaments. So, she said, she was looking to buy a bike.




One of the sales people in that shop told her she should come back to the shop after losing weight.






I felt badly for that woman, but I did nothing to help her. I hadn't thought about her in some time, and I've related the story as best as I can remember it.






Did you notice that near the beginning of this post, I wrote, "those of us who aren't built like fashion models." Yes, I include myself. Of course, when I was training as if I were going to enter the Tour de France for 40-and-older riders, I woulnd't have said anything like that about myself. Granted, I was trimmer and had more strength. But almost no one has the same sort of body in middle age as he or she had when young. (Trust me: I know that as well as anybody can!) Sometimes it has to do with life taking the turns I've mentioned; it also has to do with the way our bodies age. Also, in my case, taking hormones added a few pounds to the ones I was already gaining by other means.






And, let's face it, most people aren't born to be a perfect size four. (I'm talking about dresses, not Euro racing kit! In my prime, I wore a size three.) So why should that bar any of us from cycling? Is there any law that cyclists have to be, as one New Yorker columnist put it, "lycra sausages"?

A Real Woman?

I understand Ann Coulter is hawking her new book.  Oh joy oh joy.  


Once a reporter asked her what she would do if she found out her son was gay. She said, "I'd tell him he was adopted."


Good thing she doesn't have a kid to tell that to.  In fact, I wonder whether she'd've answered the reporter the way she did if she had a kid.


I've read and heard rumors that she's a trans woman, or that she suffers from Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.  If either one is true, I wonder how she'd react to someone telling her that she's not a "real woman" or that she doesn't belong with us.

How Could I Ever Break Up Your Family?

If I recall correctly, one of the characters in Alberto Moravia's The Conformist (and in Bernardo Bertolucci's film based on the novel) says something to the effect that in Italy, people can rationalize anything in the name of their families.


That's more or less what any number of Italian-Americans (Remember, I speak as one!), from church officials to Mafiosi, have done.  However, in America, instead of one's own family, one can use "The Family" to rationalize all manner of prejudice and hatred.


To wit:  Nearly all of the opposition to equal rights for transgenders (or, for that matter, gays, lesbians and bisexuals) includes some group or another with the word "family" in its name.  It's happening now in Maine, where a group called the Maine Family Policy Council is trying to get the state to roll back some of the protections for transgenders it encoded in its laws.  The Massachusetts Family Council is trying to do the same thing in their state, and in Connecticut, "family" groups are trying to prevent that state from passing a gender-inclusive anti-discrimination bill.  Similar scenarios are playing out in other states that have passed, or are trying to pass, such legislation.


How, pray tell, does protecting the rights of LGBT people threaten the family?  If a man marries a man, or a woman a woman, I don't see how that undermines heterosexual families.  If anything, allowing same-sex marriages might prevent a few broken homes, as some young person who, not so long ago, might have entered into a sham marriage in order to "fit in" will have the option of creating a family on his or her own terms.  I think such a union would have a better chance than some marriage that's based on nothing more than guilt or misplaced familial or societal expectations.


And I don't know how making it illegal for someone to fire or evict me, or to commit violence against me, because I had an "M" on by birth certificate will break up anyone's family or persuade some kid to be like me unless he or she feels about gender identity as I did.


Finally, even if you define marriage as "a man and a woman," and believe that is the basis of a family, I still don't understand how I can be such a threat to it.  I never stopped any heterosexual couple from getting married or having kids, and I never broke up anyone's marriage or family. Well, I've been blamed for the latter, but I still don't understand how I came to have such power.


If anyone can explain how undergoing having undergone my transition, or loving whomever I love, is such a threat to the formation or stability of someone's family, I would be very interested in hearing it. 

Thirty Years Later, It's Our Epidemic

Thirty years ago today, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the Centers for Disease Control, included a piece of information that was little-noted at the time but would, literally, change the world.

Five previously-healthy men, ranging in age from 29 to 36, were diagnosed with an illness that had been all but unknown in the United States, save for people with compromised immune systems.  About all these young men had in common were that they were treated in Los Angeles hospitals and were said to be "active homosexuals."  They had no known common sexual contacts.

The illness for which they were being treated was pneumocystis carinii. By the time the MMWR announcement was published, two of the men had already died. Within a year, the other three would be dead.

About the only people who knew about their illnesses were those doctors and researchers who read that issue of the MMWR.  However, stories about a "gay cancer" in which victims had nearly identical systems to those of the five men in the report had been circulating, mostly by word of mouth (Remember, there was no Internet in those days.) among gay men.

