Holding Pride

It looks like someone was smiling on the Pride celebration:





She stands in the courtyard of St. Luke in the Fields parish and school.  The Pride March ended only a block away.

Cycling Under The Rainbow

Today the Pride March makes its way down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Park. From there, marchers will turn on to Christopher Street and pass the Stonewall Inn.  On this date forty-five years ago, patrons fought police officers who tried to raid the bar.  This clash, first labelled as the Stonewall Riot and later the Stonewall Rebellion, is usually cited as the beginning of the modern LGBT equality movement.

As always, there will be some bicycles in the procession.  Of course, nobody will ride very fast, and some of the bikes as well as cyclists will no doubt serve mainly as props for signs or floats.

I admire the spirit of these marchers in Vietnam, who are pushing for marriage equality in one of Asia's most repressive regimes:

We all know that such struggles are important.  But we can't forget that sometimes the battle is won and lost with, and on, accessories:

Young, Black, Trans--And Dead--In Ohio

Imagine finding the body of a gunshot victim in the middle of a street at 8 o'clock in the morning.  

That is the gruesome discovery a Cincinnati sanitation driver made the other morning by coming upon the corpse of twenty-eight-year-old Tiffany Edwards. Police are looking for a suspect named Quamar Edwards, who is not related to Tiffany.

What did Ms. Edwards have in common with Cemia "CeCe" Dove, Betty Skinner and Nicole Kidd Stergis?  Because you're reading this blog, you've probably guessed that they were all transgender women.  And they were all killed in Ohio during the past eighteen months.  

Oh, and all except Skinner were trans women of color.  The risks trans people face--We are sixteen times as likely to be murdered as anyone else--are magnified for trans people, especially trans women, of color.  

The state that calls itself The Mother of Presidents has its share of capable community leaders, such as Shane Morgan, the founder and chair of TransOhio, and Vicky Blum, the outreach director at Crossport.  However, they are working in a particularly difficult environment:  Ohio's hate-crimes laws do not cover crimes based on sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.  
That, perhaps, is not surprising when one considers that the Buckeye State is one of five (Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee being the others) that do not alter the sex on a transsexual's birth certificate, even after he or she has had gender-reassignment surgery.  

Thanks again to Kelli Busey of "Planetransgender" for making me aware of a story not covered in the local news media.

The Last Night Before AIDS

If you are my age, or a little older, you can clearly remember a time when most of the world--and, probably, you--didn't know about AIDS.

The "beginning" of the epidemic is often placed on the 5th of June in 1981.  On that day, the Center for Disease Control released its report documenting five young gay men who were treated for pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in Los Angeles hospitals between October 1980 and May 1981.  On the day the report was released, two of the men were dead.   

The reason why this mini-outbreak of pneumocyctis carinii was seen as so significant, even unusual, at the time, is that nearly every recorded case of PC developed in people with compromised immune system.  That meant most of those afflicted with it had been, up to that time, elderly, suffering from some condition that compromised the immune system or were taking medications--or abusing substances--that weakened them.  The patients in the report were described as "previously healthy"; the oldest of them was 36 while the youngest was 29.  So they did not come close to fitting the profile of previous PC sufferers.

At that time, I was living some semblance of a straight male's life.  By that time, I'd had relations with two males; the rest of my romantic/sexual life, such as it was, involved females.  So, not many people would have described me as being part of the gay (nobody was calling it LGBT) community.  Still, I knew more gay men and lesbians than most other people I knew and had heard stories about the "gay cancer" before the CDC report was released.

Still, I didn't think much about it.  Part of it was that I wasn't really gay--which, by my definition, meant that I had nowhere near the number of male partners as some gay men I knew.  Also, I suppose I had some of the arrogance of the young:  I didn't think it would happen to me or, by extension, anyone I knew.

Well, a couple of weeks after that report was released, I went to a party held at the house my closest friend (a woman) at the time shared with another woman and two gay men.  We were all students or recent graduates of Rutgers and some of our friends and classmates attended this party.  

It would be the last time I would see most of them.  Of course, some of us simply drifted apart, as people often do after graduating or leaving school.  But four other people--including my first roommate at Rutgers-- would die within the following decade--from HIV, of course.

