All Hearts Day Cards

For some of us, today, Valentine's Day, can be as depressing as other holidays that are centered around heterosexual love and family relationships.  In some ways, this day can be even worse than Christmas and Thanksgiving are because almost all of its trappings are based on cis- and hetero-normative (I promise not to use that term again for a long time) rituals and behaviors.  And the same sorts of people who accuse us of wanting special treatment make a point of being as obnoxious as possible when fondling each other in places that charge too much for oysters and champagne.

Plus, this "holiday" is even more commercialized than the others.  I take that back:  The others were hijacked by corporations to make people feel guilty for not buying their useless, overpriced shit and giving it to people they pretend to care about.  Even so, most people have some vague notion of what those holidays are supposed to celebrate.  On the other hand, Valentine's Day as we know it, is entirely a creation of the greeting-card, candy, lingerie and other industries, almost nobody realizes that this day was originally a feast day for St. Valentine, who has almost nothing to do with the notions of "love" fetishized on this day

To counter this, artist Alexandra Dean Grossi has created a set of free e-cards celebrating "All Hearts Day":

 


 








 

Hormone Treatments Approved For Chelsea Manning

You've probably heard the old joke:  An example of an oxymoron is
"military intelligence".

Or this:  "There are three ways to do anything:  the right way, the wrong way and the Army way."

They have been told so often, and for so long, by veterans as well as currently-serving members of the Armed Forces because, well, there's at least a germ of truth in them.  So, when some high-ranking officer acts with common sense and courage, it shocks even the most jaded folks who wear, or have ever worn, the uniform.

That is what Col. Erica Nelson did in writing a memo last week. She's the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas.

Knowing that, you might have figured out the purpose and subject of her memo.  Leavenworth's most famous inmate at the moment is none other than Chelsea, nee Bradley, Manning.  And, yes, she did what we (or at least I) have hoped she would do:  She approved Manning for hormone treatments.

She is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.  After her sentencing, she announced her intention to live as female under the name Chelsea.  She later sued for hormone treatments; the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing her, argued that she is entitled to them as part of the Army's obligation to provide medical care.  Since the Army, like all of the other branches of the Armed Forces, does not allow transgender people to serve, it does not provide hormone treatments.  And since Manning is still a soldier, the Army argued, she is not entitled to it, although the Veteran's administration provides such treatments to veterans who begin their transitions after leaving the military. 

It will be interesting to see whether Col. Nelson's action will be part of a larger change in the military, especially since Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said, in December, that the ban on transgender troops is likely to be assessed and should be lifted.

Perhaps there is military intelligence after all!
 

A Paralell Universe?

From Diana, I learned that Roman Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne of the Burlington (VT) diocese has affirming words for transgender people.  However, he sees same-sex relationships as "not matching up" to what the Catholic Church calls its members to "strive for".

A part of me is cheering:  Too often, trans people are “thrown under the bus”.  Too often, the throwers are gay men and, somewhat less often, lesbians and bisexuals.  Worse yet, groups that call themselves LGBT organizations and take our money (which, for trans people, is harder to come by than it is for anyone else) have sold us out by devoting all of their resources toward the singular goal of legalizing same-sex marriage. 

And, of course, many people who aren’t part of our alphabet soup are perfectly willing to welcome the first three letters into their fold but toss out T’s.  Some have positions of power and influence; others are examples for their children, students and others in their lives. 

Whether transphobia comes from gay, straight, bisexual or any other kind of people or organizations, the result is the same:  It divides trans people from lesbians, gays, bisexuals and others who don’t fit societal norms of gender and sexuality.  And, of course, it divides others in the spectrum.  The result is that when one has any sort of victory, the others believe (sometimes correctly) that it has come at their expense.  Such a perception, of course, makes all members of oppressed groups easy prey for further exploitation.

Really, all of this isn’t so different from the way plutocrats have created and exploited tensions between races and ethnic groups.  So, for example, many Italian immigrants of my grandparents’ generation detested Irish-Americans, most of whom preceded them by a decade or a generation in America.  And many African-Americans believe that Jews have done more than anyone else to oppress them.  Of course, the truly rich and powerful, who have exploited everyone I’ve mentioned, and just about everyone else, are, as the saying goes, “laughing all the way to the bank”.

My point is that if we, as trans people, should be glad that someone who could have “thrown us under the bus” chose not to do so, and should not rejoice or even breathe a sigh of relief that he chose to toss other groups of people—especially those who have been the objects of hate and violence similar to what we’ve experienced—instead.