That so-called "gay cancer" and the previously-rare form of pneumonia that killed its victims was, of course, what we now know as AIDS.  

What few people knew was that many, many more people were carrying the seeds of that illness within them.  In fact, a little less than two weeks before the MMWR was published, I was--unknowingly, of course--among four of them. It was the last time I saw any of them alive.  I was twenty-two years old, and those people I saw were around the same age.

Eleven other friends and acquaintances of mine have died of the illness.  Five of them--including my first AA sponsor--died between Memorial Day and Christmas one year.  

That was also the year--eleven years after I completed my B.A.-- I began to teach at the college level as a graduate assistant.  I saw, immediately, a dramatic difference between the freshmen in the first class I taught and my undergraduate classmates--or the kind of person I was in as a freshman.  Even those of us who came from relatively conservative environments were still shaped, in various ways, by the various forms of sexual liberation that had washed over college campuses and other segments of society for nearly a decade before my first day as an undergraduate. 

We may well have been the first generation of undergraduates who weren't hiding our sexual experience, desires and proclivities from each other, let alone those who had immediate authority over us.  In fact, said authority figures--and the parents and guardians of some students--almost seemed to expect that sexual encounters would be part of our undergraduate experience.  I recall one classmate being told, by his father, that he needed to "get laid more often."  That young man's father was one of the so-called pillars of his community.

The freshmen I was teaching nearly a generation later shared none of those attitudes.  In fact, I could sense it even before they wrote or voiced their attitudes about sex and intoxication.  

At first I thought that they didn't value those things as much as we did because they were on a non-residential campus, in contrast to the residential campus I attended.  Then I thought that they were more conservative because they had grown up with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as their Presidents, and the resulting conservative values expressed in the culture. 

But one day I thought back to something else I'd experienced about two years earlier, near the end of the 1980's.  I had been working as an artist-in-residence with the Poets In The Schools program here in New York.  One of the schools in which I'd been working was in the East New York section of Brooklyn.  It was considered, along with the South Bronx and possibly East Harlem and South Jamaica, among the poorest and most dangerous parts of New York City.  (The following year, the precinct that included the school recorded more homicides than all of France or the then-West Germany.) 

One day, in that school, an eighth-grader asked how old I was. When I told him I was thirty, he asked when I would turn thirty-one.  I told him three or four months, or whatever it was.  "Then you're the oldest man I know!"

Mind you, that boy was thirteen years old.  "No, that can't be!"

"My Uncle Henry was thirty-one when he died."  And, that kid added, it was AIDS that claimed him.  I would find out that about at least half of the kids in that class had a family member who died the same way; everyone in that class knew someone who died that way or was murdered.  

The students in my freshman class were only two to four years older than that boy in East New York would have been.  A couple of them grew up there; a few more grew up in neighborhoods that weren't much different.  I guessed that their comparative circumspection about sex and drugs may well have been shaped by their experiences of seeing friends and family members succumb to the ravages of AIDS or as a result of the so-called War on Drugs.

During that semester, Magic Johnson announced that he was HIV-positive.  Of course, he was very quick to assert that he is heterosexual.  While nearly everyone believed him, many of us thought he "had" to say that in order to cover himself.  Being the great NBA player he was, he had access to the best medical care available.  But he could very easily have been misdiagnosed or mistreated in some way had he not made that assertion.

On the other hand, his announcement of his "normal" sexuality turned out to be a good thing in the long run, for it helped to change a lot of people's perceptions about AIDS--and, perhaps, homosexuality.  No longer could people equate one with the other.  

So, in that freshman class at Brooklyn College in 1991, I believe I saw an interesting and, on its face, counterintuitive change take place.  Along with their more conservative and restrained attitudes about sex, I was also seeing, if not tolerance, at least an acknowledgement that people they knew and loved are gay and were not, as one televangelist claimed, like rats during the time of a plague.  That is not to say that there weren't homophobic students:  I recall comments scrawled on the door of Allen Ginsberg's office at the college.  But other students, including most in my class, were ashamed and embarrassed that one of their peers could be so ignorant.  And a few students and faculty members openly mentioned their non-heterosexual inclinations.

I was not one of them.  I still feared how people might react had I openly discussed my gender identity, much less manifested it.  Years later, when I "came out," I experienced some of the things I'd feared--though not from my students.  

