One Way To Explain The Difference

Here's an answer to a question just about all trans (and more than a few cisgender) people are asked:

When An Enemy Of Trans People Is A Friend of Labor (Or So He Thinks)

A colleague is petitioning the college to build or designate transgender bathrooms.  "A male-to-female is taking her life into her hands when she goes into a men's bathroom!," she exclaimed.

"Tell me about it!"  I didn't go into detail, but I told her about an incident early in my transition in which a security guard harassed and outed me for using a women's bathroom.

The problems of shared public space are not, of course, limited to bathrooms.  In many other venues, the risk to transgenders of incurring violence or worse is great when they are forced to use facilities intended for the gender in which they are not living.  Though the dangers are more pronounced for male-to-female transgenders, female-to-males are not immune.

For trans people, perhaps no place is more dangerous than a jail or prison.  Almost everyone, except for the most physically intimidating, is potentially a victim of rape or other kinds of violent assault.  If a male-to-female is incarcerated with men, the warden may as well attach a target to her back.

That is why Texas Governor Rick Perry's refusal to comply with the Federal Rape Prevention Act is unconscionable.  

One of his rationales is that a provision of the act prohibits cross-gender searches.  About 40 percent of all guards in male prisons are female.  So, according to Perry, turning the Act into a law "may mean the loss of job and promotion opportunities".  

Ah, yes.  Rick Perry is a friend of labor.  So much that he has to compromise the lives of trans people.

And to think that he ran for President!

Dignity In Death

Too many trans people face the dilemma of being defined by a document issued when they were born while they are living their lives their true selves.

I was in such a dilemma for several years:  I was living as Justine, a woman, but my birth certificate still said I was a boy named Nicholas.  That could have been problematic had I had a medical emergency or worse.  After all, I could have been buried as a man. (On top of that, I don't think I want to be buried.  But that's another story altogether.)

For too many trans people, the obstacles involved in changing their birth certificates are prohibitive.  In some states and countries, the procedure is endless and expensive.  And, in many jurisdictions, changing birth certificates for any reason is simply not allowed.

That is why I was gratified to read about this latest development from California:

Sacramento, CA – The Respect After Death Act (AB 1577), authored by Assembly Speaker-elect Toni Atkins and sponsored by Transgender Law Center and Equality California, passed the Assembly Health Committee today by a bipartisan provisional vote of 17-1. The bill is designed to help ensure transgender people have their authentic gender identity reflected on their death certificates.




The Respect After Death Act will mean that death certificates reflect the authentic lived gender of the deceased, with various forms of proof accepted under the law, including written confirmation of the deceased’s wishes, updated birth certificates and driver’s licenses, or medical records of gender transition.



“Transgender people deserve the same dignity and respect in death as everyone else,” said John O’Connor, executive director of EQCA. “This bill provides much needed legal guidance that



“Every person deserves to be treated with dignity after their death, including having their death certificate accurately reflect who they are,” said Speaker-elect Atkins. “AB 1577 will provide direction to officials for determining the wishes of the deceased with respect to their gender identification. I am grateful for the strong bipartisan support of my colleagues on the Assembly Health Committee.” will make it easier for authorities to do their jobs. It also ensures that when California remembers transgender people who have passed, it remembers their authentic selves.”



Current law requires death certificates to list personal data such as name, sex, and race, and there is no legal guidance about how the official filling out the death certificate should determine a transgender person’s sex. The lack of guidance sometimes results in cases where the information on the death certificate is not consistent with the deceased’s lived gender. This can put funeral directors and coroners at risk of liability if the friends and family of the deceased believe that they listed the incorrect sex.



“Too often, the identities of transgender people are disrespected, especially when we are unable to speak for ourselves. Gender identity represents a core part of who we are as people and this identity should be recognized even upon our deaths,” said Masen Davis, executive director of Transgender Law Center. “When a loved one is not honored as their authentic self upon their passing it is extremely painful for the family, friends, and community.”

