GenderBendy

Time to go home

Last night in the garden there was a barbecue for the staff, because the patients who had their surgeries this week are the last batch before the clinic closes for a long summer break. The surgeons and nurses and housekeepers and other support staff laughed and drank wine and sang karaoke. Someone did a really good cover of CCR's "Rollin' on the River." In the early part of the evening, while it was still light, I was rubbernecking from the porch and saw that Dr. Bélanger, who was wearing a sun-dress and flip-flops, has a biohazard symbol tattooed in the middle of her back. 

I finally got to see my new parts completely yesterday when the last impediment - and my last remaining anxiety - was removed: a small wad of gauze stuck to a (perfectly common, normal) blood clot in the minutely-sutured clitoral area. I had been warned that as long as the wad was there, there was danger of threads from it ending up inside me during dilation, which could lead to infection. Patsy, the head nurse, worked patiently with a squeeze bottle of saline and a pair of tweezers, and finally succeeded in removing it. It was a pleasure to watch her work. Without exception, everyone who works here is really good at their jobs.

It transpires that I have had successful SRS at one of the best clinics for the procedure in the world. My results are amazing. In a few months, when the swelling and bruising are gone, the hair has grown out again, and the end of the douching regimen has allowed the development of natural flora, I will have a vagina which appears to all five senses so much like a natural-born one that not one of my hundreds of lovers will be able to tell the difference. I will be orgasmic - maybe even significantly more so than most natural-born women, it has been whispered -  and at least a little self-lubricating. I have a work of art between my legs.

I'm being driven back to Maine today by my dear friend Jessica, and my brother Brian is flying out and will be there when I arrive to stay the first few days home with me, just in case I get light-headed or need help digging a swimming pool. After he goes home I'll have the house to myself for several days; I have a couple of writing projects lined up and a new piano piece to practice, and various friends who have promised visits.  The next week my dear spawn return in the usual childcare rotation. Mad's girlfriend Annu, whom I adore, is visiting from Finland. No school, few stressors...summer in Maine with company! I'm back to work on August 6th.

All of which will need to be fit in between lots and lots of surgical after-care; the routine consumes several hours a day in the first few months.

In the fall and beyond, besides work, I'm looking forward to engaging with son Sam's senior year in high school, moving those writing projects forward, helping with the fight to win marriage equality in Maine in November, and playing more music. I'm trying to decide whether I have the time and the courage to sign up as an accompanist for the student-recitalists at the USM music schools. Oh, joy, something else to feel anxious excitement and anticipation about...and it has nothing to do with gender! :-)

With regards to transition, I'm still not done, but I have new ideas about how much more I am going to do. Electrolysis will definitely continue until my beard is gone, and I'm not done working on voice. Also, I get to resume hormones when I get home tonight, which, with the natural testosterone now gone, may still have further desirable effects. The remaining open questions are FFS, facial feminization surgery, and breast enhancement. I've spend a lot of time this week with women who have had both, and at the moment of this writing, I'm still 50-50 on FFS and only ten percent probable on breasts. In both cases, a really natural outcome is just so hard to achieve. At some point, more homework will begin.

The question is different. What I have done here in Montreal is fix a fundamental problem: I had a penis I hated, and now I have a vagina I love. I already have a face and breasts, so there is no absolute - only a tangle of conflicting desires and ideas around concepts of beauty and femininity. This much I know: as I have all along, I will be doing my homework, taking it slow, and only moving ahead on steps I feel I must take in order to live as myself in the world.

I will end this part of my SRS blogging project with a random funny moment from my time at Asclépiade: the routine for dilation involves fishing the phallic utensil of the moment out of its bath of antibiotic solution, then holding it over the container so that the solution can drip. There's always one drop that won't fall, and when the dilator is too wet the lube slides off. So, innovating the other day, I came up with the technique of gripping the priapus firmly at the base and shaking it to air-dry it faster. "Pardon me whilst I waggle my dildo at you," I thought, and burst out laughing in the empty room.

Sometimes even really big important things go right. :-)

Before the lecture

At 7pm this evening there is going to be a lecture here on the USM Portland campus by Dr. John Broida, chair of the psychology department. It seems to have two titles: "How do you know if you are a girl or a boy?" and "The differences between the sexes: are they the cause of differences between the genders?" I plan to attend, and I thought I'd write a quick post before I go so that my reporting of my state of mind going in is not tainted by the event itself. I'll report after too.