But none of us were thinking about it then.  Nor were very many other people 

From Stonewall To Toronto: World Pride

This weekend, there will be Pride celebrations all over the world.

Here in New York, the Pride March always passes the Stonewall Inn, where patrons--including transgenders and drag queens--fought back against a police raid on a hot night forty-five years ago this Sunday.

I marched last year, and on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion--just a few days before my surgery.

Three years after the Rebellion, Toronto witnessed its first Pride event.  For years after that, the police continued to raid bathouses and the city denied organizers permissin to march down Yonge Street.   Every mayor beginning with Barbara Hall in 1995--and ending with, ahem, current mayor Rob Ford three years ago--has attended the march, though it wasn't officially recognized by the municipal government until 1998.

This year, Toronto is hosting World Pride.  

A few days ago, the Huffington Post ran a fine article and even better selection of photos from the 1974 event.  It's worth looking at for the hairstyles, cars, bikes and clothes. In other words, even if you don't care about LGBT history, it's a history lesson or time capsule, depending on how old you are.

Check out the photo near the end in which a young bespectacled lesbian is sitting on the front steps of what appears to be City Hall.  Check out her lace-up, open-back clogs:  Can you get any more '70's than that?  (I wore a pair when I was in college!)

Trans Teen Pimped On Streets, Then By State

George Orwell would've had a field day with this:  Putting someone in prison can be therapeutic.


Someone actually said that.  Not in those words, of course:  After all, the person who gave us that pearl of wisdom is a bureaucrat.  That means that if she ever had the ability to speak forthrightly, it was beaten out of her or she gave it up willingly in order to preserve her lifestyle.


The "someone" in question is Joette Katz, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.  Before becoming Commissioner, she was a judge.  That experience, it seems, honed the skills she's using in her current position, especially when it comes to cases like that of a 16-year-old transgender identified only as "Jane Doe".


Granted, she assaulted staff members at juvenile facilities in which she's been housed.  But staffers in such places are used to such things, and there's no indication that her attacks--if she indeed perpetrated them--were any more intense than others they've experienced.  And, it could be argued that with the proper care, Ms. Doe won't attack anybody again.


However,  Ms. Katz is accused of overstating Ms. Doe's offenses--and of not mentioning that one of the staffers involved in one of the incidents has been terminated.  Worse, Katz never mentioned that Ms. Doe has been a ward of the state through most of her life, during which she has suffered beatings, been raped and denied food.  Moreover, she has been homeless and trafficked for sex. If she isn't suffering from even the mildest form of PTSD, Ms. Doe must be one of the most resilient (or emotionally numb) human beings ever to walk the face of the Earth.


Now tell me:  How would putting her in a male prison for adults--and keeping her in solitary confinement, to boot--help her to recover from the trauma she no doubt carries?  And how would such incarceration make her less likely to assault others (if, indeed, she actually did such a thing), especially given that she has never been charged with a crime.


Think about that:  a sixteen-year-old who was removed from her mother's custody at age four, locked up--no, worse, placed in isolation--without having committed any indictable offense.  Could such a young person end up becoming a criminal simply from the anger issues she'd develop over such an ordeal. D'ya think?


But Joette Katz, the former judge, somehow believes that prison personnel--and fellow inmates of a gender different from hers--will accomplish what psychiatrists, nurses, counselors and other employees of the juvenile facilities in which she's spent much of her life couldn't do for her.


In other words, this estimable Ms. Katz believes that prison will give a young, vulnerable trans person the therapy she needs.


Oh, you're accusing me of sarcasm now, are you?  All right, I'll lay off and let you tell me whether, instead of looking out for Ms. Doe's best interests, the high commissioner is using her as a bargaining chip to placate state legislators who oversee her budget.


Could it be that Ms. Doe has gone from being pimped on the streets to being pimped by a megalomaniacal state official?


Nothing a little time alone among men won't cure, right?

Trans Woman Challenges Gay Incumbent In Maryland

One day, perhaps, this won't rate as news:  a transgender woman challenging a gay incumbent in a primary.

