Real-Life Sophia Bursets: Transgender Women Face a Nightmare in Men’s Prisons

Author’s Note from Mey: The problem isn’t trans women being placed in men’s prisons, or trans prisoners being denied medical treatment, the problem is the entire system. There are no good cops or good prisons, all of them work towards the goal of White supremacy and terrorizing, torturing, locking up, and murdering Black people. Police and prisons must be abolished now.

The clear breakout star of Netflix’s new series Orange is the New Black is actress Laverne Cox who plays Sophia Burset, a transgender woman serving time along with all the other prisoners in the fictional Litchfield Correctional Facility in New York. At one point, Sophia is denied her hormone therapy, highlighting the problem that trans women in general, and especially in prison, of have in getting proper medical care. Sophia is the rare example of a trans woman in prison who actually gets to be incarcerated with other women. The horrifying reality of the situation is that trans people are almost always put in prison with inmates that match their gender assigned at birth. This not only leads to lack of proper medical care, but also mental anguish, increased rates of harassment and violence and shockingly high rates of sexual abuse. For trans women who are locked up, getting access to medical care and safety from the guards and inmates is a serious problem. But the problem starts when they are put in prisons designed for men.

Perhaps the most high profile recent case of a trans woman being sent to prison is CeCe McDonald. In June of 2011, McDonald, an African American woman, and a group of friends were walking past a bar when a group of white men started hurling racist, homophobic and transphobic insults at them. A fight broke out and McDonald had a glass broken in her face and needed 11 stitches. She and her friends tried to get away, but were followed and the main attacker, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed with a pair of scissors. Despite Schmitz’ history of violent crime and affiliation with white supremacist groups, McDonald was charged with second-degree murder but pleaded down to manslaughter. She was sentenced to 41 months in the men’s prison in St. Cloud, Minnesota. As soon as she was arrested, McDonald had little hope of being placed in the correct prison. According to Katie Burgess, the executive director of the Trans Youth Support Network, “there’s really no history of transgender people being placed according to their gender identity.”

The National Center for Lesbian Rights says that transgender prisoners who have not undergone gender confirmation surgery are placed according to their assigned gender at birth. This means that all trans women who do not want bottom surgery or are unable to obtain it are forced to live in men’s prisons.  Given the fact that it is extremely difficult for many transgender people, and especially transgender women of color, to get steady jobs and housing, getting gender confirmation surgery is something that often remains out of reach. And it is trans women of color who are most often targeted by police. The National Center for Transgender Equality shows that 21% of transgender women and nearly half of all black trans have been incarcerated at least once in their lives. This is compared to 2.7% of the overall population. The surgery requirement leaves trans prisoners, and especially trans women, incredibly vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault.

A men’s prison is a dangerous place for a woman. According to a Department of Justice study, more than 1/3 of transgender inmates was sexually abused and that trans women are more than 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted while in prison than cis women. The frightening reality is that when trans women are arrested, they go from a world where they are already disproportionately the victims of violent crimes to a world that is perhaps even more dangerous. This is a bleak picture, and one that could very likely be improved at least somewhat if trans women were simply allowed to live in the proper prisons.

Trans women who are forced to live in men’s prisons also have to face the humiliation of having to pretend to be the wrong gender. In many prisons, trans women are forced to cut their hair and are not allowed any gender appropriate clothes. For many trans women who already might suffer from depression and/or dysphoria, this is another burden they are forced to bear. Report after report has found that trans people suffer higher rates of harassment, bullying and assault than other inmates, and this especially true of trans women that are forced to live in men’s prisons. For many trans inmates, their greatest hope lies in being placed in Protective Custody, which often only happens after they have been sexually assaulted. Here they are kept away from the rest of the prison population and are usually safe from harm that would come from other inmates. However, they are more vulnerable to assault from guards and prison workers and face social isolation and a lack of activities and educational and vocational training.

For many trans women currently incarcerated in men’s prisons, sexual assault is only one of many problems they have to deal with. Many don’t even have access to the hormones they need to keep their bodies and minds healthy. This is the case with Ophelia De’lonta, a Black trans woman in a Virginia men’s prison. The Virginia Department of Corrections recently ruled that her hormone therapy wasn’t medically necessary and therefore they won’t pay for it anymore. Courts have ruled that prisons must do what they can to keep all prisoners safe and healthy, but trans prisoners have had the burden of proving they are unsafe or have an extreme medical need for hormone therapy placed squarely on their shoulders.

It seems like there are no set rules or guidelines for why trans women who haven’t had bottom surgery are placed in men’s prisons. Prisoners have said that in most cases officers examined their genitals when they were arrested and made the decision based off of that, regardless of their gender identity, other steps they’ve taken in their transition or which prison they would most safe in. Several trans women have tried taking their cases to the courts, hoping that they would be placed in women’s prisons, but they are almost always unsuccessful, due in part to a ruling that says inmates don’t have the right to be placed in any particular prison. Overall, it seems that the Criminal Justice System doesn’t consider trans women who haven’t had bottom surgery to be true women. This creates a nightmare situation where trans women are consistently placed in prisons that are entirely unsafe for them and ill equipped to properly care for them. Until all trans women are seen as the women that they are and their medical needs and safety are considered to be priorities, prison life will continue to be a violent and terrifying experience for far too many trans women.

Also.Also.Also: Trans* Women in Paris and Other Stories We Missed This Week

Hey, firecrackers! Let’s take a look at the stories we missed this week while my friends and family trolled my Facebook.

Are You Ready

Is NASCAR ready for a gay driver? Does anyone care?

All Around the World, Gay Rights Crumble Just In Time For Me To Write About Them

+ Meanwhile, in Haiti…

Organisers say they are pleased with the turnout on Friday as more than 1,000 people took to the streets here to protest homosexuality and a proposal to legalize gay marriage in Haiti. The protesters carried anti-gay placards and chanted songs in which they threatened to burn down parliament if its members make same-sex marriage legal. A Haitian gay rights group has said it plans to submit a proposal allowing homosexuals to wed, but a coalition of religious groups said it opposed recent laws in other countries supporting gay marriage.

According to sources in Haiti, within the protest against marriage between persons of the same sex, individuals armed with knives (sticks, blocks and other objects) attacked several people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-u126Q3gHA

+ In Mexico, an openly gay mayor.

+ In Britain, people who watch porn need to ‘fess up. Or else they’ll lose their ability to watch it forever. No but seriously, everyone in Britain may soon have to inform their Internet providers if they want to continue accessing porn.

Keep On Keep On Keep On Journaling Through The Night

“Emotional writing heals physical wounds.”

All In The Family

Kids aren’t impacted by their parents’ sexualities – they’re impacted by their parents, period.

A second study in as many weeks has found that adopted children are not impacted by the sexual orientation of their parents. Instead, what matters is how well parents support each other and how satisfied they are with the division of childcare labor.

Epic Wins

+ Rachel Jeantel will go to the HBCU of her choice, for free.

+ Ohio must legally recognize one of the most deeply moving gay love stories of all time, according to a federal judge.

+ Ex-gay pride was cancelled.

Women Reading Things, Not Reading Things

Why are women deserting newspapers? Does it have to do with the shitty trend pieces written about our lives?

A Republicanism Round-Up

+ House Republicans have thrown in the towel on DOMA.

House Republicans have been using taxpayer funding to foot the $2.3 million dollar billto defend the Defense of Marriage Act in a number of cases…Now that the Court has overturned DOMA, the House is abandoning its defense in the other cases…Thus, the federal government will no longer be spending taxpayer money to defend discrimination against same-sex couples, though the money already spent — which could have actually helped people — is lost forever.

+ Ken Cuccinelli, candidate for Governor in Virginia and man who shares a last name with a really terrible person I knew once, wants to ban oral and anal sex (FOR THE CHILDREN, OF COURSE) and is a straight-up, unabashed, incredibly douchey, homophobic asshole. I assume for those of us who live in Virginia this election is a no-brainer, right.

Trans* Women In 1950’s Paris

You heard me.

Also.Also.Also: This Indie Gay Country Song Went Viral and Other Stories We Missed This Week

I don’t even know where to begin. But here’s the stories we missed this week, probably while I was crying. Or watching Orange is the New Black. One of those things.

#JusticeForTrayvon

From Black Girl Dangerous:

On Saturday, George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Or, put another way, white supremacy allowed a man to stalk and murder an unarmed black teenager and walk away. If you don’t understand how and why this case was about race, which, I believe, requires only the barest minimum of understanding about the world we live in, then this piece is not for you. I’m not the least bit interested in explaining something so incredibly obvious. If you insist on pretending that none of this is about race, please just excuse yourself from this conversation. You don’t deserve to sit at the grown-ups’ table.

If you’re still reading, I’ll assume you don’t have your head up your ass and that the role of race in this case is clear to you. Great. Now, since we’re all on the same page, my only question is:

Are we mad enough yet?

Carmen’s Video Luncheon

I’ll never be as cool as Brittani, you guys.

+ Karen learned to dance in a year.

+ DO YOU FEEL THE FEMMEGASM

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

+ This “indie gay country song” went viral. I repeat: “indie gay country song.”

Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us! Other Times, They Suck.

This week, Tig Notaro took on Reddit, sh*t got (even more) fucked up on Big Brother, Mazzy Star announced a comeback, and Mary-Louise Parker gave up the Internet.

I don’t know if you can imagine a friend sending you something they thought was funny, that was something mean someone wrote about you and there’s like 50 comments from complete strangers across the world about you — and you can say ‘Oh I let it roll off my back’ and ‘I wouldn’t take it personally’, but you have no idea until it happens to you. It doesn’t feel nice…

You Should Give, Get Involved

+ Platonic Solid: both he and she are gay. their failed relationship was not for lack of love. rather, it was for the simple fact that maintaining a relationship with and being in love with the opposite sex was never a real possibility. they were hiding behind their true identities in the comfort and similarity they offered each other. parker and madison find that they were always “soul mates,” just not in the traditional sense of the word.

+ K&A: this comedy centers around Karly (straight) and Alex (lesbian) best friends since college, whose dysfunctional, co-dependent, drinking and drug-taking relationship impedes them from ever finding someone special in their lives besides each other.

+ Wimust, Wimust, establish gender equity in the arts.

Women dedicate time and energy to achieve individual goals, with enormous personal, social and financial sacrifices and are victims of a system that resists all possible forms of change. They are subject to discriminatory behaviour in selection and appointment procedures and access to cultural institutions, academies and universities, means of production and promotion and broadcast networks in all disciplines.

Talent alone is not sufficient for the artistic quality of a performance or success of a career leaving skills and talents unexploited, damaging artistic dynamism, influence and economic development and depriving the arts of talent and skills.

Regular contact with the public is necessary for recognition, and it is, therefore, essential to increase the presence of works created by women in programming, collections, publishing and consultation.

A Trans* Victory

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is finally taking on trans* cases. And trans* people are winning those cases.

“We applaud the EEOC for conducting such a thorough investigation and interviewing so many witnesses to the anti-transgender harassment,” said Tico Almeida, president of the LGBT organization Freedom to Work. “Coming just a few months after the EEOC issued its historic decision that transgender people are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the EEOC’s reasonable cause determination in this case is, to our knowledge, the first time in history that the EEOC has investigated allegations of anti-transgender harassment and ruled for the transgender employee. This case shows that the EEOC takes very seriously its role in protecting LGBT Americans’ freedom to work.”

You Are You

“You Are You” is your average, run-of-the-mill camp… for gender non-conforming boys.

LESBIANS.

Turns out “emotional infidelity” is a big problem for ladies who love ladies. And turns out we’re not doing too well in the body image department, either. The key here is to avoid worrying about your feelings and your body by making out with each other a little more, but please don’t wholeheartedly trust anything I say.

Hyperbole and a Half: The Book

It’s all happening.

Sex, Gender, Culture

I find this sub-category title hilarious because I took a class called “Sex, Gender, Culture” once. I also ran into a frat brother outside that class who asked me eagerly, “Wow! You’re signed up for sex culture, too?!”

Now, for some hard-hitting questions about our modern world.

+ Are tampons sexist?

+ Et tu, Google?

Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” but apparently that doesn’t mean don’t give it money. The tech giant is hosting a fundraiser for Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican. Just in case you’re unfamiliar with Inhofe, here are some of his greatest [homophobic] hits.

+ Why is Angie “always the man?”

+ Did anyone wanna go to Russia, anyway?

If a trip to iconic city of Moscow or the edgier St. Petersburg is on your bucket list, an anti-gay law recently passed in Russia may have you thinking again… Russia’s laws permit the government to arrest and detain gay, or pro-gay, foreigners for up to 14 days before they would then be expelled from the country.

QT Corner

You needed this, right? Let’s. Get. Fluffy.

10 Reasons “Orange Is The New Black” Is The New Lesbionic TV Show You Should Watch Now

So, our writer Kate is currently strapped to her chair consuming Orange is The New Black so she can recap the whole g-damn thing for y’all, but while she’s doing that, I have an idea: you should start watching Orange is The New Black. Like right now.

We just saw the first four episodes and holy shit, this show is really fucking good and funny and smart and gay. See I’m in this cabin in the woods right now with the four other humans in charge of Autostraddle for an Editorial Summit, and last night we put on the first episode to enjoy while eating dinner and then before we knew it, it was one AM and we were still watching it. We’re four episodes in and if we didn’t have so much work to do, we’d be marathoning this bitch ’til sunset.

I don’t want to spoil anything major for you, so I’m gonna keep this list as general as possible.

Ten Reasons You Should Watch “Orange Is The New Black”

10. This show is super gay.

Emily Nussbaum described it as “the love child of Oz and The L Word.” Accurate.

9. Jodie Foster tried out TV directing for the first time to direct the third episode of this show.

We get a press release every time a lesbian makes a fimo bead, how did we not already know this.

8. Transgender actress Laverne Cox plays transgender character Sophia Burnett

Having a trans* actress play a trans* character! What will they think of next??? Cox told The Huffington Post (where she’s also a regular writer), that “the scripts are amazing and the directors are amazing.”

7. Hot Girls

Seriously every five minutes Rachel was like “why is everybody on this show so attractive???” 

6. Created by Jenji Kohan

Kohan wrote Weeds and Tracey Takes On, among other amazing television programs. This lady’s good at her shit. As Emily Nussbaum pointed out in her rave review of the show for The New Yorker: “In different hands, this might be a cringe-worthy premise.” Other writers include Lauren Morelli (a woman!) and Sara Hess (a woman of color!).

 

5. Taryn Manning

From the moment I first encountered Taryn Manning in Crazy/Beautiful, I knew I’d had a crush on her all my life. I don’t think she’s shown up yet in the episodes we’ve seen, but SHE WILL.

4. Natasha Lyonne

Bitch is back! I love her forever, because But I’m A Cheerleader. (Sidenote: Clea Duvall was at the OITNB premiere!)

3. Legendary lesbian comedian Lea DeLaria as butch lez “Big Boo”

2. Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager Plays “Red”

1. So. Many. Women.

So many women! Different kinds of women, too, like crazy diverse. According to imdb, for a lot of these actresses, Orange is the New Black is their first big project, which is amazing. And then there are actresses like Michelle Hurst who you spend forever wondering where you know her from, only to discover she’s played NINE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS on various Law & Order franchises. I’ve never seen Dascha Polanco before and can’t wait to see her again and again.