So I can understand why too many trans people kill themselves or stay "in the closet."  Too many of us lose families and other networks, and jobs, as a result of finally reaching the point at which we could no longer live lies.  The loss of our lives as we knew them drives too many of us into sex work and into other kinds of risky work and behaviors, and the resulting loss of income and insurance keeps too many of us from getting the diagnoses and treatments we need.   

Thirty years after that MMWR report, HIV-positive people are living longer and, sometimes, not getting sick at all.  That is true, anyway, for those who have good incomes and insurance policies.  For everyone else, the disease is just as terrible as it was then.  The difference is that its victims are poorer and more likely to be female.  Male-to-female transgenders just happen to fit both descriptions.  So, thirty years later, the AIDS epidemic is ours.

Reflections Cycling

All of my kidding aside, I really am a rather reflective and contemplative woman.  I've had to be.  Maybe that's why I sometimes, while riding, I see images of cyclists I might have been, or appeared to be:

Was this man riding to exhale?  Or would he be inspired?  Or some of both?  Actually, those questions apply to just about every cyclist one might encounter as a Saturday afternoon turns to dusk behind a curtain of high clouds.  For that matter, those questions could apply to pretty much anyone who cycled, walked, skated, skateboarded, fished from, or sat on the benches lining, the promenade that passes under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

But what of two people on a tandem on the Coney Island boardwalk?

One doesn't see tandems very often in New York.  I'm guessing that the riders are a father and son or, perhaps, an uncle and nephew. 

When I was growing up, there still weren't very many adults who cycled.  None in my family did.  Even the owners and operators of most bike shops weren't riders:  They, like most adults, saw bicycles as the means of transportation people used only until they got their driver's licenses.  

The few adult cyclists one saw were almost invariably male.   And now I realize that, even today, the vast majority of adults I see riding are male.  Perhaps that is the reason why I see those images of who I was, or might have been.

Now I remember cycling along the ocean in New Jersey as a teenager.  From Sandy Hook Savedsouth to Sea Bright, the wind and tides exhaled through shells and bones on the other side of the sea wall that separated the ocean from Route 36; south of Sea Bright, they sluiced through mounds and valleys of sand that stretched even farther than I could have cycled on any day I cycled, or the one after it, or the one after it.  How far, exactly, would it go?  To Key West?  At least I knew that if I were to cross the ocean--which, of course, I couldn't do on my bike--I'd end up in Portugal, in Spain, in France.   

Nobody I knew then had been to any of those places.  And they hadn't been to the places where they wanted me to go:  the colleges, Annapolis, West Point or any of the other Armed Forces academies.  Or, for that matter, the offices  they hoped I would occupy, or even the schools in which I would study and teach.

None of those schools existed, at least for me, when I was riding along the ocean so many years ago.  And nobody followed me:  nobody, that is, except for a middle-aged woman who told me to inhale deeply and exhale completely, and that everything would be all right because she was going to be there for me, no matter where I rode. 

And I was present today, as I always was, for that teenaged boy who spent sunny days and overcast afternoons cycling the Jersey Shore.  Perhaps I saw the person he might have been, too.  

  

Can They Raise A Gender-Free Child?

People have been asking me what I think about the Canadian parents who are raising a genderless child--or, at any rate, one who is not specifically identified as male of female.


It's one of those ideas I like in theory.  Ideally, no one should be forced to conform to one set of rules or another concerning gender identity and expression.  If I do say so myself, very few people know better than I how it feels to try to fit into narrowly-defined roles based on factors you had absolutely no say in determining.  Not only are you trying to fit; others are trying to fit you into the notions they've received about how boys or girls should act.  I don't blame my parents:  I didn't have a language to express how I felt and, even if I did, I don't think they would have had any way to know how to act in accordance with the knowledge I could have conveyed.  


Even today, almost no parent has any clue as to how to raise a kid who doesn't feel the right gender was recorded on his or her birth certificate.  And, when I was a child, about the only transsexual anyone knew about was Christine Jorgensen.  Although a lot of people still, unconsciously, see her as a sort of archetypal transsexual, some of us--including me and, I assume, my parents--have since come to realize that she was not typical of anything.


Given the environment that existed then, I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had been raised as a girl.  We've all heard the horror stories about the boys whose parents or guardians made them wear dresses and long braided hair (although, interestingly, we don't hear much about girls who were forced into being boys).  Even if I didn't break down from being made fun of and getting beat up every day, I would have incurred a lot of stress that  might have led to other problems, both for me and my parents.