I'm not holding my breath.  I'm just glad that at least in Montgomery County, Maryland, they have an incumbent who has fought for the community and a challenger who, perhaps, can do even more.

Dana Beyer, the Executive Director of Gender Rights Maryland, is looking to win the nomination for a state senate seat currently held by Richard Madaleno.  They are Democrats and, since no Republican is running, the winner will most likely end up in the state's legislative body.

Unfortunately, at least one thing is depressingly predictable:  the stupid and hateful comments to an article announcing the race.

Trans Student Equality Resources

I'm sure that some of you are familiar with Trans Student Equality Resources. If you're not, check out their website:  It's full of information and all sorts of other resources useful to young trans people (of all ages) and our supporters.

Oh, and they have some neat graphics, too, like this:

Was He Taunted Into Killing?

The other day, I heard about it:   One 14-year-old boy stabbed a classmate in front of a Bronx junior high school.  Both were scheduled to step up to the podium and graduate this week.  Instead, the boy who was stabbed is lying in casket and the boy who stabbed him is in a jail cell.

I’d heard that the stabber was so bullied that, on the day he stabbed his classmate (who was once his friend and skateboard buddy), it was the first time he’d been to school in weeks.  He could barely leave his apartment; other kids—some of whom didn’t even attend the school—came to his building specifically to taunt him and even to make death threats.

Knowing nothing about him, or the other boy, I immediately thought the bullying had to do with his actual or perceived sexuality or gender identity.  I hope I don’t seem as if I’m gloating when I say I was right.  At the time, I don’t know why the thought entered my mind.  But now I think I know why it did.

You see, I experienced a pretty fair amount of bullying myself all through school, practically from the first day I can recall all the way through college.  Every single incident included homophobic and misogynistic taunts.  I was called “fag”, “queer,” “fairy” and all of the old standards.  Relationships were invented between me and shy, lonely boys who were not considered terribly masculine and with whom I just happened to talk one day or another.   Sometimes those alleged liaisons were also used to label me as a girl, or more precisely, a non-male. (Little did they know!)  Of course, when anyone was seen as female—whether or not he or she actually was—it was not in a flattering light, even if the girl was seen as sexually attractive, or at least available.   The “c” word was one of the nicer labels attached to those born with XX chromosomes.

And, I’ll admit, I did a bit of bullying myself, including one pretty serious incident.  I’ve told a few people about it; most explain it away as “self defense” or a reaction to peer or other kinds of pressures I experienced.  While their intentions might be benign or even protective, I have never tried to so rationalize the bullying I committed.  

By the same token, I will not try to use the bullying Noel Estevez   experienced to rationalize, let alone justify stabbing  Timothy Crump,  any more than I would accept the taunts, beatings and other harassment a former partner of mine experienced in his childhood and early adult life as an excuse for the abuse he committed against me.  However, my experience has also led me to understand, I believe, why Estevez  acted as he did.

So have the stories I’ve heard from friends, acquaintances, current and former co-workers and students and others who were taunted, threatened, beaten and otherwise harassed—sometimes to the point that they dropped out of school and ran away from home.  Every single one of their taunters was motivated by homophobia, misogyny (in the case of girls who were, or were perceived as, lesbians) or what we might today recognize as transphobia.  

Nearly everyone who has worked with or studied young people who’ve committed violent crime recognize that the stabbings, shootings, beatings or other forms of brutality they inflict on others are almost invariably impulsive and instinctive.  Those with a more scientific orientation than mine might accuse me of being over-simplistic, but I think there is a very common-sensical reason:  A fourteen-year-old simply doesn’t have the skills, emotional and intellectual resources—or, I suspect, even the body chemistry—to deal with blows, whether they’re physical or emotional, the way some of us learn to deal with assaults on our dignity and persons when we’re forty.  

That is the reason why I think it’s so wrong to charge Noel Estevez   as an adult.  I know lots of people will say, “Well, if he’s old enough to kill, he’s old enough to pay for it.”  I wholeheartedly agree.  However, locking up such a young man with older men who’ve killed more than once or who started their criminal careers before his mother was born will do nothing to make him pay whatever debt he can pay for taking a classmate’s life.  It will also do nothing to help him deal with the impulses on which he acted; in fact, being incarcerated with career criminals will only make him more likely to respond to the next affront with violence has as much chance of ending in his own death as that of his attacker.  