There are two things on my mind heading to this talk. The first is a hope that I will learn something about the latest science around gender. According to my (somewhat desultory) research, there is no consensus yet among scientists about exactly where gender comes from. (To be clear, by  "gender" here I mean a person's sense of self as masculine, feminine, or some combination or negation of the two.) Is gender innate, or a learned social construct, or some combination of the two? How closely is it tied to biology, specifically, to the sex of the body you are born with? Different answers to these questions can lead to sharply different explanations of what it is to be trans - a birth defect, a psychiatric disorder, the next step of evolution - which in turn can lead to real consequences in the lives of millions of trans people. So, these are politically and socially loaded issues.

The other element of my state of mind is a readiness to defend my gender should Dr. Broida answer his own question with a determinism which implies that I don't exist or am deluded. I Googled him, and there was an incident a decade ago in which a student complained that he had made racist and homophobic remarks. The case ended with a settlement to Dr. Broida from the University, apparently after a U. official mishandled the institution's response. On the other hand, I gather Dr. Broida includes in his lecturing toolkit a willingness to provoke for the sake of instruction, which seems commendable, and I also hear that there are LGBT students who have spoken highly of him. Still, he gets mixed reviews on ratemyprofessors.com. One recent review remarks, "Likes to use intimidation and reverse psychology on students."

In short, he's a straight white man in a position of power, and he sounds like he might be a bit of a bully.

Well, it's just about time to get myself over to the planetarium. I  haven't dressed out of my ordinary for the occasion, but I did give a thought to a solidly femme presentation this morning, and I've done the second-shave-of-the-day I do on days when I'm going to be face to face with people in the evening. Will Dr. B, do you suppose, let me live?

Maine's Transgender Revolution video

I'm turning 50 next Tuesday. If I figure out what that means, you can be sure I'll post about it. ;-)

In the meantime, video is now available online of a panel discussion I recently helped put together about the past, present, and future of the trans experience in Maine. The panel was presented by the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine on March 21st, 2012, on the USM Portland campus, and it went really well. My fellow panelists - Margaret Cook, Jamie-Lynn Emma Kane, and Alex Roan - were all excellent, sharing personal stories and general insights in a wide-ranging conversation which was variously funny, touching, profound, and inspirational. We also had some wonderful input from the audience.

Links:  Part One  Part Two

Brief personal viewing notes: I hate my voice still. I have *got* to do something about that. But, I thought I rocked the dress pretty well...panel day turned out to be the first really warm day of spring I anticipated in this post.

Anyway, if you decide to check any of the video out, happy viewing! :-)

Inmate Sex Change Prevention Act struck down in Wisconsin

Victory in a fight it's a shame had to be fought. From aclu.org:

"At trial, Wisconsin made the disturbing argument that this law was really for the good of the transgender prisoners, since denying them hormone therapy prevented or reduced the feminizing affects of that medication thereby reducing the risk of their assault by the male prisoners with whom they were housed."

To which the court responded in part, "Refusing to provide effective treatment for a serious medical condition serves no valid penological purpose and amounts to torture."

Complete story here.

The Trans Explosion

The article I wrote recently for Out in Maine, the LGBT quarterly supplement to the Portland Phoenix, has been posted on line. In the article I assert that trans really seems to be *happening* right now in crucial ways, and, using local examples in Maine, explore how personal trans narratives are driving this change and vice versa. If I have piqued your interest, you can check it out here...

Out of a flame war, pandemic love

Last night my 19-year old daughter Madeleine posted on facebook some whimsical wordplay based on terms she is trying out to describe her sexuality. She has already claimed “pansexual,” (which I also am coming to prefer for myself), meaning attracted to people based on who they are as people, regardless of biological sex or gender; and she’s trying out the word “demisexual”, meaning not tending to feel sexual attraction except to a person with whom one has first become emotionally intimate (which I also like for myself...I hope you don’t mind, dearest, that I’m co-opting your words). “Demisexual” is a new-minted word, courtesy of the asexuality movement, for an old-fashioned idea: sex as an adjunct to, an extension and expression of, love. So Mad’s line was that she’s a “pandemic romantic,” which, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny.

A few of her friends posted light-hearted comments, and then one particular friend, whom I will call X, posted this: “‘Pansexual’ is an orientation. ‘Demisexual’ is not. Neither is ‘romantic’. Just sayin'.”

An escalation ensued. Points got misunderstood, feelings got hurt, and what could have been a substantive conversation about the complexities of identity quickly turned personal. An hour and 40-some posts later, several people had posted things they are probably regretting today (if they’re done fuming), my daughter had defriended X, and various friends both in cyber and real space were giving her hugs in commiseration for having been the unwitting trigger of, and scorched figure at the center of, a doozy of a flame war.