Plus, given that gender roles were even more narrowly defined than they are now, I don't think it would have been possible to raise a "genderless" or "gender-free" child. 


And, while some people--particularly the young--take a broader view of gender than people in past generations did, everyone is still expected to conform, at least in some fashion, to the gender to which they were assigned at birth.  And parents are still expected to raise kids to do so.  This means that, in the end, kids are still expected to be readily identifiable as their birth genders.


Mind you, none of this has anything to do with "confusing" the kid, as many people would expect to happen.  In fact, the boy who is sent to school in dresses has problems later in life, not because he is "confused" but, rather, because he knows what he is.  Whatever is done to them, nearly all kids eventually decide on what manifestation of gender is right for them.  I've read about parents who had kids of both genders and who, instead of giving GI Joe to the boys and Barbie to the girls, buy those toys and let the kids decide which ones they want to play with.  Almost invariably, the boys go for the GI Joe and the girls for the Barbie.  


Of course, the parents who are not letting their kid--or anyone else--know what gender the kid is are allowing exactly that to happen.  And, in a more accepting world, the kid would make choices and become, and would live happily ever after, as the story goes.  However, we don't live in that kind of world, at least not yet.  


So what, exactly, is a parent--or kid--to do?

The End Of Memory: Beyond Forgetting

Yesterday I rode my bike through a part of Brooklyn in which I spent much of my childhood.  I hadn't been there in four years.  The last time I was there, it was an unusually hot for this time of year, but would have been absolutely normal, say, in late July or early August.  The same could have been said for yesterday.


And, yesterday shared another trait with that day four years ago:  There were no shadows, as if the heat had evaporated them--or, perhaps, prevented them from being born in the first place.


Actually, what I just described is also how I remember every summer day--and many in other seasons--in that neighborhood.  Everything seemed burnished into a tablet of a moment would last for days, weeks, months, years, and even entire lifetimes.  It's what I sometimes call the Eternal Present.  


Yesterday I also did something else I did on that day four years ago:  I stopped by the church in which I served as an altar boy and the parish school, diagonally across the street, I attended. Both looked much as they did then and, in fact, as they did in my childhood.  The church seems not to have aged at all:  Although not an unattractive building, it's not an architectural or historic landmark of any sort.  The school, on the other hand, is an even more ordinary structure, and it did look shabbier from the outside than it did four years ago, not to mention the way it looked when I attended it forty years ago.  


One difference, though, between now and the recent or distant past is that I had no compulsion--from others or from within me--to go inside either one.  When I last went to the neighborhood, four years ago, I entered the church for the first time since my days as an altar boy. There, I confronted the "ghost" of the priest who molested me.


So, really, I no longer have any reason to go into that church.  Actually, the neighborhood felt almost as if it were no longer part of my life.  In one sense, it isn't:  I've changed.  And, of course, the neighborhood has changed.  It is because of those changes, in fact, that I was surprised to see the that the school, and even the church,  were still there:  Nearly everyone in that neighborhood is a Hasidic Jew.  In fact, all of the announcements I saw taped to lampposts and the signs on the stores are printed in Hebrew characters.


But even if the neighborhood were still filled with blue-collar Italian- and Irish-Americans and non-Hasidic Jews, as it was during my childhood, it would have felt like a neighborhood that was no longer, and perhaps had never been, mine.  Or, at least, the things I remembered would have been merely the past rather than my specific memories.  And, you might say that I've "moved on" from having confronted the "ghost" of that priest.  He is long dead, and the boy he fondled and whose lips he pressed against him has become the woman whose image on the distant horizon of his life tormented him precisely because she--that is to say, I--was the one who sustained him.  That I did that, and have become whom I've become, may be the only things that no one can take away from me.  And I'm certainly not about to let anyone--much less a ghost--steal them from me.  


That, by the way, is also the reason I have decided not to pursue it legally.  For one thing, those multi-million dollar settlements the media trumpets are only single notes in the cacophony the legal system.  For another, I simply don't want to relive or even recount what happened for lawyers and judges--or, for that matter, any other civil or ecclesiastical authority.  And, finally, I don't know how many years I have left.  I'd prefer not to spend them dealing with the legal system.


I don't know when, or whether, I'll go back.  For now, I hope I won't need to. 

I'm Here

I know it's been a few days since I've posted.  The semester has just ended, and  that has meant a lot of work.  And, over the weekend I did some bike riding. And I've wanted to write about a couple of things on this blog that require a bit of thought and explanation.  I don't want to "dash off" posts about them, nor do I want to write them when I'm tired.