However, treating  Estevez as a juvenile might at least give him access to whatever help he needs in dealing with the traumas he’s experienced.  Some have said he acted in self-defense; I don’t think anyone portrayed him as a crazed homicidal maniac.  Given the sort of environment and treatments he needs, it’s unlikely he’d ever commit such an act again, even under the most extreme duress, including homophobic death threats.

What Kinds Of Choices Are These?

Be forewarned:  I'm going to whine in this post.  So, if you'd rather read, or simply do, something else (e.g., ride your bike), I understand.

Here goes:  I had to use up some airline miles by the other day.  I didn't have enough to get a ticket:  Indeed, the last long flight I took was to Prague nearly three years ago.  And I didn't have enough for much of anything else.  Hey, they said I didn't even have enough to donate to charity!

But the airline group (Delta) offered me magazine subscriptions.  Wouldn't you know it?  There wasn't a single cycling-related publication on the list.  Nor anything having to do with poetry or literature in any other shape or form.  Or history. Or art.  Or France, Italy or England. The only travel-related publication caters to gazillionaires.

No Atlantic Monthly.  No Harper's Bazaar.  No Paris Review.  And no New York Review of Books.

So what kinds of magazines were offered?  Cigar Aficianado.  (I have smoked exactly two cigars in my life and don't plan on smoking another. )  Wine Spectator. How, exactly, does one become a "wine spectator"?  Now, I've known a lot of whine (actually, whining) spectators in my time and have been one more often than I care to admit.  There were also magazines about parenting and other things I've never done and probably never will do.

I found only three that even remotely interested me. One is The Economist.  While their politics are different from mine, I can rationalize subscribing to it because it's literate, intelligent--and British.  What were the others?  Please don't hate me for choosing these:  Time and Vogue. At least I can tell myself that the latter will help me with my personal and professional image. And, even if I hate the writing, I can just look at the pictures.  As for Time:  I can read whatever I find halfway relevant and donate each copy to my hairdresser's shop.  

Gays-Only Village Outed

Since I've been eating a vegan diet lately, I can't lick the egg off my face.  I have to remove it by other means.  Maybe Max and Marley will lick it off.

How did it get there? Well, yesterday I wrote a post about a proposed gays-only village in the Dutch city of Tilburg.

Turns out, the thing was a hoax.

But the fact that so many people--including yours truly--believed it shows us the degree of homo- and trans-phobia, even in a supposedly liberal country like the Netherlands.

The joke's perpetrators created it for that very reason. Who's responsible for the news that wasn't?  The Roze Maandag foundation, which, among other things, organizes Pink Monday, held in Tilburg every summer.  ("Roze Maandag" is Dutch for "Pink Monday".)  Not surprisingly, they orchestrated the hoax for the very reasons I said it worked.

Dorothy Parker once said that in this country, we elect our practical jokes.  I hope that the Dutch--or, for that matter, any other nation--don't erect physical structures based on hoaxes.

A Gays-Only Village?

I have always had mixed feelings about high schools specifically for LGBT people.  On one hand, such schools might shield students from bullying they might experience in other schools.  On the other, segregation always turns the ones segregated into second-class citizens.

Now a developer wants to build a gays-only neighborhood in the Dutch city of Tilburg.  Mayor Peter Noordanus has endorsed the idea.

I'd be curious to know how much support there is for this idea in the Dutch LGBT community--or across the Netherlands generally.

Proponents of the project point out that recently, there has been an increase in the amount of violence and oppression against LGBT people.  That, in the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage and reputed to have some of the most gay-friendly laws and policies in the world.

Moreover, more than one-fifth of all gay people report that they don't feel safe in their own neighborhoods.

How can that be in the Netherlands?

Well, as in much of Europe, "Skinheads" and other hate groups have increased their membership.  These home-grown terrorists blame gays, immigrants and others who are simply different from themselves for their society's ills--including their own inability to get a job.

Sound familiar?

