For Lou Rispoli, RIP

Far too many people are killed simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, for crossing paths with the wrong person or people.  Any murder is tragic; any seemingly out-of-the-blue slaying on the street should provoke grief and outrage.

Whenever the victim is gay, lesbian or transgendered--or seems to be--we cannot help but to believe that--or, at least, wonder whether--the killing is a hate crime.  And when said victim is a well-known activist, it's hard not to feel that the killing was an assassination and, perhaps, part of an attempt at genocide.

And so it is with the murder of Lou Rispoli.  Details of the crime are sketchy, but it seems fairly certain that two stick-wielding young men beat him while another kept watch in a nearby car.  Rispoli was killed around 2:15 am on 20 October, on 43rd Avenue near 42nd Street in Sunnyside, Queens.

It's not much more than a mile from where I live.  In fact, I've passed that spot dozens, if not hundreds, of times.  It's a quiet, almost quaint, neighborhood of prewar apartment buildings and row houses that abuts Sunnyside Gardens.  Like much of Queens, it is very diverse, with old Irish immigrants and their children, Italians and their children who came a bit later and more recent immigrants from India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and several South American countries.  And, like a few other Queens neighborhoods--notably neighboring Woodside and Jackson Heights--it has a population, if not community, of gay male couples (Rispoli, in fact, had lived with his husband, whom he married just last year, for more than three decades.) that lives under a sort of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.  

The good news is that in such neighborhoods, one's identity or orientation is almost never questioned, at least openly.  Most people tolerate, if not accept, their LGBT neighbors.  The bad news is, of course, that the revelation of a gay, lesbian or trans person's identity leaves him or her very vulnerable to haters, or simply to aimless young (mostly male) people.

Somehow I suspect Rispoli's attackers are from the latter group.  Whoever they are, they have left a man without the partner with whom he's spent most of his adult life, and two daughters without one of the people who raised them.  And from many other people they have taken a friend and ally--and robbed everyone of his humanity, which I sensed very strongly in the brief encounters I had with him.  That is what everyone recalled when they marched  and held a candlelight vigil in his memory this afternoon and evening.

Trans Woman Tasered In Her Groin

I used to think some of the most ignorant stuff I'd heard and read was published and broadcast as "news" in the New York Post and on Faux (I mean Fox) News.

Now it seems that some of the ones who post comments on New York Daily News articles--especially ones about trans people--are giving the Posties and Foxies some competition, whether or not that is their intention.

Just take a look at what some of them said in response to the report of Brooke Fantelli being tasered in the groin by a Bureau of Land Management Agent who asked for her ID.  You have probably guessed what happened next:  The agent--identified as J. Peter-- looked at her license, which still identified her as male. The politeness and courtesy which he'd shown her up to that moment turned to hostility and aggression:  "Ma'am" and "Miss" became "Sir" and "Dude."




From a video I've seen, and other accounts I've read, Ms. Fantelli was compliant.  She had been shooting some video and drinking beer with a friend in the desert near Los Angeles.  But she was not trespassing on or destroying property, or harming other people or wildlife--or, as far as anyone could tell, breaking any laws.  Even if her blood alcohol level had been over the legal limit (no test was administered), it is not likely that she was guilty of any offense, for she was not driving.  

Even if she had been drinking and driving, or trespassing (which doesn't seem likely because, as far as anyone knows, the land was neither restricted nor private), there was no reason to taser Ms. Fantelli.  For that matter, there was no reason for "J. Peter" or anyone else to use any sort of physical force against her.

In other words, if "J.Peter" would have been a civilian, he'd be guilty of a hate crime.  Some of the folks who comment on Daily News articles seem to think it's justice.

What I Missed: Gender Clinics

Sometimes I think about the things I missed out on as a result of transitioning after the turn of the century rather than, say, in the 1980's.

One of those things is a visit to a gender clinic.  In She's Not There, Jennifer Boylan reports seeing a sign for one in London when she was there during her junior year in college as a young man named James.  He was tempted to check it out.  It's probably a good thing he didn't.

You see, "gender clinics" were the gatekeepers to the world of medical and psychological help for people whose gender identity and expression differed from those that are accepted in society.  They operated from utterly regressive notions of gender and sexuality.  Among those notions is the one that defines women, in part, by their sexual attraction to men.  In the universe of those clinics, a male-to-female transsexual who wanted to remain married to her wife, or who wanted to continue having sexual relations with women, was not a "true" transsexual.

As for female-to-male transgenders:  They were barely on the radar of those clinics at all.  

Perhaps the most notorious of those clinics was the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto.  It was originally named the Clarke Institute; before it was renamed, it was known as "Jurassic Clarke" in the trans community.  CAMH exists today but, it seems, is no longer offering "services" to the trans community.  If such is the case, we should be thankful.  

The Clarke Institute was named for Charles Kirk Clarke, a Canadian psychiatrist whose goal of "keeping Canada sane" was to be accomplished, in part, by increasing the psychiatric profession's influence in making medical and political decisions.  After overseeing Canada's two largest mental hospitals, he co-founded the Canadian National Commission for Mental Hygiene, now the Canadian National Mental Health Association.  

During his time as head of the Commission, foreign-born patients made up more than 50 percent of Canada's institutionalized population.  So, perhaps, it's no surprise that he used a psychiatry-based rationale to advocate for more restrictive immigration laws--and for eugenics.

Perhaps it's even less surprising that an institute bearing his name would offer services to, among others, "those who wish to manage their cross-gender feelings and expression of those feelings while remaining in their original gender role."

Now tell me:  How does this differ from the "reparative"  or "conversion" therapy for gays commonly offered by psychiatrists, or people claiming to be such, who are Christian Evangelicals and Fundamentalists?  (One such practitioner is the husband of Michelle Bachmann, the Minnesota Congressional Representative and former candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination who is his partner in a clinic.)  