"Coming Out" Opens The Door To Better Health

I often wish that I could have "come out" as trans earlier in my life--say, in my adolescence or even early adulthood.  I think of the years I "missed", being unable to live as the person I am.  And I always suspected that I would have had an easier time of living as a woman--especially in my early years in my true gender--had I started sooner.

Of course, there are many reasons why I didn't.  For one thing, I didn't think I was anything like Christine Jorgensen or Renee Richards, the only transsexual women I heard about when I was growing up.  I didn't understand that there were all sorts of ways of being a transsexual woman, let alone a woman, period.  Also, even though I have had relations with males, I always knew that my primary attraction is to women.  According to the conventional wisdom of the time, a "true" trans woman was attracted--and, for that matter, attractive--only to men.

Plus, there was a great deal more overt hostility toward people who didn't fit the prevailing notions of gender and sexuality.  The only reason why I wasn't bullied or harassed even more than I had been was that I was involved in sports and kept up a masculine facade.

One of the results of being in the closet was that I drank heavily and dabbled in drugs in my early adult life.  I also had difficulty forming and keeping relationships--a problem I still have now.

I don't think anything I've just said would surprise Stephen Russell.  He's an expert on adolescent mental health at the University of Arizona at Tuscon.  The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry has just published a study, of which Russell is the lead author, indicating that LGBT adolescents who are open about their sexuality and gender identity have higher self-esteem and suffer from less depression as adults. 

As almost everyone knows, depression can lead to other mental as well as physical health problems, including substance abuse, not to mention suicide attempts.  So, I think it's fair to say that anyone who "comes out" as a teenager is likely to be more healthy in general as an adult.

I Will Be There In Spirit...Really

I know I haven't mentioned "two-spirited" people much on this blog.  I have avoided that because although I wouldn't necessarily identify as one, I feel that I can identify with them.

In other words, I feel that I am related, in some way, to them because I do not fit into American culture's dominant ideas about gender and sexuality.  I was born with a male body and female spirit.  That spirit needs to live fully, which is the reason why I transitioned from life as Nick to living as Justine.

And, yes, I am masculine in some ways. Some of that has to do with the body into which I was born; some of it is a matter of education and acculturation.  But, in spirit, I see myself as female.

Perhaps my conception of myself is congruent with how two-spirited people see themselves and are seen by their communities.  Even if that were the case, though, I would be reluctant to identify myself as two-spirited simply because the concept of it has a cultural context.  And I am completely outside of it, just as I am not part of the South Asian cultures in which hijras live.

Still, I have great respect and empathy for the two-spirited people and know there's much I can learn from them.  That is the reason why I am happy they are having a pow-wow that's open to the public this Saturday in San Francisico's Cow Palace.

 

Speaking Out Against Domestic Abuse

I don't watch awards shows.  Well, all right, I don't watch TV these days.  But even when I was tied to the tube, I didn't pay attention to the Grammys, Oscars or any of the others.

So I missed Obama's anti- domestic abuse message at last night's Grammys, or the speech by Brooke Axtell that followed.  But someone passed them on to me:

Taja DeJesus Murdered In SF: If We're Not Safe There, Where Are We?

A Jewish man whose parents survived the Holocaust once told me that the only time he ever felt safe was when he was in Israel.

I mention that, not to take a side in the conflicts that tear that part of the world, but to relate something I thought about as I heard some more terrible news.

Taja DeJesus was raised in San Jose but moved to San Francisco because of the greater acceptance of transgender people found in the City By The Bay.  Some in our community think of it as our Israel, if you will.

She was found with stab wounds on McKinnon Avenue in the city's Bayview district around 9 last Sunday morning.  Authorities are not calling her murder a hate crime.  According to anonymous sources, the suspect was found dead, an apparent suicide, behind a warehouse not far from where De Jesus's body was found.

Even in a city with a reputation like San Francisco's, there are areas--Bayview being one of them--where trans people aren't accepted or that are simply dangerous.  Lord knows we have such places here in NYC.  Even the "gayborhoods" aren't always safe for trans people.  Actually, they can be even more dangerous because thugs come from other parts, and outside, of the city, specifically to get their thrills from bashing actual or perceived LGBT people.

Perhaps we need a place an Israel:  You know, a place where we can go and be accepted for who we are--or at least be reasonably sure that we won't experience bigotry or bullying, or get killed, just for being who we are. 

