Thanks For The Flashback, Donald!

Some have called last night's debate "depressing".

It left me in too much shock to be depressed.  The last time I felt that way about an event in which I was not personally involved was on 11 September 2001.

Perhaps I will be depressed about it later.  That is, after living through the trauma I feel is coming over me.  

It started, I now realize, when Donald got just a little too close to Hillary.  That, in and of itself, was scary enough.  But the expression on his face:  Tell me it isn't that of a stalker!

That, and the way he paced around--and his body language and overall demeanor--practically spelled "abuser".

I know.  I was having flashbacks.  Everything gesture, every word of his, was a threat and would have been even if he hadn't thundered that he would put her in jail if he became President.

Abusers do that, a lot:  They make threats.  Just like Dominick threatened to destroy my life--and nearly did--after I told him I wanted no more to do with him.  I'm sure that if he reads this, he will threaten me again.  Or, perhaps, he won't even give me such a warning, and he will go ahead and do something to make my life hell.  As it is, I have recurring health problems as a result of his abuse and harassment. 

There was the e-mail in which he said that "living in a cardboard box will seem like paradise" unless I gave in to his demands.  And the one in which he bragged that he could tell everyone that I had sex with my students, and with children, and "everyone will believe it and not you because they know your (sic) a pervert" and a "completely worthless human being" who "did nothing to make my life better"

Funny that he was calling me a worthless pervert, and claiming I did nothing to enhance his life--before, and after, he begged me to stay with him.  And that he used to call me at all hours to complain about how people treated him, how they imputed all manner of sexual crimes to him, because of his sexuality--or, at least, the way they perceived it--after saying, the day before, that all I ever did "was listen" to him.  "Big deal!" he exclaimed.

Then when I brought him to court, he said the threats he made were "just talk" and "only words".  Hmm...How many abusers have said that?  "I didn't mean it," he whined.  But if he "didn't mean it", why did he?  Why did he say or do those things?  When I asked him that, he made more threats and claimed that I did worse, that other people did worse.  When, in another incident, I called him on his racism, he sent an e-mail to a bunch of people saying that he saw the white robe and hood in my closet the last time he was in my apartment.

Well, all right, Donald at least said "I apologize" before saying Bill did worse things and Hillary has hate in her heart and started the very lie (about Obama's birthplace) he spent years propagating.  That's more than Dominick ever did.  But both of them did the something else abusers are always doing:  blaming their own words and actions on the victim.  It's a clever way for perpetrators to portray themselves as victims without seeming to.

In short, The Donald is a petty, vicious bully, just like most abusers.  Just like Dominick.

Hey, Donald, thanks for the flashbacks.  I'm going to send you the bill from my therapist.  Oh, right:  You're going to make me pay for it.  Just like Dominick said I would pay.

I hear he's looking for a job.  Do you need anybody to help you on your campaign? Oh, right:  I caused him to be unemployed.  He couldn't have said it any better.

At least all he wanted to be was a cop.  Donald wants to be Abuser In Chief, I mean President.

Girls Just Wanna Ride Bikes...In Iran

If you were going to start a movement, would you ban 51 percent of the people from participating in it?

Perhaps that seems like a rhetorical, or merely silly, question. 

It is, however, one that is begged by a turn of events in a country full of paradoxes.

I'm not talking about the US Presidential election campaign.  Rather, I am referring to a something that happened in a country where such things normally don't happen--and what resulted in one part of that country. 

The nation in question is performs more gender-reassignment surgeries than any country except Thailand.  Yet its leader once famously declared that there are no homosexuals in his country.

By now, you may have realized that I am talking about Iran. 

It's not a country noted for its advanced environmental policies.  So more than a few eyebrows were raised when, in November 2015, environmental activists in Aran, an industrial city in the western province of Markazi, introduced the idea of "Tuesdays Without Cars" or, more generally, "Clean Tuesdays", on which people are invited to leave their cars at home and, instead, commute by bicycle. 

The idea quickly spread and now all of the Iran's provinces have joined in.  Now it's on the verge of becoming a national event.

But national events aren't easy to coordinate in a country like Iran.  I have never been there, but I have been told that in at least one sense, it's like neighboring Turkey, where I have spent some time:  there are great cultural differences from one region to another.  So, in a city like Tehran or Istanbul, there are neighborhoods full of people who live lives not too dissimilar from those in Western capitals.  However, in both cities, there are also conservative religious enclaves.  So, it almost goes without saying that in the countryside, customs and interpretations of Islam are, shall we say, not exactly liberal.