Given what I've just presented, it should also come as no surprise that, during the last years of his professional life, Ray Blanchard ran the Clarke Institute.  In brief, he based his work on a now-mostly-forgotten "disease model" of gender identity that he mainly cribbed from Magnus Hirschfeld. 

The result was that at the Clarke Institute and other clinics like it, those who entered its doors were treated more or less like sex offenders.  Even those who were approved were treated with suspicion and, at times, outright hostility.  The fact that they turned away 90 percent of the people who came to them was bad enough; one can only imagine the damage they caused to those whom they approved.  

They, wittingly or not, helped to make the "Lost Generation" of transgenders I've mentioned in earlier posts.   Rigid notions about gender identity, and the mistaken notion that it's intertwined with one's sexual orientation, were reinforced for those who managed to get treatment and transition.  Those, like me, who transitioned later in their lives are not seen as "true" transgenders by such people and those who treated them.  This is one more reason why it's been difficult to pass on the lessons previous generations of trans people learned--and, perhaps, the ones they might have unlearned in a more tolerant environment.

How A Misguded Moral Crusade Victimizes Trans People

I am glad that attention has been paid to the discrimination and violence transgender people too often face.

There is a related issue that receives a lot of notice but is almost never discussed as a transgender issue: prostitution and human trafficking.

I am not a lawyer or policy-maker.  However, before continuing this post, I will do my best to distinguish prostitution from human trafficking, as the terms are often used interchangeably.

As I understand it, human trafficking involves the transportation of people--mainly young women and girls--from one place to another for the purpose of employing them as sex workers.  Prostitution is the sex work itself:  sexual acts performed for money, whether for one's self or (as is more common) a pimp or other boss.  It is the demand for the work of prostitution that fuels human trafficking.

However, both are transgender issues because trans people--particularly young male-to-females--are disproportionately involved in sex work. We disproportionately have the "risk factors" that can lead to becoming involved with such work--and vulnerable to human trafficking.

Though there are some who become sex workers voluntarily (We've all heard about young women who do it to pay for college.), the vast majority have left homes, schools communities or nations where they were sexually exploited or otherwise abused.  

Young trans people are more likely than others to experience such conditions. And when some young trans or gay kid runs away from home to escape bullying or other kinds of abuse, he or she finds him or herself as a stranger in some place or another with no educational or other credentials (Many don't finish high school.) and few or no marketable skills.  How many options for legal employment are available to such people?

So they turn to sex work.  I admit, I am glad I haven't had to make such a choice:  I'm not sure of how long I would have survived if I had. And I don't condone the demand for such services.  However, no one has ever been able to eradicate it. Attempts to do so are, as Noy Thrupkaew has written, misguided moral crusades.

Such crusades are not only misguided. they are destructive to the very people who are exploited by human trafficking and prostitution:  the sex workers themselves.  It seems that whenever some "get tough on crime" politician decides to go after the "Johns," it's the sex workers themselves who end up in the criminal justice system.  And, of course, we know which gender makes up most of each category!  

As Thrupkaew points out, there are a few who are sex workers by choice and would not want to go into any other line of work.  However, most want to get out of the trade; most can't.  The only ways out for most are arrest or death.  Either one precludes the possibility of a "normal" life after sex work.  Most of those who are arrested return to the work they were doing before the cops picked them up.  If it's so difficult for a high-school dropout with no marketable skills to get a job, imagine how much more difficult it is with such disadvantages combined with the burden of a criminal record.

The only way to improve the lives of people, especially transgenders, who become sex workers, is to make it possible for them to leave the trade.  If they can complete their educations in places where they don't face the daily threat of harassment or worse, and get safe places to live and  jobs that will allow them to pay for their housing and other experiences, they would be much less likely to turn to, or stay in, sex work.  

DD 214: An ID Problem For Transgender Veterans

During the Presidential campaign, I wrote about how Voter ID laws were a hindrance to transgender people.  This is particularly true for those who are in the early stages of their transition:  They may be living completely or part-time in the gender of their minds and spirits but do not yet have ID to reflect their identities.  Some haven't yet changed their names; others live in places where they can't change their names, let alone the gender designation on their drivers' licenses or passports, without having gender-reassignment surgery.

For all the attention I paid to the issue, I still can't believe I missed another, related, issue.  It also has to do with identification and vital records.

Since Veteran's Day is being commemorated today, you might have guessed that it has something to do with military records.  If you did, you're right. Specifically, it has to do with form DD 214:  the document uniformed members of the Armed Forces receive upon their discharge or retirement from the military.

"You have to produce it for almost everything you do in life," says Bridget Wilson.  She is an attorney who has been representing transgender people in military and civilian matters for two decades.  She explained that that veterans have to show their DD 214s when they apply for college or to take the exams for law or other professions.  They also need it when they apply for jobs with large employers, some of whom get benefits (or simply "brownie points") for hiring veterans.  Military retirees also must have the form in order to provide their dependents with medical benefits or to access some of the privileges, such as shopping on military bases, the had when they were on active duty.

Nearly all of the 300,000 transgender veterans underwent their gender transitions after leaving the military.  This means their DD 214s show the names and genders by which they were identified when they were in uniform.  The Department of Defense treats the form, and other documents as "historical records," which means that military officials aren't allowed to change the information of them.

The result is that transgender veterans are routinely turned down for services and, of course, can't use their status as veterans when they apply for jobs and colleges.  According to Wilson, it would take only Defense Secretary Leon Panneta's signature to change the situation.     

As Wilson said, the issue may exist simply because "it wasn't on the radar" of Defense Department officials.  One reason for that is that most transgender veterans have transitioned in recent years and, even a decade ago, the numbers of trans veterans weren't as great as they are now.  However, as the situation of transgender veterans becomes better-known, there may be reluctance to change among those same officials--in part because transgenders still can't serve in the military, even after the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

After all, isn't everyone who served entitled to the same benefits?

