You Should Go: “In the Turn” at Seattle’s Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

This Saturday in Seattle is the world premiere of In the Turn, a documentary about a 10-year-old transgender girl who finds acceptance and empowerment in the company of a queer roller derby collective. The full length documentary is directed by Erica Tremblay, (Tiny Red Universe, Heartland) a skater with the Boston Derby Dames. The Vagine Regime is an “international community of proud queer roller derby folk and radtastic allies” fostering a loving and welcoming community for LGBTQ players. In the Turn focuses on their stories while also encapsulating the excitement of the sport and the fervor of their adoring fans.

The film is playing at the AMC Theater at 7:15pm on October 18th as part of the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Tremblay and other guests will be in attendance and there’s a free reception at Gordon Biersch from 9pm-11pm. Get your tickets now and check out the other screenings on their website!

Saturday, October 18, 2014. 7:15 pm
AMC Pacific Place
600 Pine Street, Seattle, WA 98101

7 Vital Stats About Our LGBT Elders

images via shutterstock.com

Out and Visible: The Experiences and Attitudes of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Older Adults, Ages 45-75 is a new study by Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE), which draws attention to the everyday realities and struggles of the older LGBT community.

We talk a lot about how our intersecting identities affect our lives and the way we interact with the world, and when we talk about age, usually it is in the context of young LGBT people. Rarely do we hear about age as older generations experience it. “Out and Visible” paints a clearer picture of the lives of LGBT older people, and demonstrates how the issues we often talk about in a general LGBT context affect the oldest members of our community. Kira Garcia at SAGE spoke to the importance of the report:

“This is a report that’s really important because it begins to fill in gaps in some of the missing data around the lives and experiences of LGBT people as they age. It helps to quantify some of the things that we’ve already known for a long time about LGBT aging, which is that we do age a little bit differently than our non-LGBT counterparts. We are much more likely to live alone, we are much less likely to have children. LGBT people are also more likely to struggle financially and be concerned about how they are going to support themselves in retirement. So it’s really exciting to have some of that data in front of us to help us tell that story with real facts and figures to attach to some of the anecdotal information we’ve had.”

The report focused on the 45-75 population, which SAGE Senior Director of Public Policy and Communications Robert Espinoza said gives insight on, “the attitudes and experiences of LGBT older people through various stages of older adulthood — as early as age 45, when planning for the future is essential and concerns about aging begin appearing for many people, and as old as age 75, when many people are living their lives as elders.”

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

1. There are at least 3 million LGBT People Over 55 in The US, and that number will double in 20 years

The over-55 population in general is growing because the Baby Boomers are getting older, and as we go through generations, more and more people are coming out at later ages, or reaching retirement age having been out for much or most of their lives. This means that resources for LGBT older people are going to be in higher demand than ever before, and that healthcare and resource providers for older people will be interacting more and more with LGBT populations. In order for LGBT people to be able to age with dignity, we are going to need more resources, and those resources must be adequately prepared to serve the unique needs of our communities.

2. 51% of Older LGBT People Are Very or Extremely Concerned About Their Financial Futures

Did you read about the new report from LGBT MAP and the Center for American Progress about economic struggles faced by LGBT families? It showed us how legal discrimination and exclusion of LGBT people from financial benefits afforded to non-LGBT people lead to higher rates of poverty and less financial stability in the LGBT community. 29% of LGBT families were “thriving financially,” as opposed to 39% of non-LGBT families. The report showed that LGBT families typically have less savings to absorb a financial hit, and even if they do make it to retirement without a financial crisis, the finances just don’t add up:

In many ways, “Out and Visible” picks up where that report leaves off, outlining all the ways in which financial instability predictably follows LGBT people into their later years. 51% of LGBT older people reported feeling very or extremely concerned about “having enough money to live on,” comparing to 36% of non-LGBT people. This statistic reflects a world where 42% of LGBT older people anticipate that they will outlive the money they have saved for retirement (as opposed to 25% of non-LGBT people), and where most older people are concerned about cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. To help secure their financial future, many LGBT older people anticipate working “well beyond” retirement age in order to survive, though even this avenue is a worse bet for LGBT older people than their non-LGBT counterparts, because of the lack of legal protections against employment discrimination.

3. 2/3 of Older Trans People Worry About Being Denied or Having Limited Access to Medical Treatment

LGBT older people face significant health disparities, which the report notes, “have been linked to a lifetime of stigma, discrimination, violence and victimization; higher poverty rates; a lack of access to LGBT-competent providers; and low rates of health insurance coverage.”

The lack of LGBT-competent providers keep many older LGBT people from disclosing their sexual orientations and gender identities to their primary care providers and other healthcare professionals, for fear that they would face judgement or receive inferior care.

These barriers are particularly significant for transgender older people. 44% of transgender older people worry that their relationships with healthcare providers would be negatively affected if their gender identities were known, as opposed to 20% of LGB older people, and two thirds of transgender older people worry about being denied or having limited access to medical treatment as they age. SAGE also noted that older Hispanic LGBT people are more concerned than their African American and white counterparts about receiving poorer quality care if they disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity.

4. 24% of LGBT Older People of Color Experience Housing Discrimination

Housing is an issue for LGBT people that is almost exclusively discussed in relation to LGBT homeless youth. However, you will probably not be surprised when I remind you that there is not a queer housing fairy that brings the keys to a stable housing situation to every young LGBT person on their 18th birthday. For many LGBT people, obtaining safe and adequate housing is a struggle throughout their adult lives, and this is no different for older LGBT people who are already struggling more with financial instability than their non-LGBT counterparts. Obtaining housing is a challenge because of economic issues and discrimination: 25% of older transgender people and 13% of older LGB people reported having faced discrimination while searching for housing on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation. Older LGBT people of color also reported more frequent discrimination on the basis of race than non-LGBT people of color — 24% versus 18%.

While it is common for affordable housing facilities to exist for older people, many older LGBT people don’t utilize them for fear of discrimination. In recent years, organizations in various cities like Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Chicago have established several affordable housing facilities specifically for older LGBT people, but that’s hardly enough to meet the demand — 78% of survey respondents said they were at least somewhat interested in LGBT-friendly affordable housing options.

5. 34% of Older LGBT People Live Alone and 32% Fear Growing Old Alone

Older LGBT people often don’t have traditional family networks to support them, and mainstream support for elders is typically designed to work with traditional family structures, assuming that kinship networks will be made up of spouses, children and grandchildren. This creates situations in which many LGBT older people have limited support systems as they age. Garcia noted,

“34% of LGBT older people in the survey live alone. And that’s compared to 21% of non-LGBT older people. That’s a huge proportion of our population. That has really big implications for older people as they age. It can lead to a phenomenon called “social isolation,” which is exactly what it sounds like, and that in turn can lead to some really bigger challenges: health challenges, depression. It can mean that it’s harder for people to get the healthcare they need, or to get out of the house at all.”

Living alone is only one of many barriers LGBT older people face to finding community in their later years. Many LGBT older people who do have family networks are isolated from them or worry about burdening them, potentially preventing them from seeking support: 48% of transgender older people and 32% of LGB older people reported worrying about being a burden on their loved one. Others reported that they “struggle to find community in LGBT spaces, where youthfulness is revered and older people are less embraced.” Many older people also seek community through volunteering, part-time work, travel and leisure activities. However, many older LGBT people (1/3 of transgender people and 27% of LGB people) report feeling that work or volunteer activities would close to them if people knew about their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Some respondents noted faith communities as places where they found support. 26% of African American respondents and 23% of transgender respondents said people from their churches or faith were part of their support network.

6. 21% of Older LGBT People are Concerned About Losing Physical Attractiveness

Nearly twice as many older LGBT people than non-LGBT older people are concerned about losing physical attractiveness as they age. While this may seem an odd metric to note, it gives important insight into older LGBT people’s outlook and quality of life, reflecting profound concerns about physical decline, aging and remaining independent. LGBT older people of color reported feeling more concerned about maintaining physical attractiveness than their white counterparts: 34% of Hispanic respondents and 22% of African American respondents reported concern, as opposed to 18% of white respondents.

7. Twice As Many LGBT Older People See Themselves As Mentors Than Non-LGBT Older People

The fact that so many of our communities’ older people see themselves as mentors has, according to the study, “profound implications for civic organizations and businesses seeking to bolster their engagement, volunteerism and activism.” It also has profound implications just for younger LGBT people. What this means is that if you are a young LGBT person moved by these numbers, and you want to change the outlook for older LGBT people, they are ready for you. Go to your local LGBT center and ask an older person what they’re reading. Invite the older neighbor you spotted at pride to come to your Autostraddle potluck. Meet your great aunt’s gay friend and talk with them about gender. Open your LGBT center events at your university to staff and faculty. If there’s housing or a center for LGBT older people in your community, make sure you flyer there for your queer events. Try to make your organization one where youthfulness and agedness are embraced.

Of course, changing the situation for older LGBT people doesn’t all fall on the young LGBTs, or the old LGBTs, or the LGBTs in-between. Community, government and health organizations that serve older people need to get better at providing services that LGBT adults can access. For example, SAGE recommends healthcare providers integrate questions about sexual orientation and gender identity into their intake procedures to help people feel less stigmatized when they disclose. We also need more legal protections across the board to prevent employment and housing discrimination, which would protect LGBT people later in life, and would also contribute to economic security in the earlier years of life, better-situating LGBT people to be financially prepared for retirement.

To find out more about the report, resources for older LGBT people or how you can get involved with supporting older LGBT people, visit SAGE’s website.

You Need Help: Dressing Like a Grown Ass Trans Woman

Welcome to You Need Help! Where you’ve got a problem and yo, we solve it. Or we at least try.

Q:  So, the deal is, I’m a just-beginning-transition, lesbian-identified trans woman. And it took me a while to get there — I’m early-50s. So, what am I supposed to wear? I’ve got a pretty good person doing my hair for me, and I’m confident that they’ll get me where I belong hair-wise. But I’m kind of struggling with where to go in terms of clothing. I’m not particularly femme in presentation or inclination, but the lesbian-hipster aesthetic is not entirely age-appropriate.

Frustratingly, I’ve been sporting flannel (and other plaid) shirts, jeans, and deck shoes as a dude for years. Do I just keep that going? Or what?

Mey: First of all: Congratulations! Starting to transition, is in my opinion, the hardest part, so you’ve already done something that you should be super proud of! You’re awesome and you should feel awesome.

This is one of the top results for “Lesbian Fashion,” I’m not sure if this clears things up or just makes them more confusing. via shutterstock

Second first of all: My inclination is to say just wear whatever clothes feel comfortable. There’s no right or wrong way to dress as a trans woman. Basically, you could just keep wearing the same type of clothes you previously wore, but buy them from the women’s department instead of the men’s. You could definitely keep wearing your flannels, your plaids and your jeans and you would still be dressing as a woman. But I also know that that might not be the exact kind of help you were looking for here. So I’m also going to give some fashion advice.

A good first step is to figure out what kind of look you’re going for. Do you want to be a soccer mom? Businesswoman? Cool aunt? Tough lesbian chick? Outdoorsy type? Once you’ve figured that out, this will all get a lot easier. Maybe you can find some age-similar actresses, politicians, musicians or other famous people that you’d like to emulate. Like maybe Lea DeLaria, Wanda Sykes, Tig Notaro or Cecilia Chung.

Zackary Drucker rocking those layers like the pro she is. via zackarydrucker.com

Now for some specific advice. I think you can pretty much do no wrong when it comes to blazers. They’re not too dressy, not necessarily femme – but not necessarily butch either – and they immediately make any outfit look better and more grown up or professional. I would just avoid blazers that have shoulder pads. In fact, most layering techniques are pretty good for the not-particularly-femme-in-presentation-or-inclination trans woman looking for some good sartorial choices. Apart from blazers, I’d suggest getting some nice cardigans and either a jean jacket or leather jacket (or both!).

Have you given any thought into getting a nice suit or two (or three)? A good suit looks really dang good, it’s age-appropriate for whatever age you are and it’s versatile. Autostraddle has published quite a few guides to buying a great suit. And if you have the budget, you can get it tailored to fit your body specifically, which is always great. Or, for a cheaper option, you can check out Lane Bryant.

A great pair of boots is also a great way to go. It’s easy to find them in all sorts of sizes, they’re often pretty androgynous and they can help mark you as a lesbian. Plus they’re just dang practical. I also think that oxfords are a great looking pair of shoes that don’t have to seem super femme.

Reina Gossett (second from right) looking amazing in a denim button up. via srlp.org

There are plenty of not-too-femme fabrics and patterns that you could look for when looking for tops that would still definitely read as stylish and sophisticated, but hopefully wouldn’t make you feel like you were overdressing or femming it up just because that’s often what’s expected of a trans woman. You could go for denim or cotton button up shirts, houndstooth or gingham – I’m a huge fan of gingham – or flannel. I mean, if you already wear flannel, why not continue? There are definitely plenty of ways to make flannel age-appropriate. Modcloth sells a lot of clothes that fit into these categories and look really great. I already mentioned layering, and here again, using flannel as one of your layers, perhaps under a blazer, leather jacket or down vest is a great look. Also, I mean, Autostraddle does have some really awesome t-shirts and hoodies that we sell.

