GenderBendy

On being called "it"

A few weeks ago, at a posh chess club in downtown San Francisco (I look for the local club when I travel), someone called me "it." I had stopped in during their afternoon open access time and was playing a series of casual games with a pleasant young man named Sammy. The first two games had gone to me and I was doing well in the third, when the guy who was playing at the next board glanced over at our position and said, "Oh, is it winning again?"

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Two or three fragmentary ideas for responses flitted through my mind, but all I did was say "she" under my breath, too quietly to hear. Then I sat there numbly hurting and wondering what to do. Should I walk out? Confront him? Lodge a complaint? Burst into tears? What?

Then I remembered something I had heard a few weeks before on the program Democracy Now!. Host Amy Goodman was interviewing a woman who had done something to rile her local right-wingers, and as a result she was receiving a lot of abuse - e-mails, phone calls, even death threats. At the end of the interview Amy asked the woman, "Do you have anything you want to say to your adversaries?" and she answered calmly, "I wish them well."

I admired that response. So what I did at the chess club was, I waited until it-man had just finished a game, and then I held out my hand to him and said, "Hi, I'm Lisa." What else could he do? He shook my hand and said his name. Then I went back to playing chess with Sammy, and that was that.

Another time I might confront, might express my hurt and anger, might try to educate. In the meantime I am glad that I have found a way that seems to work, at least for now, to hold myself together when subjected to random unexpected nastiness.

My word-geek brain has come up with the following:

Letter-Ladder Poem for a Trans Woman

When you are  T

They will call you  IT

And you will be  HIT

With all sorts of other  SHIT

But though it hurts when a person  IS HIT

You don't have to accept the hate unless you  WISH IT

So, fuck 'em, and honey, whatever you've got to swish,  SWISH IT!

Sistah, get up here!

Last Thursday, May 30th, was a momentous down-and-up day for me. I was in San Francisco at the annual conference put on by the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. In the morning I learned that I had not gotten a station manager job for which I had been a finalist. The rejection stung, because I thought I was particularly well suited for the job, and had given the candidacy my all. I didn’t have much time to brood about it, though, because in the evening I went to a Moth Story Slam on the theme of neighborhoods, told the story of coming out to my neighbors, and won the slam.

Another part of my California trip was getting together with Larry, whom I hadn’t seen since college. He’s a professional jazz pianist, and when I timorously asked him if he would let me try singing with him he said yes, and then after the first song he said, “let’s do another.” And another, and another, and at the end he didn’t say I was the next Carmen McRae, but he didn’t say I sucked either. He said I hadn’t done too badly for the first time. As horribly self-conscious and unsure about my voice as I have been since transitioning, the implication that he thought there could be a next time made me feel wonderful. Thanks Larry, you’re such a sweetheart. :-)

So in the same few days I received a couple of powerful affirmations of my voice (variously defined), and a couple of de-affirmations of my hireability as a community radio station manager - the natural next step for me if I'm going to stay in the biz. (Besides the job I didn’t get, there was also a conversation with the outgoing holder of another juicy position in which she gently discouraged me from applying.) As a result of these developments, after nearly three decades working in non-commercial radio I find myself wondering if there is still a career arc for me in that world any more.

I was naive about prejudice before I transitioned. I thought it was always clear-cut and obvious. It’s not. It’s insidious and veiled. In this case I can all too easily imagine even such dedicated liberals as the folks who were considering my application reassuring themselves that they had no problem with my transness themselves, but still fretting about how, for example, potential funders might be reluctant to give money to a station I was running because a trans woman was the one asking, and so finding some plausible reason not to hire me.

Of course I’ll never know for sure if such prejudice by proxy was in play. Maybe it was plain straight-ahead prejudice. Maybe on the other hand I just wasn't good enough for the job. Maybe it doesn't matter. Here's what I know: if after a lifetime of work in my chosen field it turns out that I can’t move ahead, maybe it’s time to go into another field. Suddenly it seems more important to finish the novel I wrote the draft of last November during NaNoWriMo. Likewise to get back into the comedy work; likewise to find some place local to do some more singing; likewise to really engage with the idea of putting together a one-woman show.