Why We Are The Future Of Faith

Lately I've found myself thinking more and more about an issue that I ignored and had assumed I would always ignore:  that of the relationship between transgender people and religious communities.

You see, for a long time I told myself I wanted nothing to do with any religion.  Most of the time, when people asked about my faith, I'd say I didn't have any (unless, of course, I grunted "It's none of your fucking business!").  It's a lot easier to say you don't believe in a supreme being or power, or anything beyond this physical world, than to get into arguments about what it is, isn't or might be, or why I don't subscribe to someone else's belief.

Even so, I couldn't help to notice that more than a few trans people are involved with religious communities.  Some, like Eva-Genevieve Scarborough and Joanne Priznivalli, write about their experiences on their blogs.  Outwardly, I expressed astonishment that any trans person would want to be a participating member of a church, synagogue or other organization, let alone study or train to be a cleric.  I told myself such people were misguided, at best.  Sometimes I wondered whether they suffered from advanced cases of Stockholm Syndrome.  What else could explain their desire to identify with institutions and members that, very often, told them they were vile sinners or that they simply didn't exist?

One thing I could not fail to notice was that they--and some trans people who weren't overtly religious--often described themselves as male or female "in spirit" and their processes of "coming out" and transitioning from living in the gender they were assigned at birth to life in their true selves as "spiritual" experiences.

Yes, those words came up a lot:  "spirit" and "spiritual".  I even used them to to describe my own journey.  And on the night after my surgery, I had a very long, detailed and intense dream that, for me, could not have been evidence of anything else.

Perhaps my perceptions were colored by the fact that most of the support groups I attended, and most of the trans-related activities in which I participated, involved people who were beginning their transitions--or simply exploring the possibility of doing so--in the middle of their lives, or even later.  Not a single one of them spoke of their wishes merely in terms of changing their body parts; they all spoke of making their corporeal forms more reflective of their "true selves" or "spirits."  I have come to believe that if you have reached a certain age before embarking upon the requisite counseling and medical treatments, you really can't see your change in any other way.

(To those of you who are young--say, under 40--I hope I don't seem condescending.  If you really understand your identity and why you want to change your body to reflect it, you are more mature than most other people.  On the other hand, I have seen very young people who see the transition only in terms of hormones and surgeries.  They will say or do whatever they think they must--including sex work--to get them.  The consequences are often tragic.)

Anyway, I realize now that the revulsion I expressed at religious institutions was, in part, a response to my own earlier experiences with them.  I grew up as a Roman Catholic and spent several years in a school affiliated with the church.  I was even an altar boy!   Although the Church was, and is, repressive and I had some rather unpleasant (to say the least) experiences with priests and nuns, I have to admit that I received a better education than I might've otherwise had.  And, truth be told, for all of the bigotry that's part of its doctrine, I was safer there as a sensitive and possibly effeminate boy than I was on, say, sports teams or ROTC (both of which I would later participate in).  And, as Richard Rodriguez points out in A Hunger of Memory, there is less socio-economic class prejudice in the Church than in other parts of society.  Growing up in blue-collar Brooklyn, I was aware of that fact, even if I couldn't articulate it.  

And now, it seems, there are some religious leaders--and their followers--who actually understand that following the precepts of their faith means treating as they would other people.  Love thy neighbor--whether trans or cis--as thyself. Thou shalt not kill--whatever the identity of the person.  

Perhaps even more to the point, some are starting to realize that if their faith communities are to have any future at all--let alone carry out their missions--they must include people of all identities.  Actually, it goes deeper than that, as Joy Ladin points out:  Judiasm, of which she is an adherent, as well as Christians, Muslims and others cannot continue to confine themselves to the gender binary. It's not just a matter of the survival of religious institutions; it's a matter of allowing all people to participate in life as fully realized beings.  That, as I learned during my own transition, means understanding the spiritual dimension--forget that, the spiritual reality--of a person's identity.