Transgender Veterans

Today is the real Veterans' (Armistice) Day.  So I thought it would be interesting to share something I found on You Tube.

Monica F. Helms--who, interestingly, created the Transgender Pride Flag--is a transsexual Navy veteran who began her transition at about the same age that I began mine.  She made two videos tracing the history and contributions of transgender" and "transgender-like" people who served in the Armed Forces, from the American Revolution to the Gulf Wars.  

She uses the term "transgender-like" because, as she points out, the term "transgender" wasn't invented until the mid-20th Century.  While there are accounts of people who crossed gender lines and served in the military, the records and details of their lives are often sketchy, particularly about their lives after the military.  Some "transgender-like" people may have crossed gender lines (as you might expect, from female to male) in order to enlist and returned to living in their birth genders after taking off their uniforms for the last time.

I suspect that in some of the earlier wars, gender-crossing might have been more common than people realized:  a Union Army nurse during the Civil War estimated that she had seen 400 cross-dressing women in blue uniforms.  There are accounts of women who lived as men, both in and out of the military, whose "secret" wasn't revealed until they went for medical treatment, or even until they died (as happened to the jazz musician Billy Tipton). However, by 20th Century, records and medical tests had become more accurate, so there are fewer accounts of female-to-male soldiers and sailors in the two World Wars than there were even in the Spanish-American war.

Anyway, Ms. Helms did a great job, I think, especially when one considers how much difficulty she must have had in getting the material for her documentary.    For one thing,  military and medical records from, say, the War of 1812 are  far from complete.  (Even in more recent times, records were destroyed in fires, floods and such.)  Also, many families--and, I am sure, the Army and Navy--managed to keep secret the identities of many who served, particularly as spies.  And, of course, one has to wonder whether very many people who were in a position to help--let alone the Armed Forces--were helpful.

Part 1:




Part 2:

Fate And Hunger

Here is another part of the work of fiction I am writing.  (Some other parts have been posted; they are in italics.)


Foregone conclusions.  Perhaps the only one, or at least the first one, is the knowledge that they exist.  And that each of us has a different time, place or way of learning about them.  Some people do not come to that knowledge until the moment of their deaths.

Me, I learned about inevitability--about marching with fate-- one cool, damp, overcast Sunday afternoon.  In those days, I always knew what day of the week it was because I was expected to.  That's how it seemed, anyway:  Someone would decide that I had to be in a certain place at a certain moment.  Or I knew that it was Sunday because I saw people going to, and coming from, church and the store down the block was closed.

People walk differently when they're drawn by the impossibility of taking a different step from the ones they've been taking.  They don't walk like people who are doing "what they have to do," such as when they're going to work or the dentist.  On Sunday afternoon, at least on this block, there is only one repetition of fate:  people going to have lunch, dinner or fights with those people they're bound to see:  family members and in-laws, or their equivalents or proxies.

Really, they're not any different from the people who spend an overcast afternoon indoors because it rained in the morning.  They're drawn by the momentum, the inertia of density, like amusement park rides that continue to run even when nobody's riding them. It was on such a Sunday afternoon that I learned some things couldn't be stopped or steered any more than the forces of life--or death--on this block.

I think there's always a moment--I'd've called it a decisive moment but for the fact that I don't believe in a humanoid god--when a person begins the desperate run from this block or takes the first steps in the march to death.

I was chopping onions (and, oddly, tears weren't running from my eyes--it must have been a very sweet onion) for the huge bowl of salad that would accompany the two big pans of lasagna mother was making even though none of her friends or neighbors was coming over that day.  They decided they didn't want to go out in the rain, even after it stopped.

But we made that big Sunday dinner anyway, even though neither of us got hungrier on Sunday than on any other day of the week--or at least not hungrier enough that either of us noticed. There'd be leftovers for the rest of the week, at least.  Not that I minded:  I'd rather eat my favorite foods (and I've never eaten anything is more satisfying than that lasagna) days after they were made than something I like less even when it's fresh off the stove.

But leftovers weren't the reason why my mother went ahead and made that big dinner anyway: She'd've made a huge Sunday meal no matter what.  She always had and, I realized that day, always would.

She always did.  After I left this block, she'd always tell me what she was cooking whenever we talked.  For a long time, I wondered whether she was trying to entice me into coming back event though she knew I wasn't coming.

She was going to make those meals, not matter what.  Before I started helping her in the kitchen, and long after she knew I'd never be there again, she cooked.  We'--or she--'d eat them, or whatever portion we could, whether or not we were hungry.  That's what we and everybody else on this block did in the presence of a big Sunday meal.

Hunger is the reason to eat; the hunger of several people is the reason to cook a big meal. I realized that was how I'd live--it'd be my philosophy of life, if you will.  Talk when there's someone to talk to, broadcast when you're trying to reach a lot of people.  It's not a matter of what you're trying to say, or whether you have something say; it's all about saying to speaking to fill the void between you and whoever is there.  Likewise, if you're really hungry, you'll eat just about anything to fill the pit in your stomach.  Of course spinach and mineral water are better for you than hot dogs and soda, but you don't think about that when you're truly hungry:  that is to say, when you're not thinking about the vitamins or other substances your body breaks down when...I was going to say, when you no longer experience hunger.  But for all I know, there might be more of the same after death.

Mother cooked, no matter who was or wasn't there.  Adam talked--to me, to anybody who'd sit still for a while--even though he didn't have anybody to talk to.  They died on this block.  So did Grap, the football player who attacked me  at the end of my last day in school.  He got into a fight with some guy who hadn't "stolen" his "girlfriend", didn't "look gay" and hadn't looked at Grap the wrong way; he fought because, well, he hadn't looked at Grap in the  wrong way and couldn't be accused of provoking him.