In her Hitflix interview, Kohan noted: “You have this huge talent pool that is generally tapped for very limited visibility roles, but they’re so good and to be able to let them flex and shine is just so exciting. I would get these audition tapes and it was just one after the other, so good. So we started creating more characters because we wanted to use more of the girls we saw in the audition tapes. There were just so many great Latina actress and black actress that hadn’t had the opportunity to really do this thing, especially in New York, which was a fresh pool for me in terms of faces and talent. Like I said, it was an embarrassment of riches and we really got amazing people.”

It’s true. And the best way for you to get rich fast is to watch it on Netflix!

Also.Also.Also: The Gays Are Accidentally Equal in Costa Rica and Other Stories We Missed This Week

People chose to suck at previously unrecorded rates this week, so before you read this I recommend you grab a Stella and put on Magna Carta… Holy Grail (or Yeezus) to remind yourself of your own inner power. You are a god, damn it.

Privilege-Checking Advice

“The Straight, White Dudes’ Guide to Discussing Diversity.” Plz RT.

Anytime you find yourself about to say the phrase “You know what you should do…”, stop, drop your trousers, and punch yourself in the nuts. Because, seriously, if I had a dollar for every time a guy offered me a solution without understanding what I had already been doing, I’d have a closet full of Louboutins by now. It’s damned offensive to start dictating suggestions without a strong knowledge of the history of the people you are engaging. When you start the interaction that way, you’re going to earn an eye roll.

So rather than “You know what you should do…”, start with “Can you tell me more about this? What have you been doing?” Unless you’re one of those guys who has a thing for punching himself in the nuts.

Harshing My Mellow

Ugh.

+ Introducing: d00d with a radio broadcasting platform to share his lowly opinion who also happens to feel victimized by a lesbian putting her arm around her wife on the Food Network.

+ Toronto’s gay pride planners are doing all they can to take the T out of #LGBTPRIDE!, and trans* people are fucking tired of it.

It should astonish everyone (except trans people, who are used to this kind of thing) that the Trans March receives zero financial support from Pride Toronto Inc. No money, no media support, no logistical support, no water for marchers. Nothing.

The fact that one of the wealthiest members of InterPride / WorldPride contributes absolutely nothing to this community event is disgraceful. However, not only have they failed to contribute, they have actively set up barriers (literal and figurative) to prevent marches from happening.

+ Introducing: the shitheads committing anti-gay hate crimes on the subway. On video.

+ A Ugandan tabloid is releasing images and names of gay “recruiters,” AKA plain old jane gays who happen to exist in a place where that mere act is illegal.

+ In Australia, private schools are gonna fight! for their right! to party expel gay students. This party got weird all of a sudden.

+ Introducing: the Louisiana legislator trying to ban the pride flag from being displayed in public and his inspiration: a man who insists it isn’t about “the gays.”

+ In Africa, “corrective rape” is apparently a laughing matter. For police. The quote you’re headed for is upsetting:

“I was walking home from the shop when they grabbed me. They undressed me and said that if I screamed they would kill me.

“They bragged about it and said I would be ‘right after this’. I immediately reported it to our local police, but they just laughed at me. They didn’t open a case, saying I was crazy.

“They said that if I were a ‘real’ woman, they would have treated me differently.”

Give A Little, Then Leave Yr House

+ Liberty’s Secret is one of the only America-themed musical theater performances (and, let’s be real, musical theater performances in general) I’d ever consider endorsing, seeing, or expressing interest in. It needs your help.

http://vimeo.com/68892566

+ Gabrielle Rivera called out this week to me, her patronus (I kill bugs well), in the name of her fellow Bronx queers and their goddess-given right to love themselves. WE NEED TO SAVE BRONX PRIDE! Sounds like a good cause, y’know?

The organizers of the newly established Bronx LGBTQ Community Services Center are determined to hold a gay and lesbian “pride” event, but they have less than three weeks to raise more than $2,000 to pay for the permit.

“We’re reaching out to everyone,” said Peter Frank, the Bronx LGBTQ Center secretary, who said the group is dependant on sponsors and registration fees to foot the bill for the Bronx LGBTQ Pride and Health Fair, which is planned for July 20 in Crotona Park.

The realization that funds were short came weeks after Frank applied to the city Parks Department for an events permit.

When he paid the $25 application fee, he said, he saw a list of related fees on the Parks Department website but didn’t understand until weeks later that the whole shebang could cost up to $2,500.

You should donate, become a member of the center, and attend the Pride celebration. (If you’re from a local nonprofit, SIGN THE FUCK UP FOR A TABLE!) Notice I said “and” and not “or.” Do it all. The Bronx needs you!

Worship-Worthy Folks

Ellen Page is fierce and feminist. You already knew, but it bears repeating because she went out and said it again, and also if we discuss Ellen Page more we get to look at pictures of her more.

I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists. Maybe some women just don’t care. But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?

Sharnee Zoll-Norman’s married to a woman but never said out loud in an interview that she was gay. ‘Til now.

“It’s never been printed,” she said.

Zoll-Norman continued saying that she never felt that her sexuality had any connection with her basketball career.

“I never felt whether I’m gay, straight, bi, [or] whatever that my sexuality had anything to do with me as a basketball player, and I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with me as a person,” she said. “If I was straight, I wouldn’t have to come out and say that I was straight.”

The Miss South Carolina contest just got gayer. Meet Analouisa Valencia, the bilingual multi-racial queer some are calling “the new face of the South.”

“Last year, I did compete at state, but I wasn’t as comfortable because of the fact I was hiding who I was,” said Valencia. “This is my first year coming out and saying, ‘This is me, girls. Sorry, I’m going to be changing in the same dressing room as you. This is what’s going to happen.'”

Valencia’s appearance in the pageant is not just history-making in South Carolina.

“I’m the first openly lesbian contestant in the Miss America system, the first bilingual contestant we’ve had, so that’s good,” said Valencia.

With three titles already under her belt, Valencia’s family says her success helps represent the changing face of the south.

Queering immigration isn’t just about giving out green cards. Sowjanya Kudva explains in the following video:

Marry Me!

+ How many gay people are married? Turns out it’s complicated, like most things related to lesbianism.

+ Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly Monday passed a bill without contemplating the fact that it legalized gay marriage. Oops.

A Series of Questions Nobody Had to Ask, But Then Did, and Then They Made It Worse and Answered Them

Guys, marriage is like so hard when you and your partner are both women because like, who does man things, you know? Like, what is a relationship without gender? Clearly relationships between two people of the same sex mean relationships in which two people with identical gender presentations and identities are partnered forever and ever and conceive on the same day until they die on the same day, same breath, right? Let’s just rest easy on all of these hard questions, because it could be worse: it could be a gay divorce. I mean, who gets the money when there’s no WIFE? Is divorce even possible when there isn’t a homemaker? Is monogamy real? Will queers destroy the standing definition of partnership by like, living together and stuff and expecting it to be simple to leave one another just like it was for Britney Spears and that dude she married for a couple minutes? Did we decide what a relationship without gender even was yet, by the way? Did you buy eggs at the store like I asked or were you too busy avoiding taking out the trash again?

Sigh. Equality is hard. I just wanted to U-Haul, y’know? Whatever. I’m gonna go put on a dress and catch a WNBA game.

Panic! in the Locker Room: On Fighting for Trans* Youth with Words as Weapons

“You are a verbal terrorist, and a coward. A verbal terrorist because you will do the most hurtful thing you are capable of doing, with the intent of hurting or threatening to hurt those who don’t agree with your ideals. That is what a terrorist does. The difference is, you cant bomb a building, so you use your keyboard. A coward because rather than stand up and face the ramifications of your ideals, you chose to fling out hate-speeches riddled with profanity, knowing that you have no accountability whatsoever.

I am ashamed of you.”

The irony is that I was supposed to be taking a break from writing. April and May had been two months of research, writing, deadlines, and apartment-searching, all while working about 55 hours a week. I was looking forward to taking a few evenings to drink beer and catch up on Doctor Who. If Morgan Freeman was narrating this, right now he’d say “But Fate had other plans,” in that tone that is both amused and foreboding.

I’ve been a freelance writer for almost three years. I’ve written plenty of stuff for no pay or no byline, just to build my resume. My stint at one particular publication — let’s call it Whatever Mag — was like that. It was a political commentary site, and I wrote a few pieces before abandoning them for paying work, but I remained on their contributors’ email list.

I mostly ignored the emails, as anyone with an overflowing inbox does. But this subject line caught my eye: Boys in the girls locker room, legally? WTF?!

Maybe now is a good time to mention that I identify and visibly present as genderqueer. In my day-to-day life, I experience curiosity, harassment, occasional verbal abuse, and a lot of invasive questions. My sister and I have joked about making t-shirts that say “MY GENDER = not actually your business.” On the back, we’d print “Owing you an explanation since approximately never.”

Despite the quiet, sane voice in my head telling me to delete the email and move on, I opened it. The body of the email said, “Left, right, or independent, this is an absurd topic. Please, PLEASE someone (preferable someone from all parties) submit an editorial on this proposed lunacy.” The editor of Whatever Mag then linked to a proposed bill in California, AB-1266, which would amend the California Education Code like so:

A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.

In other words: trans* students would be able to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and join the sex-segregated sports teams that fit their identity, rather than being forced into ones that fit the F or M on their birth certificate, or being made to use an entirely different space.

Lunacy. Absurdity. The litany of fuck this, fuck transphobia, fuck everything began to crank and lurch in my head. I started writing one of my trademarked Why U Gotta Be So Bigoted emails, but five sentences in, I stopped. It occurred to me that this was an open call for editorials. I emailed the editor and told him I’d love to write a piece on the bill. A few minutes later (bless the quick turnaround of the internet), he replied enthusiastically. I cackled evilly for a while, cracked a beer, queued up a playlist of The Gossip and Pansy Division, and started to write.

---

 

What exactly defines certain actions as trolling? Is it acting with the goal of causing reaction? Is it the dirty-fighting nature of it, hitting below some metaphorical belt line? Is it the profanity, the intent to offend, to cause rage?

If so, I trolled the hell out of this guy.

My editorial talked about the bill and the reasons that its proponents were fighting for it–the harassment that trans* kids face in school, the high incidence of assaults and bullyging, the fact that they’re more likely to skip classes or school, the high rates of suicide and depression. I listed statistics from Injustice At Every Turn and Harsh Realities, and the 21 names of trans* people who had been murdered in the first two months of 2012. I wrote about my experience of being genderqueer: getting glared at in restrooms, having verbal abuse slung at me on public transportation, being interrogated by complete strangers. I wrote about the email itself, how it had intruded its way into my night and made me heave with rage, like there was a hurricane bottled up in my chest. Then I named the sender.

I used the word “fuck” a lot. Profanity is a weapon, and I pulled out my entire arsenal.

So fuck you, too, [editor of Whatever Mag]. Fuck you for thinking that people like my friends and I deserve the violence we get, the discrimination, the harassment from our peers and from the people entrusted with our care. Fuck you for thinking that equal rights and protections for at-risk youth is “absurd” and “lunacy”. Fuck you for your ignorance. Fuck you for another night I lost to anger and impotence.

Also, please unsubscribe me from [Whatever Mag]’s contributor mailing list. I never want shit like that in my inbox again.

Overreaction? Maybe. That didn’t make it any less cathartic.

The piece was rejected. A day later, I got an excoriating email in my inbox, full of hurt feelings (“How is your belief any important [sic] than mine?”), transphobic hysteria (“I am furious that little girls are at risk of being forced to the humility [sic], embarrassment, and a myriad of other harmful things that will occur, should this AB1266 pass.”), and comments on my emotional stability, (“You are in a horrible emotional state, a bitter person, and contributing to the massive acceptance gap between those who agree with you, and those who don’t understand you.”)

None of it was unexpected; it read like a list of common reactions to any call out. All the stages were there: denial, anger, derailment, and counter-accusations of bigotry. What was surprising was the offer to print my rant if the editor could include his full response with it.

After talking with some friends who are more level-headed than I, I crafted a reply to his response. I reiterated my main points, and addressed some new ones: like the fact that he kept repeating “little girls showering with teenage boys”, which was decidedly creepy, not to mention offensive, and his insistence that trans* people were the instigators of violence rather than overwhelmingly the victims of it. I even reined in my profanity, though I let loose a little bit at the end:

So, why do my personal beliefs trump yours? Because you want to continue discrimination against people like my friends and I. Because you value your comfort over others’ rights to safety and full integration into a community. And I want at-risk kids to be able to grow up, get an education, and become fabulous adults who change the world. Thus, no, I don’t give a shit about your beliefs. They’re conservative, bigoted, and outdated, and they warrant no respect from me.

I signed it “Nicole Cipri, Genderqueer Warrior,” and sent it off.

For that, I got called a verbal terrorist. Because calling someone “a bigoted fuckwit” is totally the same as planting a homemade bomb in a building.

 

The best advice I during this weird debacle was the following: remember that this fight is about trans* youth. I didn’t exactly follow it, of course, but here’s what you should know now:

AB-1266 has since passed in the California Senate, and if governor Jerry Brown signs it, the California Education Code will be amended to protect trans* students’ right to inhabit their own identities. This is a huge victory, and one that I had a personal, if distant, stake in.

The last time I went to a spa, a woman confronted me: “This is the ladies’ locker room,” she said, gesturing at the stick figure in a skirt on a door. It’s for this reason that I don’t go to spas often, which tend to be havens of uber-femininity. I’m not a woman, much less a lady. I’m a rude, ambiguously-gendered weirdo.

People have a habit of looking at me, then looking again, a little closer. Sometimes I ignore them, but sometimes, I’ll look back, force myself to meet their eyes. If I have no choice in being objectified and scrutinized, then I can at least choose this: to be a mirror, to stare back, to confront them.

A number of friends and family have told me to wear the moniker of “verbal terrorist” proudly. Make buttons, a t-shirt. Make light of it.

But that would belie how shaken I was by it. Was this supposed to be a victory? It had just deteriorated to two people writing angry emails at each other — the very thing I aimed to avoid in the first place. After reading the editor’s last foaming-at-the-mouth email, when he called my writing hate-speech, my actions cowardly, and my words the equivalent of a bomb in a building, I wanted to hide under my bed. I stood by everything I said. I agreed to have my name attached to a profanity-laden attack on someone’s transphobia, confident that while I came off as overly emotional, this editor came off as seriously unhinged. I’m guilty of trolling a transphobic man, and while I don’t regret it, I also don’t think it changed anything, much less his bigotry. I can’t help but wonder, what did I actually gain through this? A weird story to amuse a future date, maybe. Other than that, it’s been an exercise in futility and frustration.

Instead, when I went home, I pulled out my laptop and started to write. Writing is first thing that I reach for when trying to make sense of the world, or carve out a place for myself in it. Words are a weapon, double-edged and quick to cut, but still the best that I’ve got.

Special Note: Autostraddle’s “First Person” column exists for individual queer ladies to tell their own personal stories and share compelling experiences. These personal essays do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Autostraddle or its editors, nor do any First Person writers intend to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. First Person writers are simply speaking honestly from their own hearts.

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When not committing acts of verbal terrorism, Nicole enjoys books, bikes, adventures, martial arts, gender neutral pronouns, and drinking tea. You can talk to them on Twitter (@nicolecipri) or Tumblr.

Joy and Rage: Why the Fight for Queer Equality Doesn’t End with Marriage

This Wednesday the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), so now we have to talk about it. DOMA was instated in 1996 under President Bill Clinton, and now 13 years later, it’s gone.