So, for those of you who've been following this post, I'm writing this to let you know I'm still here and this blog is still going.  Thanks again for stopping by!

If They're Committed To It, Don't Let Them Do It

"I don't have anything against gay people.  I just don't think they should be allowed to get married."


I'm sure you've heard someone say something like that.  A student of mine wrote it in her paper.


That in itself wouldn't raise my hackles:  I've heard and read all sorts of things.  


However, the student's rationale for her belief is one of the strangest I've ever heard.  Like many who oppose equality, she tries to empower her beliefs with her religious faith and her concern for the daughter she is raising by herself.  


She says that she doesn't want her daughter to grow up believing that a union between two men or two women is "normal" or "moral."  That argument is also nothing new.  But here's where things get weird:  She says the fact that the divorce rate is so high is reason enough not to allow marriage between two men or two women.i


I asked her to explain that.  This is what she said:  "Well, you know, a lot of these gay couples stay together for  a long time.  Actually, I have some friends who are gay and have been 'married' to other gay people for ten, fifteen or even twenty years."


"All right.  How does that relate to the topic of gay marriage and why it shouldn't be allowed?"


"If my daughter sees straight couples getting divorced while gay couples are staying together, it might give kids like my daughter the wrong message."


"Which is...?"

"That gay couples are more commited to each other and stay together longer than straght couples."


"And the problem with that is...?"


She told me that she is "sheltering" her child from all sorts of "evil" influences.  


I never knew that staying married was "evil"--or that it's something kids shouldn't know about.


I must say: It's the first time I ever heard someone's commitment to something as a reason for not allowing him or her to do the very thing to which he or she is committed.  


At the very least, it's the strangest argument Iv'e heard against gay marriage.

Rain and Earthquakes

The semester is just about over.  I'll be teaching a summer class, but I will have a few days off in between.  Hopefully, it will be enough time to regroup, or whatever you want to call it.


Not that it's been a bad semester.  At least, not for teaching, anyway.  And people at my second job have been treating me well, for the most part.  I really wish it could be my full-time job.  


But that job has been unusual in some ways.  I guess that's inevitable, since it was the first place in which I was hired after my surgery.  And it's also the first place in which I'm working without my history as Nick.  I have his expereinces and abilities (such as they are), but I have not been talking about them as much as I had been.  And, at the new job, I have not talked about my gender identity to my students, though some know about it.  I mean, out of a few thousand students, faculty and staff, it's hard not to believe that at least one hasn't typed my name into a Google search bar and come up with this blog, among other things.


Has it made me a better or worse instructor?  I'm not sure.  Somehow I feel, though, that in not disclosing the fact that I lived as a guy named Nick, or discussing some of the experiences that were part of it, my life has become subliminal source material  for my teaching.


And even though some people on my second job have been very warm and friendly toward me, I still am scarred by some of the things that happened on my other job, where I've worked for the past six years.  I have experienced various betrayals and back-stabbings and, every day, I have to walk by the security guard who sexually harassed me.  


In the meantime, I've had three students in one of my classes whom I would swear were sexually molested or assaulted.  Actually, I know one was:  She told me herself.  But for the other two, I can sense the violence so intensely that I'd be willing to bet that something happened to them, probably when they were children.  One of them, whom I'll call Rachel, wrote her paper comparing Desdemona's relationship with Othello, and Emilia's to Iago, with that of an abused woman to her abuser.  


The thing is, she seemed to know, very intimately, what it's like to be a battered spouse, or anyone battered.    And she has the painfully diffident look and manner of someone whose sense of herself is debased daily by those with whom she lives.


Rachel uncannily reminds me of a girl I knew in high school.  I'll call her Norma.  She had that same look and manner Rachel has.  Another trait they have in common is their intelligence:  Sometimes I think it must be painful to be as smart as they are. 


I hope to see Rachel again.  In some way, I'd like to reassure her that things--and she--are going to be all right or that, at least, they can be.  

Transgender Group Honors Former Governor

Yesterday the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund honored former Governor David Paterson. 

During his final year in office, he signed an executive order mandating some protections for transgender people in the workplace and in other areas.

Because he didn't serve a full term as Governor, and because he became Governor only because Eliot Spitzer resigned in the wake of a scandal, some say that Governor Paterson will be only a footnote in history.  However, I think that even if he doesn't become an icon, I think his time in office will be studied.  For one thing, he actually made more and greater efforts to advance the rights of transgenders, as well as others who have experienced discrimination.  For another, he did that at the same time he was cutting the State's budget. 