Ultimately, though, you’ve got to just wear what feels best. This is your time to be who you’ve always wanted to be. I mean, what’s the point in transitioning if you still can’t express yourself the way you want to? So really, it just comes down to this: You do You.

Mari: Oh, the style question. I think the “what I am supposed to wear?” problem is something that’s a pretty universal experience for trans-women, regardless of the age they transition. Mey has already hit basically ALL the broad points I wanted to make, so I’m just going to reiterate the most important one: your clothing choices are about what makes YOU comfortable. The truly magical part of transition being able to let go of the expectations people have been forcing on you for years and just be yourself!

Jennifer Finney Boylan via jenniferboylan.net

I really think looking for people with a style you’d like to emulate is a good first start. I happen to think Rachel Maddow is a particularly dapper masculine-of-center woman, but you have to find what works for you. You might be more comfortable looking at some of the more prominent trans women like Christina Kahrl and Jennifer Finney Boylan, who are both generally quite well dressed. Whoever you decide to look at, take note of both their clothing (cut, color, length, material, etc), and their accessories (jewelry, handbags, belts, scarves, etc), as those all go into giving you a polished look. I’d also strongly advise finding a trusted friend and making time to go shopping, even if it’s just window-shopping. Try on lots of options in lots of different styles and find the colors, fabrics, and styles that you feel fantastic in. Being willing to try on something a little different has lead to so many accidental finds that turned out to be beloved clothing items for me.

Here are a few suggestions to get your started, based on some of things I happen to think look good and that tend to be pretty timelessly stylish:

Tops: A staple of queer women of almost any age is the button up. They’re versatile as hell, since they can be dressed with slacks and/or a jacket, or dressed down with jeans or khakis. If you’re going for the sharp-dressed look, make sure they’re well-ironed. You can also wear it over a tank-top or cami to get a different look. Polo shirts are a more casual option if you’re shooting for a preppy kind of look. For even more casual, don’t underestimate the versatility of a soft t-shirt in a flattering color. Flannel, of course, is always an option, but consider leaving it untucked and mostly unbuttoned, and pairing with a color-coordinating tank- top underneath.

Janet Mock looking great in a t-shirt and blazer. Plus, bell hooks!

Bottoms: There are a lot of options here, depending on what you tend to like. Well-fitted, taylored slacks in black and grey are very useful basics for business, dressier occasions, or just because they’re your thing. Khakis are also a versatile options. When it comes to jeans, skip the skinnies (IMO), and go for a fitted boot-cut. They’re more universally flattering and stylish on women of all ages. A few years back, Autostraddle published a pretty awesome guide to jeans.

Shoes: I’m generally reticent to promote specific brands, because I abhor label-politics, but I’m just going to go ahead and suggest you get a pair or two of Doc Martens. Yes yes, I know… it’s a stereotype for queer women, but adding boots are a great option for putting some edge on just about any outfit. What’s not awesome about boots with a dress? In addition to boots, they also make fairly stylish shoes in lots of interesting styles that range from rather feminine to totally butch. Look at maybe a pair of 8-hole boots or oxfords, or a pair of their sandals for summer. As a bonus, many of their shoes tend to run a little wide, which can make finding a comfortable of women’s shoes a lot easier when you’re cursed with wide feet. I also maintain that anyone of any age can rock Chuck Taylors.

Imogen Binnie looks great in a scarf and so will you!

Accessories: It’s pretty much required by law that you own a piece of Pride jewelry. Well, no, not really, but it can make a really clear statement about sexual orientation. Adding a scarf can really change the look of an outfit, and has the added bonus of neck-warmth! Hansen recently wrote an awesome piece on jewelry that you might find helpful. A bold wristwatch is also a great option for completing your look.

Again, I want to stress these this is JUST a jumping off point of some things to consider. Ultimately, it’s you who has to wear the clothes, so find what makes you feel happy/comfortable/ sexy/cute/confident and rock it. Don’t let anyone shame you for your style, or force their particular notions of masculinity/femininity or what a trans woman or lesbian should look like. It’s a big queer world out there, so YOU DO YOU!

Send your questions to youneedhelp [at] autostraddle [dot] com or submit a question via the ASK link on autostraddle.tumblr.com. Please keep your questions to around, at most, 100 words. Due to the high volume of questions and feelings, not every question or feeling will be answered or published on Autostraddle. We hope you know that we love you regardless.

No Excuses: California Bans Gay and Trans Panic Defenses for Anti-LGBT Violence

feature image via shutterstock

It’s been a banner summer for progressive action in California. Just a few weeks ago, California became the first state in the US to push their state universities to adopt more rigorous standards for what constitutes sexual consent. Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed the “Respect After Death” law that will help ensure trans people are able to have their gender accurately reflected on their death certificate. Yesterday marked another important historic first for the state when Brown he signed AB2051, a bill banning the “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses for assaulting or murdering members of the LGBTQ community.

The gay and trans panic concepts seem to come up very frequently when a hate crime is committed against a queer person, and it’s been at least partially employed in some of the most heinous murders of LGBTQ people in the last 20 years. When Gwen Araujo, an 18-year-old trans woman and the inspiration for the International Transgender Day of Rememberance, was brutally beaten to death in 2002 by four men who discovered she was trans, their attorneys unsuccessfully argued for a conviction for manslaughter, citing overwhelming anger at what was then referred to as “sexual deception.” In 2008, when another 18-year-old-trans woman, Angie Zapata, was beaten to death, her murderer also claimed it was a “crime of passion” after discovering that Zapata was trans. Earlier this year, a man charged with the beating of two trans women in Atlanta similarly invoked the defense, and was only charged with a misdemeanor. Unfortunately, this list could go on and on with examples of attempted justification for anti-queer hate crimes. Even more unfortunately, the argument does occasionally work.

image via shutterstock

The bill was introduced by Democratic California Assemblywoman Susan Bonita. It easily cleared the Assembly by a vote of 50–10, and marked the completion of Equality California’s goal to obtain passage of 100 pieces of LGBT legislation. It represents a considerable strengthening of the 2006 legislation that added specific language about bias defenses to California jury instructions, a bill named for Araujo. That law was shown to be considerably lacking after the mistrial in the case of the murder of 15 year old Larry King. This legislation updates the California Penal Code’s definition of “sudden quarrel or heat of passion” to exclude sexual orientation and gender identity:

“For purposes of determining sudden quarrel or heat of passion pursuant to subdivision (a), the provocation was not objectively reasonable if it resulted from the discovery of, knowledge about, or potential disclosure of the victim’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation, including under circumstances in which the victim made an unwanted nonforcible romantic or sexual advance towards the defendant, or if the defendant and victim dated or had a romantic or sexual relationship.”

After the Assembly’s approval of AB2051, Equility California’s Executive Director John O’Connor stated:

“We’re glad that the Assembly Public Safety Committee agreed that this manufactured defense that plays upon homophobia and transphobia has no place in California’s justice system. The law should not treat victims of crime any differently because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and that includes eliminating anti-LGBT bias as a ‘reasonable’ basis to mitigate the punishment for violent crimes against them.”

Last year, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution calling on lawmakers across the country to ban these kinds of defenses. Following the adoption of that resolution, president of the National LGBT Bar Association D’Arcy Kemnitz, published an op-ed making an impassioned push for national wide adoptions of these standards, writing:

“If courts in the South and the Midwest refuse to let this “defense” take root, it would be a huge step forward in our movement’s work to win not just legal equality, but indeed, legal validity and respect for LGBT people. A lot has changed in our country over the past 15 years. But we haven’t changed nearly enough until we’ve said, as a nation, that every life is valuable and no one can be attacked, murdered, or demeaned in our country or our courts because of who they are.”

Unfortunately, anti-LGBT violence remains frighteningly common, and the situation is particularly dire for trans women of color. This summer has been one of the deadliest in years for trans women of color across the US, and the overall rates of anti-trans violence appear to be on the rise. While a lot more work needs to be done to stem this horrific rise in violence, laws like these will at least give some hope for justice for those who fall victim to hate crimes for little more than daring to be themselves.

Please Stop Saying That Trans Women Were “Born Boys”

feature image via Shutterstock

As an out-and-proud trans woman and activist, I find myself having a lot of the same conversations about being transgender over and over again. Some of them are pretty benign, like how I chose my name or whose writing was influential in my work. Some just come with the territory, like those about harassment, discrimination, and health care access.

A few of them have reached the level of being absolutely grating.

Perhaps the one I’m most eager to never have to have again (aside from MAYBE the conversation about the t-slur) is the one where I explain why it’s so bloody hurtful when people constantly talk about how I was “born a boy” or worse, “born a man.” Yes, it’s true that some trans women do see and frame their experience in this context, but the vast majority of us do not, and that includes me. GLAAD’s guide to reporting on transgender issues explicitly informs journalists not to use the terms  “biologically male,” “biologically female,” “genetically male,” “genetically female,” “born a man” and “born a woman.”

I wasn’t born a boy, and I’ve never been a boy, and it’s like a knife to my heart every single time I hear that phrase. And boy have I been hearing that phrase a lot! 

We’re allegedly entering an era of unprecedented fairness regarding media coverage of transgender people. This is true, sure, although things are “getting better” relative to how things were, and “how things were” for trans women in the media was “the absolute worst” until very recently. But it’s also true that despite this progress and no matter how many times trans people make this correction, the media just can’t manage to stop flogging this particular deceased equine.

Laverne Cox made it clear to CBS’s Gayle King that while she was assigned male at birth, she was not “born a boy.” Janet Mock gave Piers Morgan some scathing retorts after he said she “was a boy until age 18,” insisting that she “was not formerly a man.” Activist Cece McDonald made it clear to Rolling Stone that she was not born a boy, rather that she was “born a baby.” Writer/activist Parker Molloy and MMA fighter Fallon Fox co-wrote an excellent op-ed in June covering this very issue. Molloy and Fox write:

“This framing only sensationalizes the identities and experiences of trans individuals as nothing more than a hook to reel the audience into a world closely resembling that of a carnival freak show. This framing in itself highlights the physical changes undergone by trans people and ignores the fact that the people they’re referring to are genuine, lovable, normal individuals.”

 

Neither of these people were born a boy. via E! Online

Despite all these people making it absolutely clear that this is something no one should do, IT JUST KEEPS HAPPENING. When Scarlett Lenh, a young trans woman, was voted Homecoming Queen of her Colorado Springs high school, almost everybody screwed it up. The Christian Science Monitor referred to her as “a biological boy who identifies as a girl.” The Denver Post called her “biologically a guy.” The local CBS afflilate referred to her as “biologically a boy.” Oh, and to make matters worse, many of these outlets also used her male name, a completely irrelevant piece of information.

Huffington Post Canada recently referred to transgender model Geena Rocero as “born a boy.”

Just last week, People Magazine interviewed 14 year old Jazz Jennings, who co-wrote a book for transgender children, and mentioned that she was “born a boy.”

Earlier this year, a Grantland writer violently and tragically mishandled his story about a transgender woman who’d invented an innovative golf club on so many levels including, but absolutely not limited to, sentences like, “What began as a story about a brilliant woman with a new invention had turned into a tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself.” Apparently the significant backlash to that story still wasn’t enough to wake up the media.

As Mey and I recently discussed, the New York Magazine profile of transgender CEO Martine Rothblatt was full of the same unfortunate phrasing when they straight-up released a COVER STORY bearing the hook: “The Highest-Paid Female CEO in America Used To Be a Man.” That was as step better than The New York Post, I suppose, who straight up referred to Martine as “born a man” in their headline.

These are all examples from 2014 alone. So clearly, the message that it’s unacceptable to say that trans women “used to be men” or were “born boys” is simply not getting through. It’s not just the media that gets it wrong, obviously, I see the same thing happen on twitter and facebook regularly. It seems like the most common way to explain being a trans woman is “born a boy but identifies as a girl.” I’m constantly hearing references to “when you were a guy” when people talk about my pre-transition life. What I’m trying to get at is that this is a thing, and I really need it to not be a thing.

I want to make a few things perfectly clear. Trans women are women. Period. End of story. We’re not “women who used to be men.” We’re not “men who identify as women.” We’re not “males who identify as women.” We’re not “men who became women.” WE ARE WOMEN. Stop putting qualifiers on our womanhood. It’s offensive, hurtful and cruel to insinuate otherwise. Our past, present, and futures are ours to define and no one else’s. Even if we didn’t figure out that we were trans until well into our adult lives, it absolutely does not mean that we were ever boys or men. Many trans women feel that they’ve always been girls, or at the very least, that they’ve never been boys. You don’t have any right to tell me, or any other trans person, that they were ever a particular gender, just as I have no right to tell you what gender you are. A trans woman who was obligated to present as male for most of her young life is was no more “born a man” than a lesbian who was obligated to date men for most of her young life “used to be straight.”

Of course, there are people who do identify as having been a boy or a man before transition. As Mey and I discussed in our piece about Martine Rothblatt, those people ALSO have the right to define their own narrative, and it absolutely should be reported as they prefer. However, that makes it even MORE important to explain that, while this specific person identifies or describes themselves in that way, many trans people do not. As much as I’ve talked about trans people and the trans community on the whole, we’re a pretty individualistic bunch, each with our ways of discussing ourselves and our journeys. But, when you’ve got folks like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Fallon Fox, Parker Molloy, Cece McDonald, and now me saying “hey, this is something you have to stop using as a universal,” I feel like it’s time to pay attention.