 

Denying Access--To Whom? For What Purpose?

Let's see...The most common crimes in Florida are drug offenses, theft, assault, driving under the influence and aggravated assault.

And HB583 will address those crimes....how? 

Frank Artiles, a Republican (surprise, surprise) member of the Florida House of Representatives and self-described Christian (more suprise) has introduced the bill on Wednesday.  A committee assignment is pending.

If the bill becomes law, people would be required to use bathrooms and other public facilities designated according to the gender they were assigned at birth.  A person caught using the "wrong" facilities would face charges.

Artiles claims his bill is a "public safety measure".  He added--here's something Bartlett should include--"I truly believe your anatomy dictates where you should go to the bathroom".

Hmm...Now I'm confused. Perhaps you could clarify, Mr. Artiles.  The "M" box was checked on my birth certificate.  But now I have a vagina and clitoris.  And I've grown a pair, such as they are.  So, my anatomy says...

Oh, here's another complicating factor:  My birth certificate now says that I'm female.  It was changed, after my surgery, to reflect my gender and new name.  In what Godless liberal hellhole was that allowed to happen?  

Well, I'll give you a hint:  It's north of Florida.  No surprise there, right?  It is such a bastion of European-style libertinism and fiscal irresposibility that it named one of its major university cities Athens and another fairly large city is called Rome.  

It sounds like a terrible place, doesn't it, to an upright Christian man like you.  I'm sure you don't want to do business there or expose your family to its terrors.  I'm sure that a man with your virtue, erudition and wisdom can guess what that place is.

New York, where I live?  Nope.  Massachusetts?  Try again.  OK, I'll tell you:  the State of Georgia, where I was born.  Somehow the folks in the Peachtree State's Department of Vital Records had no problem realizing that I am, in fact, female.

So, Mr. Artiles, perhaps you could tell us how your proposed law will be enforced.  Will we have to present our birth certificates to enter public facilities?  Will there be security cameras that can see through clothing, like the ones airports have?  

Acrually, Mr. Legislator, I hope that you aren't thinking about those cameras.  After all, you aren't a good Christian man?  Then why would you want to see me in all of my nakedness?

Mr. Artiles, perhaps you should reconsider HR583.  Perhaps you can explain to us just how it will protect your wife, your mother, your daughters and all other female residents of the Sunshine State--including my mother--from attack by sexual predators?  And, when I go out to have lunch with Mom, do you think I'm going to the restaurant's facilities to peep under the dresses of retirees or molest their granddaughters?  Do you really believe I'm even capable of the latter?

Mr. Artiles, perhaps you can clarify.

Mary Lambert's Wish

You heard her on "Same Love", that powerful song about gay marriage that became a surprise number one hit for the hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis two years ago.





Having just released her new solo album, Heart On My Sleeve, the singer-songwriter says that she would like to see trans people more accurately represented.  That would "make it easier, I think, on a lot of people who may be struggling in transitioning".  

She says that often, when watches "something that's supposed to represent a trans person", she thinks, "God, you missed it.  You missed it.  You had a great opportunity".

Even if I didn't love her singing, I'd love to hear more from her just for talking about misrepresentations of trans people as a missed "opportunity"!

I Hope It Doesn't Take This To Make You A Man (Or A Woman)!

In other posts, I have described how I, and other trans people, were motivated to transition by moments or incidents in which we realized that our only other choice was death.  

Other trans people have been motivated to transition by near-death experiences:  They realized that they would have been memorialized and buried in the gender to which they were assigned at birth rather than that of their true selves.

But Thomas Page McBee's near-death experience caused him to "come out" as transgender.  As the author of Man Alive tells the story, he was mugged by someone who pereceived that he was presenting himself as a man.  But, in the course of the attack, the attacker came to believe that a then-pre-transition McBee was not presenting as a male and let him go.

"I had a gut feeling that this had to do with me not being perceived as a male," he says.  That sense was later confirmed for McBee when the attacker went on to kill another man in a very similar kind of incident.

That experience, terrible as it was, helped him to unravel his gender identity and masculinity. He soon realized that the way other people were perceiving him wasn't the same as the way he was perceiving himself.  Soon afterward, he came out as transgender.

Here, he talks about the experience with Ricky Camilleri:

What Money Couldn't Do

If I ever hear anyone say, "Gender is learned" or "Gender is performative" again, I'll scream.  Trust me, you don't want to hear that.