When Transgenders Self-Medicate

For about nine months before I began to live and work full-time as a woman, I was taking estrogen and Spironolactone.  For about a year and a half before that, I was attending support groups and participating in various activities related to the community, some of them at the LGBT Community Center in New York City.

At a Center event, I met a trans woman who was probably a few years older than I am now.  I don't know whether or not she ever had the surgery, but it was easy to see that she'd been living for a long time as a woman--and, most likely, taking hormones.  I also suspected that she had--or might still have--been involved in sex work.

I haven't seen her in a long time, but early in my transition, I was bumping into her everywhere--or so it seemed.  She always had advice--some of it good--on some aspect or another of the life on which I was embarking.  Thankfully, I ignored what was probably the worst advice she gave me.

"Forget about the doctors, clinics, even--what's that place you go to?"

"Callen-Lorde", I said.  

"Yeah, forget about them.  Forget about all of that.  You have to go through so much to get your hormones."

"I've got them."

"But those horomones will take forever to work on you."

"Well, I am on a low dose now.  So far, so good.  As long as my next tests are good, my doctor'll up my dosage."

"Still, it's going to take years and years for them to work."

"Well, I've had to wait years to get to this point..."

"Don't you want to have a woman's body soon?"

"Yeah. But..."

"Well, I can get you some German hormones."

"German?  What's the difference?"

"Well, you know, German girls are bigger.  So they get stronger hormones."

I squinted at her.   She pulled a package from her bag.  I know a few dozen words of German, but somewhow I knew, just from looking at that label, that ingesting those hormones wouldn't be a good idea.

Later, I learned---from where or whom, I can't recall--that a lot of trans women--especially young ones engaged in sex work--buy those German hormones, which are meant for livestock.

I mention this incident because I came across this article advising trans people not to self-medicate with hormones.  Turns out, there are a lot of discussion groups about that very subject, including some on how to go about getting hormones from outside the medical establishment.

The temptation to do so is great, especially for young trans women, many of whom have run away from abuse at home or bullying at school and have no medical insurance or other resources and are scarred by prejudice and hostility they experienced from health-care professionals.

Self-medication is generally a bad idea for anybody.  But the risks are even greater for trans people because the precarious situations in which too many of us live leave us even more vulnerable to exploitation by "professionals" with questionable--or no--credentials.

That might be the biggest hazard trans people face, after the discrimination and violence to which too many of us fall victim.

 

Israel Protects LGBT Students

Last week, the Israeli Knesset passed a law prohibiting discrimination against students based on gender identity or sexual orientation.  The law is actually an amendment to laws pertaining to the rights of the student.  Still, it is significant because it actually identifies gender identity as one of the ways in which one can be discriminated against.

What's especially gratifying, apart from the fact that it passed in a country that has laws based on religion, is that such a wide majority voted for it.  Only two of the twenty-seven members of the Knesset opposed it; the other twenty-five said "yes".

And Dov Henin, who introduced the bill, said that its purpose is "to protect not only the students in the LGBT community--it is there to protect us all".

I know Israel is only the size of New Jersey and has half the population. Still, I have to ask:  If Israel can do it, why can't this country?

Department of Justice To Train Police To Work With Transgender People

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I had to go to my local precinct--the 114th in Astoria, Queens, New York--three times before they would even take a complaint from me regarding the harassment and bullying I experienced from Dominick.

Simply being brushed off, as I was the first time, was bad enough. But the second time nearly pushed me over the edge: two out-of-uniform officers harassed me on their way out of the gym, after a workout.  They made air-smooches, asked me (in a mocking yet menacing way) whether I wanted to "take a ride" with them and, finally, threatened me if I didn't respond to them.  The desk sergeant sat only a few feet away and watched it unfold but claimed to see nothing.  Then, as I was unlocking my bike from a parking meter on the next block from the station, two officers barged in front of me.

"You're not supposed to park there!," one of them bellowed. "This spot's only for officers."

"I'm sorry, I didn't see a sign..."

"Just shut up and go, " the other one yelled. "And if you know what's good for you, you won't come back."