In Marivan, a county of Kurdistan province about 500 kilometers from Markazi, some women were stopped on 29 July for the crime of...cycling.  At least, some police officers had the idea that women on bikes were haram.  For the time being, women can't ride bikes on the streets in the area.

While there is nothing in Iranian legal codes that prohibits women from cycling, in places like Marivan, the idea of a woman riding a bicycle goes against traditional religious values--or, at least, interpretations of them.

Now, I am certainly no expert on the Qu'ran or Sharia law, but I don't think anything in either would exclude women from riding bicycles, specifically.  But some would interpret those texts, which warn against shameful acts, to mean that women should not ride bicycles.

Or, at least, they would interpret them to mean that women should not be seen riding bicycles in public.  Upon hearing about the July incident, Mamousta Mostafa Shirzadi, the Friday prayer Imam for Marivan, said that officials of the Sport and Youth Organization "need to provide" the women an "appropriate indoor space" for cycling.

In response, organizers of Tuesdays Without Cars pointed out that women, as much as men, need to be able to use their bikes as transportation-- and not just for exercise or recreation, which is all that an indoor space would allow.

Here is a video from a protest against the ban:




Below is a still from a video of a mother and daughter defying the de facto ban on women cycling:




A mother and daughter defy the fatawa against women cycling.

 

If Only She Would Quit Her Day Job, Too...

If you've been reading this blog, you might (rightly) guess that I'm no fan of Ann Coulter. 

So I couldn't help but to grin, just a little, when I saw this video:



Ms. Coulter really bombed.  The best parts, for me, came at the 4:56 mark--when Pete Davidson yells "good one!" ironically--and at 6:34, when Jeff Ross gives, shall we say, a frank appraisal of her performance.

She was trying to use the occasion to hawk her newest book.  Somehow I don't think it was a very good marketing strategy.  But what do I know?:  I studied literature and history, not business!

I'm Sick And Tired Of Hearing About "Thoughts And Prayers"

I know it's been a while since I've posted on this blog.  I began one year before my gender-reassignment surgery and planned to document that year leading up to it.  I had no idea of whether I would continue after that--or, if I did, what direction this blog might take.

For a while, I was writing about my post-surgery life.  But, in time, there was less and less to say about that, so I found myself writing about various transgender--and LGB--issues.  Too ofen, they involved malicious, discriminatory acts of violence (mentally and legally as well as physically) against us.  Perhaps I don't have as strong a constitution as I thought I had, for I could only write about such things so much, and for so long.   And I have never had any interest in turning this into a blog about academic gender studies.

Lately, though, I can't help but to notice the violence against LGBT people.  I don't know whether there's been more of it lately, or whether it's receiving more notice--which is to say that people are recognizing that we are being victimized for being who we are.  

That is what happened to 50 people in the Pulse nightclub.  Though my days of going to bars and clubs are long past, and I am not as immersed in the LGBT milieu as I one was, I'd heard of it: It seems to be one of the gay destinations in Orlando, Florida.  Thus, it seems like a logical (if I might use that word) target for someone like Omar Mateen, who was "repulsed by the gay lifestyle" according to media reports.

"The gay lifestyle":  Did he actually say that?  If he did, I'm amazed that, at this late date, the media still uses it without attributing it to him.  If they were not directly quoting him, it shows that they are just as misinformed, if not prejudiced, as he was.  Being gay--or lesbian or trans--is no more a "lifestyle" than being Muslim or black or handicapped.  A lifestyle implies choice; no one has ever chosen to be gay or transgendered, though we may indeed make the choice to follow our innate selves.

Also, while Mateen may well have been an ISIS sympathizer or whatever, it's hard to imagine that it was his primary motive for going into a crowded nightclub and opening fire.  First of all, ISIS-type terrorists usually choose larger, more public venues.  Second, he was described as "self-radicalized".  It's hard to understand why, if he indeed sympathised with ISIS or any other large organization, he would carry out a mass murder-suicide mission in their name without their help.  Even if he were, as some say, "crazy", it's hard to understand why he would make such a choice.