Now, I'm not an expert in these matters.  But I do believe that he is one of the few office-holders, if not the only one, in recent history who tried to expand civil rights at the same time he was shrinkng the budget of his government.  Most of the small-government conservatives (at least the ones I know about) see civil rights legislation as giving "privilege" to particular groups of people, and of costing the government--and society as a whole--lots of money not only to enforce the legislation, but also from the missed economic opportunities they claim to be the result of such legislation.

Of course, some will point out--rightly--that Patterson did what he did when he had nothing to lose (politically, anyway).  By the time he signed the executive order, he had already announced that he wouldn't stand for re-election.  Well, maybe there's another moral to that story.

Looking At My Vagina Again

Early this evening, I got home from a bike ride I took to Point Lookout, via Rockaway Beach.  After feeding my cats and myself, I dilated.  


Nearly two years have passed since my surgery.  So I suppose I was expecting, to the extent that I was thinking about it, that my vagina to change in some way. I just wasn't sure of how it would.  


Maybe my memory of what my vagina looked like in the days and weeks immediately after my surgery has been distorted.  But I seem to recall it as more linear and vertical:  the folds surrounding the cavity seemed to cascade in layers of rosy-colored lines.  


So, perhaps it is only against that memory that my vagina seems to be taking on a more ovular shape, with the folds around it rippling and curving in arcs from it.  For all I know, the shape was more like that from the beginning and I just didn't notice or have any way of comparing it.  


Whether or not that has actually happened, I feel as if that part of my body has taken on the feminine shape I've always wanted.  It looks more and more like other vaginas I've seen.  No, I'm not going to say exactly how many I've seen, or how I came to see them. After all, this is, ahem, an educational blog!


I don't know whether or how my vagina will change again.  I suppose that it will, if for no other reason than I will.  It seems like the surgery, like taking hormones and everything else that came before it, was "just the beginning," as they say.

Since We Last Met

On my way home last night, I bumped into someone I hadn't seen in at least a year.  Lucy was getting chicken-on-a-stick from a "street meat" cart next to the Capital One bank on Broadway.  So, I noticed, was a rugged-looking man who looked to be a couple of years older than her.

He's her husband.  He wasn't, the last time I saw her.  They met around this time last year, she said, and got married, in a very small ceremony, in September.  I'm not surprised that it happened so quickly:  I always figured that Lucy wouldn't have a long engagement after meeting "the one."  And, from what little I had seen of him, I wasn't surprised that he "fell" so quickly, either.  You know how it is:  those tough-looking biue collar guys can be, deep down, such softies sometimes.  Maybe that's the reason why the men who've mattered most to me in my life--save perhaps for Bruce--have all been blue-collar, in spirit if not in fact.  Somehow I think Lucy feels the same way.

It's a strange feeling, though, to meet a friend's spouse and realize that you've known that friend for longer than the spouse has.  You realize that, apart from the physical intimacy, there is something else that makes your friend's relationship with her husband different from her friendship with you or anyone else.  I'll describe it as best I can:   Although you are friends in this moment, your friendship is defined by its history.  On the other hand, if you are going to spend your life with someone, you have to be able to look toward the future, or at least forward from the current moment, with that person.  

I met Lucy some time during the first year I was living in Astoria.  I had just moved from Park Slope and the life I had with Tammy; I think she met me during the time when I was still going to work as Nick but was going to Manhattan and the LGBT Community Center whenever I could, as Justine.  I also believe it was just before I started taking hormones.  I'm pretty sure that I introduced myself to her as Justine, which would make her one of the very first people who would meet me that way.  


In any event, she recalled that she was nineteen years old then.  That sounds right; she was in her second semester of college--ironically enough, LaGuardia Community College, where I was teaching at the time.  Now she's twenty-seven and working with her husband, who is an independent electrical contractor.  


He talked about how he met Lucy.  The funny thing is that he said almost the same things I've said about her:  that she's pretty, but that's not what you notice about her.  It was "a light within her," he said.  And that, of course, is what I've always liked about Lucy:  that radiance from within.  "That's forever," he said.  "Someone who's pretty today might not be tomorrow."


Then, for no reason I could discern, he told me, "You must have been really beautiful when you were younger.  You're a beautiful lady now. But you really must have been something."


Lucy and I could only smile to each other.