High risk ventures? Yep. Long odds of success? Uh-huh. Buffeted by fluctuating confidence, scared of failure? You bet. Might still have to just go for it, though. What the hell else am I going to do? Money worries press ever harder, other avenues seem closed, and there are only so many hours in a day, so much energy left in the body. Life surely does seem to want to boot me out into the spotlight.

One more email to the Plain Dealer about Cemia Dove

Dear Ted [Diadiun, Cleveland Plain Dealer Reader Representative],

One more thought with regard to the PD's coverage of Cemia Dove. At least one other news service is getting right:

Connor Kiesel's report

I refer to the short printed article, not the accompanying video.

OK, I've said my piece, and will pester you no further. I hope I've helped you see trans people not as freaks, jokes, crazies, or villains, but as people simply trying to live authentic lives after having been dealt a tough genetic hand at birth. It's hard having a body out of synch with who you know yourself to be, even before you encounter the world's prejudice, ignorance, and fear.

Regards,

~Lisa~

The Plain Dealer just can't get it right about Cemia Dove

I have been following the The Cleveland Plain Dealer's coverage of the murder of trans girl Cemia Dove with increasing dismay. The transadvocate has a good in-depth analysis of the original coverage here. A PD article yesterday, reporting an arrest in the case, which continues to mis-gender Ms. Dove and deny her any name but her birth name is here (update - as of 4p ET on 5/5/13, this article has apparently been taken off the PD website). And a column today by PD reader representative Ted Diadiun is here.

Here is the e-mail I have just sent to Mr. Diadiun:

Dear Mr. Diadiun,

I have just read both Mark Holan's 5/4 article on an arrest in the Cemia Dove case and your column today about the PD's coverage of Ms. Dove's murder. I am sorry that some of the response the paper got to its coverage was vitriolic - there's never any call for that. On the other hand, I feel compelled to suggest, in a most respectful way, that everyone at the PD involved in this coverage still just doesn't get it. 

I am once again appalled, as I was when I saw the original and edited versions of the articles about the discovery of Ms. Dove's body, that the paper continues to use only her male birth name. True, it is probably still her legal name - I doubt she had enough privilege or support in her life to change it - but it only took me a couple of minutes of internet searching, based on the information in the first versions of the story in your paper, to find a couple of other names she clearly preferred. Even if you felt compelled to mention her birth name, you could have mentioned her female name(s) too - in the great majority of the article, ideally.

I am also deeply saddened that you re-used the same awful photos from the original coverage. Again, a few minutes on the internet would have led your reporter to Ms. Dove's facebook presence or to her youtube channel, where you would have found plenty of kinder pictures. The pictures you persist in using rob her of her dignity, or worse - they make her a laughingstock.

And, although you even say in your column how the pronoun issue could be resolved in future by setting up the use of "she" with an explanatory note, you don't do this yourself. Avoiding pronouns altogether, as you do in your column, ducks the issue and is not an adequate response to the problems in your coverage.

The simple truth of the transgender experience is that people are the gender they say they are, period. Until your coverage, and your coverage of your coverage, of the murder of Cemia Dove acknowledges the truth that she was a female person, you continue to tacitly condone and perpetuate the prejudice which led to this horrific crime against a disenfranchised and helpless girl.

Please, dig deeper. Do some more research. Question your prejudices. Try harder to understand. Because, so far, up to and including your column, The PD's coverage of this tragic story is truly shameful. 

Respectfully,

~Lisa~

p.s., send the same evening:

Hello again. Upon reflection, and having calmed down a bit, I'd like to tone down a few words and phrases in my last few paragraphs:

Until your coverage, and your coverage of your coverage, of the murder of Cemia Dove acknowledges the truth that she was a female person, you continue to tacitly condone and perpetuate the same sorts of prejudice which no doubt contributed to this horrific crime.