This, of course, has been a momentous week in American politics. The Supreme Court, being the showy queens that they are, save the best for last for each season that they’re in session, and this time around they made some decisions that will weigh on their legacy of human rights and change the immediate realities of millions across the country.

Human rights, of course, mean much more than gay rights, despite what the genius branding of the Human Rights Campaign would lead one to believe. Human rights are civil rights, a concept most strongly associated in America with the Black struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 60s. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, which at the time was a landmark case that outlawed discriminatory practices that systematically prevented Black Americans from voting. Up until that point, this blockage from voting was one of many institutions that perpetuated the disenfranchisement of Black bodies and lives. Voting confirmed, at the very least, that they were participating citizens of this country, and that could not be taken away, no matter hostile the climate may still have been. The Supreme Court gutted this historic bill on Tuesday. DOMA was defeated on Wednesday.

 

What does this have to do with gay rights? Well, nothing explicitly. The cruel juxtaposition of the two decisions is what’s most startling. We may call it progress when one historically oppressed group gains unprecedented rights, but what do we call it when another group simultaneously loses theirs after decades of brutal struggle? Furthermore, how do we begin to understand the total cognitive dissonance that begins to settle in when we realize that these groups are not mutually exclusive? There are now Black and Latino voters in “our community” who are not voters anymore. Their marriages may be recognized in the eyes of the state (if they are married under very specific circumstances), but suddenly their votes are not.

The idea seems to be to divide and conquer. Oppressed groups can’t gain true power in this country without each other. They may be placated with wins throughout history, but as we’ve just been shown, these wins can be taken back at any time, given the right context, political climate, and national culture that is taking place at any given historical moment. The act itself seems to be one of hypocrisy toward the idea of human or civil rights. Rights mean that we are entitled to them, that we are born with them, that we do not have to earn them, that they are irrevocable because they are our given fucking rights, and we have them because we’re human. At the very least, we have them because we’re citizens. Now we know that’s not the case, and we should keep that in mind before we get too distracted with this victory.

But can’t we just be happy for marriage for just one minute? Well, I think it’s fair to say that we have been, and I think it’s unfair to say that we can’t continue to be, even while remaining critical of the institution that enabled this freedom.

After all, it is the same institution that revoked it in the first place.

The frustration on all sides isn’t new. There’s this thing that happens on the left where you start a movement with huge blanket causes. It gains momentum and a large following, and with that large following, inevitably garners criticism. Your movement isn’t inclusive enough. Where are the people of color? Where are the queers? Where are the women? All too often, these questions are seen as “holding the movement back,” to which I say:

You’re damn fucking right. Because the struggles of queer and trans* people are no less important than the struggles of gay people, and if they move forward without us, they are not moving forward at all.

There are, of course very practical, very immediate, and very much deserved upsides to marriage. This is now especially true for binational couples, as laid out here by Immigration Equality. Married couples enjoy tax breaks, hospital visitation rights, and shared healthcare. Through marriage, individuals who are U.S. citizens could sponsor their partners for citizenship. It’s also worth noting that this is could be the second institutional channel recently opened to queer people. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, members of the U.S. military also have a streamlined naturalization process, giving undocumented people – yes, even queers – the same opportunities to endanger their lives in exchange for access to basic human protections within this country’s borders.

For some people, this is more than just a theoretical argument or a symbolic stride, it’s a day-to-day reality. These are people’s lives. For some people, marriage matters. Increased access to resources matters. Being able to treat your partner as your partner – not just as a stranger – in the eyes of the law, that matters. And so celebrating a victory which might allow them greater access to those resources and rights is totally appropriate. But our power as citizens is what enables us to win these victories, and so by the same token, our celebrating should be done with the knowledge that many peoples’ power to effect more changes like this has been stripped away.

Is this indicative of a deeply flawed system in which couples may only gain access to healthcare, tax cuts, citizenship opportunities, and legitimacy of their own relationships through an institution supported by a government that refused to act on AIDS, that mandates policing of our bodies, that puts us under surveillance if we step out-of-bounds (or really even if we don’t), and that passed DOMA in 1996 “to reflect and honor… collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality”? Well, yes. But that’s why the fight doesn’t end with marriage.

We won this past Wednesday. Well, at least some of us did. So celebrate, because you have the right to do that, and maybe now you have a future that you could have never imagined before. That’s something to celebrate. And then think about what it could mean to be an ally to those who may not have benefitted from this victory that changed your life. How can those living on the margins of the queer community expect to win their rights to dignity without the allyship of those who have greater privilege?

As Mia McKenzie of Black Girl Dangerous said yesterday in “Calling in a Queer Debt: On DOMA, the VRA, and The Perfect Opportunity”, this time is about action. She points out something that many people know but few people really, truly internalize – that you can be queer and something else. And that many, many of us are:

“Will you make room in your agenda for the rest of us? Those of us who are queer and black, trans* and Chicano, intersex and South Asian, and Two-Spirit? Will you speak up for us, while the cameras roll? Will you speak up for all the people in this country whose rights are being taken away while yours are being increased? Or will you be silent? It is not enough to acknowledge your privilege. Acknowledging it will never make it better, will never, ever change anything. At some point, you must act against it. This is that point.”

We are queer people. We have struggled with our desires. We’ve grown to fit our bodies. We’ve built communities. When society at large told us that we should feel hatred and shame towards ourselves, we found comfort in each other. We’ve defined love by our own means and standards. We’ve found a way. We create and struggle and feel. We survive. And we’re going to continue to survive, not just for ourselves but for our predecessors who died neglected by the government, who were beaten, arrested, and humiliated, for those who live and die on the streets, for those young people we’ve seen pass who felt that life as a queer person was unbearable in today’s world.

We just won marriage, but we won’t stop there because liberation means creating and living in a world that’s actually worth living in. We’re not going to stop at marriage, because we know now what we didn’t always know: we deserve so much more.

Also.Also.Also: Why Don’t We Wanna Internet Bang? And More In The Stories We Missed This Week

Happy Wednesday, Internet friends! Here’s the stories we missed this week.

Why Don’t We Wanna Internet Bang

I don’t know.

Ever since hookup websites (and subsequently apps) became the way gay men play, lesbians have been asking, “Where’s our Grindr?” But perhaps the better question would be, do lesbians want to bang or just hang with friends? And if you build a women-seeking-women app, will they come?

GOP D00d: Gender Stereotypes Rule!

Rep. Phil Gingrey thinks DOMA sucks and kids need to learn their gender roles in school, duh.

You see, it’s not that he hates the gays, Gingrey just wants the best for the kids. And that means that they learn about traditional, stereotypical gender roles at an early so that they realize that a mom can never be like a dad, and vica verca. Then, they will never get gay married! A woman will come across the woman she loves and realize that she will probably fuck up their future kids by not being a father. Thanks grade school and Rep. Gingrey.

On “Serious” Journalism

Maybe women’s magazines don’t do “serious” journalism because women don’t have the basic tenants of respect in this fucking world.  Le fucking sigh. Fuck Port.

This is Serious

A New York rapist adds to the recent tally of hate-crimes with an orientation-motivated rape:

A rapist in the neighborhood of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, N.Y., has begun targeting lesbians, reports The Brooklyn Paper.

On Sunday, a woman who was walking down the street shortly after midnight was raped at knifepoint by an attacker who reportedly told her, “I’m doing this to you because you’re gay.”

This Billboard Is Serious

This billboard about HIV awareness totally promotes the gay lifestyle, right? Nope. I just hate everyone.

Councilwoman Vonceil Jones-Hill told Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth that the billboard presents “African American men who are homosexuals as acceptable” and encourages gay people to “feel free to continue what you are doing” — and she thinks that is a problem.

So does local pastor Bishop Eli Jacobs, who said: “When I saw it I said, ‘Now what are they up to? They trying to promote two men being together?’”

F*ck You, Russia

Ugh. Russia wants gay people to not adopt. SURPRISE!

The State Department doesn’t approve.

A senior State Department official on Wednesday said the U.S. government has grown increasingly concerned about anti-LGBT discrimination and violence in Russia.

Uzra Zeya, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, spoke to the Washington Blade in an interview at her Foggy Bottom office hours after the Russian Duma unanimously approved a bill that would ban foreign same-sex couples and single people from nations that allow same-sex marriage from adopting Russian children…

“We are absolutely against any legislation that prohibits same-sex consensual relations and we speak out against it and so it’s a consistent position,” Zeya said. “We’re very concerned by the overall direction in Russia. It is something that we have communicated directly to the Russian government.”

Delaware’s Trans* Protections, feat. Sarah McBride

Guess who was integral in passing a law for trans* protections in Delaware? My girl.

Wednesday afternoon, the Delaware Senate voted 11-9, with one not voting, to pass a law protecting transgender people from discrimination based on their gender identity. When Gov. Jack Markell’s (D) signs the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act into law, Delaware will become the seventeenth state to legally protect transgender people from discrimination. Gov. Markell has expressed his support for the legislation, and an outspoken advocate for transgender equality in the state.

Cindy McCain: Yea / Nay?

Is Cindy McCain a gay hero? Does anyone care? Answer to the former: right here. Answer to the latter: who knows.

“It’s pandering, to use an ugly word, to the most common level of what it means to get support,” he said. “Cindy McCain has said a few things in support of same sex marriage that seem to me to fall under the rubric of supporting basic civil rights. Some people don’t do that, like her husband. But have we reached the point where national groups are rewarding people for doing low-level basic common decency? Thanks for not kicking us in the head again!”

F*ck Grace University BTW

Grace University wants Danielle Powell to leave the premises and pay them back her scholarship because, I mean, she’s gay. Common sense, right?

Supreme Court Strikes Down Heart of Voting Rights Act, Endangers Many Voters’ Rights

The Supreme Court is currently considering a number of issues that could make a major difference in what the future of America looks like, from affirmative action to same-sex marriage. Today they made a ruling that seems more fitting for the past than the future — they struck down a key component of the Voting Rights Act, specifically the portion which requires states to get federal permission before they can make changes to their voting laws.

The Voting Rights Act dates back to 1965, and was created in response to the fact that discriminatory and racist voting laws, like the practice of requiring that citizens pass a “literacy test” (when black citizens’ access to education was severely restricted), disenfranchised many black and African-American voters across the nation. The VRA instituted federal oversight of voting practices, requiring that states with a history of voter disenfranchisement get clearance from the Department of Justice before making any changes to their voting laws. The VRA has been renewed four times; the most recent renewal would have kept the Act in place until 2031. But after the most recent election, Shelby County of Alabama brought a case arguing that since they had basically equal voter turnout from black and white voters, the VRA was unfair to them and no longer needed.

Today, the Supreme Court agreed with them, by a vote of 5-4, declaring the provision which requires federal clearance for certain states to be unconstitutional. The part in question, Section 4, designates which states are to be singled out for federal clearance, was still using data from 1975. Shelby County’s claim, which the court has supported, says that data is no longer reflective of reality; essentially, that we have moved on from the kind of racial discrimination that was commonly practiced in 1975 and no longer need laws to protect citizens from it. The decision was written by Justice Roberts, who said that:

“In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics… Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were.”

Whether or not Justice Roberts thinks that the nation is still ‘divided,’ the country has seen its fair share of controversy over voter laws in the past few years that, for many, call into question whether voter discrimination is truly a thing of the past. Literacy tests are no longer a common practice, but a law in Pennsylvania that would have required very specific photo identification for voting was halted just before the election in November 2012. Much like literacy tests, these laws don’t include any language that specifically discriminates against people of color; purportedly, they exist to protect against voter fraud, although no legislative body has ever been able to prove that voter fraud is attempted often enough to be a legitimate concern to anyone. But a 2012 study found that voter ID laws would in fact “disproportionately demobilize” young voters of color, who were much less likely than other groups to have the photo ID that voting required. The study found that “overall turnout… by young people of color ages 18-29 could fall by somewhere between 538,000 to 696,000 in states with photo ID laws. …Nine percent of whites don’t have such ID, compared with 25 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Hispanics, the Brennan study said.”

Additionally, in 2012 the Williams Institute found that voter ID laws “may create substantial barriers to voting and possible disenfranchisement for over 25,000 transgender voters this November.” 41% of transgender citizens surveyed said they didn’t have an updated driver’s license, 74% did not have an updated passport, and 27% had no documents that listed their true gender.

For context, these are laws that are already perfectly legal and enforceable even with the Voting Rights Act in place. Without the VRA, states would have freedom to go much further than this without any pushback from the federal government. Laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 are a reminder that many states are perfectly willing to pass laws that openly discriminate against people of color, and there appear to be very few, if any, consequences for them.

Justice Roberts acknowledges that the fact that many states have racially balanced voter turnout is probably a result of the Voting Rights Act, but doesn’t explain in his decision how or why the benefits of the VRA would continue without the VRA in place. Analysts across the board have argued for some time now that one of the GOP’s major challenges is winning the Latin@ vote; without the VRA, there’s no need to work to create a platform that will appeal to Latin@ voters when they can just create laws that will make it difficult or impossible for Latin@s to vote at all. They won’t even have to wait to do so — the Supreme Court’s decision is taking effect immediately, and a voter ID law in Texas is already moving into place.

Congress remains “free to try to impose federal oversight on states where voting rights were at risk,” but Roberts’ decision requires that they do so using “current data.” In addition to collecting and analyzing new data, Congress would also have to come to an agreement about which states require federal oversight, which is very unlikely given how politically divided and contentious the current Congress is. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ginsburg wrote that:

“The great man who led the march from Selma to Montgomery and there called for the passage of the Voting Rights Act foresaw progress, even in Alabama… “’The arc of the moral universe is long,’ he said, but ‘it bends toward justice,’ if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.” That commitment has been disserved by today’s decision.”

President Obama has expressed “deep disappointment” with the decision. He makes that comment not only as the President, or as the nation’s first black President, but as someone who’s often co-opted as proof that America has moved beyond racism, when in fact his entire life is testament to the contrary. Frustratingly, his election provides many with the means to reassure themselves with the thought that the institutional racism the Voting Rights Acts works against is over, when in fact it’s unlikely Obama could ever have been elected without the VRA’s protections (it’s no coincidence that the spectre of “voter fraud” and voter ID laws which coincidentally target voters of color reached new heights of popularity during his re-election campaign). But Obama’s campaigns, especially his first, were marked by intense organizing effort for voter education, voter registration, and activism for voters’ rights. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, the nation will have to once again rely on these tactics and more if it wants its marginalized citizens to be actively represented in its government.

Coy Mathis, 6-Year-Old Trans Girl, Wins Landmark Civil Rights Case and Makes History

Coy Mathis was just trying to live a normal, fun, happy life like the other students at her Colorado elementary school. And for the most part, she was. That is, until last December when her school district in Fountain, Colorado told her parents that when she returned to school, she would be forced to use the staff bathroom, nurse’s bathroom, or even the boys bathroom instead of the girl’s bathroom she had been using the entire time she had been going to school there. She was being singled out and punished by the Fountain-Fort Worth School Discrict not because she was causing problems or starting fights in girls bathroom where she belongs, but because she is transgender. Her parents rightly felt that this was a violation of their daughter’s rights and the Colorado’s 2008 antidiscrimation statute, withdrew her from school and took the case to the state’s Civil Rights Division.