I can't understand how anyone who knows the story of David Reimer can utter such nonsense.  He--originally named Bruce-- and his identical twin brother Brian  were born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on 22 May 1965.  At six months, concerns were raised about how both of them urinated.  They were diagnosed with phimosis and, as a result, circumcision was recommended. However, only Bruce underwent the procedure, which a urologist did by the unconventional method of cauterization.  It went horribly wrong, and Bruce's penis was burned beyond repair.  Brian's condition cleared up without surgery.

The parents, worried about Bruce's prospects for future happiness and sexual function without a penis, consulted with John Money, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.  At that time, Johns Hopkins was the chief center for research on gender identity disorders and of gender reassignment surgery.  Money was an early and prominent proponent of the idea that gender is learned and believed, as most practitioners did at the time, that a penis could not be replaced but a satisfactory vagina could be constructed.  Not surprisingly, he believed that Reimer could achieve a more satisfactory life as a female and recommended that he undergo gender reassignment surgery.  So, at the age of 22 months, Bruce's testes were surgically removed.  

He was renamed Brenda and underwent years of hormone treatments and attempts to socialize him as a girl.  According to Reimer, Dr. Money forced him and Brian to play sexual roles, with Bruce/Brenda on bottom, as he believed this would help both of them develop "healthy adult gender identity."  His parents made him wear frilly dresses in the harsh Canadian prairie winters.

Through it all, Bruce/Brenda always idenitified as a boy.  Never once, he said, did he believe himself to be a girl.  He fell into a deep depression and, at age thirteen, threatened to commit suicide if he were forced to see Dr. Money again.  His parents then told him the truth about his gender identity, and at age fourteen started to live as male and assumed the name David.  Later, he would undergo testosterone treatments, a double masectomy and a phalloplasty to reverse the effects of his estrogen treatments and earlier gender-reassignment surgery.

One of the cruel ironies of this story is that his brother Brian was, if anything, more "feminine", at least in the way people would define that term. Brian was gentle, introspective and had little interest in masculine pursuits.  In contrast, Bruce was, in the words of John Colapinto--who wrote As Nature Made Him:  The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl--"a hellraiser".  Brian died of an overdose of antidepressants in 2002, as David was dealing with unemployment and difficult relationships with his parents and wife, whose three children he adopted.    On 2 May 2004, his wife told him she wanted to separate; two days later, David committed suicide.

As Colapinto points out, as terrible as this case is, it doesn't provide an answer of "nature" to the "nature vs. nurture" debate. Some people believe that a case like David's--or, for that matter, his brother's-- proves that gender is entirely a function of the genitalia one has at birth.  However, I think--based on my own experience and that of trans people I've known--that however we come to the way we identify ourselves--whether we're born with it or come to it in infancy, early childhood or whenever--no amount of behavior modification, pharmaceutical treatments or surgery will change it.  I identified as female, even when I didn't voice it, about as far back as I can remember.  And no attempt to "make me a man" could change it.

Here is an interview Colapinto gave on Canadian television:

She Chased O.J.

She chased O.J. Simpson.

No, I'm not talking about a Buffalo Bills cheerleader during the 1970s, or some Hollywood starlet.

I'm talking about the chopper pilot who tracked the (in)famous slow-speed chase behind O.J.'s Ford Bronco in 1984.

Now she's back--except that she looks a bit different from those days.  And that's not just a result of age.

You see, back then, Zoe Tur was Bob Tur. Now she's a reporter with "Inside Edition":  the first transgender to hold such a job in the US.

Well, that's better news than the news she was chasing that day more than two decades ago!

By The Numbers, Again

This is for anyone who thinks that our pleas for equality are demands for "special treatment":

Same Shit, Different Coast: Trans Woman Michelle Vash Payne Murdered In L.A.

If I were more jaded, I'd say it's the same old story.

But since a life was ended in a horrible, brutal way, I won't be so blase.  

Still, we've heard it too many times:  A trans woman found dead in her apartment.  Boyfriend is prime suspect.

This time, instead of Ridgewood (about two neighborhoods  away from mine), New York, the scene is on the other coast:  in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles, California.

There, firefighters forced their way into an apartment.  After quickly putting out a fire in a rear bedroom, they found the body of Michelle Vash Payne on the kitchen floor.

But, from the looks of things, her death had nothing to do with the fire:  She had been stabbed and a murder weapon was recovered at the scene.

About an hour before the firefighters came, neighbors said they heard arguing in the apartment, into wich Payne and her boyfriend had recently moved.  However, nobody called the police.