This incident has helped me crystallize some thoughts about sex, gender, and queer identity. First of all, I respectfully disagree with X. Demisexuality and being a romantic *are* both orientations. In fact, in a way, they are more radical orientations than the L, G, and B of LGBT, because, just as pansexuality challenges the unquestioned assumption behind these letters that gender matters, they challenge the unquestioned assumption that sex matters. They are a “none of the above” option. They say: “If I, whoever I turn out to be, should happen to want to go to bed with my sweetie, whoever my sweetie turns out to be, it will be because I love my sweetie and my sweetie loves me. Love is different from sex and knows no gender, and love is what matters most to me.”

I am *not* saying that LGB folk don’t understand or care about love. Completely not. But queer culture does seem to me to be as obsessed with sex as our culture as a whole is. I don’t really have a problem with that, though as a person who cares less about sex than love it makes me feel marginalized at both cultural levels. And I could hardly blame people fighting for equality for their sexual identities if they felt threatened by the idea that sex doesn’t matter. I do have a problem, though, when it becomes politically incorrect to speak of non-sexual or only-incidentally-sexual love.

And, I *am* saying that the emphasis on traditional concepts of gender inherent in the definitions of L, G, and B sometimes feels inimical to the interests of us T folk. My dear LGB friends: I thank you most fervently for the enormous amount of help and support you have given me in my gender work, both individually and, by fighting a version of the same fight first, on a global scale. I have learned and benefited from your struggle. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the forces of prejudice and hate which so seldom distinguish between us. And, I enjoy your company, feel at ease with you, and am so grateful to have been welcomed in under the big LGBT umbrella. But, alas, all that said, I do also sometimes see you as part of the gender hegemony against which, all my life, I have struggled. I will never self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, hetero or homo, because all of this terminology fails to challenge and continues to perpetrate the bad old binary concept of gender. Until I come up with something I like better, I am a pandemisexual romantic trans woman.

May I invite you to join me and Mad in seeking new ways of talking about ourselves and each other which celebrate the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of gender as thoroughly as we have celebrated the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of sexuality? And could we all, please, get at least part of the way back to the charming old-fashioned notion of speaking reverently of love?

The Hearing and the Beating

On April 12th I attended a Judiciary Committee hearing in Augusta on a bill (LD 1046) which would make an exception for trans people in Maine’s Human Rights Act, so that forcing a trans person to use the bathroom or locker room matching her/his physical sex at birth would not count as discrimination. I went to add my voice to the chorus of “against” voices; and I came away with puzzles to figure out about prejudice. Please forgive the long post, but I’ve travelled down a long chain of thought and feeling since the hearing, and I want to try to get it all down.

The hearing went well for us opponents, I think. Equality Maine did a great job of organizing, so we had all been briefed on how to be courteous to the Committee, how to field questions from reporters, and when it would be our turn to have our three-minute say; and the supporters soon ran out of speakers, so then it was just a long string of trans-positive testimony. Many non-trans allies spoke, which was lovely; the most moving for me was the father of a young trans girl who wept talking about the ordeals his family has endured trying to find safe schooling for his daughter. And the trans among us accomplished as much, I think, by showing ourselves to the Committee as by speaking. Look at me, each of us said, just by standing there: I am trans, and I am intelligent and well-spoken, and I dress in ordinary clothes and act in ordinary ways, and I clearly have feelings just like everyone, and, in short, I am an ordinary human being, just like you.

This was a crucial point to make...because behind the testimony of the supporters of the bill lurked the pernicious and utterly false phantom image of the trans person, especially the trans woman, as sexual predator and pedophile.

LD 1046 would legalize discrimination against trans people

I'm off to Augusta...will report later! Text of the testimony I'm offering below...wish me luck, and please, if you want to help, contact your state rep and senator and urge them to oppose this awful bill. Thanks!

Written testimony of Elizabeth Bunker in the matter of LD 1046; Judiciary Committee hearing, Augusta, ME, Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Good Afternoon, Senator Hastings, Representative Nass and members of the committee. I am Elizabeth Bunker from Wells, and I urge you to vote “ought-not-to-pass” on LD 1046.

Thank you for accepting my written testimony; I would have liked to testify in person, but my son has to be at band practice at Wells High School by six o’clock with a dinner under his belt, so I could not commit to staying until my turn to speak.