Of course, on that gray mirror of an afternoon when I learned about fate, I couldn't yet know what propelled Adam to his death or what he'd share with anyone who'd died and would die on this block.  I knew only that I wasn't going to die, at least not there or here.  I couldn't.  I didn't know why.  I just knew I wouldn't.  That knowledge terrified me as much as--possibly more than--knowing that I'd have to make a choice not to.


And--I didn't know how I knew this--I could never be a man, not even a very young one--on this block.  Not a woman, either.  So I wouldn't've been  able to stay in the kitchen, with mother, for much longer.

The Yankees Get It

Disclaimer:  In spite of its title, this post has nothing to do with baseball.   (By the way, I'm a Mets fan!)

I am referring to natives of New England.   They always seem to be ahead of the rest of the country (save, perhaps, for San Francisco) when it comes to legislation and policies that help to bring about equality for LGBT people.

Massachusetts, of course, was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.  Now that voters in Maine have approved such unions, the only New England state in which same-sex couples can't get married is Rhode Island.  However, the Ocean State recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

Last year, Massachusetts Governor Patrick Deval signed a law that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in employment, education, housing, credit and lending.  It also makes violence against transgender individuals a hate crime. Now similar laws are on the books in all New England states, with one exception:  New Hampshire.

However, the situation in the Granite State may change.  As voters in Maine were voting in favor of same-sex marriage, New Hampshire's voters elected their first transgender lawmaker.

Stacie Laughton beat out two Republican challengers for one of three seats in the Granite State's House of Representatives in Ward 4.  She says she hopes that her victory will inspire others in the community "to get into politics, or into any other position, for that matter".  On the other hand, she says, "I don't want being transgender to be a focal point," and that she can "work between party lines and not let political partisanship hold us up when it comes to the important matters before us in the Statehouse."

She seems to understand that, aside from discrimination, those matters are the same for transgender people as they are for everyone else:  jobs, the economy, healthcare, education and such.   Would that others understood!

A New Sundance Series And The Lost Generation Of Trans Men

The Sundance Channel has just list of original scripted series for the 2013-14 television season.  Among those new shows is one about a trans man dealing with his new life as a male and his past as a lesbian activist.

That outline also defines the lives of a few trans men I know.  They, like me and many trans women I know, transitioned in their 40's or 50's.  Some have had gender-reassignment surgery, as the protagonist of the Sundance series has.  Others took hormones and managed to "pass" well enough to live as male.  And I know of two who looked so masculine they didn't need to take hormones or have surgery.

The ones who lived as "butch" lesbians and were activists also described a common experience:  rejection.  One trans man I know was a lesbian activist for about three decades before he finally transitioned.  Once he started living as male, he lost  friends and allies with whom he shared hunger and meals, apartments and homelessness, and even jail cells.  An organizer with one organization flatly told him he was no longer welcome; others shunned him or simply stopped returning his calls and e-mails.

When he tells people of such experiences, he's often told the same thing I often hear:  "Well, they weren't really your friends, were they?"  While that may be true, losing the companionship and emotional "safety net" such people once provided still hurts.  And, for many of us, their support was a lifeline, literally as well as figuratively.  That is especially true for those whose families and communities cast them away, and who lost jobs or were kicked out of schools or other institutions because of their non-conformity to accepted gender roles and mores about sexuality.

Also, most of the people who think they're consoling us, or simply giving us good advice, have never had their friendships similarly tested. Most people don't ever have to know whether or not their friends are as true as they believe them to be.  Knowing who your friends is, of course, invaluable. But you can pay a terrible price for it.

The trans men (and trans women) who have transitioned in middle age during the past fifteen years or so are, as I have mentioned in previous posts, part of the Lost Generation of Transgender people.  These trans men and women share the experience of being cut off from earlier and subsequent generations of trans people.  Many of our contemporaries who transitioned (or, at least, started dressing and otherwise living as members of the "other" gender) when they were young are dead now. Others are broken in various ways.  And then, of course, there are those who never transitioned or who lived "underground." 

Those of us who survived long enough to transition in middle age were sustained, in part, by whatever relationships and organizations we had in our lives.  I was living as a male in the straight-to-bisexual part of the spectrum of sexual orientation; thus, even though I had gay male friends and acquaintances, I really wasn't involved with LGBT political or social movements.  But other sorts of relationships with individuals and groups, some of which I lost during my transition, sustained me.  Those who were involved in LGBT movements--particularly trans men who were lesbian activists--may have depended on them for emotional, intellectual and spiritual sustenance, or even their very identities to an even greater degree than I had to depend on my involvements and entanglements.

So, when those trans men transitioned, they had to build new friendships, communities and other support networks, much as I had to do when I did in my passage from living as Nick to life as Justine.  Sometimes young trans people are willing to be friends or at least allies, and I love them for that.  However, they don't understand what it's like to be the person who is nearest, rather than the truest, to what they are.  The ones who are transitioning while they're in college, or in other relatively supportive (or at least non-hostile) communities, aren't going to understand what it's like to give up those to whom they have given, and who have given to them.  And they won't have to experience those people giving up on, or rejecting them.  

While I am happy that those young people may not have to face the same kinds of loss and rejection my trans friends and peers have faced, it's sad to know that they'll never truly understand that the gaping chasm of loss, rejection, abandonment and death that stretches between them and us.  I am glad that Sundance plans to fill at least some part of that gap.

Light At The End Of The Storm

I don't mind cloudy days.  Actually, I like them, especially for cycling, particularly along a seacoast.

However, during the past few days, clouds have spread a thick gray curtain between us and the light of the day, even though Sandy had passed.  

Today, though, those clouds gave way to the less ominous overcast skies one often sees in coastal areas.  And we saw something that might have been reported as a UFO, given recent conditions:  the sun.