In a victory for Coy, transgender students, and anyone who wants to use the bathroom in peace, a ruling was made saying that the school district was wrong in discriminating against Coy and that she would be allowed to use the bathroom that matches her gender. In the decision, the Civil Rights Division said that in putting up these special rules for Coy, the school created “an environment that is objectively and subjectively hostile, intimidating or offensive.” Steven Chavez, the division director, wrote that forcing her to use the wrong bathroom was equal to forcing her to disregard her identity. They agreed with Coy’s family that the school district’s argument that at birth, Coy was declared male is a simplistic approach that fails to appreciate the complexity of gender. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the complaint on the Mathis’ behalf, said that this is the first ruling in the country that affirms trans students’ right to use the correct bathroom and the most comprehensive ruling supporting trans people’s bathroom access.

In deciding that Coy could no longer use the correct bathrooms and instead had to use the boys’ bathroom, her school was doing two things that, unfortunately, happen far too often to trans people: they were bullying her and needlessly sexualizing her. The school was purposefully trying to shine a spotlight on her every time she tried to do something that is extremely personal and private. They were trying to point out to all her classmates that she is not like them. At an age when children are looking to make friends and socialize smoothly into large groups, often for the first time in their lives, Coy would have to stand out like a sore thumb every time she had to perform a perfectly normal part of every day life. Multiple times a day, all her classmates would have a visible reminder that she is not like them and that even the adults think she should be handled with special instructions.

Taking it even further, the school decided to boil down the way that they viewed Coy to her potential sexuality. They were afraid that her anatomy (or what they assume her anatomy looks like, because I doubt that even they would have the audacity to perform an examination) would create uncomfortable situations for the other students. While going to the bathroom may be a sexual experience for some, that is not the case for a six year old girl, and for the school district to insinuate otherwise is offensive and disgusting. But this is a realty many of us trans women face. For some reason, many people are obsessed with our anatomy and think that we have sexual appetites that can only be quenched by using a women’s restroom. But let’s keep in mind that this specific case is about a child. While this attitude is crude and juvenile, it is even worse when people decide to needlessly sexualize a six year old.

It’s scary and uncomfortable when people are seemingly obsessed with how and where you go to the bathroom. It’s even scarier when people are trying to force you to use a men’s bathroom when you’re a woman. Imagining how that fear and unease must be amplified for a little girl makes me physically ill. Forcing a first grade girl to use a boys’ bathroom isn’t only opening her up to bullying and weird looks outside the bathroom, it is more insidiously opening her up to violence and bullying inside the bathroom. Imagine being a scared young girl in a place that already probably makes you feel uncomfortable. Now imagine there are half a dozen boys aged 6-12 in there with you and that they can take one look at you and see you don’t belong. If the school district had it’s way, this is what Coy Mathis would have had to face every time she had to use the bathroom. Normally, it’s the school’s job to protect it’s students from dangerous situations like this. But instead, the school decided to join in with any potential bullies and say that she is different and strange and doesn’t deserve to be treated like a “normal” student.

Thankfully, Colorado gave Coy Mathis, and other children like her, a victory. This victory brought both a smile to my face and caused me to roll my eyes. On one hand, I’m ecstatic for Coy. She gets to return to school and be herself with one less bully to worry about. She, and every other trans student (at least in Colorado) gets to use the correct bathroom.

This is a big win. The Colorado Civil Rights Division said that what a trans person’s birth certificate says isn’t the most important thing, their identity is. It’s setting a precedent for how other schools may treat other transgender students, and may also have a major impact on legal realities for trans* adults. This is the first ruling that holds that transgender students should be allowed to use bathrooms that match their gender, and is the most comprehensive ruling ever on trans* access to appropriate bathrooms, which is a major milestone.

But on the other hand, it’s ridiculous that this issue would even be brought up. Coy Mathis wasn’t trying to force the school to have an LGBT pride week (although that would be an awesome thing for schools to have), she wasn’t trying to force other students to challenge gender norms, she just wanted to be able to perform a normal, private, human function. Hopefully the rest of the nation can catch up to Colorado’s example and let children be who they are and do normal things without having to take abnormal, embarrassing and unnecessary steps.

Also.Also.Also: Anti-Gay Workplace Discrimination Is Still Happening and Other Stories We Missed This Week

Here’s the news we missed while I was listening to Yeezus.

The SCOTUS on Gay Marriage: “Nope, Nothin’ Yet”

When it comes to two critical gay rights cases being decided upon soon in the Supreme Court, I’m gonna get my Rafiki on and dramatically say it is time.

Except oh, oops, no, nevermind. Not today. It’s not time yet. What the fuck is taking so long? Is it the gears grinding in Anthony Kennedy’s head? Is it the Ghost of Lack of Gay Friends Past? Is it getting the files in order? Are the robes being dry-cleaned? CAN A SISTA GET A RULING ON HER FUTURE OVER HERE?

Maybe on Thursday.

Total Dick Move

This shit is the worst.

+ Poland’s first openly gay lawmaker was attacked Saturday in Warsaw following the Gay Pride parade.

+ According to Focus on the Family, trans* people don’t exist.

+ Should anyone really be protecting “gay marriage critics?”

+ Grace University expelled a student for being gay – and then demanded she pay back her scholarship.

Hey, This Is A Cool Thing

I wouldn’t lie to you. We’ve been over this before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NlCSfM4kKUw

Ending Discrimination in the Workplace Apparently Not A Universal Goal for Us as Humans

Obama wants to end discrimination against LGBT folks in the workplace… OR DOES HE? We may never know. That’s politics.

What we do know is this: Marco Rubio does not support gays in the workplace. But he’s totally not a shitty human being or anything.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is touted as a top GOP presidential prospect in 2016, thinks it should be legal to fire someone for their sexual orientation.
ThinkProgress spoke with the Florida Senator at the opening luncheon of the annual Faith and Freedom Forum on Thursday and asked him about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill to make discrimination against LGBT individuals illegal across the country.
Though Rubio bristles at the notion of being called a “bigot,” he showed no willingness to help protect LGBT workers from discrimination. “I’m not for any special protections based on orientation,” Rubio told ThinkProgress.

You Should Give

Be Here Now is “a comedy web show about two sexually progressive NY gals who ditch their down-and-out lives for LA in search of a spiritual awakening.” Fund that shit.

Movin’ On Up

Obama named three more gay ambassadors this week (spoiler alert: they’re gay men) and the Supreme Court Thursday confirmed the first openly gay Latina to serve on the federal bench. Also, THE NEXT DALAI LAMA COULD BE A WOMAN JUST SAYING.

This is good news considering we could use some more women in government so that people can stop stereotyping women in government differently than women as a whole. Or at all. Whichever works.

Three Words: “Starring Ellen Page”

Ellen Page is in a new film called Touchy Feely. I hear it’s chart-toppingly Indie or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zu6qd1QngqQ

Leaving a Mark on the American Heartland With My Solo Queer Trans* Woman Roadtrip

trans*scribe illustration ©rosa middleton, 2013

I have peed on sacred ground and no deity has struck my hot trans* ass down. I have peed in the American West. I have peed in the truckstops and the rest areas. I have peed in the foothills. I have not been misgendered! (Take that, Winston Churchill.)

I have also walked arm in arm with my girlfriend at a midwestern Christian college. The worst that happened was bubbly undergraduates asking if we wanted some coupons. This past year of my transition, 2012, has been one of road travel with many miles revisited across numerous American states.

My first road trip occurred in the summer, when my girlfriend and I moved her brother to college. It was also when we visited my mom to tell her in person of my transition. Needless to say, it wasn’t quite a carefree emotional vacation. Yet there were light moments. On our drive between these two events, we stop to get some snacks. As we wait, a hitch-hiker engages me in conversation:

“Are you guys sisters?”
–No.
“Mother and daughter?”
I look askance. “No. We’re partners.”

After 7 years together, that word still strikes me oddly. It’s the best word we’ve got since we have no interest in marriage. Before transition, “girlfriend” bestowed more heteronormativity than I was comfortable with. At least “partner” introduced queer connotations. Now, though, I’m loving “girlfriend” because of the obvious queerness. It’s a linguistic stake in the ground declaring us a girl-girl couple.

Our stoned friend continues, “business partners? Travel buddies?” My partner finally turns around and states: “girlfriends.” “Whoa! That is so cool!” he goes on and on. We take our food and go back to the car. Two hours later, we’re back in Chicago having dinner with good friends and recounting our day.

Anxiety Checklist

I’m no newbie to the road, having driven 44 states and 6 provinces — more than most people I know. As a genderqueer non-binary male, I bore the cross of whatever locals and cops assumed about me. Those assumptions are gone now, replaced by new ones. So after my first successful trip with my girlfriend, it was obviously time to take my show on the road solo, right?

Not the least of my concerns was driving my friend Xene’s unfamiliar Prius from Seattle to Omaha through possibly inclement November weather. Yet, my larger concern was driving solo as a woman. My overactive imagination wrote the scenarios of the damsel in distress as if my extensive experience had been nullified. Additionally, it wrote the narrative of the trans* victim trope. I’d be lying if I said that my sheer excitement was not perfectly balanced by sheer fright.

Unlike summer, I was on my own. Outside of Seattle, I had no idea what to expect. There aren’t many positive narratives about road-tripping trans* women outside the comparative safety of the urban archipelagos.

A definitive, six-question “What Rogue are you?” internet quiz identified me as a highwayman. That’s cool and fitting. Unlike Noyes’ Highwayman, I made it back fine. Like him, though, I may have engaged in crimes. Exhaustingly, peeing while trans seems a radical political act these days and possibly an outlaw act depending on the jurisdiction.

Correct documents notwithstanding, I was still transporting my penis across state lines. I couldn’t help but have a few concerns. For example, I’m callous and lazy; I refuse to tuck. I don’t go out of my way to highlight my non-standard equipment. However, I can’t be arsed with providing the cis world the misguided satisfaction that I’m ashamed of my anatomy. It’s turned into a point of pride as well as a bizarre, TMI-based, political statement. It’s taken me many years to finally realize that I fucking love my body, all of it.

Yet it’s a defiance I embody while comfortably ensconced in queer-friendly Seattle. Reality is different outside the archipelago, where political statement can become tempered by survival concerns. What could go wrong?

Naturally, these concerns would play out in the many restrooms along the route. Spiro! Amirite ladies!? I can’t be the only transwoman who feels a little vulnerable every time she stands up exposed to those two, centimeter-wide gaps, stage right and stage left, on either side of the stall door. Intellectually, I understand I see more outward than people see inward. Yet in the unfamiliar hinterland, informed scientific knowledge takes a backseat to survival paranoia.

Armed with equal parts excitement and fright, callousness and caution, I leave Seattle’s warm, queer embrace. I feel a little like Bernadette in Priscilla, piloting my vehicle into uncertain territory. All I’m certain of is that I have timelines and I must proceed as the way opens.

As with all proper road trips, this one gives me time to think. Thoughts become beautifully disjunct as the placelessness, unfamiliarity, and discovery distort time in strange ways. The following thoughts cross my mental field of vision. They aren’t fully formed, much less resolved. They’re starting points for future travels, literal and figurative.

Interstate 90 East; Mile 37

Truck Nutz! On the west side of the Cascades? Well played, Washington! As it’ll turn out, these are the only pair of danglers I’ll see. It’s cold, after all; I suspect most have fully retracted toward the gas tank until April at least. I revisit my fantasies about welding a vagina dentata to the front of my Jeep: Truck Teeth!

Eastern Washington

At a rest area, a car parks next to mine. Two women about my age get out of the car. Having known fanfic, I can’t help but ship them. Of course they are a couple. The subtext will not allow anything less! There’s far too much heteronormativity out here anyway.

Despite my imagination, something real happens in a single second. As I sit in my car, fiddling with my iPod, I look up at the driver. As she looks back toward her car, our eyes lock through the windshield for the briefest moment. I’m shook by her subtle expression as she glances my way and non-verbally communicates something wonderful. A warmth washes over her eyes and she flashes the subtlest of smiles. I stop. I probably flash a smile. I feel complete reassurance. I feel admiration. I feel acceptance.

I’ve never experienced this before transition but I’ve been sensing it ever since. When read as a woman by another woman, especially in unfriendly or unfamiliar spaces, I get this knowing look like some secret handshake. It’s a feeling of solidarity maybe? I don’t know exactly but it is completely affirming. Even now, writing about it months later, I’m deeply moved. I tear up every single time I remember it.

Thank you, unknown traveler, you have no idea how much this means to me.

South of Butte, north of Pocatello

The previous night I visited my librarian friend, Regan. We discussed Montana’s “live and let live” ethic and Butte’s “toughness”. As this was my first visit since, we talked about transition as well. Toughness. I cringe when people call me brave. My evolution and becoming has been absurdly, laughably easy compared to others. Still, I appreciate the sentiment.

The road from Butte is the most treacherous, with ice and blowing snow. With resolve, I pilot myself the best I can, through obstacles and hazards. Perhaps I’m finally starting to internalize my own agency and accomplishments. Sometimes I even believe some of my hype.

Pocatello, Idaho

One thing I love doing on solo trips is pulling off the interstates around larger towns and driving through their centers. In all these towns, I’m struck with the social landscape’s overwhelming heteronormativity. I get enough polite looks from trucker dudes, but I’m missing glances from lady-loving ladies. I’ve been getting these more often at home and I really love them. So, this trip reminds me just how much of a fabulously amazing queer bubble Seattle is. I no longer take this for granted. On the way out of Pocatello, I do manage to stumble across the gay bar. Queerness exists in the heartland, imagine that. We’re everywhere.

Salt Lake City, Utah

I had two missions here. Foremost was visiting my friend, Greg, now a university librarian. As it turns out, his partner has written on legal issues of trans* discrimination in bathrooms. These are the coincidences in my life. I’ve chosen correctly to visit friends along the route – the perfect balance to many miles spent alone.

Before seeing my charming friend, however, I planned to pee at Temple Square. Yes, it’s sophomoric. However, given my mischievous agnosticism and the LDS’s relationship to TBLG folks, I wanted to leave this symbolic mark. If nothing else was accomplished during this trip, it was imperative, as a queer trans* woman, to urinate at Temple Square and bear witness to the stunning lack of consequences, divine or otherwise. Peeing While Trans* is a theologically symbolic act, too.

Reader! Next time you visit the amazing North Visitor Center, think: a trans* woman urinated here! The time of the Great Mundane Micturition has passed! We are still here. And I am still peeing. I’m thinking of taking this superpower back on the road, hiring myself to ranchers to mark territory.

Wyoming

Wyoming is the Equality State. Women here achieved suffrage way back in 1870. Additionally, a number of notable political firsts for women have occurred here. For the moment, I take Wyoming’s claim to equality at face value and head into Laramie to have dinner with Kaijsa, yet another librarian friend.

The previous evening, my friend, Cheryl, messaged me: “Safe travels, cowgirl!” Such tiny little words, finally in the correct gender, make me so profusely happy I could squeal.

Sydney, Nebraska

At the motel, the young dude checking me in is checking me out. I think. He’s chatting me up with sheepish laughs and cutesy jokes giving him away. My deeply internalized self-doubt interjects. Exactly 63 reasons other than I’m an unaccompanied chick come to mind. Such ridiculous back-bench arguments occur in my mind’s parliamentary chamber.

