Always The Same: Revelations And Changes

Parisians and psychotherapists disappear for the month of August.  Sometimes I think of myself as a Parisian in spirit,even though I haven't been in eight years, but I have no illusions of being a psychotherapist.  So what's my excuse for being somewhat conspicuously absent this month?

Well, I've managed to be busy with other things, including writing projects.  Hopefully they'll remunerate me; for now I find them rewarding.  And, frankly, when I haven't been doing those things--or riding or playing with my cats--I've felt drained, spiritually and emotionally exhausted.  The pastor of the church I started attending a few months ago says I'm healing. She's right.

Still, I've managed, in the past week, to ride to Point Lookout (Nothing like a few hours riding Arielle to make me feel lithe!) and to take a few shorter rides--and to record a few things along the way.

I'll start with something I saw on my way home from some volunteer work:

Sometimes I think archaeology is the step between destruction and forgetfulness.  At least, that's how things seem to work in New York. Sometimes, when a building is torn down, a long-concealed sign,  like the one in the photo, is revealed.  

What particularly intrigued me was the bottom inscription:  "Separate Waiting room for women."  Talk about a relic!  My undergraduate college went co-ed only four years before I enrolled in it.  And, boys and girls entered my Catholic elementary school through separate entrances:  a practice that was abandoned a couple of years after my family moved away.

Given that I lived as a male until ten years ago, it's hard for me not to wonder and imagine what my life would have been like had I entered through the girls' and women's doors.  Of course, had I lived in such a world, I would not have attended the college from which I graduated.  In fact, I might not have attended any college at all.

In those times, I probably would not have witnessed this:

The stretch of Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges has been turned into a lovely park.  Not long ago, it was off-limits, as the neighborhood around it--DUMBO--still consisted of functioning and recently-ceased manufacturing and warehousing.  This stretch of waterfront, like so much of the rest of New York's shorelines, was used in various ways by those industries.  In fact, most New Yorkers had little or no inclination to spend any time by the water, as it was associated with rough trades and characters.  Fifth Avenue became Manhattan's most-desired address in part because, of all of the island's avenues, it is furthest from the East and Hudson Rivers.

Ah, but some things don't change:

That's one reason why I--and Arielle and, on occasion, Tosca--like to take a spin to Point Lookout.

Trans Woman Killed Across From Police Precinct

When's this shit gonna end?

A couple of days ago,  I wrote about one hate crime against an LGBT person and a person of color. Now there's another.  The only difference is, the LGBT person and the person of color are the same woman.  And she's dead.

On Saturday night, 21-year-old trans woman Islan Nettles was out with a friend in Harlem when they were confronted by a group of young men. 

I haven't been able to find details, but from what I've learned, an argument ensued after the young men learned that Ms. Nettles was born male.

One of the young men yelled anti-gay remarks, and punches were thrown.  The friend ran to find help, and the young man was on top of Nettles. 

When she arrived at the hospital, she was still conscious but soon fell into a coma and was declared brain dead.  She was placed on a ventilator so family members could pay their respects and, tonight, police told NY1 that she'd died.

Police have arrested a 20-year-old male in connection with the case, but have not released his name because of a pending upgrade in the charges against him.

Now, I'll tell you what might be the most outrageous part of this killing:  It happened right across the street from a police precinct house.  



What does that tell us when haters and other thugs can assault and kill trans people with such abandon?

Hung In The Middle

One of my comments on my Huffington Post article about Don Ennis came from Alana Sholar.

It just happens that she's written a book, "Hung In The Middle", about her own story as a transgender woman in rural Kentucky.

She is a great example of something I've long said:  Nothing will do more to help people understand us than hearing our stories, whether in person, in print or elsewhere. Even the least articulate among us can, I think, have a greater effect (if a person is open-minded) than taking, as someone else so eloquently put it, "Remedial Trans 101 for the eighth time".

I intend to read Ms. Sholar's book.