Still, I don't see how any good can come of such a program.  If anything, segregation sends the message to haters that it's OK to harass and brutalize those who already exprience oppression.   That is what happened in this country between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.

And, if such a colony is constructed in a country like the Netherlands, what does it portend for LGBT people in other parts of the world?

Ennis Fired As ABC News Producer

"A gender-flipping producer from ABC news now has a pink slip to go with her pink slip."

If you think that line opened a New York Post article, you're close.  It's actually in the New York Daily News.

Last year, Don Ennis announced he was living his wife of 17 years and would henceforth live as Dawn.  Three months later, he said he was "misdiagnosed" and would return to living as Don.  A two-day bout of "amnesia" made him realize he wanted to live as Don again.

Just recently, Don realized he did indeed want to live as Dawn after all and once again re-emerged from the closet. Shortly thereafter, ABC news fired her for "performance-related issues" that had nothing to do with her gender-switching.

Now, I'm not in a position to know whether Ennis is indeed Don or Dawn--or both, or what his situation at ABC was.  I would suspect that, until his transition, they must have thought he was doing a good job if they kept him on their payroll for as long as they did.

Whatever the story, Don Kaplan, who filed the Daily News story should be ashamed of his immaturity.

Note:  I identified Ennis as male or female, as Don or Dawn, as he/she identified him/her self throughout the past year.  I don't mean, in any way, to pass any judgment on what Ennis' "real" gender or name might be.

Bringing Back The Gay Life In Atlantic City

Most people think LGBT history began with Stonewall.  The rebellion at the iconic Christopher Street certainly ignited the modern LGBT rights movement.  However, years, even decades before Stonewall, there were enclaves--even entire cities--that were seen as "gay havens".  Also, some industries and professions had more than their share of LGBT workers, although almost no-one ever talked about it.  As an example, when the Wall Street industries were seen as "gentlemen's professions"--before the "go-go" years of the 1980's--it was an open secret (Is that an oxymoron?) that more than a few brokers, analysts and even traders were gay.

Ironically, some of those "gay havens", whether geographic or vocational, disappeared just when the LGBT rights movement was picking up steam.  The quick, easy money that was being made on Wall Street prior to the 1987 crash filled the air with testosterone and turned the Street into a hypermasculine (and, at times, homophobic) environment.

And some of the old gay enclaves became victims, directly or indirectly, of their popularity, or from other forces.

One such example was New York Avenue in Atlantic City.  As AC turned from "America's Favorite Playground" to a slum by the sea, the gay bars, clubs and other venues gave the city whatever vitality it still had.  Indeed, even straight people used to frequent them, as they were reputed to have the best dances and parties.  

What signalled the death-knell for the old New York Avenue was the opening of casinos along the boardwalk in 1978.  Then, land prices skyrocketed and pushed out many of the gay venues, most of which were small businesses owned by the people who founded them.

Now, as other communities have legalized gambling and built casinos, Atlantic City has seen a decline in business.  Save for the boardwalk and a few adjacent streets, like New York Avenue, most of the city didn't benefit from the tourists gambling brought in.  So, AC risks once again becoming a place where dreams and people are broken, like the city depicted in Louis Malle's film, which I recommend highly.

So what can save this onetime jewel from turning into flotsam?  According to Mayor Don Guardian, the answer is gay tourism.

Growing up gay, he said, he knew that a rainbow flag was a sign that one's business was welcome and that it was a safe place to go if one felt threatened.

He may be onto something:  Other dying Jersey Shore communities like Asbury Park were saved by gay tourism.  After spending weekends or longer vacations there, some gay couples purchased houses, which were then relatively inexpensive, and renovated them for their own use or to rent as guest houses.

What If They Had Sexual Orientation Reveal Parties

Perhaps it's because I've never been a parent.  Or, perhaps, I'm just not hip enough.  

I just learned of one of the newest trends among young parents-to-be:  a "gender reveal party."

Of course, such an event would not have been possible in my mother's generation, or even when my peers started having children: No one knew a new baby's gender until he or she was delivered.

But many mothers-to-be claimed to know the gender of the babies they carried.  And, more often than not, they were right.  I guess the only reason why no one had "gender reveal parties" is that no one wanted to take the chance--and risk the embarrasment--of being wrong.