Let’s talk a bit about why this “born a man/boy” language is dubious. Firstly, as other writers have pointed out, it’s just FACTUALLY inaccurate to say that ANYONE was born a man. No one springs forth from the womb a fully grown adult. Not even Sir Patrick Stewart (the manliest man there is, IMO) was BORN a man. He was born a baby, and grew into a totally awesome man because, well, that’s how human life works. To refer to a trans woman as “born a man” is to dehumanize her, because it’s literally impossible for any human to be a born a man. Using the phrase “born a man” over the much-preferable “assigned male at birth” forces people to juxtapose the image of a transgender woman with a prototypical man, which just serves to drive home the pervasive view that transgender women are vile freaks of sexual perversion.

The phrases “born a boy” or “born male,” while not quite as offensive, are still fraught with problems. First, defining who exactly is, or is not, a boy/girl or male/female is a much more complicated process than many people realize. That becomes especially true when add words like “biological” to that phrase. What is it to be be biologically a boy/male? Is it their genitals? That would leave some pretty serious open questions for anyone who is intersexed. Is it chromosomes? The existence of conditions like Swyer Syndrome and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (who are frequently cisgender women with XY chromosomes) kinda shoots that right in the foot. Just where is the biology in “biologically boy/male”? It seems doubtful that the writers using those phrases checked the gentials or chromosomes of their interview subjects, so it’s little more than conjecture, really. In the end, male and female are just boxes on a form checked by a doctor making a semi-educated guess. Girl/boy are labels to describe just two of the many possible gender identities, so to designate them for others is to deny them agency in their own identity.

That point about agency is a really important one. Something that most folks find to be a pretty important right is our right to define our own identity and the terms of the narrative of our own life. This is why people react so strongly when their characters come under attack; it an undermining their fundamental right define who they are as people. When you use phrases like “she was a born a man”, you’re effectively telling someone like me that YOU know me, my history, my struggle, my identity better than I do. You’re effectively denying me agency to define myself. One the biggest struggles of the trans community for decades has the matter of agency— much of the world views our identities as men and women (or not men or women at all) as illegitimate, insisting that they must know our hearts, bodies, and being better than we do, and for so long, we were denied the right to identities medically, socially, and legally. As trans people, we have the right to say not only who we are now, but who we’ve been for entire lives. Our narratives are ours to define.

That whole agency thing is why I find the whole meme so terribly hurtful and harmful. Coming out and transitioning was the most difficult and dangerous thing I’ve done in my entire life. I literally risked absolutely everything— my job/career, my friends, my family, my financial stability, my home, my LIFE really— for the opportunity to define my identity on my own terms in way that felt genuine to me. When someone says or implied that I was “born a boy,” it feels like I’m being shoved right back in the box that I risked everything to escape. It makes me feel like I can’t ever truly get out from under the fact that I was assigned male at birth, that I’m permanently tainted in people’s eyes. I’m admittedly very fortunate— I don’t get mistaken for a guy pretty much ever, but when people say things like “when you were a guy,” it’s a gut-punch reminder that people still remember that false identity very clearly. It’s still misgendering, even if it’s happening in past tense. It suggests that being a woman was a choice I made at mid-life and an aspect of my being that wasn’t “true” until I got a doctor’s stamp of approval. It defines my womanhood as something that only began when cisgender people were able to see that I was a woman just by looking at me.

If it catches me off-guard, it can trigger a wave of dysphoria that can rattle my self-confidence and fuck up the rest of my day. There’s a pretty pervasive fear amongst trans people— the fear that everyone is just “playing along” with us out of politeness, but never really accepts us as who we are. When I hear phrases like “born male but identifies as a woman,” it’s the perfect fuel for that particular fear. When I hear or read articles discussing trans women who “used to be men”, it’s a reminder that the world still largely sees us as curiosities, and that our humanity isn’t terribly important. It feels like how I define myself isn’t important, and that my self-definition has to be adapted to the comforts of cis, straight world, like the idea that I’ve always been a girl is too much for others, so it simply cannot be true.

It’s not just harmful to currently out or transitioning trans women, either. Though things are certainly getting better, young trans people are often first exposed to the concept of being transgender long before they ever put the pieces together for themselves. If they’re encountering media or conversation uses of the whole “born a boy” narrative before they’ve figured out their identities or read more inclusive writings from within the trans community, they’re likely to swallow and internalize those concepts. That’s one of the many ways that internalized transphobia develops, and take it from me, it’s a ridiculously hard thing to overcome. It’s unfair and cruel to teach young trans people that they’re not entitled to define their own identities, that their gender identity is more tied to how they look than how they feel, that the designations made on their birth certificates are immutable concepts, especially when we’ve come so far as a community. Really, that problem doesn’t apply just to young trans people, but to anyone who’s coming to terms with being trans for the first time.

These things do not define us. Image via shutterstock

There are some who will say that writers and other media professionals use the “born a boy/man/male” language as a simplification for a public that’s simply not well informed about trans issues and terminology. It’s much of the same blowback when we hear when we ask folks to use the term “cis” or “cisgender” to refer to non-trans people— that phrases like “assigned male at birth” are too academic for the average reader, and using them will decrease clarity in the article. If that’s the concern, then I think the responsibility falls to the writer to do some education, even if that includes taking some time to educate themselves. The trans community is very small and highly vulnerable, so our representations in the media are SO much more powerful that we can really ever manage to be on an in-person level, just due to sheer numbers. Those who write about trans people have an enormous opportunity to educate the public about the issues, complications, and language of our community. I’d argue that, given how much impact a single article, interview, or new piece can have on how the world-at-large views the trans population, there’s also a DUTY to be aware of and discuss those things when covering trans issues and trans people. To take the cop-out and say “it’s too complicated for my readers” is lazy and irresponsible writing.

I’ve talked a lot about why the “born a boy/male/man” narrative is so harmful, so let’s touch briefly on better options. If you absolutely must discuss someone’s pre-transition legally-designated sex/gender, the appropriate terminology is “assigned male/female at birth or “designated male/female at birth”. This often abbreviated AFAB/AMAB/DFAB/DMAB for the sake of brevity. Some trans people will also add the word “coercively” to that phrase to emphasize that this assignment or designation was done without their assent or input. If you don’t know how someone prefers to be referred to, don’t make assumptions and ask!

I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I think anyone who’s ever used this terminology is inherently transphobic or trans misogynistic. I really think, more often than not, it’s well-intentioned people who don’t really understand the harm that can be done by perpetuating the “born a boy” narrative. When I’ve had this conversation with people in person, they’re almost always pretty taken aback about how hurtful I find it. So, if you’ve used it before, I understand. But, as trans rights and trans identities become a bigger part of the public consciousness, it’s time to be aware of how we might be denying people their right to define their own identities throughout their lives. We’ve made some serious headway on getting people to stop misgendering us in the present; now it’s time to stop misgendering us in our past.

Once More With Feeling: House Democrats Make Renewed Push ENDA Vote

feature image via shutterstock

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, has had a pretty tumultuous year. After weeks of hearings, amendments, and fierce debate, last November the Senate passed a version of ENDA that included protections for transgender people for the first time. Unfortunately, in the 10 months since then, the bill has languished because Speaker of the House John Boehner refuses to allow a vote on the measure, as he feels the bill is “unnecessary” and will cause “frivolous lawsuits.” In response to Congress dragging its feet on the bill, President Obama signed an executive order earlier this year banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by federal contractors. Following the sweeping Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision that enshrined the religious rights of corporations, numerous LGBT rights organizations withdrew their support for the Senate-approved version of ENDA, concerned that the religious exemption included in it was now too broad in light of the Hobby Lobby decision. In a press conference to move the bill forward, Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado is using a procedural move known as a discharge petition to force a vote on a version of ENDA with narrowed exemptions, despite Boehner’s blockade.

A discharge petition is a formal motion in the House of Representatives that requires the signatures of 218 members of the chamber (an absolute majority of members). If the required number of signatures are gathered, it allows the bill or resolution that’s been filed to be placed on the voting calendar 7 days later. Think of it as a kind of referendum petition inside of Congress. It’s a rule intended as a check on the heavy control the leadership has within the House. This is far from the first time the Democrats have tried to force a vote via discharge petition in the last year. Back in April, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi filed a discharge petition to attempt to force a vote on a bill for comprehensive immigration reform. Last October Rep. Chis Van Hollen from Maryland attempted the maneuver to pass a bill to end the government shutdown. Both attempts ultimately failed. In fact, the last time a discharge petition was successful was back in 2002, forcing a vote on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act.

Polis’s amendment scales back the scope of the religious exceptions to those groups specified in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, namely private clubs and very specific kinds of religious groups. The Senate version contains language that covers any organization partially owned by or with religious affiliations, which would include religious universities and hospital. It was this amendment that secured the support of ten Senate Republicans and allowed the sponsors to overcome a filibuster. Organizations like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Lambda Legal believe these exceptions would, in light of Burwell v Hobby Lobby, allow any company to discriminate so long as they claim a religious belief. So far, the White House has expressed vague support for a vote on LGBT protections, but without mentioning ENDA in particular, or endorsing the narrowed religion exceptions. It does not appear the White House is working to pressure House members to sign the petition at this time. The Human Rights Commission has been the first major LGBT rights organization to laud the Democrats for pressing the narrowed bill forward, stating they “appreciate the leadership of Leader Pelosi and Congressman Polis in seeking every possible avenue to advance ENDA.”

Were the discharge petition to succeed, and this version of ENDA to pass in the House, it would need to return to the Senate with the narrower language, where many believe it would face a difficult battle for final passage. With the midterm elections just around the corner, both parties will be looking to shore up the support of their constituents, so it may be a particularly unpalatable time to seek Republican support for an LGBT rights bill, despite the fact that a majority Americans (and Republicans) support these protections. One might hope for one last push for the bill’s passage during December’s lame duck session (historically a time for controversial legislation to see the floor), but all indications are that this year’s lame duck won’t quack very loudly. Unfortunately, if the GOP takes the Senate in November, as many are predicting, it may be a long time before we see an ENDA bill this close to passage again.

Rebecca Kling and Chicago’s Early to Bed Say “Trans Women + Sex = Awesome”

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As we all know, the Internet is made up of primarily two things: cat pictures and sex. Whether you’re looking for photos, videos, stories, discussions, toys, or partners, the good folks of the Web are more happy to provide a dizzying (and occasionally, nightmare-inducing) variety. Oh yeah, and ADVICE. There’s a veritable army of folks who want to give you advice on how and what to shove into where and when. Some of those things are really awesome, like our NSFW series on how to have lesbian sex. Some of them are things you should never actually pay attention to that make for rather amusing blog posts when queer girls try them out. Unfortunately, in this vast pornucopia of proffered sex help, trans people are pretty damn under-served. When it comes to sex, it sometimes seems like trans women only have two options for how others will view them — as being undesirable or as walking fetishes. We deserve better than that, dammit! Trans ladies are just as worthy of genuine, hot, enjoyable sex as anyone else.

Unfortunately, the resources to help us and our partners figure how best to have all that hot sex are not plentiful. Mira Bellwether‘s single-issue zine, Fucking Trans Women, has been pretty much been THE go-to source on the topic since she published it in 2010. Well, Chicago’s Early to Bed, a feminist-run, LGBT-friendly sex shop, has decided to get in the game as well. They’ve enlisted the help of trans blogger/performer Rebecca Kling to write a handy guide to getting it on directed at trans women and their partners.

This is the rest of the internet.
image via Mari Brighe

While Kling’s guide, Trans Women + Sex = Awesome, isn’t of the scope and size of Bellwether’s zine, it’s definitely a well-written and fun introduction to a topic that’s deserving of considerably more attention. She splits her piece into four sections, discussing terminology, having sex with a trans woman, having sex as a trans woman, and getting sex toys involved. She gives two beautifully simple guidelines that underly her entire discussion, and I think they’re rules that we would ALL do well to think about when it comes to our partners:

1. Don’t Make Assumptions
1. Don’t Be A Jerk

While I suppose that she could almost just leave it at that, it wouldn’t exactly make for great reading. Luckily, she goes on to write a whole lot more about the social, psychological, and sexy aspects of getting down with transgender women. Perhaps one of the best things about her section of being the sexual partner of a trans lady is her section called “Don’t Put Your Shit On Us.” And no, those of you giggling at the potential double entendre, it has nothing to do with excrement; it’s about understanding that your hang-ups (if you have them) about sex with trans people are about you. They’re not our responsibility to help you fix.

“You’ve been told your whole life that trans women are icky and to be pitied (at best) or beaten up and killed (at worst). Your complex feelings are legitimate and important for you to process. But not with your partner. It is unfair and unreasonable of you to ask your partner to play therapist.”

As someone who’s had way too many awkward encounters with cis folks freaking out about how my body looks or works, it was really encouraging to see Kling cover this often-overlooked situation in a way that doesn’t put the responsibility on us.

