Another Anniversary!

Yesterday this blog turned seven years old.

And I turned six.  That is to say, six years ago yesterday, I underwent my surgery. 

My, how time flies!

Riding On Race Memory

The other day, I took a ride I hadn’t taken in a long, long time.

I ended up in Long Branch, New Jersey, as I’d planned.  I rode there back in December.  But I made a wrong turn just as I was leaving the industrial and post-industrial necropolis of north-central New Jersey took a very different route from the one I’d planned.  I didn’t mind: It was a very satisfying ride that took me away from the traffic streaming in and out of the shopping malls that day, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.

But Sunday I took the route I rode so many times in my youth, through the weathered Jersey Shore communities that line Route 36 from Keyport to the Highlands.  So much was as I remembered it from the last time I rode it, twenty years ago, and the first time I rode it, twenty years before that. Then I crossed over the arched bridge that spans the Shrewsbury River where it empties into Sandy Hook Bay and drops into the spit of land that separates the river and bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  

At the top of the bridge, the ocean stretches as far as you can see. Whether it was bluer than any eye or stone I’ve ever seen, or grayer than steel, nothing made me better than seeing it and descending that bridge.

Here is something I wrote about the experience of doing that ride for the first time as a woman named Justine—after many, many journeys as a boy and man named Nick:

*****************************************************************************************

Yesterday’s ride brought back memories of the race.

I did not make the turn.  I could not.  I did not for many, many years.  But yesterday I did.

Either way meant pedaling uphill.  To the left I went.  Two hills, instead of one.  Between them, a brief flat, where I could regain some of the momentum I’d lost.

But the climbs were neither as long nor as steep as I remembered.  I forgot that I’m not in as good shape as I was the last time I did this ride, this race, more than twenty years ago.  

To get to the ocean and back.  That was all I had to do in those days.  To the ocean and back before dark, before the air grew as cold and night as false as the water, as the reflections on it:  my reflections.

All I had to do was get back for dinner.  At least, that’s all I was told to do.  Sunday; you simply did not miss dinner.  You couldn’t even be late for it.  So there was only so much time to get there, to get to the ocean and back.

I am pedaling on memory now.  My body’s memory:  the only kind.  The first time I did this ride, when I was a teenager.  The last time, twenty years later, twenty years ago.

Before the memory, I knew nothing.  I could only move ahead, I could only pedal.  Gotta make it.  I could not stop. My memory of this ride, this race, could not, could not let me.  You will.  I could not hear; when you’re in this race, you can’t.

On that flat between the climbs, a woman walked toward me.  She says something; I can only see her.  She knows me perfectly well; I don’t.  She does not stop me; I cannot.

She would climb these hills many more times.  You’ll make it!  How does she know?  I have no other choice.

The climb is easier when you have a memory of the race.  It’s inevitable.  You couldn’t go any other way.  There is only the race, the climb, that ends at a bridge that you’ll cross because there is no other way over the bay, to the ocean.  

Because I made the turn. Because I couldn’t have gone any other way.  Not when a teenaged boy’s elbows and knees slung him forward on his saddle and up the hills.  Not when the memory of a woman in late middle age, the electricity in her flesh—his flesh—guides the wheels beneath her, beneath him, over the bridge and to the ocean.

The day is clear.  Reflections of the sun pulse; she moves the weight of his bones down a narrow strip between the bay and the ocean all the way to the end.  His end, where he turned around for the race.  He would have to get there and back while he could; she knew he would but he could not.  He could not have known.  He could only push; he could only pump.

The sunset is even clearer.  Weathered houses stand ready; the abandoned ones lost to the tides.  I am pedaling into the wind but my bike rolls as easily and smoothly over cracked asphalt as boats, sails like wings fluttering between ripples of water and clouds. 

They will reach their shores, whoever is guiding them, whoever guided them years ago.  I came to the end of yesterday’s ride on my memory of a race:  the teenaged boy who first followed these roads, the young man who did not know how to turn; the man who would not—and, finally, twenty years later, the woman who could not.  She crossed the bridge to the ocean. 

Yesterday I rode on the memory of that race, the race that I am.

What Gender Is

Artivism Project

How Quickly Notions About Us Are Changing

One thing I find interesting--and gratifying--is how quickly much of the public's understanding of what "transgender" means is shifting.

