Tag: transgender

In a life not dominated by the desire to change the world so that it would be a better place to live, moving would be a great excuse for taking a month away news and politics and trying to spread the word.

But my life is dominated by that mission.  

So I flipped a coin to see whether I should try to wrap some new words around an idea or two or post something old.  When one gets to be as old as I am, it gets more difficult to “write something new” since one may find that almost everything has already been addressed in the past couple of decades…or the 292 diaries posted here…or the 260 poems written.  As much as I would like for people to read my old diaries, in the spirit of learning about lives they cannot conceive, I know that the past gets forgotten very easily and reading someone’s old diaries is an unlikely occurrence.

Unfortunately for me, since it meant no nap this afternoon, on the last day before the moving begins, “something new” won.

For today’s story, we will travel far afield from the typical domains of politics or science or law that have so often provoked our thinking into an often overlooked area of human relations:

To which gender do you belong?

It’s a simple question, or so common sense would tell us-either you’re male, or you’re female.

As it turns out, things aren’t quite so simple, and in today’s conversation we’ll consider this issue in a larger way. By the time we’re done, not only will we learn a thing or two about sex and gender and sexuality, we’ll also learn how to offer a community of people a level of respect that they often find difficult to obtain.

Here it comes again.

At a time when the country of Pakistan, not what anyone generally conceives of as a bastion of progressive attitude on GLBT rights…Pakistan for %^&$%^’s sake…can have its Supreme Court rule that transfolk should be able to enjoy the same rights under the law as do the so-called normal people, there is a struggle in this country to even admit we are human beings, deserving of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Or, failing those, at least the use of a bathroom.

Since we had to go house hunting Friday afternoon, I decided to put together a summary of some trans news items for Friday evening’s column.  But while I was doing so, one of my favorite movies came on, namely Carl Sagan’s Contact.

The news, of course, is what it is.  The movie put a different spin on the whole thing,  so maybe this will come out as not only commentary on those items but also a statement about the state of the universe.

Just maybe a few readers out there will get the point of what I am trying to say.  There is always hope for that.

It’s been a long hard work, trying to get back into the swing of teaching.  The course we are teaching only lasts for 5 weeks and is at a very low, introductory level (Computer Literacy), but that is where these students are.  The program is part of the New Jersey Equal Opportunity Fund, an attempt to rescue students who had fewer opportunities for advancement during their time in high school.  Most are from the inner city areas of Jersey.

Last weekend Debbie and I decided to march in the New York Pride Parade for the first time since we moved to the area in 2000.  We are, generally speaking, not designed for marching.  I marched in both the Dyke March and the Pride Parade in Seattle and in the San Francisco Pride Parade once upon a time, but that was back in the 90s.  I was so much younger then;  I’m older than that now.  Debbie is from Los Angeles originally, but never marched there.

Anyway, we gave it a shot this year in The City.  We didn’t make it all the way.  Having to stand in the heat and wait for 3 hours before we could start marching took most of the starch out of us.

But I took plenty of pictures.  The point of these words is to provide some wrapping for those pictures.

They’re here.

After…how long is that?  Forever?  Really?…the Congress has a couple of bills before it which would actually be beneficial to the GLBT community.  And…horror of horrors…to transfolk as well.

What’s up with that?

The two bills go by the unofficial names of the Matthew Shepard Act and ENDA.  They cover two of the parts of what I have in the past considered the heart of The Gay Agenda:

• the right to not be fired for being GLBT
• the right to not be thrown out of our residences if discovered to be GLBT
• the right to be served in a restaurant
• the right not to be beaten up every other Tuesday

I am aware that other people think that marriage equality and the right to serve in the military are also at the heart of said agenda.  I’m of the feeling that maybe they are more of the lungs.  What I listed in the box affect all GLBT people, including those who are not in relationships or who have no interest in the military (including those who, like myself, who have already served, thank you).

(Please rec at dkos too)

Michael is nineteen years old. He lives in Tennessee, otherwise known as hell on Earth for transgender people. He goes to school in a relatively more liberal part of the state but things are still ridiculously hard on him. Add to that the fact that his parents don’t really accept or care about him the way he is.

His parents, if you can call them that, are your typical homophobic conservatives who are not adaptive to any sort of change whatsoever. He came out to them as a boy four years ago, and you’d think by now they’d gain some sort of understanding or at LEAST want to learn more about being transgender, but that’s not the case with those people. His dad recently told him, paraphrasing, he is a GIRL and his dad will never recognize him as a boy. Ever. In case you haven’t figured it out already, this is mind-numbingly stupid.

It doesn’t help that there are so many misconceptions about transgender people, but honestly, it doesn’t help that they won’t take the time to learn about it and rid themselves of their incorrect views on it. His parents seem to think that transgender and intersex are the same, and that he’s somehow trying to say that he has ambiguous genitalia or looks. He looks like a guy, because, you know, he IS, but they argue that he doesn’t and they also argue that if he does, it doesn’t matter because he’s not a boy. They argue that he’s been constantly indoctrinated and brainwashed by people and by “facts” he read on the internet. Michael is a really smart guy. Probably the most intelligent guy I’ve ever met, really. When he first realized something was off with his body, he started reading about it. He posted on transgender internet forums and met people who were the same, so he could learn about what’s making him feel that way. This is a logical step for anyone. This isn’t some sort of secret plan to turn oneself into a boy. He wanted to understand and to be closer to people. He wanted to stop feeling so alone and scared.

Once more to the well.  

Without rehashing the last weeks’ debates over President Obama’s relationship with the LGBT rights movement, I wanted to outline a list of legislation that is currently in play, along with recommendations about what we can do to help speed the processes along.  There’s nothing worse than the feeling that we have no say in the political process, but here are four opportunities to get vocal in a concrete, direct way:

1. the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligation Act

2. the Employment Non-Discrimination Act

3. the Matthew Shepard Act

4. the Military Readiness Enhancement Act

And the best part is, you really can help.  All four of these bills are before Congress (or about to be introduced), and your representatives are waiting to hear from you.

So I was trying to spend the first part of the week continuing with a a fictional story I have been working on.  Wall.  There was this realization that to really do the story justice, I needed to write a whole historical background for a people who had none.

Big wall.  Immense wall.

Then I had a rather severe allergy attack.  Putting the two of those together left me in a panic because Friday was fast approaching and I had nothing for the column.

But I was saved, sort of.  Chaz Bono came out.  That may seem a bit weird, being as how not long ago Bono was Director of Entertainment Media for GLAAD.  But there are different kinds of coming out:    

The WeaveMothers watched the train switch to the happentrack which they had just finished.  The transition was as smooth as ever it could be.  

The Engineer guided some steam through the whistle.

And the Storyteller began the tail of the Girl and the Five Fears.

Whether tomorrow’s Prop 8 decision affects you directly or not, it’s likely to be a big moment for the LGBT movement, insofar as so many married and wanting-to-right-to-be-married couples are heavily invested in the outcome.  

I won’t waste words on the background of this issue since so much has been written already.  But if you value equality and want to be part of what happens next, I’ve put together a list of events and links that should be useful.