But, I fear, the real reason why law enforcement authorities and the media want to pursue the ISIS angle--to the extent that it exists--is that they can justify throwing more resources at investigating it, and carrying out other kinds of surveillance, than they could for investigating this tragedy as just a hate crime.  I mean, they will take something more seriously if it involves geopolitics than if it involved "just a bunch of gays out drinking and dancing".  Oh, should I add that most of the victims were Latinos?

Anyway...I can only imagine how the loved ones of those who died, and those who could in the coming days, must feel.  Which is the reason why it makes me sick to hear what we always hear after mass murders and other horrific crimes and tragedies: "Our thoughts and prayers are with them."

Fuck thoughts and prayers.  They never prevented anything like this or helped anyone who had to pick up the pieces afterward.  What we need is to keep folks like Omar Mateen from getting the weapons that enable them to commit such atrocities.  (He was in Florida, where one can walk into a Wal Mart and buy a gun almost as easily as one can buy a fishing reel.)  He bought his weaponry just days before he walked into the Pulse:  enough time for a background check that could have revealed, for example, that he beat his ex-wife.  Also, it might have raised questions as to why he, who wore police garb whenever he could and wanted so badly to becoe a cop, never became one.  Did he reply, and was he rejected because of psychological issues?

Mourn the victims. Give the families and friends the resources they need to help them move on with their lives, to the degree that is possible.  And keep assault weapons away people like Omar Mateen.  Fuck thoughts and prayers:  Neither our high-mindedness nor God will solve anything that we won't solve for ourselves.

How Important Is The Bicycle In Women's History?

In a post I wrote three years ago on my other blog, I relayed one of the most striking insights Susan B. Anthony offered:
   
    "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling.  It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

Yesterday, I came across this:

     "Advertisements, magazines and posters promoted the image of the New Woman, just as other forms of mass media would later exhibit images of the flapper, the housewife, the wartime worker, and the androgynous feminist.  The bicycle was the symbol of the New Woman's freedom outside the home, as she raced off with her friends--men or women--down city streets and into the countryside."

Obviously, that didn't come from Ms. Anthony.  It did, however, come from a source that's intersting, if not as much so as, and for different reasons from, the godmother of feminism as we know it.

The second quote is the only mention of the bicycle in The Social Sex:  A History of Female Friendships, by Marilyn Yalom with Theresa Donovan Brown.  Dr. Yalom is a former Professor of French and senior scholar at the Clayman Institute of Gender Research at Stanford University. Ms. Donovan Brown is a former speechwriter and ran a financial communications firm.

I strongly suspect that Dr. Yalom supplied most of the information and Ms. Donovan Brown did most of the writing.  After all, the section on women's friendships and the salons of 17th Century France contains ideas and insights that only someone who read the sources in the original could have gleaned.  And the prose flows freely--like, well, a good speech.

Therein lies both the book's strengths and flaws.  While Donovan Brown's prose flows freely, it often lacks depth.  While Yalom's research provides the reader with glimpses into the nature of the relationships described in the book, and shines a light onto documents that might otherwise have been lost, those documents (letters, stories, essays and novels) come almost entirely from women (and, in a few cases, men) from, or with connections to, the upper classes.  That, perhaps, is not Dr. Yalom's fault, as most women who weren't part of those classes were illiterate until the 19th Century and rarely went to college before World War II.

Still, the book is an engaging and, at times, interesting read.  It won't turn you into a scholar or an expert, but it's a good starting point for anyone who wants to read more about relationships or women's history.  Finally, there is something to be said for any piece of writing that reminds readers of the importance of the bicycle in changing women's lives, however brief and fleeting that reminder might be.

Michelle Dumaresq: 100% Pure Woman Champ

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance.  

This day was first observed in 1999, one year after Rita Hester was murdered in her Allston, Massachusetts apartment.  She was killed just two days before she would have turned 35 years old.


Her death came just a few weeks after Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die on a cold night in the Wyoming high desert.  Their deaths helped to bring about the hate-crime laws now on the books in the US as well as many state and local statutes.  Moreover, Hester's killing--while not as widely publicized as Shepard's--galvanized transgender activists all over the world.

Because I am--at least to my knowledge--the only transsexual woman with a bike blog, I am going to use this post to honor one of the greatest transgender athletes of our era.

Michelle Dumaresq was born in 1970.  In 2001, she entered and won her first competitive mountain biking event--the Bear Mountain Race in British Columbia, Canada.  After she won two more races, her racing license was suspended in response to complaints from other female riders.  The cycling associations of British Columbia and Canada, after meeting privately with race organizers, tried to pressure her into quitting.  Of course, she wouldn't, and after a meeting with UCI officials, it was decided that she could continue to compete as a female.