As it was dark and everything happened so quickly, I didn't see the officers badges--or, indeed, whether they were not wearing them or had covered the numbers on them.  The cops who harassed me on their way out of the precinct gym didn't have their badges.

That came about seven years after I'd been stopped and frisked by two men who might or might not have been cops (They were in an unmarked van.) as I was riding my bike home from work on a hot day.

I don't know whether the stop-and-frisk incident had to do with my being trans:  They claimed I was in the projects (which I wasn't, but "so what" if I were) and demanded to know what I was doing there. But I have little doubt that what happened during my second visit to the 114th had to do with my identity if for no other  reason that I mentioned that fact about myself in all of my visits, as Dominick was using it to impute all of the old sterotypes to, in order to spread false rumors about, me.

As you can imagine, I've had no love (not that I had much before), and lost whatever respect I had for, the police until recently.  The only reason why I am now willing to even entertain the idea of revising my opinion of them is that I've met a detective in my church who is nothing like I expected any officer to be.  I think she really means it when she expresses her sorrow over my experience.

We need more like her.  Even for those who, like her, became cops because they wanted "to help people" or "be a positive force in the community", understanding of people whose gender or sexual identities might be different from their own are developed.  (The same is true of most people, I believe.)  

That is why I am glad to see that the Department of Justice has just launched a program to train local police departments to better respond to transgender people.  It is, if nothing else, a good first step:  a recognition of a need. 

Deputy Attorney General James Cole understands that one result of mistreatment is that too many of us simply don't report harassments, assaults or other violations against us.  As a matter of fact, even after that third visit to the 114th, when an officer finally took a statement from me, I vowed to never again report any crime, against myself or anyone else, to the police.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll reconsider.

Dreaming Of Going Dutch

I try to keep myself in the moment and to appreciate where I am.

Still, it's not hard to want to be on a bike in Leiden, Netherlands when I see this:

From Bicycle Dutch

On A Hater's Death, From His Son

As I mentioned a few days ago, Rev. Fred Phelps senior--he of Westboro Baptist Church fame--has died.

I am happy to know that I'm not the only person who has asked that we don't express the same sort of hate toward him that he showed us during his life.   Such a plea has come from no less than his estranged son, Nathan Phelps.

Recovering from Religion has issued this statement from him:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 24 2014 – On behalf of Nathan Phelps, son of former Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps, Recovering From Religion issues the following official statement:

“Fred Phelps is now the past. The present and the future are for the living. Unfortunately, Fred’s ideas have not died with him, but live on, not just among the members of Westboro Baptist Church, but among the many communities and small minds that refuse to recognize the equality and humanity of our brothers and sisters on this small planet we share. I will mourn his passing, not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been. I deeply mourn the grief and pain felt by my family members denied their right to visit him in his final days. They deserved the right to finally have closure to decades of rejection, and that was stolen from them.

Even more, I mourn the ongoing injustices against the LGBT community, the unfortunate target of his 23 year campaign of hate. His life impacted many outside the walls of the WBC compound, uniting us across all spectrums of orientation and belief as we realized our strength lies in our commonalities, and not our differences. How many times have communities risen up together in a united wall against the harassment of my family? Differences have been set aside for that cause, tremendous and loving joint efforts mobilized within hours…and because of that, I ask this of everyone – let his death mean something. Let every mention of his name and of his church be a constant reminder of the tremendous good we are all capable of doing in our communities.

The lessons of my father were not unique to him, nor will this be the last we hear of his words, which are echoed from pulpits as close as other churches in Topeka, Kansas, where WBC headquarters remain, and as far away as Uganda. Let’s end the support of hateful and divisive teachings describing the LGBT community as “less than,” “sinful,” or “abnormal.”  Embrace the LGBT community as our equals, our true brothers and sisters, by promoting equal rights for everyone, without exception. My father was a man of action, and I implore us all to embrace that small portion of his faulty legacy by doing the same.”