Please, dig deeper. Do some more research. Question your assumptions. Try harder to understand. I have already asked the same of your reporter and editors. Ms. Dove was evidently murdered simply for trying to be who she was. The least you can do in your coverage is afford her some of the basic dignity and respect in death that she was denied in life. 

~L~

 

Leveraging disconcerting otherness

If I don't hear back from this one job I really thought I was qualified for by the end of today, I'm going to have to assume I didn't even make it to the phone interview stage. I guess I should have refrained from mentioning my transness on my resume. Of course they'll have some other good reason if/when they turn me down, and I'll never know if it's prejudice or not. Ha. Welcome to life as the disconcerting other.

The femme ache is back. Yesterday I went on an unpremeditated shopping spree for makeup, and after a winter of drab sameness got dolled up for an evening of eight ball at Mulligan's. I've gotten dolled up again this morning, and just held an impromptu photo shoot at my desk to check my look. I'm going for cute, and, I don't know, maybe approaching it sometimes, but what I seem naturally to be able to nail is goofy. Of the five pics below the fourth felt best taking it, and made me squirm least looking at them after. It made me laugh instead.

So, since nobody seems to be want to hire me, I'm back to thinking about comedy as the next thing into which to pour my energy. I'm planning to perform twice in the next few days: Sunday at the open mic at Mama's CrowBar and Monday at Taffy's outrageousness-during-the-commercials-in-RuPaul show at Styxx. Time to tap the deep untapped wells of goofiness which have always been here inside me. Fate commands it!

 

Job hunting, and a night on the town

I haven’t posted much since the surgery because I have a willful literal part of my brain which tries to make something so because something else is so, as in, I’ve had the surgery, so I'm not trans any more - I’m just another ordinary woman now, dammit. These kinds of simplistic formulations can help with motivation and focus, but they don’t turn out to be exactly true, which leads to stress. The trans thing just keeps coming up again.

For example, I’m job hunting. I like my current job, but after eleven years I itch for a new challenge. Also, as a practical matter, I need to start making a little more money if I can. So the question is, do I mention that I am trans in my applications?

It shouldn’t matter, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. There is definitely a lot of transphobia in the world, and in my experience even many enlightened liberal folks still have some work to do to get comfortable with a trans person. On the other hand, bringing the trans thing up early might actually make me a more attractive candidate for some positions. A trans woman might trump a cis woman in some people’s diversity tallies.

So far I have mentioned it (with a brief factual note at the head of my resume - experience before 2011 under the name...), because I did a lot of the stuff on my resume under my old male name, and I figure they might go looking online for, say, those articles I wrote back in the early 00’s. I might stop mentioning it though, if none of my current apps pan out, so they can think about me first, at least for a little while, as just as a woman who’s interested in their job.

It feels icky, having to calculate the when-to-tell issue, but I can't avoid it.

Then there’s dating, which so far just isn’t happening. I got feeling so antsy and fun-starved this week that I messaged Taffy, my dear outrageous drag queen friend, and arranged to share a night on the town. I wanted to get drunk, play pool, dance ecstatically, flirt, and maybe even kiss someone.

Which all happened except I didn’t kiss anyone, though someone did kiss me. I got drunk and played pool at Blackstones, and flirted with a guy at the table. In our short conversation just before Taffy and I left I saw and took an opening to include in a list of pert questions “So do you like guys?” which he answered with a careful “For the most part.” He was handsome, nearly as tall as me, and seemed quiet and kind. Hm, maybe we’ll bump into each other again.