Other female riders felt she had an unfair advantage.  Their resentment was, not surprisingly, based on a common misunderstanding.  Dumaresq had her gender reassignment surgery in 1996, five years before her first victory, and had been taking female hormones--and a male hormone blocker--for several years before that.  By the time she started racing, she no longer had any testosterone in her body (Biological females have traces of it.) and she had lost most of the muscle mass she had as a man.

I know exactly where she's been, as I also had the surgery after six years of taking hormones and a testosterone blocker.  A few months into my regimen, I started to notice a loss of overall strength, and I noticed some more after my surgery.  Trust me, Ms. Dumaresq, as talented and dedicated as she is, had no physiological advantage over her female competitors.

I remind myself of that whenever another female rider (usually, one younger than I am) passes me during my ride to work!

But I digress.  Michelle Dumaresq had the sort of career that would do any cyclist--male or female, trans or cisgender, or gay--proud.  She won the Canadian National Championships four times and represented her country in the World Championships.  That, of course, made the haters turn up the heat.  When she won the 2006 Canadian National Championships, the boyfriend of second-place finisher Danika Schroeter jumped onto the podium and helped her put on a T-shirt that read "100% Pure Woman Champ."

Ms. Dumaresq would have looked just fine in it.

I posted the following on my other blog (Midlife Cycling) yesterday:

Allo.?

Isabelle. Je suis Justine.  Tu vas bien?

Oui.  Comment ca-va?

Bien.  J'ai vous vous reveillez?

Ah...oui.

Pardon.

No problem.  (She likes to use that phrase.) 

J'ai entendu les nouvelles de Paris.

Yes, it is terrible.  But we were not there.

Je suis tres hereuse pour ca.

Would you like to talk to Jay?
Il dort?

Oui, mais se reveillera.

I didn't want her to wake him.  At least I knew he was at home, in his bed.  But she brought him to the phone. 

Desole de te reveiller.

Don't worry.  Mais, besoin de redormir. 

That's OK.  J'ai voule etre sur que vous etes OK.

He thanked me for calling.  I assured him that all I wanted was to know that he and Isabelle were not casualties of the bombings, the shootings, that rocked Paris and its environs yesterday.  I knew that, chances were, they weren't there when those terrible events went down, but I just wanted to be sure.

Then I called Michele.  No answer.  Asleep, I hoped.  I left a message.  Just before I started writing this post, I found an e-mail from her.  All right.  I can breathe a little easier.  Can they?

None of us had gone to the Bataclan together.  But we'd walked those streets, ate in restaurants and sipped espressos in the cafes near it.  When I heard that death struck at Le Carillon, I stopped cold. 

It's just a block away from the Quai des Jemmapes, on the eastern bank of the Canal St. Martin.  Back in August, after a lovely morning ride, I enjoyed a picnic lunch of fresh foods and Badoit water I bought along the way.  As the sun softened the green tint of the canal and leaves that flickered in the breeze, it was hard to imagine anything terrible, let alone the blaze of guns or an explosion.

After my canal-side reverie, I retreated to Le Carillon for a cappuccino to cap off my lunch.  By that time, most locals had finished their lunch and were back at work or passing the rest of the day along the old, narrow streets.  I went to Le Carillon because it was the nearest café, but it was a place I would have chosen otherwise: It seemed like a real old cozy neighborhood watering hole Parisians themselves would habituate, not some place trying to look the part for hipsters who wanted an "authentic" experience. 

I sat at a wooden table on the sidewalk.  So did a few other people.  It's hard to imagine that sidewalk with bodies sprawled over it--even more difficult than it was, the first time I saw the Place de la Concorde, to visualize the blood of French monarchy and nobility spilled all over it.  But certainly not as difficult as it is for those who witnessed the darkness that descended upon the City of Light.

Mama Mechanic

This afternoon I took a ride out to the Rockaways on Tosca, my Mercian fixie.

The weather was lovely, as it was yesterday:  warm, but not overly so, with high puffy clouds floating across expanses of blue sky.  And, as luck would have it, I rode into the wind on my way out to Rockaway Beach and Far Rockaway.  That meant, of course, that on my way home, I could pedal about 20 RPM faster without trying.