I am very moved by the humility and compassion behind Nathan Phelps' statement.  It's especially touching given the pain I'm sure he feels over losing a loved one with whom he'll never have an opportunity for reconciliation.  

Ironically, the young Phelps may provide the only lasting legacy of his father's work.  An organization like Westboro Baptist Church that's built upon hate can only destroy itself over infighting from its members. (Living and dying by the sword, anyone?)  The fact that Nathan has chosen not to follow in his father's "God Hates Fags" campaigns or protests at the funerals of military service members killed in combat shows that, at some point, bigotry and other kinds of ignorance must, inevitably, end.

A Timeline Of Our Visibility

I have not forsaken my promise to write more about the Lost Generation of Transgenders.  Sooner or later, though, I think it will turn into a project that will extend well beyond the boundaries of this blog.

With LGT in mind, I thought I'd post this Transgender Visibility Timeline:

Sleepless As What's Under Them

The other day I got out for a bit of a ride.  On my way home, I passed through the Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn.  

The Heights abuts the waterfront and the Hill is next door.  Both neighborhoods have been the home of a number of writers, especially poets--including the ones everyone's heard of like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and Marianne Moore and ones only readers of this blog have heard of, like yours truly.

Anyway, much of the Heights gentrified decades ago--in fact, one of the first landmarked districts in the United States lies within the neighborhood.  Cobble Hill is also turning into an enclave of young professionals and families.  

One result of those demographic changes--and shifts in the city's, nation's and world's economy--is that much of the city's maritime history is disappearing.  I know about those developments firsthand:  Two of my uncles were maritime workers and their union headquarters once occupied an entire square block, and a good part of another, in South Brooklyn.  One of my early birthdays was celebrated in its reception hall; so were milestones in the lives of other family members of longshoremen and other workers.  Now that square-block sized building is occupied by the largest Muslim elementary school in America and the maritime workers are relegated only to a couple of offices in the other building.

One of the last remaining vestiges of the work those men (almost all of them were male) did is seen on this building I passed on Atlantic Avenue, near Clinton Street:

The former headquarters and workshop of John Curtin's sail-making operation is now condominums, with a restaurant and Urban Outfitters store in its street-level studios. 

Riding through the neighborhood made me think of this passage from Hart Crane's masterwork The Bridge:

 Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

Gender Grammar

As a writer who's spent many years teaching English, I found this interesting:

From Planet Deafqueer

 

Chelsea Manning Seeks To Make It Official

Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning is requesting a formal name change.  On 23 April, a judge in Kansas--where she is currently incarcerated--will hear her petition.

Prison officials say that the judge's decision will have no bearing on her detention status.  According to George Marcec, a spokesman for Fort Leavenworth, prison officials don't see Ms. Manning's case as "a gender thing," but instead view it as "just him changing his name."  Therefore, whatever the outcome, Manning will be detained with other men.  Male inmates in cases like hers are detained in Army garrisons like Fort Leavenworth, while females are held in civilian federal prisons.

Manning has also requested hormone treatments but is not now interested in gender-reassignment surgery.  Also, she has not requested a transfer to a women's prison.   According to a statement on the Pvt. Manning Support Network website, she "has made friends at Fort Leavenworth and wishes only to live as herself".

An Army judge sentenced her to 35 years in prison for one of the biggest leaks of classified information in history, but did not find her guilty of the most serious possible charge:  aiding the enemy.

Socially Relevant Messages From A Moral Monday

The days of graffiti "taggers" using New York City subway cars as their canvases, if you will, are long gone.

However, that doesn't stop "taggers" from leaving smaller, less-graphic--though sometimes more provocative--marks in less conspicuous places in the system.

The West Fourth Street station, with its multiple levels and mazelike corridors, offers a wealth of such nooks and crannies.  As if those features weren't enough, the station is in the heart of the Village and--are you ready for this?--has no exit or entrance to West Fourth Street.  You can enter or exit at West 8th or West 3rd Streets, or Waverly Place--but not the eponymous thoroughfare.