In fact, near the end of my ride this afternoon, I saw a sunset that caused me not to rue the fact that it came so early as a result of turning the clocks back an hour:

I captured the light as best I could with my cell phone from the Unisphere.

What Would Donald Trump Say To This?

I hope that the winner of Brazil's transgender beauty pageant was crowned quickly enough so that she could make it to Thailand.

There, Kevin Balot of the Philippines won the Miss International Queen contest.  Its contestants have to submit proof--with a birth certificate or a doctor's verification--of having been born male.  Otherwise, it is patterned after the Miss World beauty pageant, with contests in the national costume, evening wear and swimsuit categories.

Now I am going to do something I never, ever do:  I'm going to be snarky.  Here goes:  I wonder what Donald Trump would say if a non-trans, cisgender woman were to enter the Miss International Queen contest.

The Catholic Connection

A former co-worker once accused me of being a "self-hating Catholic."  She--who was attending a seminary while she worked with me--claimed that I would defend Muslims, Jews, Hindus, or just about any member of any ethnic group or race, before I would stand up for Catholics.

She was wrong about the "self-hating" part.  However, she might have been right about the other part of her claim.  As I pointed out to her, there aren't many places left--at least in the Western world--where the rights of Catholics have to be defended.  In most of the currently or formerly Judeo/Christian parts of the world, whatever discrimination Catholics suffer has to do with their race or ethnic heritage.  Francophone Canadians, nearly all of whom are (at least nominally) Catholics, are examples of what I mean.

Also, as I pointed out to her, I don't think of myself as Catholic, simply because it wouldn't be proper for me to do so.  I go to church only for funerals, weddings--and the occasional Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which I attend for the music.  (Actually, I don't think of the latter as "going to church", any more than I see going into a cathedral to look at the stained glass or sculpture as church attendance.)  Furthermore, I don't participate in any other aspects of church life.  

I don't even factor my disagreement with much of Church doctrine into my non-identification with the church, for many Catholics--including some who are  relations and acquaintances--attend Mass and partake in other parts of Church life even though they disagree with even more of the ecclesiastical mandates than I do.

And then there are those who probably no more consider themselves Catholics than I do, but who agree with pronouncements from the College of Cardinals that are bigoted or simply illogical.  Their arguments--such as they are--can be summed up in such as this post.  

I guess I shouldn't be too shocked.  After all, Elijah Muhammad and George Lincoln Rockwell agreed that the races should be segregated.

But here's what I find interesting:  Three of the most prominent writers and activists in so-called Second Wave Feminism--Janice Raymond, Cathy Brennan and the late Mary Daly--have their origins in the Catholic Church.  Janice Raymond was a Sister of Mercy.  Daly,  a longtime professor of theology and feminist ethics at Jesuit-run Boston College, got all of her schooling in Catholic institutions.  And, to my knowledge--I am still researching this--Brennan also studied in schools and colleges connected with the Church.

And their fellow-traveler (at least when it comes to transphobia) Germaine Greer studied in a convent school before going to the University of Melbourne. I suppose her schooling gave her a lesson or two in standing up for her principles:  Shortly after she was appointed as a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College of Cambridge University, she opposed the election of her transsexual colleague Rachael Padman to a fellowship.  Greer lost that fight and resigned after the case generated negative publicity.

I plan to explore the topic of this post in more detail, in later posts and, possibly, in other venues.  It isn't enough to merely equate the transphobia of the Church heirarchy with their transphobia.  After all, the Church is not the only institution whose leaders espouse homophobia, and hardly the only such institution to have schooled large numbers of people.  Also, there are plenty of people--including at least two whom I love dearly--who are practicing Catholics who were educated in Catholic schools but do not share in the transphobia expressed by the likes of Greer, Brennan, Raymond and Daly.

Learning more about how and why such trans-haters came from Catholic backgrounds is of more than passing or personal interest.  Those so-called Radical Feminists are, I believe, among the reasons why we have the Lost Generation of Transgenders I have mentioned in other posts.  They helped to create the climate of fear and paranoia--which dovetailed quite nicely with the agendae of the so-called Moral Majority and other right-wing religious zealots--that led to a generation of trans people opting not to transition or delaying their transitions--or, worse, dying horribly as a result of violence, homelessness and AIDS.  I want to hold them to account for that, but I also want to further understand how they became the sorts of people who complained about their own repression while doing everything they could to aid the oppression of people who have suffered at least as much discrimination as they have.

Brazil's Transgender Beauty Pageant

A few days ago, I wrote about the murder of a Brazilian transgender woman who went by the name Madona, and how it is just one example of the endemic violence against trans women--and women generally--in that country.

On the other hand, the country's health-care system provides free gender-reassignment surgery, with this caveat:  Those approved for surgery have to be approved by clinicians who, basically, have the same notions about gender, sexuality and transsexualism that their American counterparts abandoned at least twenty years ago.

And, as I mentioned, only a few legal occupations are open to trans people.  Those jobs pay so poorly (if they pay at all) that many trans people in them double as prostitutes--or sex work becomes part of their unwritten job descriptions.

So, in this environment of paradoxes about gender and sexuality, is it a surprise that Brazil has just hosted its first transgender beauty pageant?

On its face, it seems like a positive step for trans people.  Most of the more "progressive" countries on gender issues have not hosted such an event.  Some would argue that hosting the event could be a sign that at least some segments of Brazilian society are willing to accord respect and dignity to trans people.  Others might see it simply as an expression of a culture in which, perhaps more than in any other, physical beauty is celebrated.

But the contest could also be seen as a sign of segregation.  After all, in May, Jenna Talackova became one of the twelve finalists in the Miss Universe Canada Pageant.  Her victory did not come without a fight: Pageant organizers challenged her right to be in the competition although there was no written rule forbidding her entry.

Now, I've never been to Brazil.  I suspect, though, that if I were going to leave the US, I'd rather live in Canada than in Brazil (or most other places). I'd probably feel even more strongly about that if I were still transitioning, or if I were planning on getting married to another woman.