The Interracial Couple And The Phantom Gay Male Friend

A few years ago, blocks of abandoned industrial buildings that rimmed the East River were razed to build rows of "luxury condos" and glass-and-steel bars and restaurants (or, at least restaurants that look like they're made of glass and steel). 

This is all reminiscent of what happened in the Meat Packing District and the area just west of Lincoln Center.  The difference is that the place I mentioned in my first paragraph isn't crawling with cavorting celebrities, as the Meat Packing District so often is.  

Still, I think it's fair to say that most of the people who've moved into those condos and who frequent those bars and restaurants have a pretty fair amount of disposable income.  And most of them probably have no idea of what the neighborhood was before they came along.

But I know about it because I've witnessed its transformation. I frequent the area around it, which includes a pier with one of the best views one can find of the Empire State, Chrysler and UN Buildings.  Photographers, painters and other artists frequently do their work there for that very reason.  That pier is only a ten-minute bike ride from my apartment.

I'm talking about the far edge of Long Island City, near Hunters Point.  While it is certainly a well-kept area (as was the surrounding residential neighborhood, which was populated mainly by blue-collar Italian-Americans).  The newly-polished surface of the area, and its increasingly vibrant night life, give some the feeling--or, shall we say, illusion--of tranquility.

But an incident over the weekend revealed that the surface may be, as it is in so many other places, a veneer.   

Interracial couple Jacob and Billie James-Vogel discovered when left the Shi restaurant and club--one of those new glass-and-steel places--with a gay male friend whose name was not disclosed.  The assialant yelled the "N" and "f" words while attacking Jacob and throwing Billie to the ground when she tried to shield him.

I don't know what, if anything, happened to the gay male friend.  In fact, I learned about him only because of an acquaintance who lives nearby and was there when the police showed up.  This acquaintance is not the sort who embellishes or sensationalizes stories, so I am confident in mentioning the gay male friend.  Of course, that would account for why the assailant used the "F" word.  That begs the question of why that detail was reported but not the gay male friend.

If so many outlets can be so sloppy in their reporting, I guess it's too much to ask them to probe why such attacks occur when and where they happen.  Then again, knowing such things might prevent some of the attacks, which would put some of the so-called journalists out of work because they would have fewer sensational stories to report.

Smaller And Meaner

When we have the most reason for optimism, we are in the most danger.

I came to that conclusion after writing my Huffington Post article about AB 1266 in California--and hearing the remarks of San Antonio (TX) Councilwoman Elisa Chan.



 


The more people realize that giving us--I mean, all people who don't confirm to societal, cultural or religious notions of gender and sexuality--the same rights as everyone else won't bring down this country or bring on the Apocalypse, the more bigots will resort to mendacity, belligerence and even violence to continue a battle they can only lose.



Ms. Chan, though, is even worse than all of those people who trot out their far-fetched "what if" scenarios (for which they can never provide even a single concrete example) to keep trans people from using public bathrooms designated for the gender in which they live.  Those people, at least, can be seen as merely clinging to an irrational fear.  Chan, on the other hand, is trying to be a local version of Ann Coulter:  Because she cannot think, let alone form a rational, cogent position, she is trying to build her career on hate and fear-mongering.  (At least, that has always been my theory about Ms. Coulter.)  As one of her advisers tells her, "It's not an economic argument; it's not a small-governnment argument; it's a social-cultural argument and you'll get the most points by taking a stand".  

While Chan herself admits that publicly saying that she finds LGBT people's lives "personally disgusting" would destroy her career, she says that she's willing to lie about her "confusion" about trans people in order to take a position against adding language that would protect them in local ordinances.

Chan is an example of something against which we need to gird ourselves:  As the number of our opponents dwindles, they will grow meaner, more dishonest, more vicious and, in some cases, more violent. They will ultimately lose, but I (and, I assume, you) want to be alive and well to savor our victory.  So, be aware!



 

Are You Surprised?

I promise not to say "I told you so!"

But, really, are you surprised that Faux News would plumb new depths of insensitivity and just plain ignorance when it came to AB 1266?