Perhaps I'm ignorant of police procedures, but I find it a little odd that the suspect's name or photo hasn't been released, although a physical description was given and he's said to be her boyfriend.

We're Not "Confused"

I have often been asked whether I "always felt that way",

The answer is, of course, yes.  Actually, I have to qualify that:  I always knew I was a girl.  I managed, with varying degrees of failure, to suppress my identity and be the man I was "supposed to" become by playing sports, taking lots of math and science courses, dating girls, getting married, being in the Army and any number of things you can think of.

Some have asked me whether I was "confused".  Had I expressed, when I was very young, a desire to transition--if indeed I knew what that was!--I probably would have been told I was confused.  Some would have said it in a condescending way, others in an imperative tone and still others with belligerence.  Actually, I experienced all of those things when I started my transition in my 40s, so I can only imagine how things would have been in my twenties or teens.

The answer to whether I was, or am, confused is "no".  Even when I was doing well at "manly" things, and being praised and rewarded for it, I did not take it well.  If I was, and am, confused about anything, it's about getting positive feedback for anything because, so often, I got it for being inauthentic.

But, as far as my gender identity goes, I am clear about that.  And that's why I don't regret my transition or my surgery, though I wish I didn't have to experience some of what I've gone through since then.

According to an article in Medical News Today, I am typical. ("I am typical":  When did I ever think I would say that?)  That article reported a new study, soon to be published in Psychological Science, saying that the gender identity is "deeply held and consistent, rather than the result of confusion as many have previously maintained".  

The study used implicit measures as well as conscious self-reporting in an effort to understand the identity of transgender children.

According to that study, a child's transgender identity is not the result of "pretense" or a desire to shock or rebel.  

Now, of course, that doesn't mean that every boy who tries on his mother's clothes is a trans woman, any more than it means that a trans girl's femaleness can be beat out of her.  It means that those who are trans will identify that way, whether or not they have a means to express it and, by implication, those who are "experimenting" will quickly "grow out of it".  At least, that's how I read the results of that study.

I hope I cleared up some confusion with this post!

Faith And Hope In The Face Of Rejection

Some people believe they can overcome anything with their faith.  Perhaps that's true; I have no doubt that belief in God (or whatever they choose to call Him/Her/It) or simply supernatural forces helps them to deal with difficult situations and painful emotions.

Diego Neria Lejarraga is such a person.  "I never lost faith, ever," he said.  "But the other thing is the rejection."

A few days ago, he had a private audience with Pope Francis I.  This meeting was a first for any Pontiff because Diego was born a girl in Spain, where he is a civil servant. 

What makes this all the more interesting is that Lejarraga is not an activist and, he didn't go into his meeting with any notion that he would change the church.  But, he said, he was impressed with how Francis "loves the whole world" and does not have "any discrimination against anyone."  But, Lejarraga added, he was "speaking about him, and not the institution".

Still, he holds out hope that "if this Pope has a long life...I think things will change".

Perhaps some day I will have that kind of faith.

Maybe He's A Cop In Ohio

Dominick used to talk about becoming a cop.   He was about as suited for that work as I am to be an accountant.  I always suspected that his wish had something to do with being bullied as a kid:  As a cop, he would've had a weapon and the authority to inflict on others what was inflicted on him.  

Maybe he realized that dream after all, though not in New York.  

In Lakewood, Ohio, a transgender woman was arrested for shoplifting. During her questioning, an officer played Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like A Lady."

Hmm...When I ended my relationship with Dominick, he called every day and played that song.  When I didn't pick up his call, he left the song on my voice mail.  In doing that, of course, he confirmed one of the reasons why I broke it off:  his immaturity.  And he revealed what I always suspected to be his real attitude about me, and trans people.

Everyone told me to ignore him.  I did, but he escalated his harassment for the next two years:  The dumb jokes and slurs turned into spreading false rumors about me and threatening that he would make my life so miserable that a refrigerator box would seem like the Waldorf-Astoria.

Well, if he's in Ohio or someplace else, I should count my blessings--but pity the next trans person who crosses his path.

Workers' Rights=LGBT Rights

Some would argue--and I would be inclined to agree--that the most important speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave was "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam".  Delivered one year, to the day, before he was murdered, it expresses something that had become more apparent to him throughout his life:  All struggles for justice are related. As he said, you can't oppose racial prejudice in the United States (or anywhere else) and support killing people of a different race in another country.  Likewise, if you believe people deserve to be treated fairly and equally, whatever their race or gender or religion or sexual orientation, you also must believe  that people deserve to be paid a fair living wage for doing a day's work.