Having said that, I am glad that Brazil held a transgender beauty pageant.  It's one of the best things they could do at this point in their history.  Of course, if and when things change, the pageant may be unnecessary.  Then again, I think beauty pageants in general are obsolete institutions if, in fact, they ever had any meaning.

The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade

Well, as you might have heard by now, this year's Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village is being postponed.

In its four-decade history, it has never been cancelled.  In fact, it's never been held on any night but the 31st of October.  As Jeanne Fleming, the Parade's artistic director, has pointed out, it is one of the few events in this city whose timing has never been co-opted.  Whatever day of the week the 31st fell, and whatever the weather, it was held.  Even in those uncertain days after 9/11, the Parade made its way down Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas to those of you who aren't from around here!). 

I believe that the parade will be held this year and in the future because, quite frankly, we need it.  At least, some of us do--or did. 

Although I had not planned on being in the Village with the other revelers, I've been a part of parades past.   I never was a "party girl" (or guy), but every once in a while I like to let loose.  And, at the parade, I could always express some part of my self, or some yearning, that I could not at almost any other time.  One year I even won a prize:  Some bar on or around Bleecker Street gave gift certificates for the best costumes.  At least, that's as much of that night as I remember! (Hey, it was a long, long time ago--near the end of the Parade's first decade.)  I went to a couple more after that one, but then there was one Parade--1992, or some time around then--that left me in tears. Many of the marchers wore "Grim Reaper" costumes, or other equally morbid outfits.  

That, of course, was about the time the AIDS epidemic peaked, at least among gay men and white people.  In one seven-month period, between Memorial Day and Christmas of 1991, I lost five friends and other people who were important in my life to illnesses wrought by the disease.  Others--some of whom I knew--were experiencing even more illness and death in the families and communities they created for themselves as well as the ones into which they were born.  As I was completely in the closet (except, of course, at events like the Parade), I could neither give nor receive the support I and others needed to anyone besides the loved ones of the victims I knew.  And, perhaps, I was not as supportive as I might have been had I been living as the person I am.

What is often overlooked is the roles transgender people played in, and the ways they were affected by, the events I've described.  Some people still think of the Parade as a "gay" event.  There's no doubt that many of those who marched and made, or rode in, floats were indeed homosexual men.   However, it's (or, at least, I'm) equally certain that I wasn't the only trans person at the Parade.  Of course, some were openly so.  But I can tell you that there were many others, besides me, who went, whether as spectators or participants, to release some of the tensions brought on by navigating a hostile, or at least uninformed, world.  

Now, what I'm about to say may seem wildly improbable.  But here goes:  Although I didn't realize it at the time, the Parade (among other things) helped me to learn, over time, that I was not a transvestite.  Although I preferred wearing women's clothing to donning men's garb, I never got any sort of sexual thrill out of it.  It just felt like a truer expression of who I am.  Every costume I wore to the parade was one of a female character, persona or role.  One year I was a ballerina.  Another time I was a diva.  Then, a suburban housewife like June Cleaver or Harriet Nelson.  And Dorothy.  (I sprayed a pair of shoes with ruby-red paint.)  They were exaggerated female roles, to be sure.  But what other kind of role could I have played?  Also, what's a parade--especially on Halloween in the Village--without exaggeration.

As campy and ludicrous as those outfits might have been, they allowed me--even if only a few hours--to express who I am, at least somewhat.  Since those days, I've come to realize that people who feel repressed and frustrated express their yearnings, in those brief moments in which they can do so, in ways that seem almost parodical.  We've all seen, or at least heard, about the things some males will do when they're trying to show that they're men.  (A few institutions, such as the military, make use of this.)  And, of course, in the days between the Stonewall Revolution and the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, many gay men mimiced the most extreme icons of maleness:  All you have to do is look at The Village People to see that.

Anyway, as I've mentioned, there were--and probably still are--more manque as well as outre transsexuals than almost anyone realizes at the Parade.  Some will, in time, acknowledge and live by their true natures. Others will go to events like the Parade as a "release" and return to their families, communities and jobs in the costumes of the genders in which they are living.

And then there are those who have been taken by the Grim Reaper in the same ways as gay men--and, to a lesser extent, lesbians--have been:  suicide, homicide and AIDS.  Much has been said and written about how those things have devastated gay males, and the communities and industries in which they are concentrated.   It was indeed devastating, but for transgenders, it was little short of an apocalypse (or, as some would argue, a genocide).  They are among the things that are responsible for the Lost Generation of Transgender People I've described in previous posts.   And the Parade is one of the few institutions that has endured from that time.

A Transgender Storm?

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

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

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

Here's what they look like close up:

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

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

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

Eden Lane Didn't Broadcast Her Transition

Until today, I knew of one transgender broadcast journalist.  I met her when I was about to begin my own transition.  Then, Andrea Sears had been the news editor and anchor at WBAI, the New York affiliate of Pacifica Radio, for seven years.  For the first five of those years, she had been known as Andrew.

She's still working at WBAI.  Now I've learned about a transgender television newscaster:  Eden Lane.  (Can you beat that for a name?)  Every week, she interviews artists, writers, directors and other people involved with theatre, film, music, dance and television for her program on Colorado Public Television.  

She has never kept her identity a secret but, as she said, she never intended for it to be the focus of people's attention.  "If I had known that nobody else was identified as transgender as a news journalist on television, I probably wouldn't have done it.  I probably would have been too afraid."

Before transitioning, she had worked in television.  But, after her surgery, she got married and settled into the life of a suburban housewife, as she tells the story.  "All of that work experience, all of that education, wasn't something I could publicize and own, because it was under a different name and identity." Then she was a guest on a panel for "Colorado Outspoken," an LBGT television newsmagazine.  She was invited back and, when the station needed more help in covering the 2008 elections, she stepped in for her first experience outside the LGBT program.