What AB 1266 Really Means

I can just hear the bloviators at Faux News now...

Governor Jerry Brown has just signed AB 1266 into law.  It means that transgender students will now be a "protected class."

It seems that any time a new law to protect trans people is passed, discussion goes into the toilet.  I mean, literally: Somehow, it always ends up being about the bathrooms.

So, to hear the right-wing sages, a kid could just one day decide he wants to be a girl--or she wants to be a boy--and use the bathroom he or she "chooses".

Let me tell you:  It doesn't work that way.  I know of no boy who wakes up one day and decides he's a girl--or any girl who begins a new day by trying on the guy thing.  If anything, 99 percent of boys don't want, in any way, to be perceived as feminine (as they understand it), much less as girls.  Even kids like the one I was will  do whatever we can to avoid hearing that we run, throw, kick or do anything else "like a girl." 

Girls, on the other hand, are less anxious about being perceived as boyish.  Still, not many--if any at all--ever "decide" to be boys.

Those of us born with male bodies do not merely "believe" we are female or choose to be so; we know that is what lies at the essence of our beings.  The same can be said for male beings born into female bodies.  

AB 1266 is not about allowing kids to use "whatever bathroom they want."  It's instead a way of fostering an environment in which a kid can actually learn about who he or she is, and to be given the means (which others will also be given) of understanding it.

When I was growing up, neither I nor any other kid--nor, for that matter, most of the adults--had the means of understanding--the language, if you will--gender identity and expression.  One of my earliest school memories is of a hall monitor telling the boys to stand on one line and the girls on the other.  If you're reading this, you know which line I stood on, and you can imagine what the consequences were. Telling that monitor--or, most likely, any teacher or the principal in that school--that I was indeed a girl was met by incomprehension, as if I'd spoken a dialect they'd never before heard, or hostility toward what they perceived as my insubordination.

What's really frightening for me to realize is that, in spite of my isolation and the alienation it would engender, I probably had an easier time than other kids with my predicament.  What I hope is that AB 1266 and other initiatives will help to ensure that kids growing up today won't have similar experiences.

More On Huff Po

Just to show you that I've been spending my time in more-or-less productive ways, I'm providing links to two new pieces on The Huffington Post.

Why Don Ennis Hasn't Failed

Why Can't I Marry Max--Or Marley?

No pay yet.  Hopefully, that and a regular column are in the cards!

Still Here

I know that in the history of this blog, I’ve rarely gone more than a few days without posting.  Today I realized it’s been a week since my most recent post.  I’m not abandoning this blog; I simply was occupied with other things.

During the past week, I’ve spent much of my time with the volunteer work I’d been doing once or twice a week.  Also, the work I’d been doing with one organization led me to drop in on another, related, organization.  As it has to do with bicycling, I’ll say more about it on my other blog, Midlife Cycling.

Meanwhile, I am working on other writing projects that, I hope, will lead me to wider audiences and pay. One of those pieces of writing has just appeared on the HuffPost Gay Voices blog. Instead of reproducing it here, I’m providing a link to it—which, of course, is a cheap, sleazy trick ;-) to increase the number of viewers there.

Without Women On Wheels

Yesterday marked 60 years since the end of the Korean War.

The South commemorates it in a rather somber way.  The North--the so-called People's Republic--celebrates it as a victory.

However one sees the conflict and the armistice, it's hard to think of them as a victory for women (or very many other people who aren't Communist officials) or cyclists on either side. 

 

powered by Fotopedia

Late last year, the PRK (North) ended a decades-old ban on women cycling.  However, just a couple of months later--in January of this year--the ban was reinstated.  Moreover, the current statute doesn't allow women to even ride on the rear (or front) of a two-wheeled vehicle.  

The current restriction, however, is even more draconian than the one that was revealed.  Previously, offenders could be fined 2000 to 5000 won (2.20 to 5.50 USD at current exchange rates). Now, authorities can confiscate bicycles on which women are pedalers or passengers.  