Okay, so what about the sexytimes parts? After all, I said this was a SEX guide, not a don’t-be-an-asshole guide. Well, the sexytimes parts are, in fact, quite sexy. Kling does an excellent job at being descriptive without being overly clinical, and sexy without it becoming erotica. It’s not Penthouse Letters, but it’s definitely not a textbook either. She discusses a wide variety of different ways that trans people can have sex, from oral, anal, penetrative, toys, or all by ourselves. She discusses three different techniques that are relatively specific to trans women: muffing, kangarooing, and telescoping. (Admittedly, the latter two of those were totally new concepts, even to me!) While they may not be for everyone, they do give some pretty interesting new options for exploring a AMAB body. She also gives a lovely overview of some of the ways that trans women can be different when it comes to sex, whether be because of hormones or dysphoria. Best of all, she constantly reinforces that trans women are just as worthy of hot, healthy, fulfilling sex on their own terms as anyone else:

“My gender is what I say it is. My body means what I say it means. The same is true for you. Please don’t let anyone else – your partner, the porn you watch, the society in which you live – tell you that you are anything other than awesome, fun, sexy, beautiful, hot-Hot-HOT.”

If you’re a trans woman, the partner of a trans woman, or someone who might someday be the partner of a trans woman, then it’s definitely something that’s worth a read (and if you haven’t bought Fucking Trans Women yet, do that too!). After all, knowledge is power — hot, sexy power!

In Which Mari and Mey Have Conflicted Feelings About Trans Terminology and “New York Magazine”

by Mari and Mey

Being a trans woman is complicated. It can seem like every day you have to deal with things that are anything but black and white. There’s the media’s portrayal of trans people, terminology, the entire concept of “passing” — and that’s just scratching the surface. Luckily, you have Mari and Mey to talk out their conflicted feelings on these things.

This time, we took a look at the recent front page story in New York Magazine about CEO and trans woman Martine Rothblatt. The headline and the article repeatedly talk about how she “used to be a man” and use other language that’s often considered problematic within the trans community. We sat down and talked about this article and our feelings on the topic of trans terminology and language as a whole.

Mari: So, from a general viewpoint, I think a lot of the phrasing and terminology used in the article is really problematic. Firstly, while they managed to avoid the more problematic “was born a man” (because even men aren’t born men… no one springs forth from the womb as an adult), “was born male” is still a phrase I’m not a big fan of. It’s generally become much more commonplace to use the phrase “assigned male at birth” because so many trans women feel the were never male, never boys. It’s common enough that some trans people even prefer “coercively assign ___ at birth” because they feel their assigned gender was wrong forced on them. The magazine also consistently uses the very dated phrase “sex reassignment surgery,” which is problematic for the same reason. If you’re attempting to be at all trans sensitive, “gender confirmation surgery” or “gender affirming surgery” is definitely preferred.

Martine on the cover of New York Magazine

It also bothers me immensely that they frame the entire article with “what sets Rothblatt apart from the other women on the list is that she — who earned $38 million last year — was born male.”…as if absolutely none of her other accomplishments and amazing life journey can trump the fact that she’s trans. Being trans must inherently be the most interesting or unique thing about her. I really find that offensive.

Mey: Yeah, I definitely agree. This article as a whole seemed as if they got their trans terminology and understanding of how to talk about trans women from 1995. And like you said, even though the sub-headline says “and that’s hardly the most unusual thing about her,” meaning her being trans, but they still thought that that was unusual enough to be the focus of the headline and in many ways, the article. Like, she has a robot version of her wife, she started her own religion, I feel like even being the founder of Sirius Radio is in many ways more interesting than being trans!

Bina48, the robot based on Martine’s wife via NY Times

And even just the headline on the front page of the magazine declared in big bold letters that Martine Rothblatt “used to be a man,” under many circumstances would be incredibly offensive. But then, this brings up my first conflicted feeling. What if Martine herself uses that terminology? What if she sees herself as formerly being a man and having her sex reassigned through surgery? Does her personal language preference trump what is considered to be the non-offensive way to talk about trans women?

Mari: I tend to think it does. We all have the right to self-define, and there’s no such a thing as a “standard” way to be trans. However, I feel like a better researched writer who took the time to be aware of sensitive to the complicated nature of the trans community would have made that clearer in her presentation of Martine’s story… that she was using Martine’s words and language out of respect.

Mey: Yeah, that’s how I feel, and that’s what I was thinking. There should have been like, a little paragraph saying something like, “many trans women find this language problematic, or even offensive, and although Rothblatt sees herself as formerly being a man, many other trans women were assigned male at birth, but never consider themselves having been boys or men.”

But then there were other times in the article when it seemed like it was just the writer who was using her own problematic terminology. At one point it said Martine thought of herself as gay, “in the sense of seeing myself as a woman sexually attracted to women” but then later the writer says that Martine is “therefore also, sort of, a lesbian” because she’s married to a woman. If she calls herself gay, attracted to women and a woman, how does that only make her “sort of” a lesbian?

Martine and her wife Bina via NY Mag

Mari: Agreed. Same goes for the pronoun and name switching when discussing her pre-transition life. Of course, that whole conversation, along with the cliche “before” photo was also, dare I say… tacky? It feels like the writer is lost and fumbling through so much of the piece, especially when discussing gender and transition. It’s like there’s some sort of playbook for how to write about trans people for a cis audience that dates from the 90s that she’s following. And there’s this sentence, which is just… frankly pretty inaccurate: “In the conventional narrative about sex reassignment, a person is so sure from such a young age that he or she inhabits the wrong body that a surgically corrected self is a lifelong dream.” That narrative is SO outdated and generally viewed as downright harmful by many trans folks. As far as I know, the only people who believe in that “conventional narrative” are cis people.

Mey: Yeah, that was another time when I thought this article was written twenty years ago.

But back to Martine. What if she had said some even more problematic or offensive things regarding how she self identifies as a trans woman? What if she (or any other trans woman being interviewed) said something about how “as a trans woman, I’m not a real woman” or something, which at times I felt this article was close to doing. Would there be different rules then?

I feel like a lot of people confuse gender and gender presentation in these discussions. Like, even back when I was presenting as a guy, and my gender presentation was “boy” or whatever, I still consider myself a girl. My outward appearance and how people perceived me did not define my gender.

Mari: I’m with you. I think there’s an rather problematic conflation of the ideas of “gender identity” and “gender presentation” under the catch-all of “gender.” And again, if that’s how she were to identify, I believe that’s absolutely her right, and that’s how it should be presented. And those people do exist — they fall into the “gender critical” transgender camp. However, as a writer, I think it’s important to both understand and explain that situation to readers. When you’re delving into trans issues, you have a duty to know the subject matter. And, since the trans community is so small and vulnerable, I think there’s an even bigger need to be aware of how what you’re writing could impact our community and how the cis community perceives it.

Basically, there are ways to respect someone’s individual identity AND still be respectful to the larger community.

Mey: Yes! That was a thought that I had! About how we, as trans women, and trans people in general, are a smaller community and our media representation is even smaller, and so therefore we see every single instance of media representation as reflecting on all of us. And it often does. So I totally agree, that the media needs to be aware of how they portray trans people and what language they use. And I don’t think it’s that difficult. Just a couple sentences saying that this is how Martine talks about her life and gender, but many trans people don’t like or use this terminology.

She doesn’t know how to cook a chicken, we must question her womanhood! via shutterstock

Also, the article definitely had really weird ideas about gender roles between the two, and again, it confused gender roles with gender. Outside of this article, you mentioned that the New York Magazine piece talks about how Martine ordered too much food and that by the time it got there it was cold, and then her wife swooped in and saved the meal. There’s another part where it says “the guests divide themselves by gender, with Martine remaining at the dining table with the men. Helen and Bina and I gather in the kitchen, where we talk, mostly about family.” So no, it didn’t divide by gender. It seemed the writer just wanted to write a little “the women went to gab in the kitchen while the men stayed and talked about serious things” thing. Again, I think that went back to the idea that the writer didn’t necessarily see Martine as a woman, just as a trans person. And I think it’s mainly about confusing gender presentation and gender roles with gender. There’s nothing about Martine’s lack of makeup or jewelry, or her inability to plan dinner or her liking to talk to men or her sex life that makes her less of a woman or more of a man, but that’s what this article seems to think.

Mari: Yes, it seems like the writer has some vague notions of the existence of non-binary identities. She discusses Kate Bornstein briefly, and drops the word “genderqueer” without any real explanation. It may be that Martine, like so many trans people including myself, identified as non-binary for years before coming out as trans and going through medical transition. It may be that Martine STILL identifies in some non-binary fashion but refers to herself as a woman, especially when dealing with people who are less aware of trans issues. But, those are things that could easily be mentioned or explained in a sentence or two in this very long article without being cumbersome. But, instead, it’s just a mish-mashery of a whole of lots things presented in a murky, frustrating and uninformed-sounding way.

Mey: Wrapping up, it seems to me that with this issue, there is a big generational difference, like there often is with terminology in the queer community. It seems like it’s mainly middle-age and older trans women who use this “used to be a man” or similar terminology. So I wouldn’t be that surprised if it gets more and more rare as time goes on. Especially when we have leaders of the current trans movement, like Laverne Cox on CBS This Morning rejecting the idea that she was born a boy and Janet Mock very famously rejecting the same idea on Piers Morgan.

Mock on Piers Morgan

Also, with regard to the way trans lives are written about, we do see websites, periodicals and other forms of media get called out when they mess up or use problematic language, so I do think people are learning and things are getting better. And with more and more stories about trans people being in the mainstream media, I think that people will be forced to learn the proper terminology. I don’t know, I’m an optimist.

Mari: I think as the sense of community continues to grow with trans people, especially via the Internet, we’ll see some shifts in language continue to happen as we refine how we wish to discuss our lives. For so many years, the language used to discuss trans issues was forced on us by doctors and the cis world. But, over the last 10 years or so, we’ve really started to speak for ourselves and define our own terminology. I think you’re right about the generation difference in how we discuss our pre-transition lives, but I don’t think it’s necessarily about age, but about when you started transition. I think people who transitioned 10-15 years ago, regardless of age, tend to view things through a different lens than those of us who’ve done it in the last 5 years. And, as people are transitioning younger and younger, I think it’s going to start making a lot less sense to use phrasing like “used to be a man.” I think that same rise in trans voices being heard is what’s going to continue to drive changes in how the mainstream media reports on us. Our community is more visible by the day, which helps to humanize us, much as the visibility of cis queer people did in the 90s. I think we’ll always be a little behind the eight ball, but I think within the next 5-10 years, any mainstream media outlet that doesn’t want to look socially prehistoric will pay a lot more attention to how they write about trans people.

Strict Voter ID Laws Once Again Rear Ugly Head, Could Disenfranchise Thousands of Trans Voters

feature image via Shutterstock

About 24,000 transgender people whose state identification does not match their gender live in the 10 states with new, strict photo ID requirements at the polls, and they may have a tough time getting their votes counted this November.

The Williams Institute at UCLA found that 84,000 transgender individuals are eligible to vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin, states that have the photo ID laws or that might have the law before November in the case of Wisconsin. Just over a quarter of those people don’t have a valid photo ID that reflects their gender and name to meet the standards required by the law. The report notes that transgender people of color, people with low incomes, youth and people with disabilities are more likely not to have the proper ID — that is to say, people who are already more likely to not vote because of lass access will have even less access.

In other states, and in these states previously, voters without photo identification were given other options to comply with the law. Voter ID law supporters insist the goal is to reduce voter fraud, yet several of the states can demonstrate zero cases of voter fraud in recent years.  Loyola law professor Justin Levitt has identified 31 credible instances of in person voter fraud that might have been stopped by a photo ID requirement — out of more than a billion ballots cast since 2000.  In most cases of fraud, photo identification wouldn’t make a difference, Levitt explains.

Election fraud happens. But ID laws are not aimed at the fraud you’ll actually hear about. Most current ID laws (Wisconsin is a rare exception) aren’t designed to stop fraud with absentee ballots (indeed, laws requiring ID at the polls push more people into the absentee system, where there are plenty of real dangers). Or vote buying. Or coercion. Or fake registration forms. Or voting from the wrong address. Or ballot box stuffing by officials in on the scam. In the 243-page document that Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed on Monday with evidence of allegedly illegal votes in the Mississippi Republican primary, there were no allegations of the kind of fraud that ID can stop.

Transgender people face a much higher rate of disenfranchisement because of photo ID laws than the general population. A 2006 study found that about 11% of citizens didn’t have a government issued photo ID. That rate more than doubles for transgender citizens, who face barriers to getting ID because they must comply with costly and complicated state and federal requirements to legally change their names and genders.

Other groups, like married women, may face similar problems, reports Think Progress. Many women take their partner’s last name or adopt a hyphenated name when they marry but may not update their photo IDs right away. In the case of Texas, for example, people can vote if their name is substantially similar to the name on their IDs. But that leaves it up to individual poll workers to arbitrate similarity. In the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 41% of trans people report being harassed upon presenting ID that does not match their gender, and 22% report being denied equal treatment by government officials.

So, trans people trying to vote may find themselves at the mercy of the poll workers who will determine on a case-by-case basis whether their vote counts — the those statistics don’t bode well for every vote being counted as it should.