I am glad to see this story has a happy ending--at least for now.  At least, this story is turning out better than that of Mike Penner, the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who publicly transitioned in 2007 and, within two years, lost his home and marriage and returned to living as a man.  Then he killed himself.

In some ways, Eden Lane's and Mike Penner's transitions are more difficult simply because they are so public.  Mike Penner started to appear in public as a woman and sign his articles as "Christine Daniels."  At first, it seemed to be the best way to handle his situation, as he was trying to make his transition as seamless as possible.  However, the very fact that the people who'd been reading his columns when he signed them as "Mike Penner" were also reading them when he signed them as "Christine Daniels" left him wide-open for comparisons between his "before" and "after" work--and personae.  Not everyone reacted well to the "after", even if there was little or no difference between his earlier and later work.  

Plus, from all accounts I've read, he was a quiet, reserved, circumspect person.  Suddenly he was thrust into the limelight:  He even posed for a fashion shoot.  And then, when living as Christine didn't work out as he'd planned, he felt publicly disgraced and embarrassed.  He probably couldn't handle that.

(Note:  I am referring to Penner by his male name and pronouns simply because he returned to living as a male and, as far as I know, never legally changed his name.  I do not feel I am in a position to say whether or not he was "really" transgender.)

On the other hand, Eden Lane "disappeared" for several years.  Perhaps some of her former audience stopped thinking about her; others probably just assumed she left broadcasting for any number of reasons.  And, by the time she returned, her life--and name--were totally different from the ones she'd left behind.  People who had never known her, in person or on screen, as a male wouldn't have had any "dots" to "connect."

Now, I'm not saying that either Penner's or Lane's way of transitioning is "right" or "wrong" for someone who lives a less public life.  However, people will look at both and draw their own lessons and conclusions.  I am simply glad that things seem to be working out for Eden Lane, and would love things to work out as well for anyone else who transitions.

Anticipating The Storm

Max is a real New Yorker.  

We've been warned that Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy will be "catastrophic" and "a storm like no other".  

We were similarly warned about Hurricane Irene last year.  There was a lot of rain and it was windy, but the storm didn't live up to the hype, as we like to say in The Big Apple.  So, lots of people I know--and I--are skeptical, although we're making buying groceries, water, flashlights and such.

Max is doing his part:

On the other hand, Marley isn't quite so jaded.  He simply cannot get enough of my lap:

He doesn't want you to see his scaredy-cat expression.  You have to understand:  He's still young and has something to prove.

Two Members Of The Lost Generation Do Lunch

Yesterday I had a late lunch/early dinner with a friend who's just passed a significant milestone in her transition.  

She is a few years older than I am, and came from what are, on the surface, very different circumstances than mine.  However, for both of us, growing up meant inhabiting a world that isolated both of us, save for when our peers bullied or otherwise abused us.  Her parents were openly hostile to non-heterosexual, non-gender-conforming, people, while my parents' understanding was merely a reflection of what most people understood, or misunderstood, when I was growing up.  That is not to denigrate my parents: Neither they nor I had the knowledge or the language to understand what I was going through.  Still, in my own way, I spent my childhood and most of my adult life as isolated, emotionally and spiritually, as my friend spent hers.

After we parted, I realized that our isolation was such that we could not have known each other.  We might have recognized each other on some subconscious, intuitive level that I would not have acknowledged and, in fact, would have tried to suppress.  But I don't think we could--or, at least I would--have based our friendship, if we had one, on an understanding of a basic truth about ourselves.  It then goes without saying that we could not have offered each other advice, encouragement or support--or, at least, the kind either of us needed.

But, as my friend pointed out, that isolation may have kept us alive.  Had we started our transitions in our early 20's instead of our mid 40's or early 50's, we probably would have ended up as sex workers, or under even worse circumstances.  As I've mentioned in other posts, few other lines of work expose its practitioners to the prospect of incurring violence that could be fatal.  If we hadn't been beaten or shot to death in some back alley, or succumbed to an overdose or drugs or alcohol, being sex workers would have broken us mentally and spiritually.  At least, I know that would have happened to me.

We are indeed part of the Lost Generation of Transgenders I've described in a few previous posts.  During the two decades or so that followed the onslaught of Second Wave Feminism (and the concurrent conservative religious and political movements that had more in common with it than most people realize), people like me and my friend lived our lives, as best we knew how, as members of the gender indicated on our birth certificates.  We may have been reading the works of Second-Wave feminists and other writings that have become part of the canons of Women's Studies, Gender Studies and Queer Studies. (Please don't construe my use of the latter term as an endorsement of it:  I'm simply using the term the field's practitioners use!)  And some of us "cross-dressed" or occasionally interacted with the underground world of cross-gender entertainment and such.  But we did so in isolation, and were therefore unable to learn many of the lessons we could have gotten from the transsexuals and other gender-variant people (few though they were in number) who were around at that time.  We could have better understood how to navigate the world we would face--and that, in spite of the bigotry we might sometimes face, it hadn't changed, at least not fundamentally.  Although some of us would get educations (or, at any rate, credentials) and careers or vocations, we would fully understand what was, and wasn't, important and useful about them only after we began our transitions.  We'd learn the ways in which we had to educate ourselves, and each other, because those normally charged with instructing and directing us couldn't do so, sometimes because they didn't know how.  

Because we had to learn those lessons for ourselves--without the mentors and role models we might have had if we could have transitioned ealier in our lives--there is not a continuity between us and our ancestors, if you will (most of whom are dead) and the ones who transition while they are in college, or even high school.  I think now of the student of mine who said he couldn't understand why someone would "go through all the trouble of changing their sex, only to become a sex worker" and of the young trans people who think that if you don't have surgery by the time you're 25, you're not really a transsexual. They remind me of a young woman who remarked that she doesn't care about the debates over Roe v Wade or other "women's" issues; in her words, "Taxes affect my life every day; those things, almost never."