I am 49 years old, and I have lived in Wells for ten years. For the past eight years I have been employed full time at USM as the Program Director of the Community Radio station WMPG. As a professional sideline I construct crossword puzzles. I am an involved parent, sharing equal custody of my two teenagers with their mother, alternating weeks. In my spare time I blog, practice the piano, and play chess. And, I am a trans woman. That is, I was born with a male body, but my sense of self is and always has been female.

About two years ago I decided to do something about this mismatch, and began the process of gender transition. A few months ago, as part of that ongoing process, I started living full time as a woman. And (to share an instructive anecdote), as part of this moment of social transition, I switched locker rooms at the USM gym.

I did so with the full knowledge and support of gym management, and it turned out to be absolutely no big deal. A couple of private changing stalls had thoughtfully been installed in each room (trans folk are not the only ones bashful about their bodies), and that was the only accommodation I needed. In the months leading up to the switch, as I grew increasingly uncomfortable in the men’s room, I simply changed and showered in the stalls; and now, until my physical transformation is complete, I’m doing the same in the women’s. Nobody sees me undressed, and there have been no complaints. Nobody even seems to notice me.

I wanted to share this anecdote with the committee because I think it offers a real-life example both of how easy it was for my employer to accommodate my needs, and of how unfounded the fears are which seem to be behind this bill. The law which this bill seeks to subvert has been on the books for six years, and nothing bad has happened. Trans is a perfectly normal thing to be, and trans people are not trying to get away with anything...they just want the same freedom as everyone else to change their clothes and relieve themselves where they feel natural, comfortable, and safe.

In sum, LD 1046 is totally unnecessary; and, since it would establish an alarming precedent of exceptions to the legal protections provided by anti-discrimination law, it is also downright dangerous. I urge the committee to squash this ill-conceived, backward-looking, and prejudicial legislation now. It is fundamentally unfair to trans people, and it would make truly terrible law. Thank you for the opportunity to add my voice to the debate.

Trans chess, and the center of the Queer universe

Yesterday I had two different instructive adventures in trans.

The first was a visit to the Mechanics Institute Library and Chess Room in downtown San Fran. I have visited other chess clubs in other cities, including bullshitting my way in for a brief glance at the famed Marshall Chess Club in NYC, and based on that experience I was expecting something run down and seedy. Ha! The Institute is housed in a downtown highrise: imposing brass and glass doors, a uniformed attendant with a magnificent grey walrus moustache, spiralling marble stairs with ornate iron bannisters, 20-foot ceilings. Most of this was the library (members only), not the chess room, but still. The chess room was a pleasant space on the fourth floor with an attendant in an office. There were four long rows of old wooden tables with the chess boards built into them, and on the walls pictures of various chess legends who have passed through the club over the years. At four in the afternoon there were only about half a dozen players there, all older gentlemen. I played six or seven quick games and had a delightful time.

As noted in my previous post I wondered if my transness would cause a stir in the chess room, and perhaps discombobulate an opponent. What I forgot was that, while there are not huge numbers of trans chess players, I’ve hardly ever met a chess player who wasn’t eccentric some way or another. No one batted an eye, and my long list of places where my being trans doesn’t matter at all is now one place longer.

The other instructive trans adventure was a program called “Girl Talk” at the LGBT Community Center on Market Street. I had a couple of mistaken assumptions going in:  One was that I was going to be attending a panel discussion between trans and cis-gendered women; it was actually an evening of spoken word performance. The other was that the topic would be what I deal with every day, which is the complex of connections and failures to connect between trans and straight cis women in the straight world. Silly me. The topic was the complex of connections and failures to connect between trans and Queer cis women in the Queer world.

All of the performers were talented writers and readers.  There were some great lines and powerful insights, some very funny moments, some seriously artistic moments, and a great deal of community spirit. There was a lovely underpinning of vibrant activism. And, the audience was large, responsive, and enthusiastic. One comment: I could do with just a little less of the hard-driving short-phrased hip-hop-rhythmic poetry slam style of delivery...Honey, just talk to me...

I did garner one important political insight: clearly, even here, trans still struggles to establish and define itself within the larger context of LGBT culture. A great deal of work for change still lies ahead.

Now, in that room I got a strong sense of a nurturing, insular, and complete counter culture which I have the credentials to join if I want. Some aspects of this culture:  a complex set of social rules; an emphasis on self...self-expression, self-actualization, self-consciousiness, self-involvement; and a stance of difference and defiance toward the straight world. I felt that I was standing at the center of the Queer universe...but I didn’t feel sure I belonged there.