I’m quite certain my boobs have been speaking for me. Among several passports granting me passage through the heartland, my boobs are among them. My back-bench voices still try to shout down claims that the face in the mirror is a woman. My front-bench boobs counter those attempts with aplomb. Steadfast against compromise, rising from obscurity, they are fierce diplomats. I can really fill out a pair of A-cups, let me tell you, yet they are larger than life. They take after my tedious extroversion. Regardless how I feel about my face, I flash myself a bit of cleavage and snap back to affirmative reality.

Even I am mesmerized by the ideological power of my own boobs.

North Platte, Nebraska

After some exploration in town, I drive out the long way on the business loop. There’s a cop some distance behind me. I know they’re going to follow me to the interstate because that’s where their work is. Still, it makes me nervous to be around cops when I’m a long way from home.

By this fourth day on the road, I cannot ignore that my vanilla whiteness bestows me an unchecked passport through the heartland. It’s been the elephant riding with me. I’m a middle-aged white woman in overwhelmingly white America. My whiteness and age combine, lending me a certain invisibility that works systemically in my favor. This is partly why I don’t see myself or this endeavor as exceptionally brave. I’m still trying to figure out what I can do with this passport to help open the world for those who don’t have similar privileges.

In the end, unsurprisingly, a whole lot of intersectional issues followed me out of the city and hitchhiked cross-country. I’m being an urban snob but I suspect most people figure that trans* people exist… somewhere else. I have stronger suspicion that most people I ran across in the interior wouldn’t ever expect to see a trans* person in their part of the country. This invisibility leaves me unchallenged.

Omaha!

I have arrived! My confidence now can propel me to the Atlantic. Xene takes me out for dinner and a tour of Omaha that includes a dive bar… serving strawberry champagne… on tap. This is one classy city.

The following day the whole family and I go to the zoo, have lunch, and visit a playground. While I have no desire for kids of my own, I’m happy and honored to be any visible, positive combination of queer and trans and woman in my friends’ and their kids’ lives. I’m actually fairly excited about becoming crazy Aunt Amy.

Xene first introduced me to her 3 year old daughter (Hi Cleo!! *waves frantically*) a while ago, before transition. She mentions telling Cleo that she’d see me again because I was coming. At one point, her daughter asked, “So Amy is a girl now?” Her daughter accepted this without too much effort, Xene tells me. Kids are usually more amazing about these things than adults, I’ve been finding.

Remarkably, as my parent friends keep telling me, kids show amazing, nonchalant acceptance of the fact that people can change genders. It strikes me now that this familiarity may actually be why bigots are afraid to have queer/trans folks around children. Kids accept us as people and will grow into accepting adults.

This trip bookended the final administrative dealings of my transition. A week later, I received my shiny new passport, replete with hilariously unflattering photo. I am now a fully legally credentialed woman. I’m still learning, over-stepping, and growing, of course. But as far my (re)appearance into the world, I have arrived.

I am Amy autonomously, who drives across the cross-country because it seems like a scary and fun thing to do. But mostly, the road is wide open and I must keep moving forward.

---

 
Amy Dobrowolsky lives in Seattle with her lovely librarian lady and their two lady cats. Let the stereotypes commence! When she is not driving, wrenching on her Jeep, or building art cars, she is an insufferable academic working toward becoming Dr. Amy. She blogs academically at urbanarchives.wordpress.com and tweets inanely as @AmyBoldItalic because Emphasize All The Things!!

The Incredibly True Story Of How Cissexism Made My Same-Sex Marriage Legal

trans*scribe illustration ©rosa middleton, 2013

Standing in line at the Los Angeles Superior Court in Norwalk, waiting our turn to apply for a marriage license, my wife and I were all smiles. Even when we reached the little windows in the wall, and the woman behind one of the windows gave us a condescending look, telling us with a little twinkle of satisfaction in her eye that California doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages, we were all smiles. I slipped my passport out of my purse and presented the inconsistent gender marker to her, of course with a big smile on my face. I’m sure I must have looked quite smug.

You see, several months before, I had filed the proper documents with the California DMV to receive my driver’s license with an ‘F’ in the area designated for sex. However, at the time, passport changes were much more difficult to obtain. Thanks to this simple governmental regulation, my wife and I were able to exploit a legal loophole and obtain a federally recognized marriage, something that still eludes many of our LGBT sisters and brothers. Currently, only nine states out of 50 recognize same-sex marriages, a statistic that is deplorable under a government that touts itself as being, “the land of the free.”

I’ll never forget the look on that woman’s face, behind the glass at the courthouse. Nor will I forget the look on the young man’s face, behind the glass next to her. He was all smiles, too. And it seems that a month later, when we came to the courthouse dressed to the nines, he remembered us. In fact, he asked us if he could officiate our marriage! He was even sweet enough to use “spouse” instead of “husband” or “wife” regardless of what it said on the marriage certificate. He even took photos of us with our close friends out in the lobby where everyone at the courthouse that day could see us, I in my white silk strapless dress and my wife in her long bell-sleeved black dress. We were all smiles. I’m sure we all looked quite smug.

It was important to me to use a form of identification that identified me as male, despite my distaste at being misgendered during a normal workday, or in any other way being identified as a man. I hate that. I mean, I’ve got boobs for crying out loud! I am no man. But, in this case, it was important to me that someone get the clear distinction that I was exactly that, and my wife a woman, and that someone was the United States government. I needed them to see our marriage as being ‘valid,’ despite trying not to seek validation from outside sources. Sure, there’s civil unions and other forms of joint partnerships that carry tax incentives and whatnot. We could have even just had the wedding for ourselves and our friends and family, in someone’s backyard or some picturesque locale. It would have been every bit as significant and sentimental to my wife and I. But in the back of my head, was a whispering voice that kept calling, so quietly:

“…hospital visitation rights…”
and, “…beneficiary…”
and, “…power of attorney…”

These words resounded in my head, in that infinitesimal voice, because I would be damned before some nurse would keep me from seeing my wife, if she were injured! And I would be damned before seeing one single penny of our money end up in the hands of my parents simply because they were listed as “next of kin.”

The US Supreme Court will soon announce a ruling on same-sex marriage cases that have gripped America for years. The nine sitting justices will have the opportunity to determine, once and for all, the fate of millions of LGBT people who have thus far been denied equal protection under the law. I know in my heart that, at least, most of these nine people can see how important it is to a same-sex couple to be able to visit each other in the hospital, or to ensure a surviving partner doesn’t get thrown out into the street, simply because they are not the legal beneficiary. I firmly believe that they will decide in our favor, if indeed protection of the Constitution remains the mission of the Judicial Branch. I don’t see how they can’t. The defendants can’t even make a solid case without quoting a 2000 year-old book of fairy tales.

I honestly don’t even know what to think, if the alternative happens. It would carry far-reaching implications. To me, the matter is as plain as it could be. Each American citizen is granted equal protection under the law. We’ve fought the equality battle for too long to suddenly forget what it means in this country. And to the county clerk, that young man at the courthouse, it was also as plain as could be. I saw it in his eyes, when I smugly handed over my male-identified passport, and smiled at the other, condescending, clerk. Later, we all saw in in his eyes as he proudly pronounced us married by the power vested in him by the state of California.

Any law that can ban marriage from one group of people and still allow it for another, goes clearly against our Constitution and even more than that, is just plain stupid. Especially when circumventing the law is as simple as deciding which form of identification to show the clerk. Being transgender sometimes has it’s perks. Just don’t expect me to answer to “husband.”

---

Elizabeth is a thirty-something transwoman and wife. She’s a retail slave, part-time writer, and aspiring professional photographer.

Trauma Queen: An Autostraddle Book Review and Interview

I’ve known Lovemme Corazon for a while from tumblr and other spaces for trans* women of color. She has always had a strong, powerful and creative voice, and she’s always seen the importance in sharing her story with others who might have faced similar things in their lives. Trauma Queen, the new memoir by Lovemme Corazon, is a hard read but equally hard to put down. There were several times when I had to stop reading and do something else for a few hours, but the story and writing are so compelling that I was always drawn back to it as soon as possible. Lovemme discusses the things she’s experienced in her life, from childhood abuse, sexual assault and rape, to depression and suicide attempts, to gender dysphoria, youth activism and sex work. All of these things have shaped her into a radically interesting person who has a voice unlike any other authors I have recently read. But while Trauma Queen is a unique book, it is far from a unique story. There are many, many people who will find a familiar history in this book, and the author hopes that will be a jumping off point for healing and discussions.

The memoir combines everything from traditional writing, to poetry, to journal entries, and even blog posts. This creative mix of new and old writing shows the growth she’s gone through and how she has evolved as a person and a survivor. The memories from when she was a child are some of the harshest and most difficult to read. As she gets older and starts including writings from when she was in high school, you can see just how much all of these experiences have shaped her life and how much healing she has gone through, and still has to go through.

Lovemme balances these stories of hard times with true moments of levity, love, triumph, and even comedy. While I spent much of the book cringing at how real and emotional the scenes of sexual abuse and attempted suicide were, the moments where she finds happiness and hope in community and creative self care are truly euphoric. Times where she finds real, positive love are sensual and full. Passages where she puts forth ideas on how to improve community, self care, and activist circles are refreshing and creative. And the moments where she talks about complicating gender, creating her own space, and getting in control of her sex work are empowering.

Lovemme is far from your typical published author. She’s a trans* woman of color, former sex worker, survivor of sexual abuse, and extremely talented person. She has a singularly important voice and this is definitely a story that needs to be heard. In a time when so many trans* women of color’s stories are forgotten or misrepresented in the media, it’s refreshing to be able to read one straight from the source. She straightforwardly confronts many issues that are often swept under the rug.

While I wouldn’t recommend this book as a laid-back beach read for the summer, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who sees kinship with Lovemme and wants to read a story that they can see a part of themselves in. Trauma Queen was published through biyuti publishing, an independent publisher who works to showcase stories by marginalized people. You can purchase the ebook at publish.biyuti.com or buy a physical copy at amazon.com and some regional bookstores.

A lot of the things you write about — abuse, rape, sex work, depression, self injury — are really hard topics to talk about, and you talk about this in your book — we’re even discouraged from talking about them. Where did you find the strength to be able to talk about such painful issues in such a frank way?

It happened through a lot of conversations I’ve had with other survivors, other people who self-harmed, or who kind of just took care of themselves in “unhealthy” ways. And the more that I connected to these people, the more that I was honest with them about the abuse I faced, the more they were willing to open up with me. So I was able to become this open and vulnerable person, and to this day there are a lot of people who tell me that they feel very comfortable sharing their secrets or their abuse with me and we talk about it in really raw, vulnerable ways. So writing this book was very much just channeling all that I’ve learned through conversations with these other people. It’s very, very difficult to talk about it so many times, because you’re reliving the trauma time after time, after time, and this is a very wonderful way for me to just share my story with people that I want to work with in the future.

The way you write, combined with the things you write about, creates this really visceral experience for the reader where sometimes I would have to take breaks and do something completely different because it’s so hard to handle. So how do you recommend readers read this book in a safe way?

Honestly, I think that’s probably one of the strengths of this book. I think even people who aren’t survivors are going to feel uncomfortable by this and need to put it away. When I was writing this, my intended audience was my family members who don’t know about me being a survivor or a sex worker. They think depression is something I can just get past and I wanted them to know how heavy it is to carry this and how I can’t always keep it together. In terms of other readers: definitely take breaks, put it down, call a friend or someone. I would also suggest watching TV, you know, doing something really low energy, drinking a lot of water, eating foods that will comfort you. I would even say form support groups among survivors who are reading this book so you can support each other as you’re going through it.

On the topic of community: You talk about that not only just in general, but also when it comes to self care and how if you don’t have community, that makes self care and personal health so much harder. So how do you think we can work to make better communities for ourselves and for others?

I talked with Nia King about Communal Care — that’s what I call it. Communal care, to me is very much about developing personal relationships with people. You know, when you’re sad or you need support you call your friend or your family. Communal care is opening that up and instead of having one or two people, having a network of folks who you can reach out to. In New York Ball Culture, they have houses, and the way that they’re structured is that they have a mother figure, and they have a family. I think — not appropriating from that idea — but just recognizing that having this house or this network of really close friends who all check in with each other, especially as marginalized folks, is very important. I think what that takes is being vulnerable, it takes exchanging phone numbers, it takes talking about personal things that are not easy to talk about. For me as a survivor, I grew up with the idea that abusive love is love, I think community is a very imperative tool to unlearn that.

You also talk a lot about love and consent, and how from an early age, you didn’t really know how to say “no.” And I feel like that’s a common problem for a lot of people, so what are some ways we can change that and educate people more about consent?

One grey area that I brought to light is the night I was medicated and I was sleeping with my partner and we ended up having sex. I literally did not have control of my body. Seroquel is an anti-psychotic and when used at night, puts you to sleep. And I question, was that rape? Was that assault? What does that mean? There are different ways of consenting. For some people verbal consent isn’t necessary and that works for them, for me, I like to constantly check in, to make sure I’m not stepping into tricky waters. I write in the book how I say “yes,” but I’m still not really consenting to it, and that’s me not knowing how to say no. Conversations around consent lately are “consent is sexy” or “consent is mandatory” but it’s not really diving into what consent is. Like, “yes means yes and no means no” but it’s still a very dichotomous way of thinking and it’s not really digging up how grey consent can be. I want more people to be able to talk about it openly, and I think part of that takes creating temporary amnesty for people who have been abusive or who have raped. Because, I wouldn’t necessarily call the person who had sex with me an abuser. I feel very complicated about that, but I do want to talk about it. That felt very nonconsensual, but I feel like when you say that to someone, they’re going to get very defensive and say “no you were into it” and when people get defensive, there’s no real discussion going on.

You talk a lot about your gender identity in this book, but it isn’t one of the normative, binary trans* narrative that we typically hear. Can you tell me a little bit about why you think it’s important to get non-normative, non-binary gender narratives out there?

I was being true and honest in every other aspect of this book and I couldn’t lie about my gender. I grew up with Latina women, and big boobs are a thing in my family and I expected to grow into that, and I never did. And I also really enjoyed facial hair, and when that did come it was a thing that I enjoyed. And I think the trans* narrative, and especially transsexuality as a medical condition, has been very strict in how trans* people can identify and how they should behave. So if you’re assigned male at birth, you should hate being a boy since you were a child and that just wasn’t me. Now, I was a very feminine child, I was raised by strong, powerful Latina women, and I did aspire to be like them. Femininity to me was stubbornness and working many jobs and still feeding your family and kids and I think that within this binary system, femininity is seen as lesser than or weak and just all the sexist things that go along with that. I wanted to open space around gender to give people the ability to not have to fit this dominant narrative that I don’t think anyone really does.

Janet Mock just wrote a blog post  highlighting the problem that trans* women of color’s stories so often get pushed out of the way and purposefully silenced. Your memoir is one of the books she mentions that’s changing that. How did it feel to be mentioned in that blog post?

Janet and I met in April at Stanford. She was doing her presentation on trans* women in social movements. And when she heard about my memoir, she pre-ordered a copy. She wrote me and said that she heard my podcast with Nia and in that podcast I talked about how it was important to me to publish this memoir before I was dead. As trans* women of color, we all hear about the murders and the mutilations and the abuse and I just I knew that I was coming into this age range where that would be happening. So I kind of felt like a rush to put this memoir out so that these news reports couldn’t project their views onto me. Like, I have a book, you can’t lie about this any more.

What else can we do to make sure more trans* women of color’s voices are being heard and highlighted?