Based on Levitt’s investigation and many other reports, the new voter ID restrictions will have no impact or a very limited one on reducing instances of fraud, the stated goal. However, they will certainly affect the thousands of citizens in those states who don’t have proper photo IDs by discouraging them from trying to vote or getting their votes rejected at the polls. It bears mentioning that the voter ID laws have been Republican initiatives, and the people most likely to be disenfranchised — women, people of color, people with disabilities, people with low incomes, and trans people, among others — belong to groups statistically more likely to vote Democrat.

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Meet Maki Yamazaki, Your New Favourite Nerdy Queer Non-Monogamousaurus

Happy Thursday! Did you wake up today thinking g-d, I really wish I knew more about Britain’s trans folks? Of course you did. Were you specifically looking for a human with great hair and the ability to play more musical instruments than you have piercings in your right ear? Of course you were.

Photograph by Brian Hutchinson

Meet Maki Yamazaki, a games developer, musician and comic artist living in (her words) “the sunny metropolis of Glasgow, Scotland.” You might remember Glasgow from all those times sexy Detective Sergeant Sam Murray (Heather Peace) ran sexily past… things — okay maybe you don’t remember because you were staring at Sam, but. Y’know. You might not quite remember Maki, because she wasn’t there.

WELL SHE’S HERE NOW.

“Part raging workaholic, part non-monogamousaurus, Maki is also queer, trans, grey asexual, genderqueer and thoroughly nerdy.

She enjoys sci-fi, awesome narratives, feminism, peppermint tea and writing biographies in third-person. Playing some twenty five-odd instruments and still finding the time to get a few hours of sleep a night means that it’s possible that she’s actually an elaborate experiment in cloning.

If she ruled the world it would shortly thereafter be taken over by cats.”

IT’S ALREADY STARTING
Photograph by Brian Hutchinson and CatPaint

Maki’s story is being launched today on this here website as part of Patchwork, a fresh short film series about British transgender lives, produced by All About Trans and Lucky Tooth Films in collaboration with Channel 4. Throughout autumn, 25 short films will be released weekly highlighting the many diverse and brilliant faces of Britain’s trans folks.

Filmmakers Fox Fisher and Lewis Hancox, the queer brains behind Lucky Tooth Films, began making films about trans people after they both met on My Transsexual Summer, which had a massive impact on raising trans awareness and starting a dialogue across the nation. With their passion for film and their personal experience on trans issues, they have gone from strength to strength, creating a powerful platform for life-story telling with people who would have never normally spoken to the media due to fear of misrepresentation. The people they’ve filmed with are models, soldiers, artists, musicians, activists, and psychics and they all just happen to be trans.

And now here’s Maki!

Check out Maki’s work on her website (no, there really doesn’t seem to be anything she doesn’t do), throw her some money on her Patreon funding page, and follow her @doctorcarmilla.

Denmark’s New Law Makes Legal Gender Recognition A Lot Easier

Gay Star News asks “Is Denmark’s new trans law the best of its kind in the world?” and the short answer is well, no. Not because the new law, which came into effect this week and allows people to change their legal gender without having to fulfill any surgical, psychiatric or medical requirements, isn’t a great step forward for trans rights and self-determination — but because Argentina beat them to the punch two years ago.

Nevertheless, the law is the first of its kind in Europe and could hopefully set a new precedent for the fair and humane treatment of trans people in the region. It turns the individual battle for legal gender recognition from a harrowing, invasive experience of “proving” your identity to skeptical doctors or judges to a straightforward administrative procedure that allows you to receive a new personal identification number and matching personal documents, like passports and driving licenses. While far from being a panacea for anti-trans discrimination, legal recognition goes a long way in facilitating trans citizens’ access to public services and employment.

via Transgender Europe

“It will make life easier and more dignified for the individual, for example when you are asked for ID in shops,” said Minister for Economics and the Interior Margrethe Vestager when the law was passed in June. The Danish government added that the move was part of an international trend towards “easing the conditions for legal sex change(s),” possibly referring to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report released earlier this year which condemned the forced sterilisation of trans and intersex people.

Europe doesn’t have a great track record on trans rights: while Sweden was the first country in the world to allow legal gender changes in 1972, sterilisation was mandatory until the law was amended in 2013. Twenty European countries still enforce sterilisation as a legal prerequisite for gender recognition, including Finland and Norway (where only one hospital is authorised to issue psychiatric diagnoses and perform gender confirmation surgery), and many require that trans people divorce their partners or convert their marriages to civil partnerships due to laws governing same-sex relationships. Other countries like Ireland and Belarus lack provisions for trans people altogether. In December 2013, the Netherlands passed a law eliminating hormonal therapy or surgical requirements for legal gender changes, but trans people must still apply for a medical document.

via Transgender Europe

Transgender Europe (TGEU), which runs a Europe-wide campaign advocating legal gender recognition, welcomes Denmark’s latest move. However, some aspects of the law still leave much to be desired.

First, the law requires that applicants wait out a six-month “reflection period,” ostensibly to stop people making “hasty decisions they would later regret.” TGEU argues that this makes it difficult for trans people to change their documents quickly when necessary while also “[perpetuating] misconceptions of trans people as being ‘confused’ about their gender.” Many, if not most, people are secure in their gender identity and should be trusted to know what they want reflected on their personal documents. Yet it’s also true that some people just aren’t sure, get it “wrong” or change their minds later on — but why not codify, instead of condemn, this fluidity in gender laws, allowing people to make changes as they see necessary? After all, there’s still a lot of weight given to genders assigned at birth and the state doesn’t paternalistically tell parents to hold off on that even though it surely counts as a “hasty decision” that some later regret.

Second, legal gender recognition procedures are available only to those over the age of 18, which excludes a particularly vulnerable group of young trans people from education and employment opportunities as well as impeding their self-determination. In contrast, Argentina’s laws have been applied to a girl as young as 6 as the Children, Youth and Family Secretary ruled that children under 14 are capable of giving consent.

Finally, the law still does not recognise non-binary genders or intersex identities, or allow the gender field to be left blank. Australia and New Zealand allow people to mark their passports with “X” instead of “M” or “F,” Pakistan recognises the khawaja sara as having a “third gender” on identity documents, while Germany and New Zealand allow the gender field on birth certificates to be left blank for later self-determination.

TGEU “encourages the Danish government to closely monitor the implementation of the law and to remove all provisions that delay quick access to legal gender recognition.”

Stonewall Begins Work On Trans Inclusion, Asks for Your Feedback

On Saturday, Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGB charity, made its first steps towards redressing its long-standing exclusion of the trans community by hosting a conference attended by around 50 transgender activists and community members. Participants discussed what trans inclusion could or should look like as the start of a three-month consultation period around trans issues, which will culminate in a preliminary report in January 2015 and decisions on how to move forward from April 2015.

Fox Fisher (@SaluteHQ), co-director of My Genderation, produced a video summary of the day’s events featuring interviews with participants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd14bixutu8

Stonewall Chief Executive Ruth Hunt began the meeting by acknowledging the harm Stonewall in England and Wales has inflicted upon or has otherwise been complicit in causing to trans people, including honouring TERF journalist Julie Bindel, using a transphobic slur in their anti-homophobia film Fit and collaborating with Paddy Power, which recently ran a transmisogynistic ad. (The group’s northern counterpart, Stonewall Scotland, already includes trans people in its activism and research.) She added that she believes the consultation process should not be guided by cis people.

According to detailed accounts by Jane Fae (@JaneFae, Gay Star News) and many others as collected by UK Trans Info, participants discussed three possible ways in which Stonewall could work with trans people:

1. Stonewall becomes a full LGBT organisation
2. Stonewall helps set up a sibling (linked but autonomous) organisation led by trans activists, providing it with initial resources and training
3. Stonewall remains an exclusively LGB charity but provides grants to existing trans organisations

Most rejected option 3, favouring instead the possibility of combining the best of options 1 and 2: allowing trans activists full access to the resources and lobbying power of the country’s most successful and visible LGB rights group to date while also ensuring autonomy and equal participation. The objective of the conference was not to come to any conclusive decisions; instead, participants outlined their visions and flagged areas of concern, including the need to recognise the heterogeneity of trans people and narratives as well as safeguards to ensure trans inclusion in Stonewall isn’t merely contingent on the beliefs of whoever happens to be in charge at any one point in time.

Unlike his successor Ruth Hunt (left), who took the reins earlier this year, previous Stonewall CEO Ben Summerskill (right) did not believe the interests of trans people fell under the remit of the charity.
via The Mirror / The Guardian

Prior to the meeting, Ruth Pearce (@NotRightRuth, Writings of a Trans Activist) highlighted some of the specific concerns trans people in the UK face, including access to healthcare resources (transition-related or otherwise), the impacts of austerity, and lack of important localised data. Trans activists, she notes, severely lack funding, resources and knowledge to do research and lobbying work at a level comparable to Stonewall.

Participants were generally optimistic about the outcomes of the conference.

CN Lester (@cnlester, a gentleman and a scholar) and Kat Gupta (@mixosaurus, mixosaurus) raised the issue of the lack of diversity of the participants in terms of race, class, age, ability and so on — a concern the latter brought up even before the conference happened given its closed door, invitation-only status — as well as the lack of intersex participants and information on accessibility provisions. Far from being exclusive to trans organising, however, these problems are endemic in LGBT activism in the UK. While Stonewall stressed that this meeting was the first of many and that it remains open to all feedback from trans people, the demographic make-up of its first conference belabours the point that intersectionality requires proactive effort, not simply lip service: it’s not enough to expect marginalised people to participate in open calls; organisations need to seek them out and consciously create welcoming spaces for them.

There are further concerns about Stonewall’s broader politics and actions, which include honouring the Home Office as a Top 100 LGBT-Friendly Employer despite them routinely deporting LGBTQI asylum seekers and hosting champagne gala fundraisers that are a far cry from the material realities of most queer people in the country. Yet this too is an issue that extends beyond trans activism and illustrates how there is no single vision for trans involvement in Stonewall: while some may have very good reasons to continue to distance themselves from the charity, others like Paris Lees make the case that “trans people need Stonewall, and they need us too.”

Stonewall now wants to hear from everyone who has a view on its future engagement with trans issues and people, whether positive or negative. They’ve committed to holding more group meetings, particularly with underrepresented groups within the trans community, and are willing to host one-on-one conversations with those who’d be most comfortable with this arrangement. E-mail trans@stonewall.org.uk, fill in the feedback form on their website or call 08000 50 20 20 to participate in the consultation process.

In Which Mari and Mey Have Conflicted Feelings About “Transparent”

Being a trans woman is complicated. It can seem like every day you have to deal with things that are anything but black and white. There’s the media’s portrayal of trans people, terminology, the entire concept of “passing” — and that’s just scratching the surface. Luckily, you have Mari and Mey to talk out their conflicted feelings on these things. Today, we’re going to talk about our conflicted feelings regarding the upcoming Amazon Prime show Transparent, which focuses on a trans woman who comes out to her adult family and how her family deals with that and with life. (Previously, Autostraddle has written enthusiastically about the pilot.) We watched the preview and talked things out.

Mey: I guess the first thing we should probably talk about is Jeffrey Tambor, a presumably cis man, playing a trans woman. Obviously cis men playing trans women has been a huge topic of public conversation over the last year (and longer within trans circles) and so the decision to cast a cis person is a strange one.

Mari: Considering how difficult it is for trans performers to get work, it really bothers me that the central character of a series billed by so many as “groundbreaking” is being played a cis person. Especially seeing how much acclaim cis performers seem to get for playing trans characters. See Jared Leto in Dallas Buyer’s Club and Felicity Huffman in Transamerica.

Mey: Yeah, I totally agree. It’s a weird thing seeing people being called “brave” and “groundbreaking” and “amazing” for pretending to be trans on screen for a few months. And then they get paid and awarded for it, and that makes it even stranger. So that did really rub me the wrong way.

Mari: Oh, to add to that list… forgot about Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game. (And these are just people who were nominated for or won Academy Awards for playing trans characters.)

There are arguments to made, of course, about the need to have big names attached to a project for it to gain attention. But, considering they have Jill Soloway directing, that’s already one big name. And, to me, it seems like casting bigger names in the support characters (as the series seems to be designed as more of an ensemble cast), and casting a trans actress as the trans character would have been a much better way to go.

The main cast of Transparent via Hitflix

Mey: Exactly. With people like Jay Duplass and Gaby Hoffman, who are playing two of her kids, who are sort of hip, rising stars, and then people like Rob Huebel and Carrie Brownstein in supporting roles, it seems like they do have a strong supporting cast that has several recognizable names.

But I think that the other thing they were going for, was that they wanted someone who fit their idea of what a late-transitioning trans woman looked like. Like, I think that they wanted people to be able to recognize the character as “having been a man up until now,” you know? Which obviously, that is super messed up within itself and there are actual trans actresses who look all sorts of ways and are all sorts of ages. Or why couldn’t they take a trans actress and give her the “trans woman makeup” that they gave Felicity Huffman in Transamerica?

Mari: I was thinking about that, too. Since the character is supposed to be a relatively late-in-life transitioner, there may have been some concern about finding a trans actress willing to look they wanted the character to look. But, I’m really bothered by the idea that trans characters need to look a specific way to meet the cis public’s conception of what trans women look like.