So it just figures that, the other day, on the platform for the A, C and E trains, I would find this:

The MTA is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway system. However, I have absolutely no idea of who "Moral Monday" might be. My curiosity is piqued.

Fred Phelps Is Dead

This is a sort of update to an earlier post.

Fred Phelps is dead.

We all knew this was coming. After all, he had been in ill health and recently moved into a hospice.

Now, I am one of the last people in this world who would ever defend him.  Still, I hope that nobody pickets his funeral as he and his congregants did at the funerals of Matthew Shepard and soldiers who died in Iraq. After all, do we want our community (or any level) to descend to the level of non-civility exhibited by the Westboro Baptist Church?

But, as awful a legacy as he left with his "God Hates Fags" protests and campaigns, he actually did quite a bit of good. Believe it or not, he was once a civil-rights lawyer who fiercely advocated on behalf of African-Americans who experienced discrimination in schools, work and the American Legion, and abuse at the hands of their local police. He also sued President Ronald Reagan after Reagan appointed--for the first time in US History--an American ambassador to the Vatican. Phelps argued that the appointment violated the Constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state.

Then, of course, there are his family members, some of whom were excommunicated and others, like his son Nathan, who left the Westboro church. They mourn the loss of a father, grandfather and uncle, even if they came to disagree with his teachings.

The life and death of Fred Phelps Sr. should, if nothing else, help us to remember that tragedy begets tragedy. Somewhere along the way, a sense of righteous anger turned into resentful hatred that caused him to be estranged from the very community he built around it.

Where Lesbians Get Off But Gay Men Are Cut Off

Could lesbians actually benefit from misogyny?

That question, on its face, might be the most preposterous you've ever heard.  But one has to wonder whether why, in 25 nations, male homosexuality is illegal (sometimes punishable by death) but lesbianism isn't.

I should qualify my previous statement:  To my knowledge, none of those countries has a law that specifically legalizes sex between women.  Rather, there simply is no law against such relations.

The simple question is, of course:  Why?

Given that most of those countries are either in the Caribbean or Africa, and some are ruled (or at least dominated) by religious fundamentalists, my guess it that women are so invisible that the men in charge simply don't think about women doing it with women.  Or, as others might suggest, it's their secret vice:  They might find men having sex with men repugnant but have their stashes of lesbian porn.

(When I was living in Park Slope, a newsdealer I frequented also sold porn.  He told me all of his lesbian porn was purchased by men and women rarely, if ever, bought porn. I always figured that the reason is that most lesbian porn depicts men's notions of what women do.)

In more religious societies were men are seen as vehicles of God's or Allah's or whatever-supreme-being's will, and women are seen as incubators of men (ideally), it's probably considered more important to protect the moral purity of males.  In such places, women are seen as evil and thus beyond protection, let alone redemption.

And there are a good many men--including some in this country--who simply believe that it isn't possible for a woman to have sex with another woman.  That, of course, means that their notions about sexual relations are completely phallocentric.

I would love to know whether any woman has ever been punished in any of those countries for having sex with another woman.  Or, upon discovering that his wife or girlfriend is doing it with her best friend, does a man charged with upholding the law simply watch and enjoy?
  

A Day Begins With A Setting Cloud

Yesterday's post on Midlife Cycling ended with a pot of gold over the rainbow.  Well, sort of.

Today's post begins--as my day did--with a cloud moving across the cityscape. 

From its path between these buldings, it "sets":

Then it recedes, eventually disappearing behind one of the buildings:

Why We Have The Golden Rule

At times like this, I understand why the Golden Rule exists.

The Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, is said to be on death's doorstep.

When he started it nearly six decades ago, Westboro was seemingly another small Kansas church. However, he turned it into a worldwide symbol of people who hate those who are different themselves--and the world generally--more than the God they purport to serve.  