I was super blessed to have biyuti publishing publish my book. I didn’t have to edit anything out, and that was perfect. I knew that if I were to submit this memoir to other publishers, they would want me to write in a different voice that wasn’t my own. But this was a memoir, this is my life and I don’t think I could have handled someone telling me to edit my life, you know what I mean? So, a solution to that is going to smaller presses. There’s Trans-Genre, they published Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities, and then biyuti publishing is another one. Biyuti was telling me that they’re really passionate now about getting other trans* women’s voices out there, so if you’re a trans* woman of color, and you’re looking to publish some writing, go to them. They work on making sure that your voice is as true to yours as possible. I think that’s definitely important because we’re not given access to writing resources or the space to develop our skills as writers and I think retaining as much of our genuine voice as possible is important for us to be genuine with our audience and public.

What’s next for you? Do you plan on publishing any more of your writing?

In terms of writing, I’m currently working on pieces for Tranny Power, the tumblr blog. There’s also The Manatee, which biyuti is working on, and I think I was also going to submit a piece to the {young}ist. So I have a few things I need to be writing about, but I’m taking a little break. And now that I’ve written a book, I kind of want to explore other artistic expressions. I’ve been really interested in doing performance pieces and photo series. But lack of resources and funding for these projects is an issue. But I definitely have a lot of ideas I’m going to try to pursue this summer.

Also.Also.Also: Black Muslim Lesbians in Gay Mecca and Other Stories We Missed This Week

Hello, queermos and gentlefolk! HAPPY HUMP DAY! How are you holding up in this summer heat? My air conditioner is broken so please don’t ask the same question of me, even if you’re just trying to be polite.

Here’s the stories we missed this week while I was opening my windows just a liiiiittle bit more.

F*ck You Very Much

Let me see if I can get this over with fast.

+ F*ck Exxon:

For the 14th consecutive year, shareholders of petroleum giant ExxonMobil have rejected an antidiscrimination resolution that would have protected employees from being fired or harassed simply because they are LGBT.

The vote at today’s annual shareholder meeting in Dallas was not unexpected, but 81% of shareholders voted in opposition to the protection, with just 19% in favor — the lowest support ever recorded, reports the Dallas Voice. 

+ F*ck the Pentagon:

The Pentagon will be celebrating LGBT Pride Month again this year, but the memorandum announcing the designation has caused a stir with an organization that supports LGBT service members and veterans and their families…Although the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” ended the ban on out gay, lesbian or bisexual service members, the military continues to consider a service member being transgender grounds for a discharge from the military.

+ F*ck Hate Crimes:

Twenty five year-old Kevin Kiadii, who in April became the fifth man to accuse Elmo voice actor Kevin Clash of sexual abuse, was allegedly targeted in an anti-gay hate crime, continuing a disturbing trend of recent anti-gay attacks in New York City.

+ F*ck Exclusion:

Even though the first national DYKE March was twenty years ago, lesbians are still struggling to get attention in the LGBT rights movement. Flip through the next gay magazine that you find and take a look at the advertisements. Most of them will feature and target gay men because the writers and advertisers assume that, just like straight women, lesbians will have a higher tolerance for being left out and still remain interested and active. Lesbians all over the Salt Lake valley read Q and The Advocate, but when was the last time you saw a gay man flipping through a copy of Curve? And if there isn’t a strong lesbian presence in LGBT literature, the transgender community has been almost entirely left out.

But this isn’t about a bunch of magazines or where we spend Saturday afternoon. Regularly pushing aside the LBT to let the G take center stage has serious ramifications for the communities being overlooked.

+ And for the last time: IT’S YES FUCKING HOMO, OK.

Gimme Gimme Moar

I’m flying high, defying gay gravity….

Defying Gay Gravity was initially written as my own personal response to fulfilling on a childhood regret: coming out as a kid in middle school. Instead, I waited until years later when I felt safe and self-assured that it was a step I was willing to take. The book however transformed into the personal journey of Gordi and how he comes to accept himself for who he is: a gay boy looking to find a place for himself in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vmxov8qXOcw

Putting Sexism on the Map

When Laura Bates took on the Everyday Sexism Project, she intended to compile stories of discrimination – not a tome. But now, the project has a website where it compiles the hundreds of stories it receives on the regular via Twitter, and they’re becoming part of a larger feminist movement overseas.

The police plan to use the Everyday Sexism site to enhance their intelligence on where and when harassment happens, said Inspector Ricky Twyford of the British Transport Police, the project manager for the move to curb sexual harassment on London’s buses and trains.

They also want Ms. Bates to repeat what Inspector Twyford called a powerful talk she delivered to police officials, in which she read posts from women describing being harassed or assaulted. The police plan to record it to use in workshops for officers who patrol the transit network, he said.

Stella Creasy, a Labour Party lawmaker who exchanges Twitter postings with Everyday Sexism, said these stories demonstrated that women remained unequal.

“This is real life, this is happening every single day to women in our country,” Ms. Creasy said. “There is a resurgence of feminist activism, and I say bring it on. That is amazing, that is going to make Britain a better place for everyone.”

YSG: Phresh Cutz

It’s baaaaaaaaack. Be there Saturday, June 8 from 8PM to 2AM or be totally rectangular and perfectly even on each side.

WHAT

A dope-ass, queer-as-fuck nighttime pop-up barbershop and party for you and your frands featuring:

Fresh cuts (of all styles, lengths, genders, and feelings)
Fresh tracks (four DJ sets)
Dranks (beer and wine)
Drinks (coffee and tea)
Snacks (vegans and non-vegans, we got ya covered)
…and sexyphresh queers

Cover: $5 (sliding scale, no one will be turned away), all ages

Black Muslim Lesbians in Mecca

You have to read this for yourself to understand.

S: That’s what we are looking for ourselves, that we don’t have to negotiate any parts of ourselves, its tiring and exhausting. It’s amazing that you created this space alongside these women.

RS: And I even— like when they say “Red Summer created this space.” I didn’t. I just asked you to come to the house. There would be no spaces if women didn’t show up.”

S: It would be just be yourself. [laughs]

So Atlanta is known as the “Gay Mecca” and I’ve heard that from non-Muslims, and I think it is interesting to take Mecca and take it as this place as a pilgrimage to go to Atlanta. Anyone who is black and gay wants to go to Atlanta to feel safe and to embrace themselves. Do you think that for Muslim women there is an attraction to live in Atlanta and to be in a space where they can kind of reconcile their sexuality with their faith?

RS: I don’t think if Muslim women in Atlanta had confronted that with space [living in Atlanta]. Even though there is the term of “Gay Mecca” nobody has said it as a religious term, even though there is much Muslim community in Atlanta. And I live in a community where there are restaurants, you see women in hijab walking down the streets, its not like it was far away from me. But I didn’t still feel welcome. And I didn’t, its not that anyone had a chance to ostracize, I was already prepared to not be welcomed into that space, because of my sexuality. I had enough at home, I didn’t need to recreate that experience here, but I think because its so okay to be lesbian in Atlanta, that kind of trumps it in a way. Okay I am okay with myself in this way, and now I can look at the other part of myself. Does that make sense? Like once we establish we are in safe space we are not going to be bashed or whatever, then we wanted to make it a complete safe space, not a partial safe space not a space for some of us, but a complete safe space. And what that looks like.

Have Another Drink, On Me

Do women drink too much? I am definitely the wrong person to ask.

The recommended limit for alcoholic consumption established by the National Institutes of Alcoholic Abuse and Alcoholism for women is three drinks on a given day and no more than 7 beverages a week. The study also states that men should not drink more than four drinks on a single day and no more than 14 a week.

Drinking beyond these limits can put women in serious risk for breast cancer or liver disease, as well as long-term memory loss. Despite these scary risks, a new study from the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Addiction Medicine found that college women are 5o percent more likely to exceed these limits than men. While women might not be pounding more than three drinks a day, they are most definitely consuming more than seven drinks a week.

Dr. Who?

Dr. Who should be a woman so that I can be interested in popular, contemporary television again.

Gay Marriage Goes Global

+ Nigeria’s House of Representatives banned gay marriage – and set a sentence of upwards of 10 years in prison for a bunch of random acts of homosexuality!

Under the proposed law, Nigeria would ban any same-sex marriage from being conducted in either a church or a mosque. Gay or lesbian couples who marry could face up to 14 years each in prison. Witnesses or anyone who helps couples marry could be sentenced to 10 years behind bars. Anyone taking part in a group advocating for gay rights or anyone caught in a “public show” of affection also would face 10 years in prison if convicted by a criminal court.

In its voice vote, the House simply adopted all the clauses previously passed by the Senate without any discussion. The bill now sits before Jonathan for his approval or veto. Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati did not respond to a request for comment Thursday night regarding the president’s position on the measure.

+ Another week, yet another conversation surrounding gay marriage in France.

+ As of Monday, the Peace Corps is interested in seeing same-sex couples work together within the program.

Queer is Like…

Lezbreal. Queer is, like, everything.

Turning the Tide: How Activism to Protect Queer Students and Communities Works

On May 1st, when I sit down in front of the Louisiana House Education Committee, I’m surprised at how nervous I am. For the past two and a half hours, I’ve been sitting in the back of the committee room, wondering if it’s going to rain on me while I ride my scooter home, rehearsing what I’ll say when I testify for HB 646, The Safe and Successful Students Act, comes up for debate. From the back of the room, the semi-circle amphitheater made it easier to see all the committee members. But as I sit at a table at the bottom, the committee looms above me. Having to look up at them makes me feel as if I am on trial.

Power in Louisiana is a top down scenario, and current bullying policy in Louisiana makes this clear: we have zero tolerance policies for bullying and other types of misbehavior. This means students who bully often get suspended for a week or two, then return to school with no other intervention. This is a bad set up for bully victims, as zero tolerance doesn’t change the school environment, or help bullies change their behavior. The Safe and Successful Students Act is a way to allow schools to use restorative justice practices instead of immediate expulsions and suspensions.

During my testimony, I tell the committee that I have a master’s degree in sociology, and I’m working on a PhD in English. As a researcher, I’ve noticed that zero tolerance policies lead to poor outcomes. I explain that Louisiana’s policy on bullying makes it difficult for teachers to report bullying. Under current practices, bullied students, bystanders, or bullies don’t get the treatment they need, which often leads to depression, drug abuse, and gang membership for adults. I do not talk about why this matters to me.

I keep my stories inside. Watching a friend get teased out of school while I did nothing to stop it because I didn’t want to be the next target; the note my entire science class wrote about how ugly I was; getting in trouble for fighting back. Refusing to go to school; the principal saying I could just stay home for a day; begging my parents to send me to another school next year.

I do not mention the recent suicides in Louisiana. I do not talk about how LGBT kids are more likely to be bullied and to commit suicide. I do not point out that zero tolerance policies also penalize low-income African American students. Or how queer youth of color are doubly jeopardized by current policies. I stick to data, to the US Dept. of Justice research. I am one of many women, and one of the only white women to testify in support this bill. We are all brief, as the committee chair has asked us to be.

And then Principal Roy McCoy from Bastrop, Louisiana, sits at the table to argue against restorative justice. He tells stories about himself. About teachers. Even as I’m horrified by what he says, I’m riveted. And so is the House Education Committee. They are on the edge of their seats. It is as if Falstaff from Henry IV has been reincarnated as a white, southern man. Roy McCoy uses his personal experience like it has the validity of scientific studies. He thinks that restorative justice practices will take power away from principals.

The bill author, Representation Smith, tells McCoy he has misunderstood the bill. He talks over her. She is forced to come down from her committee seat to the table to explain the bill again. No matter how many times she says that students who are violent towards teachers, other students, or who threaten violence will still be expelled, Roy McCoy counters with another story of a woman he knows being attacked by a student and suggested that HB 646 will make it impossible for principals to expel students. Despite this, HB 646 passes unanimously in committee and is slated for debate on the House Floor.

And then the damage control begins. Prior to the committee hearing, the bill had good support. But McCoy began a smear campaign against HB 646. The many organizations supporting the bill: Stop Bullying Louisiana, the Louisiana Association of Educators, and Equality Louisiana scramble to undo the damage McCoy has wrought.

After the committee debate, I sit down with activist Tucker Barry, 24, a founding member one of Equality Louisiana (a statewide coalition of 30 LGBTQ and allied organizations), to talk about HB 646 and queer activism in Louisiana. Tucker has been an activist since their days at Louisiana State University and recently gave a TEDX talk. Despite the setbacks, Tucker is excited about HB 646. “I’ve never worked on any bill that has passed before,” Tucker says. A chance to see a bill pass that will protect LGBT youth is rare. So far, this session, 2013 has been a typically tough year for LGBT issues in the Louisiana Legislature: HB 85, which would have made it illegal to fire employees because of sexual identity and/or gender identity and expression, did not make it out of the committee hearing to the House Floor. There’s SB 162 which legalizes gestational surrogacy, but only for heterosexual couples. And HB 402, which would make suing an employer for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity expression incredibly difficult. But this session marked a historic first for queer activists: it was the first time an openly transgender person has testified at a legislative committee hearing.

As it is in many states, some powerful Louisianan legislators have long let homophobia shape their lawmaking. In 1983, while running for re-election, Governor Edwin Edwards said, on film, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” Edwards won, and went on to serve his third term as Louisiana’s governor. I thought of this quote while looking at the current policies up for debate at the Louisiana Legislature which directly affect LGBTQ folks. In it, gay sex is morally equated with murder. Edwards had already served as governor for two terms; he had admitted to taking illegal campaign contributions yet he was poised to win a third election. A gay tryst was one of only things he could fathom would stop him.

Tucker and I talk during one of the very few open time blocks in their day: in between lobbying at the capitol and before the monthly meeting of the Capital City Alliance, a local queer organization. As we talk, Tucker takes time to educate me. We may live in a democratic society, but figuring out how to take part in the legislative process means stepping into a maze of terms, procedures, and social codes. In my conspiracy theorist moments, I think the legislative process is designed to confuse and bore citizens away from capitol buildings.

Here’s how laws are made: activists, organizations, and corporate lobbyists can approach senators or representatives to author new bills or add amendments to bills already in the works. For newcomers – even English PhD students – the tedious language of the bills is difficult to decipher. Bills are debated in committees – like HB 646 – and if they get enough votes in committee, then they are debated on the House and Senate floor. If it passes both the House and Senate, a bill might return to another committee to iron out amendments. Yet even if a bill makes it through all that, many bills still must be approved by Governor Bobby Jindal. Depending on the type of bill, Jindal can use his authority to veto individual lines or whole bills. Activists and legislators can see an entire year’s worth of work destroyed in seconds by one man’s pen.

Last year, Tucker worked on a bullying bill which would have included sexual orientation and gender expression on a list of protected identities. These lists, called enumerated characteristics, also include racial and ethnic identities, religious affiliations, and disability. They are recommended as best practice by the US Dept. of Justice for bullying policy; only fifteen states have them. But, as Tucker explained, “for now, using the language of sexual orientation kills anything we do.”

And that is exactly what happened in 2011 when the bill came up for debate: Representative Alan Seabaugh, from Shreveport, La., claimed that language in the bill was “straight out of the lesbian, gay, transgender playbook.” What is in our playbook? According to Seabaugh it was the enumerated list from HB 112, the Safe Schools Act which listed race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, physical characteristic, political persuasion, mental disability, or physical disability, as well as attire or association with others identified by such categories, as protected identities. The Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative Christian group, believes that words like “sexual orientation” are so powerful that having them in law would “recruit” straight youth and teach sexual politics in the classroom.