Ostensibly, PRK officials believe that women on wheels is a "violation of good socialist customs", i.e., they're offended by flapping skirts.  But, just three weeks ago, women were allowed to wear trousers and high heels.  I wonder what excuse the government will offer (not that they have to) now--or whether the ban will be repealed once again.

Getting And Keeping What We Need

Here is an infographic that shows some of the dilemmas faced by transgenders in the work force:

What Young Love Might Have Been Like

I began my gender transition in my 40's and had my surgery three days after I turned 51.  While I am glad for the time I've had--and whatever time I have remaining--to live as a woman, I cannot help to think about what might have been.

Other trans people I know who transitioned in the middle of their lives have similar feelings.  While it was undoubtedly easier to transition when I did than it would have been, say, in my 20's, I still can't help but to wonder what my life might have been like had I done so.  Would I have made different choices about school, work, relationships or other areas of my life?  Would I have lived in different places from the ones in which I've lived?  

Then again, I also realize I might not be alive now had I started my transition when I was young.  As difficult as things are for trans people now, they could only have been more so thirty or twenty years ago.  Perhaps I would have done sex work, which I think would have destroyed me mentally, if not physically.   

Still, I occasionally fantasize about having hopped on my bike or taken a bus, train or plane the day after I graduated high school (or even sooner) and ended up some place where nobody knew me.  I imagine having started a new life, under a new name and identity, among (or away from) people who did not know of my life as a boy.

I also wonder what kind of love life I might have had.  You see, I didn't date when I was in high school.  I didn't attend my senior prom, even though I served on the committee that organized it.  And, in college, even though I had a few scattered dates, I felt even more isolated than I did in high school:  I felt even more pressure to fit in with other males and to conform to ideas about maleness I'd learned up to that point in my life.

I especially think about what wasn't, and what might have been, in my youth when I hear about children and teenagers who transition.  Reading about Arin Andrews and Katie Hill really made me wonder about what my life might have been like:  They have transitioned together.  Arin is now 17 and Katie 19 and both talk about the strength each drew from seeing the other's transition.  And now they can share the comfort they feel in their own bodies, in their own selves.  

Upon This Rock Was The Movement Founded

Although people became ill and died from it long before then, the first documented cases of what would come to be known as HIV/AIDS were reported on 5 June 1981.

For the next four years, the mushrooming epidemic was depicted as a consequence of the libertine lifestyles of gay men and the poor choice others made to use intravenous drugs.  Anyone who contracted the disease was thus tarred with the most negative stereotypes about one or the other; family, friends, colleagues and others often abandoned those who were wasting away and dying from the ravages of the disease.

It was a time when many--including then-President Ronald Reagan--would not speak of AIDS, at least not publicly.  To do so, at a time when the so-called Moral Majority was at the peak of its influence, would be to identify one's self with immorality, degradation and sloth.

Then, on this date in 1985, something happened that began the change in public perception about AIDS and its victims.

If you are around my age, you remember it well:  It was announced that iconic actor Rock Hudson was suffering from the disease.

Earlier in the summer, rumors about his health began to circulate when he looked gaunt and pale--almost unrecognizable--during an appearance to promote a new cable series of his longtime friend and former co-star Doris Day.

He was diagnosed with the disease after collapsing in Paris in early July.  There, he was able to receive treatment with HPA-23, a drug that wasn't available in the US at the time.  The announcement that he indeed had AIDS came while he was in the hospital.

Rock Hudson changed the "face" of the disease, not only because he was so famous, but also because, until then, very few people knew that he was gay. Ironically, his character "feigned" gayness to get the character played by Doris Day in Pillow Talk:

 


He died on 2 October 1985, less than three months after his announcement.  In that short time, he started the Rock Hudson AIDS foundation.  He was also credited with jumpstarting Elizabeth Taylor's then-nascent fundraising crusade to fight the disease.

Most important of all, his illness and death inspired, in some people, a willingness to be associated with AIDS victims, which probably did more than anything to bring the fight against the disease into the mainstream of society.