Anyway, I was coasting through an area of Gateway National Recreation area frequented by bird-watchers and wildlife photographers--in plain view of JFK International Airport!  My external reverie seemed to embody the one that was playing out within me at that moment:  I am still in the afterglow of my trip to Paris and of the wonderful late-day ride to Connecticut I enjoyed yesterday.  I have been doing some writing away from this blog (I don't want to give too much away!) and I'm feeling optimistic about the semester that's about to begin. Now all I need is to hit the Lotto jackpot and meet the love of my life.  Hmm...I'm not so sure about the latter.  Being single isn't so bad after you've been in an abusive relationship or two.


Wouldn't you know...a cute young guy approaches me from behind.  "Sir!"  "Sir!"  He sounded distressed, so I turned to look at him.  (His distress was the only reason I looked at him, I swear! ;-))  "Do you...Oh, I'm sorry, Ma'am."

"Don't worry."

"You don't see a lot of women riding here.  And, from behind, you were pedaling like a dude."

I said nothing. (I didn't want to give too much away!)

"Do you have an allen key?"

"Yes, I do."

Just then I saw the reason why he asked:  His handlebar slipped and rolled inside the stem.

"We can't let you ride like that," I said.

"I swapped this handlebar today.  I guess I didn't tighten it enough."

"Well, let's hope it's the right diameter."

"I thought they were all the same size."

I shook my head and, from the corner of my eye, saw the source of the problem.  He had a stem with a faceplate that bolts in the four corners. He'd tightened the top two bolts much more than the lower ones.  So, in addition to the usual hazards of a loose handlebar, he ran the risk of shearing off the faceplate and, possibly, taking an even nastier spill than he might have had he only leaned on loose bars. 

Before I tightened the stem bolts, I asked him to move the bar to a position he likes.  Good thing: I noticed that his grips slipped on the bars.

He said he'd used water to slide the rubber grips onto the bars.   I grabbed the edge of the right grip and rolled it up to the end of the bar.  Then I unrolled it, and the grip--an Oury--stayed as if it had been epoxied to the bar.  I did the same for his left grip.

Then I told him to grab the grip and try to roll it, and to try to move the bar in the stem.  Everything was as firmly in place as the pyramids.

"Lady, I don't know how to thank you enough."

"Just be careful," I said in my most maternal tone.  Really, he's a nice kid--he's been working as a lifeguard--and want him to live and ride long.
 

It's Not About Privilege. It's About How She Uses It.

OK, I'll admit it: I haven't watched "I Am Cait."  Then again, I haven't watched anything on television in a while because I almost never watch TV.

That said, I want to address remarks I've heard about it, and about Caitlyn Jenner's very public journey.  Those remarks have a common denominator:  privilege, or at least the word "privilege."  As in, "She's exploiting her upper-class privilege."  A few others have said she is using her "male privilege":  in essence, denying her transition and current life.  

The "male privilege" accusation comes mainly from TERFs and their allies:  After all, any man or any conservative who refused to see Caitlyn as female wouldn't see males as having privilege.  And, perhaps not surprisingly, the "white privilege" or "class privilege" whine doesn't emenate from the lips those who are darker or poorer than Caitlyn:  Those echoes of resentment come mainly from rich white cisgender heterosexuals who took a gender studies course or two.  Ironically, they are no different from white male conservatives in that they cannot see themselves as having privilege, but they can find it in a millisecond in someone else, whether or not that person actually has it.

There is no question that Caitlyn Jenner's celebrity--garnered mainly during her life as a man named Bruce--gives her more privilege than most people will ever enjoy.  And, if she's not part of the "one percent", she's close to it--which, of course, is another source of privilege.  Of course, being white doesn't hurt her standing, either.

Every male-to-female transgender I have ever known--I include myself--has lost some sort of privilege she didn't know she had when she was living as male.  This is especially true if said trans person is white:  As one black trans woman told me, "I don't feel I lost privilege because I had so little to begin with."  Whether the same thing will happen to Caitlyn remains to be seen.  Many of us are rightly celebrating her courage and integrity and, not surprisingly, some are mocking and hating on her.  Some of the haters probably own, or run, the companies that sponsor the programs on which Caitlyn has appeared, so it's hard not to wonder whether, after the attention she's now receiving has shifted elsewhere, she will lose some of her television work or be asked to make fewer public appearances in other venues.