Why not? First of all, most of the people in the room were ten to twenty younger than I. Second of all, a dominant theme of the evening was sex, which I don’t care about much these days. Thirdly, visiting all these big city folk from my little Maine town as I was, I was feeling rather provincial. And fourthly and most importantly, all my life I have lived and worked in the straight world. That hasn’t changed post gender-revelation; and by long habit and circumstance, if nothing else, that’s still where I feel at home. I am conducting my search for love in the world generally, not just within the Queer world. There’s at least a chance that I will end up partnered with a straight man. And, if I get facial feminization surgery, I will be able if I choose to pass almost all the time as a straight woman.

It seems I get to choose which world to live in. Is that an exclusive either/or choice? Can I change it depending on circumstance? Am I actually demonstrating that I am Queer by agonizing about whether I am or not? Who the hell am I really? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions.

Outside agitator

Recently my friend Kennedy approached the SMCC Student Senate with a request that the college discrimination policy be amended to include gender identity and expression. The Senate enthusiastically endorsed this idea and sent it on up the chain of governance. It turns out that discrimination policy is set at the system level (there are seven community colleges in Maine), so the request made its way to the desk of the Maine Community College System’s General Counsel, Derek Langhauser; and at the SMCC Student Senate meeting this past Wednesday Diane Vickrey, SMCC Dean of Students and Planning and the college’s Affirmative Action Officer, brought Mr. Langhauser’s decision back to the Senate.

I was at this meeting, because Kennedy was down in Florida supporting Branden through top surgery (B is doing well post-op...yay!), and had sent out an e-mail asking if anyone else could  go and represent the transgender point of view. Jamie went with me, and some other trans-folk whom I didn’t know were there too, at least one of whom was an SMCC student. Senate President Danielle Swartz welcomed us politely.

The policy will not be changed, Dean Vickrey said, because legal protection against discrimination based on gender identity or expression is covered under protections on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, or implied by the existing policy.  She said that the system doesn't want the list to include sub-categories of categories already on the list; that it is supposed to be "a succinct summary of the categories of protection." She said if there was an incident of discrimination on the basis of gender, the college would still protect the person being discriminated against, because all groups are explicitly or implicitly protected by law. She also said it is not possible to change the policy at this time because it is the General Counsel who would have to move the change forward.

As she spoke I began to feel riled. Her tone struck me as condescending, and I got the feeling from the hunkered-down silence around the table that many in the room felt intimidated by her. So I started asking questions: Who did Mr. Langhauser work for? Was he hired or appointed? (The system Board of Trustees, hired.) What was the correct spelling of his name? Perhaps my voice shook a bit; I was feeling a personal outrage still fairly new to my experience, having lived most of my life as a non-religious able-bodied straight white male...but I stayed courteous, and so did she. Fair to say, though, her face became more unfriendly each time I asked another question.

When she was done I took the floor long enough to make sure that a clear statement was made about gender being a distinct category of its own, separate from sex and sexual orientation, and deserving of separate protection (eliciting nods around the table); President Swartz also read a portion of a statement Kennedy had written which restated and supported these points.

A student asked what the Senate could do instead of pursuing a change in the discrimination policy, and Dean Vickrey said they could craft a campus-based diversity statement affirming the rights of all groups. She started listing all the positive effects this statement could have, and her tone struck me as even more condescending than before. I felt that she was telling the Senate to shut up and behave; that she was offering them, instead of a chance to make real change, a kind of pretend democracy to play at. I interrupted her.  “But not legal protection,” I said, and hunkered heads nodded around the room. Someone murmured, “Yeah, that’s what I...” She glowered at me. No, not legal protection, she admitted.

As the meeting concluded Dean Vickrey offered to invite Mr. Langhauser to an upcoming meeting so he could address the Senate's concerns directly. She also asked about the Senate's policy on open meetings - I gather she hadn't expected guests ;-). She was told that meetings are open unless the senate goes into executive session.

So, assuming Mr. Langhauser agrees to come, there will be an opportunity to speak directly to the man, and maybe educate him a little (respectfully) about gender being a separate issue which really matters to people. Kennedy has started something good. The fact that the change needs to be made at the system level if it is going to be made at all renders this fight that much more important.

I have to say, the whole experience gave me a rush...challenging the complacent Dean; claiming the right to speak my mind and seeing that I was speaking for others in the room; standing up for myself and my trans-siblings. If I can I’ll be at that next meeting...I want to do it again. :-)