According to a four-year-old report I recently found, nearly half of all people surveyed thought a transgender is someone who "switches" from one gender to another.  Nearly one in five people believed that a trans person "lives like the opposite gender", "identifies more with the opposite gender" or "has identified with both genders".  Another ten percent subscribed to what was the standard definition until the 1980s or thereabouts:  transgenders are born into the "wrong" body.

Just four years later, those statistics and notions already seem very dated--especially the large number  of people who thought trans people "switch" genders.  There is some degree of truth--at least, for some trans people-- to the other definitions I've mentioned, but they don't come close to telling the whole story about any of us.

Perhaps that is one of the best outcomes of the publicity surrounding Caitlyn Jenner and other trans people "coming out".  None of us fit a single narrative of what it means to be trans any more than any cisgender heterosexual is likely to fit into some narrow definition of "cisgender" or "hetero".   As more people understand that, it can only make it easier (though I still won't say "easy") for us to live in the fullness of our own beings.

Happy Fourth Of July! Get Ready!

Happy Fourth of July, a.k.a. US Independence Day!

Many in our community are still celebrating the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage.   Still, there's a long road ahead until we achieve equality in all areas of life.  In other words, we're still not close to freely exercising all of the things most people take for granted in the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights.

So...enjoy this day.  And prepare for what's coming.

Girl Scouts Return Donation, Then Triple It

A few days ago, I wrote about a woman who upholds her convictions--or, at least, the stated values of an organization she leads.

The Queen Anne Office (in Western Washington State) of the Girl Scouts received a $100,000 donation with a request that it wouldn't be used to help transgender girls.

That donation was equal to a quarter of the office's budget for a year. It could have sent hundreds of girls to camp.  But Megan Ferland returned it.

The office's online marketing manager then started #ForEVERYGirl, a crowd-funding campaign on IndieGoGo.  As of last night, it raised $300,000.

Now, if the Girl Scouts can do that--and integrate trans girls fairly seamlessly, as they did with the first Black Girl Scouts in 1917 (the organization was founded five years earlier)--why do the Boy Scouts have such a problem with gay, let alone trans, Scouts and Scoutmasters?

Freddie Really DidSomething

Before I started living full-time as a woman, I saw a therapist and social worker every week for a year.  And I saw them weekly for the first two years in my life as I am.

Both of them thought one of the most difficult--or at least intense--parts of my transition would be "coming out" in the college where I was teaching at the time.  About 800 faculty members taught and mentored 17,000 students; even though I planned to  announce my new name and identity only to my department chair and colleagues, and to all relevant administrators, I knew that word--and rumors--about it, and me, would spread quickly. I think that my therapist and social worker knew that would be just the beginning!

Still, if I include everyone in that college as well as family members, friends and others with whom I was in regular contact, I "came out" to, at most, about 30,000 people.  

I can only imagine what it would like to come out to two million!  That is what someone named "Alysha" did in introducing himself as "Freddie", a transgender male.

For three years, he'd been sending subscribers to DoSomething.org tips on recycling and other ways to do social good.  Now, it seems, he is teaching by example:  He talked about his struggles to come to terms with his identity and offered advice, encouragement or simply explanation to anyone who wants it.

He sure is doing something!
 

An NFL Player Tackled By Transgender Panic

Transgender=Predator.

To some people,  this equation is as ironclad as 2+2=4.  Yet when you ask those same people to name a specific case of a trans person who accosted, harassed, or assaulted anyone, or made anyone do anything against his or her will, they can't.  

It's one thing for people to believe stereotypes or myths out of fear or ignorance.  But it's absolutely vile and reprehensible when someone uses a myth or stereotype to escape responsibility for his or her actions, or to slander someone else.

I know:  Dominick did those things to me when I ended my relationship with him.  He spread rumors that traded in those stereotypes and tried to bully me with threats that he would continue to spread them and cause even more damage than he already had.

And I ended my relationship with him because he simply refused to take responsibility for the consequences of his words and actions.  Instead, he would portray himself as the victim whenever he was called to account.

The memory of those awful things he did came back when I saw this story about a football star who cheated on his wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time--and Hugh Hefner's ex-girlfriend.

Oh, but it gets even better.  Hank Baskett claims that when he went to a grocery store, he saw a couple smoking pot in a parking lot and approached them in the hope they--random strangers--would sell him some weed. They gave him a phone number to call; when he called, he was given an address where he showed up.  