A Band Of (Trans) Brothers--And Sisters

While the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been applauded, mostly for the right reasons, transgenders are still not allowed to be uniformed members of the Armed Forces.  

Meanwhile, civilian employees of the Armed Forces are allowed to transition if they are already employees.  What's not widely known is that Amanda Simpson, whom President Obama appointed as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department shortly after he was elected to his first term, is a civilian military employee.  She had transitioned years before her appointment to that post.

Another civilian employee, not nearly as well-known, is in the process of transitioning.  However, that employee also happens to be an Army Reserve sergeant. 

But there's another twist that few anticipated:  As a civilian employee, this person is male.  However, for Army drills and physicals, it's necessary to bring out "whatever I can muster that's feminine".   So, while his civilian colleagues relate to him as the man he is, he must--as he admits--lie to his fellow soldiers.   

Now, some might say that he should be content with being a civilian military employee.  However, he says, "My father was a soldier.  I wanted to come home in a uniform like him".  He was able to do that after a deployment to Iraq.  While "coming home in a uniform" (Thankfully, it wasn't a body bag!) fulfilled one dream, it left him with the yearnings of another:  He realized he had to "come out" and transition.

He hopes that one day soon the Armed Forces' ban against transgenders will be lifted.  In the meantime, he says, he has a network of about 300 female-to-male transgenders who are a "band of brothers" supporting each other "in a battle nobody knows we're fighting".

While I don't generally encourage young people to join the military unless they, well, want to be in the military (and aren't enlisting merely to "pay for school", learn a trade, "see the world", please members of their families and communities or fulfill some vague notion like "serving my country"), and wouldn't join the military even if I could, I think the ban against trans people is absurd.  After all, the traits that make a person good soldiers, sailors, flyers or officers don't change as a person transitions from one gender to another. A male-to-female might lose some physical strength, but--let me tell you--you've got to be pretty damned tough to make the transition.  Also, while a certain amount of stamina is necessary, today's military doesn't depend as much on brute strength as the forces of old.  And, if someone could hack the physical training and the rigors of combat as a "woman", I don't see why he couldn't as a man.

Most important of all, though, is something the female-to-male civilian employee/reservist mentioned:  integrity.  In battle, or in any other stressful situation, people who are fighting or simply working together toward the same goal will not succeed unless they can trust one another.  I should think that someone who is completely honest about him or her self is more likely to deserve and gain the trust of the men and women by his or her side, or under his or her command.

Taking A Shoe Thrown At Her And Putting It In Her Mouth.

Back in the good ol' days, the crazy elements of the American political right trotted out women like Phyllis Schlafly to help reinforce the notion of male superiority and female subservience. 

I always wondered:  Why is a woman in public office if she feels that she should be under a man?  I guess others have asked the same question.

Now, it seems that the Republicans have seen the error of that strategy.  Instead of letting this generation's equivalents of Schlafly and Anita Bryant (if they indeed exist) preach about "a woman's place", they have women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann who, on their good days, rise to level of ignorance found in the kinds of men who don't realize how much privilege they have.  

If the religious right is still trying to show that women aren't fit for public life, they could hardly do better than to have Palin and Bachmann on their side.

Now we can add another not-ready-for-Mensa woman to the list.  Dana Perino, who is now a Faux (I mean Fox) News "analyst" served up this gem:

“Also when a president speaks, it’s to multiple audiences,” she added. “If you think of the young mother whose 2-year-old son was shot in the face by the two black teens that approached her in Atlanta and that baby had died, why do presidents choose to speak about one case and not the other? That’s why it’s better maybe not to talk about any of them.”

David Edwards astutely and succinctly translated her blather: "Where's Obama's speech on blacks shooting white babies in the face?"

She was referring specifically to a the thirteen-month-old baby in Atlanta who was fatally shot by two teens who demanded money of his mother early this year. How she can connect that crime to the death of Trayvon Martin is beyond me:

• The shooters--17-year-old De'Marquise Elkins and 15-year-old Dominique Lang--were charged with first-degree murder about a day after the crime. 