As much as I love history, it is not the only reason why I lament the fact that there had to be a "lost generation" of transgender people, and that people like me and my friend had to be among its survivors in order to transition in these times.  The fact that a generation had to be "lost" had tragic consequences.  I think now of someone I've called Corey in this blog.  I was with her on the last night of her life.  She was reaching out to me; she had recognized something in me that I was doing everything I could not to acknowledge.  Given where we were--geographically as well as historically--I might have been the closest thing to, if not a mentor, then at least a sympathiser, that she could find.  She, too, might be alive today--and, I would hope, living as the female she truly was--had I or someone been able to give her the understanding, if not the support, she needed.  

I also wonder whether I could have helped someone else who committed suicide, in part over his gender identity, when I was a little more than a year into my transition.  He was the same age as my friend is now and, not long before he OD'd, he told me of his gender identity conflict and how he admired my "courage."  I realize now that the unease I felt in hearing that came from understanding that his praise was really a cry for help, or at least a lament for what could have been.  All I can do now is to remember him in his true gender, as I remember Corey in hers.

Why Was A Trans Woman Stoned To Death In Brazil?

In Brazil, same-sex marriages are allowed, although the notaries are not required to perform them.  Furthermore, same-sex couples enjoy most of the same legal protections available to non-LGBT people.

Moreover, the Sao Paolo Pride parade is, by all accounts, the largest LGBT pride celebration in the world.  In addition, thousands of gays from around the world flock to Carnival in Rio de Janiero every year.

With these realities, gay men and lesbians are, in some ways, better off in Brazil than in most other countries--and, for that matter, most jurisdictions in the United States.  

And the country even provides free gender-reassignment surgery.  So far, it sounds like an LGBT paradise, right?

Well...not so fast.  Those free operations have strings attached.  For one thing, any candidate for surgery has to undergo a rigorous medical and psychiatric evaluation.  That, on its face, seems reasonable.  However, the Brazilian medical establishment mirrors much of that nation's society in that it clings to notions and stereotypes about transsexual people that were more common in Renee Richards' time than they are now in the US.

Plus, lines for the surgery--and the other health care and treatments the Brazilian government provides for its citizens--are very long. So, those with money go to private doctors, or abroad.

But even with free treatments and surgeries available to them, most Brazilian transgenders live lives that can be charitably characterized as pretty miserable.  The legitimate labor market is all but closed to them; they allowed to work only in nursing, domestic service, hairdressing, gay entertainment and prostitution.  Many of those who are hairdressers, domestic servants or entertainers in gay night clubs also double as prostitutes.  Very few trans people have university educations or professional qualifications.

Worst of all, transgender people in Brazil are subject to violence, as they are almost everywhere else in the world.  However, the frequency and severity of the attacks are greater in Brazil, as exemplified by the trans woman who went by the name Madona. (Her birth name is Amos Chagas Lima.)  She died three days ago, four days after a group of attackers threw stones at her.  According to Keila Simpson of the National Council to Combat Discrimination, Madona was the 100th trans woman to be murdered in Brazil since January.

The dangers trans people--particularly trans women--face in Brazil are part of another phenomenon for which Brazil is infamous.  In that country, men who kill their wives often go unpunished and police officers kill women (and, to be fair, men) with impunity.  In such an atmosphere it isn't surprising that the murder of a trans woman would be such a lightly-regarded crime.  But that disdain is also, in part, a product of the low status of transgender people and the fact that, in spite of increased tolerance for homosexuality, the old stereotypes and attendant hatred of trans people still prevail.

She Knows Why It Wasn't Enough To Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Obama's repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" hasn't been as complete a victory as some LGBT activists and their allies might believe.

For one thing, I have read and heard stories of increased harassment since gay people were allowed to serve openly.  Some incidients have included slurs and threats.  But almost as pernicious, and more insidious, are the taunts and baiting directed at uniformed men and women believed to be gay.  It places the victim in a double-bind:  If he or she takes the bait, abuse and worse follow.  But if he or she doesn't take the bait, the baiting escalates or the baiter grows angry and hostile.  It's probably even worse if the person who's being baited is, in fact, not gay or lesbian.  

Having been subjected to such baiting, I understand how that can break someone's mind and spirit.  I nearly quit school several times because of it.

But  are two other reasons why getting rid of DADT isn't the be-all and end-all in achieving legal protection, if not respect or equality, for non-heterosexual, non-cisgendered people in the Armed Forces.

One reason is that another piece of legislation passed during the Clinton Administration:  the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.  As long as it is in effect, same-sex partners or spouses of uniformed serivce members still can't receive the benefits to which the wives of servicemen or the husbands of servicewomen are entitled.  So, even if, say, a sailor married her girlfriend in New York, the sailor's wife is on her own when it comes to health insurance, and she will not receive any benefits if the sailor is killed while on duty.

The other reason why ending DADT isn't enough has to do with the last letter in the LGBT equation.  (Have you ever noticed that "T" always comes last in it?)  Transgenders do not benefit in any way from the demise of DADT.  We still cannot join the Armed Forces if we have begun or completed our transitions, and are still forced to resign if we are diagnosed and begin our treatments while still signed on.

Allyson Robinson knows that as well as anybody does.  She graduated from West Point in 1994 and commanded a Patriot missile unit in Europe and the Middle East before she resigned her commission.  She has been chosen to lead group that will be formed by the merger of OutServe (which an Air Force officer began anonymously when DADT was still in effect)  and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Upon her selection, Ms. Robinson said, "We cannot stop until we reach the day when all qualified Americans who wish to wear the uniform of our armed services have the opportunity to do so with honor and integrity--and without fear of discrimination or harassment--whether they are gay, bisexual or transgender."