I think that’s a pervasive problem with the way trans women are portrayed by the mainstream media. They’re all either like Rayon, or they’re someone stunningly gorgeous like Laverne Cox or Carmen Carrera. There’s never any middle ground of the average-to-pretty trans women who tend to make a large part of the trans population.

Jared Leto as Rayon, in Dallas Buyer’s Club

Mey: Yeah, and I feel like Hollywood needs to make all trans women characters have literal physical markers that their character is trans. They want us to be constantly aware that she’s a trans woman, not a “regular woman” like all the other characters (since there is only ever one trans woman). And they only know two ways to physically mark a character as trans, and those are to make them either seductive and beautiful trans women who look “too good to be true,” or women who are clearly supposed to fit into the “men in dresses” trope. And there are definitely plenty of trans women who fit into both those categories, and that’s cool, but like you said, there are plenty of us who are in between and we never seem to be portrayed at all.

Mari: Yes! Absolutely spot on! Like you pulled the thoughts out of my head!

Mey: Can I talk about another thing that bothered me about the trailer? Do we really need another TV show (or movie, for that matter) about an upper-middle class white family and how tough life is for them? I can just watch Parenthood, Modern Family, or movies like This is Where I Leave You, Rachel Getting Married or The Royal Tenenbaums to get the exact same thing. Couldn’t they have been working class, or people of color or something?

Especially because the majority of trans women are not upper-middle class white women. And trans women of color don’t get as much representation as we should, although that is changing with people like Cox, Carrera and Janet Mock being in the spotlight so much.

This is what the choices for family dramedies usually look like.

Mari: Yes, I think that’s huge. So much of the media portrayal of queer culture in general is about the upper-middle class white section of the community, like The L Word, Queer As Folk, Will and Grace, etc etc. It really gives the impression than being queer and/or trans is something only privileged white people get to be. I think that’s especially harmful considering the exponentially higher challenges faced by queer people of color and trans people of color.

As corollary to that, I kinda feel like this is a story that’s been covered, the story of a later-in-life transitioning woman who’s married with children. This is pretty close in a lot of ways to Transparent (the documentary) from 2005, books like Jenny Boylan’s memoirs, Helen Boyd’s She’s Not The Man I Married, and Kristen Beck’s Warrior Princess.

Mey: Yes! I’ve talked to Janet Mock about that, how later-in-life white trans women with families completely dominated the trans memoir and story landscape for a long time, and only now are we starting to see diversity in the stories we hear, so Transparent does seem like a step back in that way.

Mari: *nod* Even Sophia in OINTB plays into that to a certain degree. The saving grace there is that she’s not white, but it’s still post-marriage, post-children transitioning.

Can I comment on two inter-related gripes I have?

Mey: Yeah, definitely.

Mari: To start, do we NEED another transition story? Why is that the only thing we can ever talk about when it comes to trans people? There’s a cis fascination with the “transformation” aspect of our transitions, so all discussions, all news coverage, all fictional narratives about us written by cis people have to somehow cover our transitions and contain the “before and after” photos, or the need to use dead names. Why can’t we have a trans character who has completed transition, and that’s all we ever know them as? Why does a period of our lives that’s quite short in comparison to the the period of time we’re post-transition have to dominate all narratives about us?

Intersected with that, why does the focus need to be on how this character’s transition affects everyone around her? It’s not about her and her journey and struggles. It’s about her family’s struggles WITH her and how something very important that’s she’s clearly struggled with for decades affects THEM and their lives. Again, that problem is pretty consistent in other accounts that discuss transition. And when this happens, the trans character become a plot device instead of a person.

Any other negatives before we talk about some of the positives? I’ll let you go first on this one.

Mey: Well, as far as positives go, as much as I think it looks problematic and overdone and White and everything, it does look pretty good. Like, they know how to market the show to Queer Millenials. And so I like that they’re putting some effort into making a quality piece of TV (or internet TV) about a trans person (and some other queer women). Plus, this does look better than a lot of trans media. So I guess my first thing that I think looks positive about it is that it’s quality.

Mari:  *nod* That’s what first struck me, too. The writing is clearly pretty decent, which I’d expect from a project helmed by Soloway. The trailer gives an indication that the cast performances, including Jeffrey Tambor (problematic as it may be) will be worth watching at least an episode or two. I also like that other queer story lines are included, including one daughter who is clearly not straight, and another who is (from some interviews with Soloway) struggling with her own gender identity.

Jeffrey Tambor as Maura

Mey: Yeah, definitely. And can we talk about that last line of the preview? The one where Maura’s (Jeffrey Tambor’s character) daughter asks her if she’s going to be “dressing up like a lady all the time” and she laughs a little and says, “No, honey, all my life, my whole life, I’ve been dressing up like a man.” That really killed me. I went into the preview ready to roll my eyes, but when she said that line, I was literally crying. That’s maybe my favorite line of dialogue about being trans I’ve heard written by cis people.

Mari: OMG YES THAT LINE. That line was like a stab in the chest. I’m pretty sure I’ve said something similar, either in conversation or writing. It was the moment that gave me hope that SOMEONE involved in the writing of the show actually “gets it.” Especially after some of the earlier comments from other characters about it being a “kink” and such.

There WERE, thankfully, some trans consultants on the show, and one of the writers is genderqueer. I know that Jenny Boylan consulted on the character creation at one point. I think, even more importantly, some of the more… problematic consults who worked on pieces like Dallas Buyer’s Club weren’t involved.

Mey: Oh yeah, that “it’s his little private kink” line! I did roll my eyes at that. But also Kathryn Hahn is in that scene, and I love her, so that’s another cast member I like.

That’s good about the consultants, I hoped they had done that, but didn’t know for sure. I hadn’t heard that about one of the writers, but that’s also a good sign. And yeah, that does make me feel better about which consultants weren’t used.

Mari: Another fact about the productions that made me feel a little better was the fact that Soloway put very specific efforts into making the set and crew very trans inclusive. According to her interview in the New York Times, they had 20 trans cast and crew and at least 60 trans extras.

Mey: Oh wow, that is good. So how about we wrap this up?

Mari: Sure. Final thoughts. You want to go first?

Mey: Sure. So, like we’ve said, this does look like it treads a lot of way-too-familiar ground. I’d much rather see fresh stories about trans women who aren’t necessarily well-off, white and with already established families. I’d also like to see stories about trans women where it isn’t just about how their transition effects their family and friends. And I definitely wish that the main character was played by a trans woman. But, I do think that they are trying to do a fairly good job. I’d even like to think that if the casting decisions were made a year later, they might have cast a trans woman as the lead. And the writing definitely looks good. I’m planning on watching it and giving it maybe two or three chances to mess up before deciding if I quit or not.

Mari: I think the series has problems, and they’re the same problems we tend to see time and time again. I’m concerned that the series might end up being a little on the exploitative side. I’m not pleased that the main character is played by a cis man, and I think the series treads some pretty well-worn paths without breaking a ton of ground. But, I have a least a little hope that it might tread those paths BETTER than those that have come before. The writing and acting look promising, and Jill Soloway is fairly brilliant, so those things should help to elevate it to at least “watchable.” I’ll definitely be watching the first few episodes with a smudge of optimism that something good will come of this project.

Transparent premieres on Amazon Prime on September 26.

Five Rad LGBT Artifacts You Can Find at the Smithsonian

Feature image via Smithsonian.com

Earlier this month, the National Museum of American History accepted into its collection a group of items related to LGBT history. The additions, which included scripts and other papers from “Will & Grace,” diplomatic passports belonging to an openly gay U.S. ambassador and his husband, and the original trans pride flag from 1999, broadened the museum’s existing LGBT collection. But that collection — which includes Billie Jean King memorabilia, HIV/AIDS lab equipment and signs from the gay civil rights movement — is far from big enough. Monica Helms, who designed the trans pride flag, talks about this in the Smithsonian magazine article about the additions. “We have been marginalized,” Helms says. “People don’t realize that we’ve existed. We’ve existed all along.”

Helms is right, of course. So much time has been spent trying to erase LGBT populations that it’s hard to find places where our history are accurately and broadly preserved. But her comments made me curious about what other LGBT items the Smithsonian museums DO have, and what a queer history buff might go out of their way to see during a visit. To my surprise, there were actually some pretty cool things! Here are my five favorite items:

The original Trans Pride Flag

via Max Kutner/Smithsonian

ThinkProgress spoke with Helms about the flag, which she designed after seeing the success of a bisexual pride flag the year before. The pink, blue and white flag was meant to represent the two genders children are usually assigned at birth as well as a middle, neutral space for those who are transitioning or identify with a nonbinary gender. Helms began using the flag at the 2000 Phoenix Pride parade and has since seen it displayed around the world, including a in recent photo from Peru.

“Time Out: The Truth About HIV, AIDS and You”

The majority of LGBT-tagged items in the catalogue are, perhaps unsurprisingly, AIDS-related. Things like fliers, postcards, movie posters and various other items designed to spread awareness and information about HIV and AIDS. This 42-minute video PSA (directed by Malcolm-Jamal “Theo Huxtable” Warner) features Magic Johnson, Arsenio Hall and a slew of other early-90s celebrities dispelling myths about HIV. It’s equal parts awkward, hilarious and awesome. Just look at the VHS cover.

Renée Richards’ Tennis Racket

via Smithsonian

Renée Richards won the New York State men’s tennis title in 1964. When she transitioned 11 years later and sought to play as a woman, the U.S. Open claimed her assigned gender gave her an unfair advantage. The New York Supreme Court called shenanigans, and in 1977 Richards won the right to play for the women’s title. She lost the doubles final against Martina Navratilova and Betty Stöve but became famous as a pioneering trans athlete. Her racket and several other items, including a dress, were donated to the museum this year.

The Ladder: A Lesbian Review, various issues

via Qualia Folk

The Ladder was the first widely distributed lesbian periodical in the United States. It was a sister publication to ONE: The Homosexual Viewpoint, and together the two of them have my favorite magazine names of all time. Of course, being published by out queer men and women during the 50s and 60s, both magazines were frequent targets of obscenity charges and other attacks. The Smithsonian has a ton of old issues of both, each with as cool and provocative a cover as the last. The Ladder started as a mouthpiece for the Daughters of Bilitis and grew exponentially more radical, much like my enthusiasm for finding and reading this magazine the more I learn about it.

Gay Power newspaper, the first issue

via SIRIS

Apologies to those of you who are not also huge journalism nerds and don’t think that publications like these are just the coolest, but also I’m not sorry because JUST LOOK HOW COOL AND GROOVY THIS IS. Gay Power was the first biweekly gay newspaper, which churned out 24 issues full of “psychedelic covers, fantastic centerfolds, regular columns by Warhol superstars, astrological advice, and firsthand accounts from the front lines of gay activism,” according to the New York Public Library Online Exhibition Archive. I can only hope Autostraddle is one day described by such a glorious sentence.

Having Your Wedding Cupcake & Eating It Too: Radical Queer & Progressive LGBT Politics Working Together

A decade ago, I was the feminist cult leader director of my small Upstate NY college’s Women’s Center. I was a righteous babe of the very early millennial generation, coming into queerness right off the hot hot heat of Queer Nation, before The L Word. I was a few weeks into college when 9/11 happened and the anti-Iraq war outrage was palpable. One of my earliest memories of my now-spouse is seeing this spiky-haired butch hottie standing on a chair at a Books Not Bombs walk-out rally, ordering people around.

Around this same time, I wrote an essay for the campus independent zine, the Get Free Times, called “The Limitations of State-Recognized Marriage Rights: Why Marriage is Essentially Unfair (and Not Just to GLBTQ Persons).” I was a power femme with feminist politics, a deconstructionist with a radical queer lens, and an organizer and activist that wanted to shake it all up and bring it all down. Being queer and redefining queerness felt urgent and authentic and intensely political.

Flash forward to today and I still consider myself a radical queer lefty. However, with almost ten years of paid organizing and advocacy experience under my belt and a lot of life experience outside of the ivory tower of academia, I’ve learned the real world just isn’t that simple. I’m still anti-marriage as a government-sanctioned institution, but I am married to my partner. (Yeah, that’s right, I totally scored that hottie from the Books Not Bombs rally a few years later and, in 2011, I queer married the crap out of him.) Do I still think marriage is the wrong goal? Idealistically, yes. However, I also worked hard on marriage equality in New York and at the federal level.

I met people whose partners were facing deportation who needed the protections of marriage. I met sick people who were unable to be put on their spouse’s health insurance because their out-of-state marriage didn’t count in their home state. I met lots and lots of people who just wanted to get married, for deeply personal reasons. That’s real life. I still think that marriage talk can suck all the air out of the room when there are other folks with issues like food, homelessness, personal safety, etc. That is also real.

Ultimately, though, my views have evolved to be pro-same-gender-marriage-equality-AND-anti-marriage-as-an-institution. I think I was unsure about it right up until June 18, 2011, when I was getting dressed in the bathroom with my partner, putting on my $35 leopard print dress as quickly as possible so we could meet our guests at the door as they arrived to our gender-inclusive, wheelchair accessible, kid-friendly and dog-friendly wedding. If there is such a thing as queering marriage, we did it. Marriage equality does not have to mean conforming to the heteropatriarchy. I can have my wedding cupcake (or donut or macaroon or whatever the cool kids are doing now) and eat it, too.