• Nobody profiled the baby as a criminal or blamed him for his own death. 

(Rhetorical question du jour:  Where are the "pro-life" people--who are supposedly so concerned that an abortion is the killing of a baby--now?)

To think that Ms. Perino was the White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush!  Her present job is, as best as I can tell, the only one that's right for her. 

I must say, though, she really "took one for the team" when she was the White House Press Secretary!

  

Conviction Set Aside In Killing Of Transgender Woman In New York State

Four years ago, Dwight DeLee became the second person convicted in the US for a hate crime in the killing of a transgender person.  His August 2009 conviction for killing Lateisha Green in Syracuse, NY came three months after a Colorado jury convicted Allen Andrade of beating Angie Zapata to death in Colorado after discovering that she was biologically male.

Andrade is still in prison, serving a life sentence he was handed because of his hate crime conviction and the long rap sheet he had before he killed Angie Zapata.  

DeLee also remains in prison, though it remains to be seen how much longer he will be there. For the moment, he's locked up on a gun charge.  However, his conviction on Manslaughter in the First Degree as a hate crime has been set aside.  The Fourth Appellate Division of New York's Supreme Court, which sits in Rochester, made the ruling because a jury found him not guilty of Manslaughter in the First Degree without the added element of a hate crime.
However, the same jury found him guilty on a weapons charge.

Onandaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick said his office will seek review in the New York State Court of Appeals, citing errors in the trial judge's instructions to the jury.

Coming Out With God

When people ask how I came to be the person I am, I tell them that the process of my gender transition was as much a spiritual as a physical or emotional experience.  

Sometimes I'm still surprised at just how many people understand what I mean.  Perhaps I shouldn't be:  After all, a spiritual journey--whether or not it's what you intended--involves learning your true essence. For some of us, that means--among other things--that we really aren't the genders to which we were assigned at birth.

Now, some would argue that someone who follows his or her spiritual calling won't want to "alter" what God made.  For a long time, I thought the same way while, ironically, denying that I believed in God or anything beyond the physical realm.  

What that meant was, among other things, that I had not freed myself from conflating belief and spirituality with the trappings (and traps) of organized religions as I'd known them.  It also meant that I was not accepting the fact that circumstances are not destiny.  After all, we have the means to change at least some of our circumstances.  One could say that God (or whatever one believes in) gave us the means as well as circumstances.

So it is with gender idenity.  Now we have the medical science and practice to help our bodies more thoroughly express what we know in our minds and spirits, just as we have the means to treat diseases or enhance life in other ways.  Using them, I believe, has to involve spiritual engagement, which can only bring us closer to that which is infinite.

So it has been for the Rev. Cameron Partridge.  He was assigned to a female identity at birth and, after graduating Bryn Mawr--where he came out as a lesbian--and, as he says, a religious person.  As I understand what he says, they were inseparable.  

Now he is the Episcopal chaplain at Boston University and the husband of a woman he married when he was still living as a woman.  What his journey underscores, I believe, is that gender identity is, like our "callings", not something that can always be readily categorized by the people in our lives, and society as a whole.  What made it unclear for so many of us--especially people of my generation--is that we felt, and sometimes acquiesced, to the desire to fit into the gender binary we learned while growing up. And the notions we learned about God and spirituality were expressions of those notions.

I'd bet that Rev. Partridge is an excellent teacher.  Some of the people who posted comments after the article I linked could use a lesson or two from her, and others--as well as the God some of them claim to worship.

Reality=Porgography?

I found this great infographic that expresses some of the stark realities of transgender life:

However, when I tried to access the site on which it appeared--transfeminism.tumblr.com--it was blocked as "pornography".

Hmm....

Melting Away

This week, we’ve had the hottest weather we’ve had all year.  (Yesterday the temperature reached 100F or 38C.)  The weather, and hearing from a trans woman I haven’t seen in a while, got me to thinking about a particular part of my pre-transition life.