That is why something I came across would have made perfect sense to him:  Workers' rights are tied to LGBT rights, and vice-versa.  I am not simply repeating a nice ideal:  There are statistics to prove it.  Those numbers indicate that union workers are three times as likely as non-union workers to have domestic partner health care coverage and twice as likely to have survivor benefits for their domestic partners.

From National LGBT Taskforce blog

Ontario Inmates To Be Housed According To Gender Identity

I'm no expert on criminal justice, so take what I'm about to say for what it's worth.

Here goes:  I think that any society that imprisons people has to decide what the purpose of incarceration is.

In the US, as in many other countries, we call our system "corrections".  From what I understand of psychology, such a term implies that the system is behavioristic in its approach:  The behavior of the person arrested is to be corrected.  Or, more ideally, some underlying condition or issue that led to the behavior will be corrected.

Those familiar with the system--inmates as well as wardens and guards--say that it almost never happens.  Somehow that doesn't surprise me, but that's a discussion for another blog (or book or class!) led by someone more knowledgeable than I am.  

Anyway, in other places and times, imprisonment was more frankly a means of vengeance.  In the 18th and 19th Centuries, prisons were called "penitentiaries", or places of penance--in other words, a kind of purgatory where the inmate worked off his or her sins.

So why am I talking about these things on this blog?  Well, it matters greatly to transgender inmates, most of whom are arrested for doing sex work or other relatively minor crimes.  If the purpose of prison is to rehabilitate or reform someone, the inmate's humanity must be respected.  Just as a doctors who don't respect their patients have no hope of helping them heal, any system that dehumanizes the people who enter it cannot make those people better than they were when they were brought into it.

Yasir Naqvi understands this.  He is the Correction Services Minister in the Canadian province of Ontario.  Yesterday, he announced that inmates will be placed in Ontario prisons according to the gender by which they identify themselves rather than their physical sex characteristics.  So, for example, someone identified as male on her birth certificate will be incarcerated in a women's prison if she identifies herself as such.

I know that some believe that prisoners are not human beings and will howl that such treatment is "coddling".  But they should think about how their tax money is being spent.  If something might help prevent recidivism, why not try it--especially if it doesn't cost any more money than doing something that doesn't work.

A Harder And More Necessary Lesson Than I Imagined

For a long time, I simply didn't think about whether there was anything beyond or after this life.  That spell was interrupted, at times, with my denial that anything of the sort existed.  It was easier, really, than trying to reconcile the possibility there could be a deity with the fate I had been dealt in my life--which, of course, includes my gender identity--let alone the fates of other people who suffered all sorts of cruelties and injustices.

For years, when people asked about my beliefs and I couldn't find a way out of answering, I replied that I was an atheist.  It was easier to argue non-belief to a believer--actually, it still is, for me--than it is to reconcile the interpretations I usually read and heard about the divine or the supernatural with anything I had seen in my life.

For much of my life, I didn't want to believe, even if a way to reconcile belief with reality (as I understood) had been explained or revealed to me.  People tried to convince me that their way was right or that they accepted people (i.e., me) but not the things they did.  Or they spewed what I thought was the most awful and absurd line:  "God loves you.  God loves everyone."  That, to me, was a sure sign that the person uttering it hadn't the first idea about what love is.  Hey, there were times when I thought that love itself is a delusion.  Sometimes I still wonder...

For the past year and a half, I have been attending a church.  I'm still uneasy about it.  It's not because, as one parishoner suggested, I'm worried about what other people think.  (I stopped worrying about that when I realized that too many people simply don't think!)  Actually, there is still a part of me that doesn't want to be convinced that there is a God (or whatever name you want to give) and that s/he (or whatever identity) loves me, or anybody.  And, in spite of what I have experienced over these most recent months, it's still hard for me to believe, sometimes, that I've met people who are actually Christians or adherents to any other faith, let alone clergy, who don't think I need to be changed or "cured".  Actually, one of the priests in my church has asked me a lot about my identity and story because this priest admits, "There's still a lot I don't know."  This same priest has listened to me talk about all sorts of other things and has helped me in other ways.