I hope that nothing like that happens to Caitlyn.  As much as I'd like to have some of her privilege, I don't begrudge her for it.  If anything, I think she is using it well to call attention to such things as the suicide of a transgender teenager no one would have heard about if Caitlyn hadn't mentioned him.  Perhaps someone could knock her for taking a cross-country trip with her own entourage but, hey, if it helps to make us and our stories and struggles more real to the public, I have no problem with it.  If nothing else, such actions--and almost everything else she's done from the time Diane Sawyer interviewed her--has helped to break some of the old stereotypes about trans people.

If you're going to denigrate someone for having privilege, go after someone who's using it to bully or exploit people--especially if he's running for the Presidential nomination of his party.  But don't knock someone like Caitlyn, who's been using it for our betterment. 

Shin's Tricycle

On my other blog, I have written several posts about bicycles, and the ways they have been used, in war.  It may surprise you to learn that the reason why I am interested in such things--and in military history, with an emphasis on the history--is that I am anti-war.  In fact, I believe that the only chance the human race has of surviving-- let alone becoming a better, more enlightened species--is to render war obsolete.  Only then will we be truly able to address issues of environmental degradation and economic injustice.

That last sentence also explains why I am anti-war and pro-veteran:  To me, few things show how pointless war is than seeing a veteran sleeping under a bridge, highway overpass or train trestle, as I sometimes see on my way to work. It also explains why I see bicycling to work and school, and even for recreation --and not as a self-conscious fashion statement or a callow attempt at irony (Can it really be irony if you're trying to achieve it?)--as an instrument for attaining peace and justice.

So, in that spirit, I am posting this photograph:

Why?, you ask.  Well, on this date 70 years ago, a boy named Shin and his best friend, a girl named Kimi, were playing with it when--to paraphrase Albert Camus in The Plague--death rained on them from the clear blue sky. 

When Shin's family found him under a house beam, he was too weak to talk.  But his hand still held the red grip of that tricycle.  And Kimi was nowhere to be found.

Shin would not survive that night.  Nor would Kimi, who was found later.   Shin's father could not bear to leave him in a lonely graveyard, so he was interred--along with Kimi and the tricycle--in the family's backyard.

In 1985--forty years after the first atomic bomb leveled their home town of Hiroshima--his father decided to move his remains to the family's gravesite.  He, with the help of his wife, dug up the backyard burial ground.   There they found "the little white bones of Kimi and Shin, hand in hand as we had placed them," according to the father.

Also present was the tricycle, which the father had all but forgotten.  Lifting it out of the grave, he said, "This should never happen to children.  The world should be a peaceful place where children can play and laugh."

The next day, he would donate the tricycle to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where it is exhibited with other artifacts, as well as drawings, photos and stories from survivors of the first atomic bomb, exploded over the city 70 years ago today.

The tricycle inspired a children's book written by survivor Tatsuharu Kodama.  Published in 1995, Shin's Tricycle is narrated by Nobuo Tetsunani, Shin's father.  It's as painful as it is beautiful.  I urge you to read it--and to take a good look at those stark drawings!  

What The Planned Parenthood Controversy Means For LGBT People

Dr. Marci Bowers is an extremely skilled surgeon with a good “bedside manner.”  Like any other first-rate professional, she has fine people working with and for her.

Among them are the screening nurses, counselors and others who prepare people like me for surgery.  The ones who worked with Marci when she was in Trinidad also worked with the local Planned Parenthood, right next to the hospital in which Dr. Bowers practiced.  In fact, on the morning of my surgery, I went to the PP office—where I passed a lone protestor—and, from there, was escorted to the hospital.

I am thinking of that now in light of the furor over Planned Parenthood.  To religious fundamentalists (who, almost invariably, are trying to follow a literal interpretation of a translation of a book written, at least in part, in languages that haven’t been spoken in more than a millennium), Planned Parenthood can be defined in one word:  abortion.  And if something has anything to do with abortion, they are not only against it, they are willing to believe the absolute worst things anyone can say, true or not, about it.

So it’s really no surprise that they’re in a lather over the story that PP is selling tissue from aborted fetuses for use in medical research and treatment.  Of course, when stories are passed along, parts of it are exaggerated, distorted or otherwise changed.  So, somewhere along the way, some hysterical or simply mendacious person announced that Planned Parenthood is “harvesting’ fetuses for tissue.  That story gave the conservatives just the sort of weapon they’ve wanted.