About three or four years before I began my transition, I started to go out “as” Justine (I had already chosen that name for myself.) on a somewhat regular basis—sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion.  Before that, I’d only been out en femme a few times, not counting the couple of times I spent Halloween “in drag”.

The trans woman who called me yesterday explained that she’s hardly been out at all—either as the person she is, or in male costume.  “It’s so much more difficult in this weather,” she exclaimed.  I agreed:  I remember what it was like when I wore wigs and had to cover more of my body because of hair or other features.  Also, I had to wear more make-up in those days.

She mentioned all of those things.  Her make-up and cover-up issue is even greater than mine was because she has very dark hair.  So her “shadow” is visible even after she shaves.  Also, because she has lost some of her natural hair—and, for various reasons, wears her remaining hair short—she needs to wear a wig or to otherwise cover it up.

I think, though, that a bigger problem for her is her lack of confidence.  I hear it in her voice and see it in her furtive movements.  Also, she still wears frillier dresses than just about any other woman I’ve seen:  They’re even more extreme than some of the stuff I wore before I started going out in public. And she feels she must wear nylon stockings or pantyhose, even when she wears sandals.

“When I go out in weather like this, the makeup just melts off me,” she complained.  I can relate to that.  If I wear makeup, say, to go to work or some social event when the weather is hot—especially if I ride my bike to get there-- I usually duck into a bathroom at my destination and sketch the liner across my eyelids and brush my cheeks with rouge or whatever I’m wearing.  I don’t want to look like Tammy Fay Baker with her mascara running down the rouge on her cheeks as she cried, “I am so-o in love with the Law-uhd.”

I tried to encourage my trans friend to get out more at this time of year:  She can be a great-looking woman (She has a model’s body and Kirstie Alley’s eyes.)  But  she’s afraid of melting away, like Frosty the Snowman. 

A Re-Enactor Of Gettysburg

A few days ago, after I cariactured Tammy Fay Baker, someone suggested that I try my hand at acting.

The thought had never before occured to me.  About the closest I came to trying it was the acting class I took during my last semester as an undergraduate.  I had no visions of myself on film or stage; I took the class mainly for fun and because, I told myself at the time, it might help me to understand acting if I ever decide to write a play (something I've never done).

Actually, some would argue that I've been acting for a long time--in the classroom.  I don't disagree with anyone who says that teaching is a performing art, but somehow I think it has more in common with stand-up comedy (something I've also never tried).  Then there are those who say that I was acting during all of the years I lived as a male.  I wouldn't disagree with that, either.  The thing is, the more I lived as a male, the more alienated I felt from the male persona I, in essence, created.  Somehow I imagine that actors--the good ones, anyway--feel more empathy, or at least understanding, for their characters as they spend more time portraying them.

Still, I found it curious that even though a number of writers, musicians, artists and other creative people and performers are transgendered, I'd never heard of a trans actor.  

Well, I learned of one today.  You might not have heard of her, but I think her story deserves attention.

Barbara Ann Myers donned a hoopskirt and petticoats to play a lady who might have been seen in the Gettysburg marketplace 150 years ago, when one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War was fought there.  

She has been re-enacting the battle and other historical events for a long time.  It helped her to indulge in her love of history while, she said, it also maginified her gender identity conflict.

"I never wanted to be a soldier," she explained. "I always wanted to be a lady and I was never able to do that."

She reports widespread acceptance from the community of re-enactors and her co-workers at the Florida Highway Department.  However, her wife divorced her, her son cut off ties and her mother doesn't want to see her in a dress.

In spite of--or, perhaps, because--of the mixed reception, she has continued to follow her passions--and, most important, her spirit.  Acceptance from some is a reward for being true to yourself, while rejection or distance from others is the price or "dues" you pay.

Seeing the video of Ms. Myers and reading her story, I couldn't help but to wonder how (or whether) the kind of characters an actor plays--or the way he or she plays them-- would change if her or she were to undergo a gender transition.