Yes, there are all those verses--mainly in the Old, but sometimes in the New--Testament that warn against "a man lying with a man as with a woman" or whatever.  But, as a student of literature, I know that all sayings, all words, come from specific places and times.  Some of our greatest writings contain notions that are outdated or simply quaint, and portrayals of people that we today consider to be bigoted.  Some things were forbidden because of conditions that prevailed at the time (for example, in the time Exodus was written, it probably was important to produce as many children as possible) and the tenets of Judaism and Christianity developed in a context of notions about gender and other cultural mores that most of us (well, at least most people I know) would find abhorrent or simply incompatible with life as we know it.  

But, whatever prohibitions there are in the Bible, the harshest utterances of Jesus himself--at least, the harshest ones recorded in the Bible--were not directed at gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgenders.  In fact, the Bible, as far as I can tell, says nothing at all about trans people. (Some interpret "a man shall not appear as a woman" as an injunction against us.  But those of us who are trans women would argue that we are not men.) Nor were they directed at those who suffered any sort of prejudice or oppression.  Rather, he reserved his most scathing indictments for the Pharisees, those religious teachers so focused on rules that they forgot what mattered, namely mercy and compassion.

Mercy and compassion.  Learning that people actually try to practice such things, as best as they know how, to people like me--and not only because we're trans or whatever--is a harder lesson to learn and accept than I could have imagined--almost as hard as the struggle with my gender identity. But it seems that I have no other choice but to learn it.

Whatever He Is, He Isn't A Joke

For too long, too many people have seen transgender people as a joke.

Through my childhood, the punchline was "Christine Jorgensen."  Later, Renee Richards became the trigger to the laughtrack.  

By the time I started my transition, Michael Jackson would fill that role.  Even though almost nobody thought he was transgendered, the first thing most people think of when someone mentions trans people is "surgery."  Cosmetic surgery, to be exact, as if it were all about altering our appearance.  

Now, it seems, the new punchline is Bruce Jenner.  Rumors have swirled that the 1976 Olympic Decathlon champion and reality TV star has begun to transition.  Not surprisingly, entertainment and gossip magazines have published Photoshopped portraits of Bruce.  One such publication has a cover of him in pink lipstick  a blowout hairdo, a silk scarf--and former Dynasty star Stepanie Beacham's body--grafted onto his head.

I will not speculate on whether Jenner is actually going through a gender transition.  Whether or not he is, he needs and deserves to be left to live his life in peace.  And, even though he is the stepfather of children who have made a career of being famous for, well, being famous, he should not be the newest butt of jokes about transgender people.

(Please don't take my use of male pronouns in reference to Jenner as a judgment on whether or not he is transitioning or even transgender.  As long as he doesn't announce that he is trans or transitioning, or any intention of living as a woman, he should be referred to as "he" and "him".)

 

What We Couldn't Share

By now, you've read of Leelah Alcorn's suicide--whether from me, another blogger, the media or some other source.

The pain she expressed in her blog--which was deleted at the request of her mother--is all too familiar.  The tragedy is, of course, that she was so young and couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel.  But what angered me, and many other people, is the way her family, especially her mother, denied who and what she was in death as they did during her life.

As terrible and familiar as her story is, there are many other trans people who've killed themselves, not because their families and friends wouldn't accept them, but because they couldn't "come out", sometimes even to themselves.

"Calie" returned from a long absence from blogging to relate such a story about someone she knows:  "He was a good boy and had become a good man." 

So why did Calie use male pronouns in referring to her now-departed friend?  Well, the person in question never revealed her gender identity to anyone--not even to her family or to Calie--in life.  Only the note she so carefully left behind (It wasn't spattered with her blood) told of the conflict and pain he was ending with the bullet in his head.

But one thing makes this story even worse than any other I've heard before:  The young person who committed suicide was the child of a transgender parent.  A macho-guy father, to be exact.  Of course, you know why he was such a macho guy:  the same reason I trained and played sports as hard as I did for so many years, or why other would-be trans women become cops and soldiers or get involved in any number of other "manly" undertakings.

Of course, a day may come when he realizes he can't keep up the facade anymore.  Then, he will have two choices:  transition or die.  I am not exaggerating:  I had such a moment thirteen years ago.  I knew that in transitioning,  I could lose my life as I knew it and I had absolutely no idea of what could be in store for me were I to transition.  But I also knew that I would not live for very much longer if I didn't transition.  

I had that moment at age 43.  I don't know how old Calie's friend or his (I'm using the male pronoun in the same way Calie used it) father were and are.  I suspect the father is close to the age I was when I had my moment of truth.  If he is, I don't know how he's gone on for as long as he has.  I don't know how I lived as long as I did with my conflict.  When I came out to my mother, she said the same thing.