When I got the opportunity to interview Andrea “Andy” Bowen, the utterly awesome new executive director of Garden State Equality (GSE), I knew she’d be the right person to talk this through with. Andy was all over the queer blogosphere last month because she is one of the first openly transgender executive directors of a statewide LGBT organization. As evidenced by the fact that this is only the second time a transgender person has been hired to lead a statewide LGBT org, ever, that we know of, this is a really freaking big deal.

Andrea “Andy” Bowen, Executive Director of Garden State Equality (via Garden State Equality)

Statewide LGBT orgs are not historically lauded for being the most inclusive — especially of transgender people and issues. While queer feminists and queer people of color are building new structures and spaces, like Autostraddle, that are more inclusive and amplify the voices of folks who have been traditionally marginalized within our movements, the larger LGBT organizations tends to be predominantly focused on and led by white gay men. Actively recruiting and hiring a young person, a community-based organizer, who has worked extensively for transgender justice and is an openly trans person, to direct their organization is a laudable move by Garden State Equality.

She’s already shaping the future of the organization, helping to coordinate support for victims of a bias-related crime in Lakewood, NJ and successfully advocating for the rights of a transgender middle school student in Middletown, NJ. In a recent press release about the arrest of the perpetrator in the bias crime case, Bowen said, “This is what our work looks like going forward. LGBT people across New Jersey let us know what problems they’re facing. GSE and its allies mobilize and use their resources to make sure our community members truly live better lives. We ensure that laws protecting our community are enforced. Our work isn’t done until all of our community members can live in peace.”

I originally reached out to Andy to do the “Wow, you’re the second transgender person to do this thing!” interview. In preparation for the interview, Andy let me know (which, duh, I should have known this already) that she was featured on Autostraddle just last year, in an Almost Famous column. She is really a jill of all trades, folks. So I had a listen to her song, How We Lose This Thing, of which the refrain is “marriage and a tax cut.” Daaaaaaaamn. I knew we were destined to hit it off and it became clear that there was way more to talk about than how cool she is (though that is also true). What is it like for someone who was down in radical queer and trans grassroots organizing through people-powered groups like the DC Trans Coalition to now head up a statewide organization whose most recent publicized victory was statewide marriage equality? I had to know.

I caught Andy while she was mid-bite at dinner with other folks at the Equality Federation Conference. She kindly abandoned her sandwich to give me some of her thoughts on the place where radical queer and trans politics meets mainstream LGBT work. We talked a bit, specifically about marriage and social policy reform.

When asked about why marriage matters to the larger movement, Andy, who has a MSW, said, “One of the first things they tell us [in social work] is meet people where they are. This concept of marriage strikes a chord and feels coherent to masses of people and it’s actually really important to undertake things that make [straight, cisgender] people believe that LGBT people are human. So you have to put that conversation in terms that are intelligible. Marriage is intelligible, right? It’s important that we have the freedom to marry and that we have really radical orgs that are like, Hey, you know, LGBT activism should be premised on a more intense, explicit economic justice platform. And so you know those different sides end up having — they are in conversation and it leads to my friends and I running organizations and having these conversations where we’re really serious about, Yeah, it’s about economic justice. I see more and more people of my generation get into positions of influence and they’re talking about racial and economic justice in really complex ways.”

As a fellow youngish nonprofit professional, I couldn’t agree more. One of the many reasons I’m so excited about Andy leading GSE into the future is the perspective she’ll bring. The GSE board definitely agrees. Founder of Garden State Equality, Steven Goldstein, said, “Andy Bowen’s becoming the next Executive Director of Garden State Equality is one of the most joyous moments in the history of our organization since I founded it in 2004.” The official GSE press release highlights Andy’s extensive work on transgender justice and policy, including Andy’s roles as Social Policy Organizer with DC Trans Coalition and Policy Associate at the National Center for Transgender Equality, where she just generally kicked ass. Andy led organizing efforts to pass Washington DC’s landmark birth certificates and name change law, worked on a lawsuit against a homeless shelter denying entrance to trans women, and advocated with health insurance providers for transgender-specific health care coverage. Oh, and she sings and plays bass in a punk band called Southern Problems, so there’s that, too. Did I mention she is a total badass?

Andy and I spoke at length about the history of social policy in the United States. She pointed out that time and time again, social policy change happens after “social cataclysm.” What did it take to get the Freedmen’s Bureau? The civil war. How about the reforms of the progressive era — the era that brought us suffrage? Poverty and corporate greed following the industrial revolution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964? The civil rights movement that spanned multiple groups from the middle-of-the-road to the militantly radical. As Andy said, “These are things that actually came to us because of cataclysms. I think that is the thing that is always in my mind… You know, a lot of things that we look at from a ‘lefty’ queer perspective as being a little bit to our right — still left of center but a little bit to our right — can still be quietly subversive.”

If we look at marriage equality as a major social policy following the work of the early gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements, the deep loss of the AIDS epidemic, Act Up, Queer Nation, and the proliferation of LGBT policy and advocacy organizations in the 21st century, marriage is a historical event. “Marriage is really important to the history of the US. I’m convinced that the movement for marriage equality has moved a lot of people to rethinking how families should work and how we should define a neighbor or a community member. That’s really important in moving us into spaces of having more compassion for each other. It’s a step towards having more compassion and mercy and dang it if that’s why I’m not in the fight in the first place,” said Andy.

I couldn’t agree more. So queer fists up for the new generation of LGBT leaders and organizers, for challenging the status quo and for bringing radical queer perspective to the progressive LGBT political arena. It’s time to get real about where LGBT progressivism is failing. It’s also time to get real about building a better future that merges the power of queer radicalism with the influence of LGBT progressivism. Andy Bowen, lead the way.

Abortion Access for All: Two Nonprofits Embrace Gender Inclusive Language

Feature image via Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

You may remember our coverage of the #ProTransProChoice campaign back in January. The campaign, organized by Beck Martens, Alice Wilder, and Calliope Wong, called on Planned Parenthood and NARAL to use more trans-inclusive language in their advocacy work.

Reproductive justice activists and trans feminist activists have long questioned the framing of reproductive health as a women’s issue. At the 2011 Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) Conference, a large reproductive justice conferences, Jos Truitt, activist and Executive Director of Development and Policy at Feministing, said:

“Stop saying and stop thinking that abortion is a women’s issue. That makes such a difference. Because it’s not just women that have abortions. Trans men have abortions. Gender queer people have abortions. Two spirit people have abortions. People who do not fit into the box of ‘woman’ have abortions.

That’s the reality we live in, and the more we pretend otherwise, the more dangerous it is for other people, and the more they are excluded by the movement. Gender is this thing that we make out of so much shit. The way we hold our hands, the length of our hair, the shape of our face, what we wear, our voices, etc. But then, for some reason, when we got to the question of what is it really, we go to what lives between your legs.

Even though that’s not how we make gender and that’s not how gender works. It’s in that assumption that gender lives in our crotches, that we end up erasing the reality that men can have abortions, men can get pregnant and give birth.”

Jos Truitt, Executive Director of Development and Policy, Feministing

Finally, some reproductive health and rights organizations are taking note. Last week, Fund Texas Choice, formerly Fund Texas Women, released a statement about their name change and shift toward gender-inclusive language. The name change was approved unanimously by the Fund Texas Choice board. In their statement, they explain that the decision was based on their mission to ensure access to abortion and stated: “…With a name like Fund Texas Women, we were publicly excluding trans* people who needed to get an abortion but were not women. We refuse to deny the existence and humanity of trans* people any longer.”

Fund Texas Choice will be updating their name on all materials, writing a new gender-neutral language policy, and adding questions to their hotline intake that will “make space for queer and trans* callers to let us know their specific needs.”

On May 21, 2013, the New York Abortion Access Fund made a similar change to become a more gender inclusive organization. They said in their statement: “We want to make sure that NYAAF isn’t just working toward every woman’s right to access affordable abortion care, but every person’s right, regardless of their gender. We realized that embracing gender inclusivity is about more than not assuming the gender pronouns that our callers use or replacing “woman” with “people” everywhere on our website. Becoming gender inclusive is an important part of our values as an organization.”

In their values statements, the New York Abortion Access Fund declared, “We recognize that systems of oppression, including racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and others contribute to systemic injustices in the healthcare system. NYAAF is committed to recognizing and addressing these barriers to the best of our ability.”

It is too easy to fall into the habit of talking about the “war on women” and “protecting women’s health.” As reproductive justice activists, we have to keep holding ourselves and leaders in the reproductive rights movement accountable for our language. Hopefully, including transgender and gender noncomforming people in the conversation about reproductive health will become a growing trend among abortion access and reproductive health organizations in the future.

Two Trans Women Shot in Detroit, Local Media Misgenders and Misrepresents Them

Feature Image via Shutterstock

After a very bloody year for the United States transgender community following the still-unsolved murder of Islan Nettles in New York, Detroit Police are advising the local LGBT community to be extra vigilant after recent two attacks on trans women. The incidents occurred near Woodward Ave between Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road in Detroit’s Palmer Park neighborhood, historically known for its large African-American LGBT population. According to police, on the evening of August 15th, a transgender woman and a 42 year old man were shot by an unknown assailant. The shooter fled in a car which was then involved in a rollover accident, but escaped on foot. The trans woman was transported to a local hospital for treatment and survived, but the 42 year old male died from his wounds. On August 18th, another trans woman was shot in this same area, and also survived. According to Sgt Michael Woody with the Detroit Police department, the 42 year old man who was killed was not believed to be a member of the LGBT community. He went to state that both attacks are being investigated as possible hate crimes, but it is not known at this time if the shootings are related. Police are speaking to a person of interest about the attacks, but currently have no suspect. Police are not releasing names of the victims citing their desire for privacy, and notification of the next-of-kin for the man who was murdered.

These are not the only attacks on members of the LGBT community in Michigan in recent months. In June of this year, following Motor City Pride, a 20-year old Christin Howard was badly beaten by a group of young men for being gay, and his attackers recorded the violence on their cell phones. In April of this year, a young queer woman was beaten in Ypsilanti after being recognized by her attackers for appearing on TV during the brief rush of legal gay marriage in Michigan. And last November, another transgender woman was found murdered and dumped in a garbage can in the same Detroit neighborhood where this week’s attacks occured.

Unfortunately, as is all too common in crimes against transgender people, the local media coverage of these attacks has been both slow and almost farcically bad. The first Detroit media outlet to cover these attack was WXYZ-Channel 7, who broadcast their report on August 20th. In it, reporter Jim Kiertzner describe all three victims (including the individual who lost his life) as “transgender men” and goes into some length about the history of prostitution in that area, even though Detroit Police were clear that there was no evidence to support that the individuals attacked were sex workers. When contacted, WXYZ News Director Dave Manney stated that Kiertzner was only reporting information provided by Detroit Police, and pledged to update his stations coverage as soon as the new details were confirmed with police. As of publication, WXYZ has updated the wording of their story on the website to reflect the fact that the victims were transgender women and had removed the video of the broadcast story. Manney pledged that efforts would be made by the station to comply with the GLAAD Media Guide when covering LGBT-related news.

Via WXYZ

Sadly, WXZY represented by the far the best case scenario when it comes to the coverage of this case in broadcast media. WJBK, a local Fox affiliate, broadcast their story on August 21st, nearly a week after the first shooting occured. In in his video segment, reporter Ron Savage refers to the victims repeated as “men” or “men dressed as women,” but never once as “transgender women.” To make matters worse, Savage also grabs tightly onto the prostitution angle, including speaking to a local cab driver and a local mother, about prostitution and drug-use they had observed in area. Again, when the police were contact for comment, they stressed that they did not believe the victims were involved in prostitution or that drugs were a factor in the crime. And, just when it feels like Savage’s segment couldn’t possibly get any worse, he invokes invokes the age-old “trans panic” trope. He plainly states: “The cab driver says he’s familiar with men seeking a female prostitute only to be unpleasantly surprised to discover the person they believed was a woman is, in fact, a man.”

Implying that trans women are men who are trying to deceive others is appalling and borders on hate speech, and it has absolutely no place in a news report. These women were shot, by Savage’s own admission at the end of his segment, while simply walking down the street. Yet, in his two-and-a-half minute segment on this crime, Savage spends nearly two entire minutes discussing prostitution in the area from information gleaned largely from speaking to a cab driver. He couldn’t even be bothered to provide the Detroit Police Department’s tip line for those who may have information about the attacks on these women, nor to pick up a phone to discuss the attack with any number of local LGBT advocacy groups, one of which is three miles away from where these attacks occurred. The entire report is little more than a sensational character assassination of two women whose only crime was to be shot while walking. It is the basest, most unprofessional reporting, usually reserved for the likes of tabloids. WJBK owes the transgender community a significant on-air correction and apology. WJBK’s news staff and management were contacted repeatedly for comment on their coverage, but refused to speak with Autostraddle.