Tucker tells me that this year, Equality Louisiana “had to figure out how LGBT youth are severely impacted in the system and figure out ways to protect them.” Without using the words sexual orientation, this can be difficult, but focusing on the specifics of oppression is useful for coalition building. As Equality Louisiana is a mostly white organization, coalition work is at the center of their practices. They work with many primarily African American groups and with educators, as Tucker explains, “we have to recognize where our issues overlap, hold together, and protect each other.” LGBT rights are not “just like” civil rights – to say so erases the experience of queer people of color, as it implies that all LGBTQ folks are white and all African Americans and other people of color are straight. However, structures and policies which oppress LGBTQ folks, African Americans, students of color, and disabled students overlap and intersect, meaning that queer people of color contend with both systemic racism and homophobia simultaneously.

Tucker tells me about a youth who reached out to the Capital City Alliance who was in trouble at his school because he wouldn’t take his extensions out of his hair. Current discipline policy in Louisiana has a code called “willful disobedience,” which can be used to enforce gender norms and police African American students. The boy with the extensions was being teased; rather than address the teasing, the school said that keeping the extensions in his hair was an act of “willful disobedience.” This case is an example of where race and LGBT issues overlap, and restorative justice, which looks to the school community rather than just authorities, would offer a better solution to these multiple oppressions than forcing a student to change his hair.

While much of Tucker’s work focuses on lobbying, Frances Kelley, a member of GetEqual Louisiana, Equality Louisiana, and Forward Louisiana (we have a lot of awesome NGO’s in Louisiana) engages in non-violent direct action related to bills. Based in North Louisiana, hours from Baton Rouge, Frances, Adrienne Critcher of PACE (People Acting for Change and Equality), and their friends use a mixture of creativity, respect, and persistence to work for LGBT rights in Louisiana. Like South Louisiana, it can be tough in North Louisiana for activists. Frances’ mother worries that her being out will affect her employment.

Frances says, “sometimes marginalized or oppressed groups are seen as angry and emotional, particularly women. I think that is unfair, how when people call other people out it is seen as being impolite.” However, Frances thinks a person can “be respectful and militant at the same time.” In particular, she practices respectful militancy when dealing with House Representative Alan Seabaugh. This spring, Seabaugh authored HB 402, The Employment/Discrimination Act, which he claims was designed to protect employers from “frivolous” lawsuits. While race, gender, and religious affiliation were exempt, sexual orientation was not. Had the bill passed, it would have meant any LGBT person who tried to sue their employer for discriminatory practices would have had to pay for the entire lawsuit themselves: the district attorney would not be required to prosecute.

Tucker views HB 402 as one of the biggest successes of this legislative session. Equality Louisiana used grassroots lobbying to get 100 people to call Seabaugh’s office. They attracted national media attention. Frances and PACE delivered a gay agenda (it included items such as doing laundry and paying bills) to Seabaugh’s Shreveport office. In the end, Seabaugh dropped the bill.

Tucker tell me that when lobbying, they tell legislators “I understand it is tough for you to take a stand on this [LGBT issues], let me give you some other reasons you can object to this bill. We don’t have any money or power, all we have to offer politicians is an opportunity to do the right thing. In the meantime, we have to keep building relationships with cautious allies in the legislature.” I think of this as I watch the House debates online for two LGBT related bills. First up is SB 162, a bill which would legalize gestational surrogacy (that’s when a surrogate does not use her own eggs), but make it illegal for anyone but married heterosexual couples to use surrogates. This bill, according to Tucker, has ended up the most openly hostile LGBT bill this session.

Though Senator Gary Smith, who sponsored SB 162, was well intentioned in that he wanted surrogacy legalized, the bill excluded LGBT folks because it specified that only a married couple (as defined by the Louisiana State Constitution) that used their own sperm and egg could use a surrogate. LGBT folks were already doubled excluded: once by the state definition of marriage, and twice by the genetic material requirements. Then Representative Hoffman – who also sits on the Marriage and Family Council – requested an amendment. Should the Supreme Court overturn Prop 8 or DOMA this summer, the bill will be null and void. In other words, if marriage equality passes, Louisiana heterosexual couples will no longer be able to use surrogates. The amendment passed. Not a single Representative spoke out against it.

While Senator Smith has been willing to meet with Equality Louisiana to reword that amendment in final committee, Tucker says this scenario “has created a perfect storm that demonstrates the political climate here.” Tucker thinks Governor Jindal is likely to veto the current bill, as the religious right opposes any surrogacy. But if Smith takes out the Prop 8 amendment and replaces with language which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, Tucker believes Jindal would pass it. The pressure from the strong right wing forces here has pitted Democrats against LGBT folks: Senator Smith now must choose between being even more hostile to LGBT folks or risk seeing his bill vetoed.

When HB 646, The Safe and Successful Students Act, comes up, there are no questions. Bill sponsor Representation Smith tries to undo the damage Roy McCoy has wrought: she assures the House that principals will still be able to suspend and expel disruptive students. It comes close, but it isn’t enough. The bill gets 50 yeas and 31 nays, which is 3 votes short of the simple majority needed to pass it. It gets rescheduled for one more try. When it comes up again, on May 27th, it fails with only 47 yeas. “Roy McCoy is a one man wrecking ball,” Tucker says. They attribute many of the nays to Roy McCoy’s lobbying, and the rest to bad break. Eight representatives who would have voted yes were absent.

I leave this process wondering if I’ve failed my students. I teach English and WGS at LSU, and when my students generalize from their personal experiences, I tell them that the plural of personal experience is not scientific data. What I’ve witnessed and heard this legislative session contradicts this lesson: personal narratives have a deep impact on laws.

Ask people about politics in Louisiana and they’ll tell you that our governor has more power than any other state governor. They will tell you about committee appointees, line item vetoes, back room deals, and the old boy network. The grass roots coalition work Tucker, Frances, and Equality Louisiana engage in challenges the very structure of power itself in Louisiana. Many here cling to hierarchy. Like Roy McCoy, who responded with fear to The Safe and Successful Students Act because could not see how restorative justice offers shared power and shared responsibility. Despite all this, towards the end of our interview, Tucker tells me “the tide is turning.” And I believe them. But, English teacher that I am, I want to offer an edit: We’re turning the tide. Because the tide didn’t turn on its own. We owe thanks to activists like Tucker, Frances, and countless others in Louisiana who fight the current for all of us.

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Penelope Dane  can’t quit Louisiana. She has work forthcoming in “This Assignment is So Gay: LGBTQ Poets on the Art of Teaching” and “My Body My Health: Women’s Stories.” When she isn’t writing her dissertation, she works on her novel, “Clay Memory.” She blogs about what she and her partner are cooking and what oppression they are fighting at bikaandsnowglobe.blogspot.com. She would love to run an Exploring the Lesbian Perspective workshop for you.

Lucy Meadows’ Coroner Says Press Deserves Shame for Her Death

feature image via The Guardian

“To the members of the press, I say shame. Shame on all of you.”

These were the words of Michael Singleton, the coroner assigned to the case of Lucy Meadows, the British school teacher who took her own life shortly after her gender transition made national gossip headlines in the UK earlier this year.

As previously recounted here at Autostraddle, in late 2012, St. Mary Magdalen’s School informed Lucy’s students that Lucy, who had previously lived outwardly as a man, would return after the winter break as a woman. And although this story is something that has virtually no news value whatsoever for people who aren’t directly connected to Lucy’s classroom, for some reason a series of sensationalized stories on the subject appeared in the British press; this started with a story in the local Accrington Observer, featuring a scowling picture of the parents of one of Lucy’s students, and then spiraled up to the UK national press, including two articles that appeared in the Daily Mail tabloid.

The most over the top of these was an opinion column from shock jock commentator Richard Littlejohn titled “[S]he’s not only in the wrong body… [s]he’s in the wrong job” that implied Lucy should be fired or moved to another school. The article also included pre-transition pictures of Lucy with her then-wife; in clear breach of any kind of journalistic standards, these pictures were directly lifted from Facebook.

Lucy chose to end her life in March of this year.

While we can never be certain exactly what role the harassment she faced from the press played in that decision, it is clear that Lucy bitterly resented the press intrusion into her life, and it is clear that the behavior was entirely inappropriate. Lucy did file a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about the Littlejohn column; it took two months for the process to be resolved and in the end the Daily Mail offered nothing more than to simply take the story down from its website. That was about a week before Lucy’s death.

The coroner Singleton described the gesture as merely tokenistic, stating, “It seems to be that nothing has been learned from the Leveson inquiry.” It was during the Trans Media Watch presentation to the Leveson inquiry that it became widely public that the British press has gone so far as open up the lives of trans children for public ridicule and abuse.

It is heartening to see that Singleton was willing to come out and make such a strong statement to the UK press (and elsewhere, by extension) that the harassment and abuse of trans people’s lives and stories needs to end. Let us all remember Lucy’s story as we demand that the press starts to listen.

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Savannah is a queer trans woman and physicist originally from the great state of Carolina (that alone should tell you which one).  She also writes on trans feminism and other social justice issues on her blog leftytgirl, preferably while listening to metal.  Savannah presently lives in Tokyo where her principle hobbies include singing at karaoke clubs and getting lost on the subway.

Identity Theft: A Trans* Intersex Woman On Traumas and Surgery

For me, being intersex has been nothing short of difficult, scary, painful, and shameful. When I was four years old, my family or the doctors or both, decided I needed ‘corrective’ genital surgery, because my genitals were non normative. I don’t know much about the details of how the decision was made because my family hid this from me and never explained or talked about what happened to me. It was off limits.

I don’t remember exactly what my body looked like before my surgery. I do remember having my surgery though. I was four. I was told it was because I couldn’t pee straight and that it needed to be fixed. I was taken to the hospital and walked back to the operating room. I remember resisting and crying on the way. I remember begging the nurse and my family not to go through with this. They tried to bribe me by telling me I could ride in a toy car for little kids to the operating room. They told me everything would be okay. They lied.

When I awoke, my genitals hurt and were bloody and swollen. They asked me to go to the bathroom to see if I could still pee. I’d had no trouble peeing before the operation, but they’d cut some things off, sewn some things up and rearranged things down there and they wanted to make sure everything still worked. I went to the bathroom with my mother and tried to pee a little. It burned. I quickly gave up on that, and insisted I didn’t have to go pee. My mother turned on the water in the sink while I sat in the stall. I pretended to try, and told her once more that there just wasn’t anything to pee out.

She gave up, and the doctor told her to call later and let them know if I’d gone to the bathroom. I walked around my grandmother’s house for days without any underwear and a t-shirt of hers because any contact with my genitals was so painful. They brought me ice cream to pacify me.

I don’t remember speaking to my family about the surgery again until about 20 years later when I confronted my aunt about it and asked her for details. This was after four years of not having contact with any of my family, due to my queer and trans* status. They weren’t safe people; we’ll leave it at that for now. I met up with my aunt in a McDonald’s with my partner at the time and asked her about what had happened. She said that I was “peeing out of the bottom of my genitals” and that it needed to be fixed. I asked her what was wrong with that. It’s not hard to sit and pee after all, half of the population or more do it every day.

A year later I heard from my mother for the first time in five years over Facebook. She said something impersonal and superficial, and I used it as an opportunity to bring up the surgery. I told her what I’d learned about being intersex. I sent her information about intersex people and trans* people and asked her to read it. She replied by saying she only intended to say hello, indicating she had no intention or interest in reading or learning about these things.

It was disappointing, but I was used to it. I can’t pretend I haven’t hurt over it, but I’ve tried to convince myself that biological relation doesn’t mean someone cares about you or that they have some kind of inalienable bond with you across space and time. My grandmother told me I would never have anyone feel proud of me or appreciate me again after I moved away and reduced my interactions with my biological “family” to e-mails and nothing more. They all stopped speaking to me soon after, mostly in response to me criticizing their homophobia, racism and various other hateful beliefs.

I didn’t officially come out to them until much later due to the fear their reaction stirred up in me and to the abuse they’d already inflicted on me throughout my childhood. When I did come out, it was only to certain people: my sibling, and two aunts, people who had minimal or no authority over me as a child. Word got around and from what my brother tells me, they reacted as though I’d murdered someone and would soon be falling into the deepest pits of hell for my ‘sins.’

+ + +

Knowing my history, as with many other intersex people, has been nearly impossible. It’s been hidden from me by my family, doctors, society. I didn’t even know intersex people existed until I was 21 years old and in college. After an exam with a doctor and a comment asking if I’d had genital surgery for my ‘condition,’ I got curious for the first time and felt brave enough to research it. What I found was life changing to say the least. I’d already started experimenting with my gender and how I would express it, and I’d always felt like something wasn’t quite right about it and my body’s history. Of course having an intersex condition doesn’t imply any particular sexual orientation or gender, but at the time I had such a limited vocabulary and this felt like a justification of my newly-discovered queer identity. I needed hard scientific evidence that there was a cause to all of this, that it was out of my hands to some extent, because I’d been raised to hate and fear people like myself. Gender-nonconforming behavior or queer sexual orientations were things that would literally get you killed. I was brainwashed by an extreme fundamentalist Southern Baptist family and culture, and I really did believe and fear burning in hell and bringing on bad fortune and punishment from a god that didn’t like queer people.

Having some kind of tangible physical evidence of the nonsensical, illogical things I’d been conditioned to believe was both relieving and terrifying. I had no understanding of where I was going and was battling internalized homophobia, transphobia, and intersexphobia every day. I became very depressed and had regular anxiety attacks. I had to convince myself I was not mentally ill, live as intelligently as possible and take care of myself. I had to prove to myself I wasn’t going to be irresponsible, frivolous and dangerous, as I’d been led to believe all queer people were. What made it even harder was the negative portrayal and information about queer people that was available and prevalent, and the way people around me reacted to me exploring and expressing my identity.

Some people began to look at me as though I was unreliable, dishonest, sexually promiscuous, deviant and sick. My grandmother had once suggested that I was doing this to be popular. What a joke. I wish I could be more ‘popular’ and accepted for being queer and intersex and trans*. Others asked invasive questions about my genitals. Some, such as my partner at the time, felt my femininity diminished hers and that I was now competition. Many agreed with the doctors. Doctors are seen as all-knowing and infallible, and if they did this, they had good reason.

The doctors themselves were less than helpful. When I first found out I had an intersex condition, I had a doctor try to convince me that wasn’t actually intersex,because my genitals had been normalized and didn’t look like some of the “most ambiguous” genitals he was aware of and had pictures of in a book. It seemed as though he was trying to comfort me, as though if I’d left believing I was intersex, it would somehow be a bad thing, a crisis.

+ + +

I didn’t tell another doctor or seek any assistance on the matter until four years later. The doctor is now my OB/GYN and prescribes me hormones. He understood me for nearly two years as just your average transgender person. The reason I told him about my intersex history was because I wanted to change my birth certificate gender marker. The law in North Carolina states one must have a letter from a physician saying the person has undergone “sex reassignment surgery” and if it does not say exactly that, then no change to the gender marker will be made.