Are you with me so far?  

So he arrived at the house, he says, and went to the bathroom.  (Hmm...So that's the first thing you do at a drug dealer's house!)  When he emerged from the loo, he says, he saw two trans women--one of them naked--making out. 

Then, he claims, one of them walked up to him and sampled the merchandise in his gym shorts.

"I didn't engage in anything," he says.  "It was like a bank robbery...I don't know if it was a couple of seconds or fifteen seconds, because all I was saying was 'get out, get out, get out."  

According to a magazine who published his story, he was so "distraught" and "humiliated" he couldn't tell his wife--Kendra Wilkinson--about it.  

Ah, yes,  the "transgender panic" defense.   He went to cop some blow and ended up getting a blow job from a stranger.  When he realized what a divorce would cost him, he got scared.  

Now, to be fair, a transgender model claimed to have an affair with Baskett while Wilkinson was pregnant and sold her story to a magazine.  If that model was lying, Baskett could have ignored or denied her story. But if the story about the affair is true, his "explanation" does nothing to make him seem less culpable.

Or more credible.  Does he really think anyone is stupid enough to believe his story?  Oh wait...Wilkinson claims she does. "He messed up," she says, "He was naive and gullible."  

Really....You can't make this stuff up!

  

If It Can't Be Used To Help Trans Girls, The Girl Scouts Don't Want It

It's great to know that some organizations actually stand behind their stated principles.

One such organization is the Girl Scouts--specifically, the Queen Anne Offices of the Girl Scouts in western Washington State.

Not long ago, a $100,000 donation came their way.  But in May, in the wake of all of the publicity surrounding Caitlyn Jenner, the donor sent a letter with this request:  Please guarantee that our gift will not be used to support transgender girls.  If you can't, please return the money.

That donation would have represented a quarter of the office's annual operating budget, and would have been enough to send 500 girls to camp.  For many people, that would make for a wrenching decision.

But not for CEO Megan Ferland.  Shortly after receiving that letter, she returned the money. For her, the reasoning was simple:  "Girl Scouts is for every girl."  She added, "Every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout, if she wants to."


Thank you, Megan Ferland!

For The Community, A Victory. For You And Your Partner, Maybe Not So Much.

As I have said in earlier posts, even though I support marriage equality, I would much prefer that the government got out of the marriage business altogether, save to set a minimum age at which people can enter into a union.  And it would be exactly that—a union.  It would allow couples visitation and inheritance rights and specify custody and other responsibilities. It would also allow one member of the couple to add the other to her or his health care policy and apartment lease agreement or title to the house. However, there would be no tax benefit for getting married. 

One reason why I believe in such an arrangement even more firmly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling became apparent to me today.  Now same-sex marriage is legal throughout the US, employers will be required to allow workers to add their same-sex spouses to their health insurance policies.  This begs the question:  Will employers stop offering domestic-partner benefits?  Will they require couples, whether hetero- or homo-sexual, to be married in order to share in the benefits the company offers?

One of the great ironies of my life is that I was once included in a partner’s health-care benefits—when I was still living as a man with a female partner.  We had a domestic partnership agreement, which New York City was offering to all couples at that time (late 1990’s and early 2000’s).  If I were still with her—whether in my former or current identity—would she be allowed to include me on her health insurance? 

I’m guessing that the answer would be “yes” just because this is New York City and her company had a surprisingly (to me at the time, anyway) enlightened view of such things.  But what if we’d been in one of those states where same-sex marriage—and even domestic partnerships—weren’t legal before last week’s ruling?  It’s hard for me to imagine that a company based in a state that didn’t have domestic partnerships would allow partners’ benefits, especially if it was compelled by court order to offer insurance to same-sex couples.

Somehow I think the battles not only aren’t over; they haven’t even begun yet.

Body Language And Marriage Politics

Four years ago, marchers in New York City’s Pride March—and revelers on the streets and in parties during and after the event—celebrated the legalization of same-sex marriage in the Empire State, which had come to pass only a few days earlier.

This year, there was similar jubilation because, just the other day, same-sex marriage was legalized in all of the United States.  The cool wind that blew drizzle and rain into this city through much of the day didn’t seem to keep very many people away from the march and other celebrations.