Some people--including the writer of a New York Daily News article--are gloating over the way his life and mission are ending.  The man who started the custom of showing up for the funerals of victims of homophobic and transphobic violence with signs reading "God Hates Fags" was , according to at least one source, excommunicated from his own church several months ago for advocating a "kinder, gentler" approach than the one he espoused for so many years.

If that's true, it's a reason to be sad.  Perhaps he learned, too late, what the results of hate are.  You might say it's a case of someone dying by the sword by which he lived.  

In any event, I'm not going to celebrate his ill health or impending death because doing so would only perpetuate the very worst things to which he devoted too much of his life.  And I can only feel sorry for someone like his son Nathan, who left the church in 1977.  "I'm not sure how I feel about this," he wrote on his Facebook page.  "Terribly ironic that his devotion to God ends this way.  Destroyed by the monster he made.  I feel sad for the all hurt he's caused so many." 

Perhaps he can help to destroy the "monster".

Why Do We Need A Parade For Our Journeys?

Is Brazil one of the world's most progressive countries when it comes to attitudes about gender and gay rights?  Or is it a conservative Catholic country that's just another fuel shortage away from returning to the military dictatorship it endured for two decades?

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, it's both.

As Taylor Barnes points out, drag shows were popular in Rio de Janiero during the 1950's and 1960's.  However, as we have seen, people's willingness to go to shows in which drug-addled men don garish clothes and layer crude makeup on their faces has little, if anything, to do with how much those same people would accept their children if they "came out" as gay, lesbian or transgender.  In fact, sometimes the same people who go to drag shows commit violence--whether or not it's physical--against people who don't fit their culture's gender norms.

Then, of course, there is Carnival, which may well  be the greatest concentration of men in drag as well as flamboyant gay men in the world.  (Interestingly, in celebrations like Carnival or the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, one rarely, if ever, sees women dressed as men or butch lesbians.)  And, as Barnes points out, the careers of transgender models are prospering in Brazil, perhaps more than in anywhere else in the world.

Same-sex marriage is legal in about half of Brazil's states, and laws about gender identity, while not quite as advanced as those in nearby Argentina or Uruguay, are still more in line with current knowledge about gender identity and expression than the laws in most US states.  However, those states that allow same-sex marriage are--not surprisingly--the ones that include the country's largest metropoli.  On the other hand, more rural areas still hold to their conservative beliefs (often based on the local priest's or politician's interpretation of faith) about sexuality and gender.

Now, I've never been to Brazil, so I can't tell you whether it's "better" for trans people than other places.  However, at every Transgender Day of Remembrance commemoration in which I've participated, a fair number of the victims' names we read were Brazilian.  To be fair, plenty are Americans, too.  But I can't help but to think that transgenders face as precarious a situation in Brazil as we do anywhere.

And I don't know how much things will improve if people continue to associate us with the gross misinterpretations--or perhaps unintentional parodies--of womanhood exhibited by the drag "queens" of Carnival or Mardi Gras--or, for that matter, the Pride March.  As long as we're seen that way, we are in the same situation of African Americans in the days of Sambo.

Add "Insincere" To "Ignorant", "Obnoxious" And "Bigoted"

I've become my mother.

All right, I'll admit, I was well on my way to becoming like her long before I started my gender transition.  After all, we have similar tastes in things ranging from food to TV shows and personalities.

A few years ago, during a holiday I spent with my parents, my mother and I were talking about something--I forget what, exactly.  I mentioned that I'd recently seen someone who hosted her own show.  "I can't stand her," I said.  "She's ignorant and obnoxious."

"Wendy Williams!" my mother interjected.

So it came as no surprise when I learned about her opposition to Chloie Jonnson's lawsuit against Cross Fit, which denied Jonnson the right to enter as a female in its fitness competition.

The video of her offending remarks, and the panel discussion during which she made them, has been removed from her website and YouTube.  She was covering her tracks (or someone was doing it for her), just as she was with her "apology".

I mean, doesn't every bigot try to deny who or what he or she is by claiming to be an "ally of the community" or some such thing?