On to Styxx, to dance ecstatically with a bunch of sweat-sheened twentysomethings. At some point I opened my eyes and a cute femme woman was dancing with me. We smiled at each other, and I enjoyed watching her dance - yep, I still like girl-bodies, especially the round softnesses. After a couple minutes she shouted something I couldn’t hear, pecked me on the cheek, and disappeared into the crowd. Later I found her on the floor again and we exchanged names. She excused herself with “I’m going to go get a drink, but I’ll find you later,” and I didn’t see her again, though I did look. Gentle brush-off? Doesn’t matter...she kissed me! :-) Hm, maybe we’ll bump into each other again.

The part I didn’t plan for was resting by the subwoofers with Taffy, our whole bodies vibrating to the pounding of the beat, and suddenly bursting into tears. Taffy held me while I cried and didn’t ask why. Such a good friend.

It’s thrilling out here in the light, and slowly I am becoming more accustomed to the feeling of constant emotional peril. The old sense of myself as a monster unfit to live among humans still intrudes from time to time, but I’m learning to weather those episodes. I guess I’m getting better at really being alive. Yay me. :-)

Melanie, and femme resurgent

Blogging in the wee hours again. Why fight it? The ongoing post-operative discomforts aside, I'm feeling energized. It is, however, a little late to get clever with structure - I am already shifting on my knees even know, trying to ease the kink in my back - so straight chronological reportage and a hastily tweaked first draft is what you get, Bub.

I posted (relatively) early Friday evening but then still couldn't sleep, and ended up back downstairs again at about 3am Saturday morning (about 24 hours ago). The only other person up was Melanie, the night nurse. She was lying on one of the couches in the living room wrapped in a blanket, trying to catch a nap, but she sat up and talked with me, and we ended up having an intense hour-long conversation (both of us switching back and forth between French and English, which was cool.)

I learned that Melanie is in her thirties, has a teenage son and a 16-month-old daughter named for two different strong women in her family's history, that she just bought a house where she now lives with her boyfriend, and that in addition to working here at Asclépiade she is also back in school for further studies in nursing. If I had seen her once and you asked me to describe her ethnicity, I would have said she was black, but in fact she has a white Canadian mother and a black Haitian father, and thinks of herself (she says) as white. She believes she got the job here because she talked in her interview about the feeling she knows from her heritage and upbringing of being stuck between two worlds.

Melanie and I discussed the similaries of the false binaries and mixed-up and complicated in-betweens of race and gender in North American culture. We talked about different peoples' definitions of happiness and success. She recited a poem for me in French; I did my voice-work practice poem, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" for her in English. I have met and connected with a lot of nice people here, but I think of Melanie as a new friend. Interesting that the one person I bond most closely with is not trans.

I was back in bed about 4:30a and slept until breakast, and the rest of Saturday was boring. Kept myself busy with French reading, walking, a DVD. Achieved the very important first bowel movement after surgery just in time to avert nursing intervention - I was starting to hear my name mentioned behind closed doors. A period of intestinal discomfort has followed; overdid it with the prune juice which is available at every meal...and that's enough mundane detail.

I went to bed early this past evening in hopes of actually sleeping when it was dark, but it was not to be; so up again to stand outside for a bit in the soft warm air of a Montréal summer night - and that's when the emotional dam burst. I started sobbing. Back inside, and thank goodness for Melanie, there with tissues and a long embrace. She also fetched me my ultimate comfort food of raisin cereal with soy milk, which I have been missing. Back to bed again for more crying. Not new reasons, just the real ones from all along, showing new facets at this phase of my transition. I really really really really really don't have to be a man any more. And I finally get to be loved for who I really am. 

When I was talking with Melanie over comfort-cereal we compared emotional landscapes. I taught her the English word "rollercoaster." "I don't cry very often," she said, "but when I do..." she groped for a phrase in English. "C'est comme un orage," I said - It's like a storm. She nodded. And I thought again of Eve Ensler's marvelous monologue about what it is to be a girl.

I wrote two posts ago about the possibility of turning back toward masculinity now that I am safely on this side of the surgery, and that might still happen, but right now I feel the resurgence of my femme truth. I am an emotional creature, and this is happening. It's really happening. I get to live.

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.