Something I saw after this year’s march bears a striking similarity with something I observed four years ago.  In most years, one sees LGBT people and their allies, alone or in groups, walking around with their rainbow flags and other regalia.  One also sees couples, but many of them have a certain tentativeness that can be seen in the almost-truncated ways they hold hands, put their arms around each other or simply walk with each other.  It’s almost as if some of them know that they can display their affection so publicly for that one day.

But this year, I saw none of that furtiveness.  The couples I saw—young old and in-between; men with men, women with women and cis people with transgenders—walked with more confidence and less of the ostentation people display when they know their moment of bliss can be rudely (or, worse, violently) interrupted.  In other words, they seemed to enjoy the sense of security—Nobody can take this away from us—most cisgender heterosexual couples don’t even realize they take for granted.

I was noticing change in couples’ body language and, it seemed, in their sense of time itself, not on the Christopher Street Pier or in Chelsea clubs or Jackson Heights bars.  Rather, I observed them in the South Bronx, where I rode my bike to meet a friend after the festivities.   I also noticed it later in my own neighborhood of Astoria—which, while it has a fair-sized LGBT community living openly, isn’t exactly Chelsea or even Jackson Heights.  Somehow I imagine that had I gone to other neighborhoods in Queens or Manhattan or the Bronx—or Brooklyn, or even Staten Island—I would have seen something similar.  In short, everyone was breathing a little freer today—even more so than we were four years ago.

A Black Woman--Like Me? Like You?

You may have noticed that, until today, I hadn’t commented on the woman of Czech, Irish, Swedish and Native American ancestry who claimed she’s African-American and became the president of an NAACP chapter.  Frankly, I haven’t been thinking much about it, partly because I think the whole idea of classifying people by race is silly.  We’re All African; Get Over It!

But this morning I heard someone echo the canard conservative talk-radio personalities have been parroting:  If she wanted to portray herself as Black, it must mean that there’s no such thing as “white privilege”.  (If anything, those talk-radio guys show us that there’s no such thing as “white superiority”.)  People like them believe that laws to protect people of color, women, LGBT people and others are “special privileges”; never mind that white men have enjoyed such privileges since the day this country was founded.

It reminded me some things a few people told me when I was starting my transition.  “Oh, you’ll have it made,” said one.  “Men are going to hold doors open for you.”  Oh, sure, I transitioned for that.  And it more than makes up for the times I’ve been slandered (in particular by Dominick, but also by others) , accused of things I didn’t do, rejected and passed over for jobs. 

And then there was Elizabeth—who, I have since realized, resents anyone who is happier than she is—who accused me of transitioning so that I could “go to the top of the Affirmative Action food chain” and get a job that should go to her or some other “real” (Yes, she used that term!) woman. 

Uh-huh.  I took hormones and abuse, and underwent surgery, just so I could teach gender studies or gender theory or some such thing.  I can just imagine what someone like Elizabeth—who, I also realize, wants to be a Second Wave Feminist with a man who will support her—would, if she were black, say about Ms.

What I’m saying is that I made my transition so I can live my life—which, I suspect, is the reason why Caitlyn Jenner made hers.  In fact, I’d say that’s the reason, or at least an important reason, why most trans people go through their process of becoming who and what they are.  Really, there aren’t many—perhaps any—other reasons.

I suppose Rachel Dolezal  is claiming blackness for the same reason.  However, contrary to what some believe, that is about the only comparison that can be made between her and transgenders.  I’m not saying that a person couldn’t have been born in the “wrong” race; it’s simply something I don’t understand because I’ve never experienced it (though I’ve often felt I should have been French, which is a cultural—for me, anyway—rather than a racial identity).  On the other hand, I understand how it feels to have been born in the “wrong” body—which is still how most people define transgenderism.  More important, I understand what it’s like to be brought up, educated and acculturated in the “wrong gender”.  Most important of all, I have experienced growing up with the mind and spirit of a gender different from the one in which I was living and presenting to the world every day for the first 44 years of my life.

Hmm…Maybe I do understand a little more of Ms. Dolezal's dilemma than I thought.  But just a little.  Whatever the case, I find no reason to worry about whether she claims she’s black, white, Martian, Tralfamadorian or whatever.  All I can say is that it’s very, very unlikely she’s claiming blackness just so she can teach Black Studies or be the President of an NAACP chapter.  After all, as a white woman, there are all sorts of other things she could do—even though she wouldn’t have the same access and other privileges white cisgender men enjoy.