What’s commonly forgotten is that abortion is actually a very small part of what Planned Parenthood does.  For many women—especially the poor and those who live in isolated rural areas—the Planned Parenthood office is one of the few places, if not the only place, where they can find compassionate and competent gynecological health care.  Sometimes even men in such situations rely on Planned Parenthood for their needs.

Knowing such things, I can’t help but to think that Planned Parenthood is a lifeline for many LGBT people.  There are still many health care professionals who won’t treat us or, worse, can’t or won’t treat us with the same compassion or diligence they would provide other patients.  I had one such experience early in my transition, and I have heard stories from other queer people who were treated with contempt or simply given inappropriate advice or care. For example, the doctor of  a lesbian I know told her that if she doesn’t want to get breast cancer, she should have a baby. I doubt that anyone in Planned Parenthood would have told her that.

After The Losses: After The Guilt Has Passed

If you are now living in a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, you have most likely lost at least one relationship that was very important to you.  It might be the one you had with a spouse or partner.  Or, perhaps, family members have—or your entire family has—rejected you. 

Maybe longtime friends or professional colleagues have decided that you are less worthy of their esteem than you were when they knew you by your old name, in the gender in which you had been living.

I have experienced losses in all three categories.  My partner split with me when I started my transition.  (When I offered not to live as female for the sake of our relationship, she would not hear of it. “You have to do it,” she said of my impending change.  “I just can’t go there with you.”)  One family member has cut ties with me; others have kept some distance.  And one friend—whose PhD, interestingly, includes a specialty in gender studies—said and did the politically correct things until she lashed out at me over an imagined transgression.   Another friend, I now realize, simply didn’t have the courage to tell me to my face how he really felt.  Over time, he stopped answering my calls and responding to my e-mails. 

And then there was the former boss—the chair of a department in which I taught—who observed my class and wrote a glowing observation and sang my praises to his superiors and colleagues—when I was a guy named Nick.  After about a year of living as Justine, I asked him whether he would write a reference or recommendation for me.  He shook his head and gave an appraisal of me that completely contradicted the report he wrote about me and things he said to others, including the college provost.

I grieved all of those relationships.  I hoped that my former partner would become the friend she said she wanted to be after we split.  I hoped that blood would indeed be thicker than whatever hormones were coursing through my body.  And I hoped that my old friends would get over the shock of the person they knew as a guy named Nick becoming a woman named Justine and realize that I was still all of the things they used to say I was: caring, compassionate, intelligent and sometimes even funny.

My old boss has retired, and I’ve moved on with my work, so I am no longer concerned with his assessment of me.  Although I still recall some of the good times I had with her, I have long resigned myself to the fact that my former partner didn’t mean what she said about remaining friends with me.  I have a similar attitude about the gender studies PhD:  She was a really good friend once (She called me the night, long ago, when I’d traced a line on my left wrist; I didn’t draw the razor blade across it) but that—like the relationship I had with my former partner, is a memory.  And now I realize—if you’ll pardon the expression—that even after my surgery, I have more balls than that male former friend, if I do say so myself.

I have not only accepted that I will most likely never have relationships with them again; I have even lost my desire to re-connect with them.  I have also resigned myself to not being reconciled with the family members I mentioned, especially one in particular.  I even promised my mother that if that family member decides to speak to me again, I will listen and not question or accuse.

That promise still holds.  Lately, though, I’ve noticed that I’m losing not only my hope or wish, but also my desire, to see a renewed relationship.  If that family member calls or approaches me, I won’t refuse.  However, I don’t expect that to happen and don’t feel particularly troubled by it anymore.  I get the feeling that if we ever meet again, it will be at the funeral of one of my parents.  We will probably be the proverbial ships passing in the night; we might say the things relatives say to each other over the death of another relative, but I don’t expect to look to that relative for support any more than I expect to be looked to.

What I’m noticing now is that I’ve lost the sadness I felt over losing that relationship—and that I’m not feeling guilty about it.  Some might regard that as cold or heartless. Perhaps it is. But to me, it seems no more sensible to pine for someone who has rejected me—and who, in our last conversation, said that rejection is about that person’s “stubbornness” (Yes, that is the word that person used) is the reason for not acknowledging me as I am, let alone having any sort of relationship with me—than it is to wish I were 27 years old again.  It just ain’t happenin’, and I’m getting over it.