When it comes to local newspaper coverage, the results are also mixed. The Detroit Free Press’s Gina Damron was the only local journalist to get all essential details of the case correct on the first try. In her brief article dated August 21st, the women who were shot are correctly gendered, the known facts provided by police are presented, and no implications of prostitution are made. The Detroit News’ Tom Greenwood is another story, though. Greenwood’s piece, also dated August 21st, refers to the victims are “gay or transgender men.” Fortunately, he at least manages to avoid implying that the victims may have been sex workers.

Terrible coverage of anti-trans violence is the norm, not the exception. Frequently, trans people targeted for violence are misgendered by reporters, are referred to by the wrong name, have their arrest records unnecessarily revealed, and are portrayed as partly-responsible for the the violence they’ve endured. Given that trans people already face disproportionately high levels of violence, and extremely levels of discrimination, it’s both cruel and unprofessional for the news media to treat them as spectacles for the sake of readership or ratings. Given that GLAAD has issued a very clear guide for handling just these situations, any news organization that claims ignorance on how to handle new items involving transgender individuals is either lazy or willfully exploitative.

Even if these two women were sex workers, they certainly did not deserve to be shot, and they definitely deserved far better treatment of their story from the local media than they received. Being trans is not a justification for violence, nor is being a sex worker. Not all trans women are sex workers, and it’s a sexualizing stereotype to assume that they are. Trans women are people, and they deserve the same respect when they are attacked as any cis person, including not having their characters dragged through the mud, or being blamed for their own attacks. Underneath all their victim-blaming and trans panic, the media seems to have glossed over the essential facts:  two women were brutally attacked in Detroit, and their attacker is still at large.

Detroit Police are asking that anyone who may have information about these attacks to please come forward. You can reach their confidential tip-line at 1-800-SPEAK-UP.

Shame Game: New Study Shows Stigma Sours Trans Relationships

Feature image via Shutterstock

To say that dating a trans woman is stigmatized is kind of like saying the Grand Canyon is a ditch in Arizona — an absurd understatement. That stigma can take a pretty serious toll on our emotional health and common sense says it takes a toll on our partners and our relationships, too. In a paper published this month in the Journal of Family Psychology, researchers from several New England universities, and LGBT health research consortium The Fenway Institute, make the first preliminary confirmation that the prejudices and discrimination faced by trans women, something psychology researchers term “minority stress,” causes significant damage to not just the quality of the romantic relationships we are in, but also on the emotional well-being of our partners.

This particular study focuses on transgender women who are partnered with cisgender men in the San Francisco Bay Area. The authors interviewed 191 couples who had been together for at least three months, recruited from a variety of locations around the region. The study population was very racially diverse, with more than 80% of the participants self-identifying as a racial minority. During the interviews, each member of the couple was given a battery of standardized psychology surveys designed to put numerical values to key traits and experiences. These included things socioeconomic data (such as income, race, and HIV status), their depressive symptoms, the quality of their relationship (measured through questions like “Do you confide in your mate?” and “How often do you and your partner quarrel?), discrimination they experience (measured through questions about how often certain kinds of discrimination occurred), and the “relationship stigma” they endure (measured with questions like “How often do you feel uncomfortable going out with your partner in public?”.) The analysis of the data focused on model called “dyadic stress,” a psychological model where the stress experienced by one partner is believed to affect the emotional and psychological state of the other partner.

Overall, large portions of this sample population reported high levels of economic hardship, depressive symptoms, discrimination, and stigma, though the ranges of responses on all measures were quite wide. Not surprisingly, the researchers found a very significant correlation between the discrimination experienced and the severity of depressive symptoms reported, both in the cis and trans members of the couple, meaning that the cisgender male partners of trans women also tend to take hits to their psychological health for the harassment they receive for having a trans partner. As well, the trans women in this study tended to report poorer relationship satisfaction when they reported higher levels of perceived stigma attached to their relationship. More tellingly, however, was the so-called “dyadic” interaction on those scores. Trans women tended to report significantly lower relationship satisfaction scores when their partner indicated higher levels of perceived stigma in their relationship, and the same held true for cisgender male partners when trans women reported high levels of relationship stigma. So, as much as we’d like to think that a relationship is only about the two people in it, the way in which the world around us treats that relationship can also have a significant impact on quality and health of our relationships. The authors of this study conclude:

“…our findings point to the importance of conceptualizing health problems among transgender women within the context of intimate relationships and social contexts. The persistent prejudice and discrimination surrounding transgender individuals remains a significant societal challenge. Relationship stigma—conceptualized as the internalization of negative messages about relational affiliation with transgender individuals — may pose a particularly devastating threat to couples’ well-being.”

These results aren’t likely to be ground-shaking within the LGBT community. Similar studies have been completed on lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in recent years, with similar results, but this is first time any such research has been attempted on a transgender population. A 2006 study showed that, in gay and lesbian couples, experiencing social stigma for one’s relationship tended to lower the perceptions of the relationship quality. A 2009 study showed internalized homophobia also tended to have detrimental effects on the health of relationships among lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

It’s important to keep in mind the limitations of this early study, as it only addresses one small subgroup of the transgender population, and trans women in relationships with cisgender women or other trans people may have widely different experiences. The authors themselves acknowledge a number of the limitations of their analysis, stating:

“Gender affirmation processes, including “passing” may moderate the relation between gender minority stressors, such as transgender discrimination and relationship stigma, and outcomes such as clinically significant depressive distress. … transgender women have diverse sexual orientations and can be attracted to males, females, and other transgender people. …this study recruited and enrolled transgender women in a relationship with a male partner, thus findings cannot be generalized to transgender women with partners who identify of other genders, or to transgender people of other gender identities (i.e., transgender men, genderqueer people).”

Perhaps one of the concerning aspects of this particular study is that it was conducted in the Bay Area, perhaps one of the most accepting areas in the US for transgender people. And yet, even there, discrimination and stigma remain a rather significant problem, to the detriment of the emotional and relationship health of trans folks and their partners. Shaming cisgender men who date trans women remains a pervasive problem, as demonstrated by the numerous “scandals” of celebrities “caught” with trans women, and the non-stop barrage of sitcom jokes about how gross it is to date trans people. As Janet Mock wrote in a 2013 essay on the subject:

“The shame that society attaches to these men, specifically attacking their sexuality and shaming their attraction, directly affects trans women. It affects the way we look at ourselves. It amplifies our body-image issues, our self-esteem, our sense of possibility, of daring for greatness, of aiming for something or somewhere greater.”

Dating and finding a romantic partner are already hard enough for many trans people, so it’s disappointing and frustrating to know that, even once we find a partner, the transphobia and stigma threatens to erode and destroy our relationships. For the friends (and mental health professionals) of trans people, the take-home message of this study should be fairly clear: the romantic relationships of trans people are under unique strains, and more effort is needed to support and strengthen them against the transphobic prejudices of the world.

New Jersey School District Accommodates Trans Teen After Their Initial Awfulness

Feature image via Asbury Park Press

A 13-year-old transgender girl in Middletown, New Jersey still isn’t sure where she’ll attend school this fall just days before the semester begins.

Rachel Pepe is transitioning after years of depression and panic attacks. She speaks eloquently on her own behalf and has the support of her mom and, if this video from the Asbury Park Press is any indication, her super adorable cat.

“I have recently figured out that I am transgendered, it has been a really good process,” Rachel said. “I just want to be treated fairly and just not be bullied, because it’s just wrong and I don’t want it to happen to other people that are transgendered.”

Earlier this summer, Thorne Middle School officials informed Rachel’s mother, Angela Peters, that Rachel would be expected to behave as a boy and go by her previous name. In her previous years at Thorne, Rachel was deeply unhappy, in part because of severe bullying from classmates and a lack of intervention from the school, Angela said.

“She would get off the bus and just cry,” she told the Asbury Park Press. “Then she would go to sleep for 17 or 20 hours and refuse to go back there.”

Officials at first seemed unwilling to make any accommodations for Rachel such as allowing her to use the nurse’s bathroom or even using her chosen name because it wasn’t on her birth certificate (as if no middle school student ever went by a nickname). The district also originally denied requests to pay for Rachel’s attendance at a private school that could better accommodate her.

Such decisions almost certainly violate Title IX protections that protect trans students, and trans students in similar situations have won in courts in Colorado, Maine and other states, as Parker Malloy points out. And according to Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, it also violates New Jersey’s own Law Against Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act.

But after a few days, things seem to be turning around. District officials are now saying they will welcome Rachel back and accommodate her as best they can. In a statement posted on the district website after meeting with Rachel and her mom on Monday, Superintendent William George said:

“Although the student is welcome to return to Thorne Middle School for the 2014-2015 school year, we are now in the process of investigating alternative placements at the parent’s request. As is our regular practice, we will work with this student and her parent to agree upon the placement that best meets her educational, social and emotional needs in the least restrictive environment.”

Likewise, Principal Thomas Olauson said Rachel would be treated with respect and inclusion if she decides to return. In addition, Garden State Equality, a prominent New Jersey LGBTQ rights group, is helping mediate the problem and will lead sensitivity trainings for teachers and administrators in Middletown Township Public Schools.

“We applaud Superintendent George for taking the right steps to affirm the health and safety of students,” says Andy Bowen, Garden State Equality’s executive director. “This is a victory for transgender students everywhere. This Middletown student and students like her are heroes for standing up for their needs. We’re excited that the community came together in dialogue to bring this situation to a happy resolution.”

Of course, things aren’t entirely resolved. Rachel faces a difficult year of either adjusting to a new school environment or returning to a school where students and administrators have previously been unwelcoming to her. And no matter what she chooses, she will likely face hostility from people who don’t respect her gender. However, with the support of her family and LGBTQ organizations, she can hopefully have a great year — and pave the way for other trans students to have more inclusive experiences of coming out in public school environments.

“There could be other kids scared out there, who live secretly at school and go home and be themselves,” Rachel said. “If this helps one person, I can be happy about that, too.”

Drawn to Comics: Meet the “Trans Girl Next Door!”

by rory midhani

Have you been searching all over the whole internet looking for a simple comic about a young trans woman going about her daily life? Well, have I got some good news for you! The comic Trans Girl Next Door shows and tells the story of a trans woman early on in her transition, through the journal comics of Kylie. Not only are these comics cute little stories, but at a trans woman who also recently started transitioning, they ring totally true.

The comics that talk about being trans are often really touching, even when they’re funny and full of energy. I totally relate to the excitement Kylie writes about the first time she was called “ma’am” in public. It’s seriously one of the best things in the world, and Kylie’s contagious enthusiasm made my face brighten up with a smile. Others, talking about how much trust it takes to confide in someone that you’re trans, and how annoying and hurtful and wrong it is when people claim that trans women are trying to trick people into thinking we’re women, are really touching and moving.

Also, it’s important that she makes comics about not exclusively trans things. She talks about all sorts of aspects of her life. Some of them are directly related to her being a trans woman who only recently started transitioning, like her comics about breast growth or having a “manly” sounding cough, but others are just about the minutiae of her daily life, like the comics about her idea of a hard-partying weekend, or the struggle of over-complicated tank top backs. Others could be related to her being trans, or they could just be other parts of her personality. I mean, who didn’t watch Orange is the New Black Season 2 and think the whole time that it absolutely needed more Laverne Cox? And all of the comics are equally cute.

When we’re so bombarded with images and stories of trans women being victims and being sad and being oppressed (which, don’t get me wrong, are all important subjects to highlight and talk about), it’s nice to see someone take a light and sugary look at that life. Like seriously, if there’s one thing you could say about these comics, its that they’re sugary sweet, almost to the point of being saccharine, but not quite there. These comics are like walking into a candy shop and filling up a grocery cart with a ridiculous amount of sweets, but then putting most of them back and only getting the best ones. This is a tough thing to do, but Kylie manages it well.

So many of these comics are just plain great. How can you not love a comic that talks about wondering if a Single Lesbian Grandma is hitting on you? How can you not laugh, but also feel totally bad, when Kylie is introducing herself to a new neighbor and is worried that her outfit and facial hair will give her away, but when she finally feels confident about it, her voice totally betrays her? And of course, you know I absolutely love it when she talks about selfies.

I really applaud Kylie for not only having the courage to tell her story in such a public way, but also for having the creativity to make being trans look so dang fun. This is a comic I turn to whenever I need something to relate to, but also something to brighten my day. So thank you, Kylie. Your comic fills a much needed spot in my life and I can’t wait to read more of it.

New Releases (8/20)

Adventure Time #31 (Boom!)

Adventure Time Banana Guard Academy #2 (Boom!)

Bravest Warriors Volume 3 TPB (Boom!)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #6 (Dark Horse)

Batwoman #34 (DC)

Supergirl #34 (DC)

The Wicked + The Divine #3 (Image)

Elektra #5 (Marvel)

Ms. Marvel #7 (Marvel)

Storm #2 (Marvel)

Welcome to Drawn to Comics! From diary comics to superheroes, from webcomics to graphic novels – this is where we’ll be taking a look at comics by, featuring and for queer ladies. So whether you love to look at detailed personal accounts of other people’s lives, explore new and creative worlds, or you just love to see hot ladies in spandex, we’ve got something for you.If you have a comic that you’d like to see me review, you can email me at mey [at] autostraddle [dot] com.