And now, again, I'm remembering Corey.  I spent what would be the last night of his life with him.  We were both in our mid-20s at the time; when he called me, I knew he was in a very bad way.  Even though we were good friends, I didn't know what I could possibly offer him that someone else could have.  But he insisted that he simply had to talk to me.

You might say that night is the one thing for which I haven't forgiven myself, and probably never will.  Of course, at that time, I wasn't "out" to anybody, including myself.  But he wasn't waiting for me to come out:  He just knew.

From what Callie says, her friend never knew that his father is trans.  Corey knew I am, just as he was.  I didn't know how to acknowledge, much less do anything, about it.  Or perhaps I was just too much of a coward.  Whatever the explanation, I think of what Corey and I could have shared with each other, and how he might be alive--as a she, of course--and I might have spared myself decades of frustration and pain.

All I can do now is to hope that the father of Calie's friend will end his pain and frustration, though not in the way his child did.  And I hope Calie and all of the other people who can't, for whatever reasons, be who and what they truly are will one day be free.

All Are Welcome--As Long As....

One of the reasons why we become jaded, blase or even cynical is that we didn't start out wanting to be those things.   

I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know.  Still, I think it bears telling in light of a story that came my way.

Greg Bullard is a senior pastor in his local church.  He and his husband, Brian Copeland, have won awards for their service to families in their home state of Tennessee.  That service includes running the only LGBT food pantry in their state.  Said pantry serves more than 200 families every month and addresses a problem--poverty in the LGBT community--that is often overlooked.

Whatever their sexual orientation or family configuration, one would expect that their son would be welcome in any school.  OK, maybe not "one".  I would expect that. I imagine you, dear reader, would, too.  So would many other people.

And, being that Greg is a senior pastor, I would expect--or, at least, hope--that his son would be welcome in a Christian school, even if that school is not affiliated with the same denomination as the one that includes Greg's church.  

Turns out, the school--the Davidson Academy--is not affiliated with any particular denomination, though it was "founded by Christians and operates in the Christian tradition based upon clear tenets of faith and practice."

Where did I find that verbal morsel I quoted in my previous sentence?  Where else:  in the letter the school sent to Greg and Brian.

Now, that clause can be interpreted in all sorts of ways.  But, it seems that interpretation of what "Christian" means, what the "Christian tradition" is and what constitutes "clear tenets of faith and practice" is dependent, at least to some degree, on geography--at least here in the good ol' USA.  And, since we're talking about Tennessee, it's not surprising that it was interpreted in a way to exclude the son of two pillars of the community--one of whom happens to be a senior pastor.

Really, I don't want to be snide and cynical.  But it's hard not to be because it's not surprising to learn that Christianity is interpreted to practice hate and exclusion in a particular part of this country where such things seem to happen more often than in other places.

Then again, I would expect--or, at least, hope--that even in Tennessee, there is a school with a supportive environment and high academic standards that would be glad to have the son of Greg Bullard and Brian Copeland walk into its doors.   

One can hope.

 

He Knows The Words. But When Will He Play The Tune?

The other night, Barack Obama used the words "transgender", "lesbian" and "bisexual" in his State Of The Union address.  While he has used those words in other speeches, it was the first time they were uttered in any SOTU address.

Notice that I said "used the words".  That was a deliberate locution on my part.  What we have to remember is that he is a politician, and he is thinking about his life after the Presidency.  Like any skilled politico, he knows what to say and when to say it.

It's commonly forgotten that Obama had to be prodded into concerning himself with LGBT issues.  Dick Cheyney voiced his support for same-sex marriage before Obama did.  So did more than a few other Republicans--and Joe Biden, Obama's Vice-President.

I still have to question his true commitment to transgender--or lesbian, gay or bisexual--equality when he accepts as much money as he does from financial-services institutions. After all, they have done more to make and keep people poor--and thus vulnerable to bigotry and violence--than any other institutions, let alone people.

In other words, he is a corporate Democrat who is thinking about the boards he will sit on and the six-figure speeches he will make after he leaves office.  The banks and other financial institutions that support him employ a lot of gay men--more specifically, the kinds of gay men who hijacked the LGBT equality movement with their single-minded commitment to same-sex marriage at the expense of all other LGBT issues.

To me, he's only slightly more credible than a Secretary of the Interior who sells Federal land to mining companies.