I'm not sure how I feel about this trend.  Then again, I'm not sure how I feel about knowing a child's gender before he or she arrives in this world.  I guess it might make it easier to shop and plan.  But I wonder whether it starts to influence, before the child is even born, some expectations the parents will have of, and ways they will raise, their children.

And, being a paranoid person who's read Brave New World and 1984, I can't help but to wonder what will happen when prospective parents can learn their child's hair and eye color, or other physical characteristics--or sexual orientation or gender self-identification, let alone possible disabilities--before the child is born.

His Son Is No Longer In The Closet

I won't make any "trapped in the closet" jokes.  I promise.

Too late, you say.  Oh, well.  At least you might know what's coming next:  R. Kelly's son came out as transgender.  

Thirteen-year-old Jay came out to his mother, who has given him her full support.  However, it seems that Dad is not aware of the situation.

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how he responds to the news.  After all, for all of his talent, he's best known for peeing on teenaged girls in the sudience during one of his concerts.


 

What Does Eric Cantor's Defeat Mean For Us?

Over the past few days, a lot of bandwidth and newspaper column spaces has been devoted to post-mortems and analyses of Eric Cantor's defeat in the Virginia Republican primary.


It's the first time in the history of this country a reigning House Majority Leader lost a primary.  That in itself is sending shockwaves through the political world.  But it's also interesting for all sorts of other reasons, some of which directly affect the lives of LGBT people, and trans people in particular.


You see, Cantor was beaten by a hard-line "Tea Party" Republican named David Brat. (You've got to love it!)  Brat and his ilk believe that Cantor was "too soft" on issues like immigration, abortion, gun control and gay marriage--all of which the Tea Partiers vehemently oppose, on principle.


Brat's campaign has mirrored and echoed others all over the country:  The Tea Party folks raise doubts about the commitment of some establishment Republican to their causes and run him (almost all of them are male) out of office, or keep him from getting elected in the first place, as happened with Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. 


In their quest for ideological purity, Tea Party types are moving further and further to the fringe and appealing to smaller and smaller segments of the electorate.  Will they decide that Chris Christie, if he decides to run for President, isn't "conservative" enough?  What about John Kasich, Scott Walker or Jeb Bush?  Even though I have little in common, at least in my political beliefs, with them, I would hardly consider them extremists, at least by the standards of the current Republican Party?


In their effort to forge a Stepford party, they are, ironically, making it more likely that Hillary Clinton--whom nearly all of them loathe--will become President in 2016.  Heck, they could make it possible for Elizabeth Warren, whom they dislike nearly as much, to move into the White House. 


As commentators like Paul Krugman have pointed out, more and more Americans are in favor of--or, at least, not opposed to--gun control, legal access to safe abortions, immigration reform and--the bête noire of the Tea Party--same-sex marriage.  And the latter has been upheld by conservative Republican Federal judges in places like Utah!


So why does the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party become more vehement in their opposition to those changes?  I'll give you a one-word answer:  Hate.  Yes, I said it.  They hate LGBT people.  (At least most of them don't try to hide it with "Love the sinner, hate the sin" nonsense.)  They hate Hispanics, the racial/ethnic group with the most people who would benefit from immigration reform.  They hate the poor, they hate women, they hate children and anyone who happens to be on the wrong side of a firearm. 


That said, I was never any fan of Romney, Cantor, Christie, Bush or the other mainstream Republicans I mentioned.  They represent mainly corporate and other big-money interests.  (In all fairness, so do most Democrats, at least to some degree.)  But they have supported--or, at least didn't make much of a show of opposing--immigration reform and the other changes I've mentioned. (Romney voiced opposition to them, but the Tea Party, rightly, wasn't convinced.)  Of course, they supported those things for entirely different reasons from the right ones: For example, to them immigration reform means more cheap labor.  But at least they weren't appealing to the basest instincts of their constituents--which is how people like Professor Brat win primaries. 


What does that mean for us?  Well, the further to the fringe Tea Party candidates move, the more persistent and just plain vicious their attacks on us will become.  Although I believe we will ultimately win, we have to be ready for them.