I hoped to find a way to get my birth certificate changed. Could we argue that my surgery as a child was “sexual reassignment” and get my gender changed? My doctor no; technically that was a “female-to-male” surgery and the surgery I needed to have and document for a gender change would need to be a “male-to-female” surgery. So essentially, because some asshole doctor somewhere decided to perform this surgery, and assign me male, I have to fix his mistake by having more surgery. How is that okay? How is that logical? But this is what my doctor told me would need to happen before he wrote a letter.

Many trans people don’t want surgery or can’t have surgery for medical reasons or because it costs tens of thousands of dollars, and that can prohibit someone from legally being recognized as the gender they are, ever. This group of people includes me. It was interesting to see my doctor’s face and reaction when I told him the only thing I would change about my body would be to undo the surgery that was forced on me as a child and that otherwise I was not unhappy with my genitals and didn’t want to change them. He replied, “Well, you can undo it if you have the surgery.” He seemed perplexed that I wasn’t unhappy or loathing of my genitals and advised that I remove, cut, and scar more of my genitals in order to cover up the first surgery.

But not only did I not loathe my genitals, removing more sensitive, functional genital tissue, including a large portion of the glans of my clitoris to reduce its size to a more “normal” size seemed like a bad idea to me. I enjoy my sex life and surgery seems like it would reduce functionality and sensitivity.

I know lots of trans people decide to have genital surgery, and of course that’s their right. But it’s also my right to elect not to. It’s terrible to push someone to choose surgery or expect them to simply because they are trans or intersex. I’d been traumatized by the mutilation that was forced on me as a child, and have no desire to relive it.

This discussion ended with him trying to convince me that I wasn’t intersex, that due to the fact it was successfully erased by surgery, I was essentially making it all up. In his words, my surgery was to “correct a birth defect,” it was not mutilation. He discouraged me from investigating further and looking into my health further; “It’s probably an isolated thing,” he told me.

+ + +

So as it stands, I have conflicting documents. My birth certificate says “M” while my drivers license and the social security administration say “F.” And eventually, when I get together the money to buy a new one, my passport will say “F.” But who cares, right? My various IDs should be enough, right?

As it turns out, no. If it were discovered that my birth certificate were in conflict with my ID, my ID would be reverted to male. If I were to unfortunately be caught walking while trans* and brought into custody or arrested for any reason, I’d end up in a facility with males and treated as a male.

I already have to deal with the fact that if I apply for a job and they run a background check, they will find out that I had a previous name, one that doesn’t fit my appearance or gender. So I will either have to let them know up front – to prevent being accused of fraud or deception – by filling out “previous names” on the application, or I can hope they don’t actually run a background check and find out what my old name was. It’s unfortunate, unfair and illogical that intersex people get assigned a gender and a sex and are expected to either stick with them (even if they’re wrong) or fix someone else’s mistake with expensive, risky surgery on their genitals.

I’ve wondered what would happen if someone like myself asked my genitals be returned to their normal state, as they were before surgery. Would any doctor be willing to leave their operating room with genitals that weren’t part of this constructed binary? I don’t foresee ever being able or allowed to exist as something physically “in between” to any degree in so far as my genitals are concerned. That body, my body, is unacceptable. If we define sexual orientation based on anatomy, as most people do, who would an intersex person be expected to be with in order to be heterosexual? We are destructive to heteronormativity, to the notion of “men and women”, even to ideas like “gay” and “lesbian” if we define sexual orientation purely by anatomy. So what’s next? Where do we go from here? And how do we get there without violating the bodies and identities of more intersex people?

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About the author: Amelie is an intersex, queer, trans* woman pursuing a Master’s degree in pure mathematics. She attained her undergraduate degrees in German and Mathematics, and has studied abroad in Germany at Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg. She has experience with working inside the university system with administrators and educators to change policies and develop educational programs offered to faculty, staff, and students. She has also experienced first hand the way in which gender and sexuality are understood in western European countries. When she isn’t studying mathematics, she is active in the community and tries to educate and raise awareness around intersex and trans* issues.

Special Note: Autostraddle’s “First Person” personal essays do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Autostraddle or its editors, nor do any First Person writers intend to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. First Person writers are simply speaking honestly from their own hearts.

I’m A Trans Woman And I’m Not Interested In Being One of the “Good Ones”

trans*scribe illustration ©rosa middleton, 2013

A month or two after I started living full time out as woman, one of my friends suggested I talk to an acquaintance of his, an older trans woman who had been out for years.

My friend thought his acquaintance might be able to give me some tips on surviving as a trans woman. I was thrilled. Here, I though, was someone who had the answers. Surely she would be able to point me in the right direction. We had arranged to meet in a coffee shop. In my excitement I arrived an hour early. It was going to be awesome.

What actually happened was that she showed up and asked why I wasn’t dressed like a woman. I was wearing skinny jeans, a studded belt, and an ironic t-shirt. I liked how I looked. I looked, in my opinion, like a queer woman in her mid-twenties on her day off, which, shockingly, I was.

But no, I was informed, I wasn’t being a woman right.

She was neither the first nor the last person to inform me that I’m doing it wrong. There was I woman I met soon after moving back up to Boston in 2011. She had transitioned in her teens and most folks wouldn’t know she was trans unless she wanted to tell them. She had a real heart for women who were just starting transition, but she had expectations for those people. She couldn’t stand ‘bricks.’ She explained that bricks were women who looked “like a man in a dress.” A cinderblock was even worse. A trans guy who was too femme was feathery.

I’ve been told that if I’d only start pitching my voice up, or stop wearing pants, or start wearing make up, I could totally pass, that no one would have to know the shameful secret that I’m a trans person.

There’s another side too. In college I asked the instructor of a Women’s Studies course I took if she could recommend any reading on trans issues. She suggested Sheila Jeffreys’ 2005 book ‘Beauty and Misogyny,’ which contains a delightful chapter in which Jeffreys uses pornography depicting young trans women of color to explain why there’s no such thing as trans and how trans women(no mention of trans men or non-binary folks for some reason) are actually evil, essentially pornographic simulacra reinforcing harmful gender tropes.

It’s a great double bind. If you present in a traditionally feminine way, you’re just being a misogynistic parody of a woman, and if you fail to present in a traditionally feminine way, well ha! There’s the proof that you’re not really a woman right there.

And even if you are “really a woman,” that might not be enough. At a Christmas party last December a Smith alumna defended Smith’s decision not to accept trans feminine students by explaining that even if trans women were women, they had still been socialized as boys and men, and that Smith, as a safe space for women and trans men, had a right to defend their students from such people, from the inexorcisable specter of their privilege.

I know women who identify as “heterosexual with a transgender history.” They’re trying so hard to get away.

But you know what’s worse than being somebody’s idea of a bad tranny? Being somebody’s idea of a good tranny, an acceptable tranny.

Last fall I was at an event in a room full of professional acquaintances. A musician who I’ve done some good work with came over to talk to me. This guy is a kind, thoughtful man who I trust. I’ve known him for about two years.

“Vivian,” he said, “it’s so nice to have you here. You always seem to happy and relaxed, and you’re always so open about being trans.”

At this point I’m smiling, enjoying a nice compliment. Then the horror began.

“All the other trans people I’ve known are always so stressed out and unhappy, and are just so difficult. You do an amazing job of making people comfortable.”

And by then I was ready to leap on him to get him to be quiet. The only other trans person he knew, as far as I was aware, was standing a few yards away. I don’t know if she heard that or not, but I really hope not.

That’s not a unique example. I’ve had a lesbian in her 60s tell me that I was the first trans woman who ever got along with, that I’m cool and queer instead of “uncomfortably trying too hard to be a straight woman.”

Here’s the thing: People fucking despise trans women. Often the nicest thing they can thing of to say to trans woman is “gosh, you are so little like a trans woman!” Being trans is something to avoid, to exclude, to escape, at worst to nobly bare up under.

But I’m done with it. You can be trans or cis. You can be super femme, you can be ultra butch. You can be straight or queer. You can have people saying you’re a transcendent beauty who just stepped off a Renaissance canvas, you can have people saying you’re a stomach turning monster. You can be a light in the world who every person you meet loves and devotes themselves to, you can be an awkward storm cloud who drives everyone away.

I don’t care. Sun shines and rain falls on the just and unjust alike. I don’t want to know who the Real Good Ones and the Real Bad Ones are. We’re all people. We all deserve to be treated as valued members of humanity. That’s all.

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Special Note: Autostraddle’s “First Person” personal essays do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Autostraddle or its editors, nor do any First Person writers intend to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. First Person writers are simply speaking honestly from their own hearts.

Transitioning While Genderqueer (Despite the Standards of Care)

feature image via Shutterstock

trans*scribe illustration ©rosa middleton, 2013

In August of 2011, I managed to make an appointment with a counsellor.

I had been trying unsuccessfully for more than a year to see someone about receiving hormone therapy and this was the first step. It had been a difficult task — four years of trying to find a mental health professional that my insurance would cover and that would see me without me having to try to kill myself first. As I walked into the therapist’s office, I recalled a time the previous year, when I had called a local behavioral health center. I had been on the verge of doing something drastic and the woman’s voice came through the receiver in a calm juxtaposition to my desperation, “Oh, we only see patients who are recovering from an attempted suicide, not people who are feeling suicidal.” Despite being one of the darkest hours of my life, that memory became, as I entered the small office, a way to calm my nerves. I had already seen the most deplorable parts of the United States’ mental health care system, hadn’t I? My head started swimming with other questions. Had my information been right? Was this counsellor used to trans* patients? Would she be supportive or weirded out? Would this be a waste of time or the freeing experience I hoped it would be?

The lobby was small and well furnished. On a table near the door was the item I was looking for: “Matt, 12 o’clock, 6 pages,” read a yellow sticky note affixed to some papers on a clipboard. The name on the sticky didn’t have the same pang of regret, didn’t leave the bad taste in my mouth that it usually did. It felt more like a farewell to an old friend than an insult. For a moment I could understand the look I had seen in the eyes of those close to me when I have come out to them in the past, all the excuses of “quirkiness” they would make for me being washed away as understanding falls into place like the final piece of a puzzle. When someone comes out to you as trans*, I’m told, at least for a little while, it feels like losing a friend and it was at that moment that I felt I understood; seeing my old name was like being reminded of a fond memory of a friend you never got to say goodbye to.

I sat down on the sofa and waited, filling out the six pages of standard medical and legal histories and explanations to which the sticky note was affixed. I tried not to stare at the door across from me until, finally, it opened. I had come out to plenty of people over the years. I have been telling friends and family that I would prefer to be a girl with varying degrees of articulation and success since I was about four years old. I had not, however, come out to a perfect stranger. I hardly noticed the other patient leaving as the therapist looked toward me, smiling, and introduced herself, “I’m Linda.”

Linda asked me about my job first, probably noticing how nervous I was. While I was getting seated, she’d glanced through the papers I’d filled out, so she probably already had an idea of why I was there. I found myself brushing off the job question, answering quickly and in few details once I realized my true purpose in seeing her was no longer a secret. She could tell I was not interested in skirting around the issue, so she finally breached the subject, “What brings you here today?”

I considered several possible answers, as I had over and over in my internal practice sessions, and decided to stick with the plan. “I feel like I’m trapped in the wrong body, I’m transgender,” I said. I had weighed the options beforehand and I knew the risks of saying too much. Most people in the medical field operate on parameters set down in what at the time was known as the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, which required a person to fit into a list of binary gender affirming criteria in order to receive hormone therapy. I was legitimately afraid of not being allowed to go on hormones because I felt more genderqueer than transsexual.

Over the next fifty minutes she asked me probing questions, surprising me with her openness at my responses and at her ability to get an idea of who I was without making it feel clinical. Yet, I always kept my gender nonconforming views to myself. The horror of not being able to transition was too much to risk, even though Linda was respectful and kind regarding the answers I did give. I told her the truth when it fit in with the accepted trans* narrative. I had known my body didn’t fit quite right since before I could speak. I had struggled with depression and in my relationships with other people because of my dysphoria. I even told her that I had grappled with the idea of transitioning for a long time, feeling like it would be a sign of defeat; that I would have lost a battle of wills against a misogynistic society which disallows feminine behavior in males. I divulged that, being a fairly spiritually-focused person, I also felt like I should be able to put myself into a state of mind where the dysphoria wouldn’t bother me, but that nothing I did seemed to help. When it came to where my personal experiences diverged from the accepted narrative, I left pieces out and downplayed events, making sure not to divulge too much information. I even steered the conversation myself near the end — something I rarely do — intentionally keeping away from subjects that I felt might warrant further investigation on her part. We talked about reactions of friends and family, difficulties presented due to the taboo nature of transsexuality, of the fear of rejection at work and the lack of legal rights for transgender people. We talked about clothes, appearances, passing, and the inevitability of being read.

Despite my fears and distrust for the system, I was surprised at how liberating the experience still was. I cried several times. Not the built-up, explosive cry I often had when talking or thinking about these things, but a half hour of eye-dampness. The freedom to let the tears sit there on my face without shame was exhilarating.

Though the Standards of Care have changed since my visit to Linda, the fear of people not fitting into the two (not-so-)neat categories of “male” and “female” hasn’t. It would have been nice to share my entire truth with her, but I feared my story would be seen as diverging from the typical trans* narrative too much. I had these fears for several reasons. First of all, there’s a pervasive portrayal of trans* women as, at worst, sexually exploitable and good for a laugh or, at best, depressed, misunderstood, and most importantly “trapped in the wrong body.” Despite what I told Linda, I don’t feel like I am trapped in the wrong body. To begin with, the only way I’m trapped is by society’s idea of gender’s intransience. If it were not for that social paradigm I could freely express my gender in any way I choose without the “trap.” For another thing, I am intersex, so the idea of being “trapped” with the wrong sex organs is a bit of a moot point in my case.

Also, though it is apparent (especially to Autostraddlers) that sexuality is not a product of gender, there is still a strong push for trans* women to date men and not other women. There is also an assumption that trans* women must be feminine and not masculine despite cis women being afforded the freedom to be “tomboys.” I have always been bisexual and didn’t see that changing with hormones (and it hasn’t). I also have mixed interests which involve things that are typically categorized as both masculine and feminine and had no intention of changing what I like based on my gender presentation.

Possibly the most important way that my goals do not align with those of the media’s representation of trans* women is in “passing.” I dislike passing as either “male” or “female” and sometimes feel that when I give into the pressures to do so I am being disingenuous to the fact that gender is a social construct and not so much a biological imperative as the world at large would like us to assume. This isn’t to say that I want people to use gendered pronouns for me however they see fit. If society is so firm in its gender binary system, then I expect to be called “she” when I am presenting as female. The fact that I prefer to be called by female pronouns rather than male is a matter of preference and I feel it should be respected.

So, if I don’t identify with the accepted trans* narrative, why, you ask, did I want to transition? Why should people who don’t fit into that narrative be able to transition at all? As I touched on before, if I have to choose a box that says “male” or a box that says “female,” I would prefer the one that says “female.” That box just feels more comfortable to me. Even for people like me who don’t really buy into the whole concept of boxes, one box can feel so uncomfortable that death begins to seem like a fairly nice alternative.

Furthermore, transition can be a social statement. If a trans* person isn’t passing, it is a testament to the fact that gender is merely a paradigm that people buy into. Likewise, when people find out your starting point is different than what they expected, it forces them to entertain the idea that gender isn’t as black and white as they’ve been told. As a corollary, both hormones themselves and the experience of being treated as part of the opposite group than you are used to have a way of broadening your own perspective. The hormones affect your thought processes and cause changes in the way your brain physically works. The subtleties of navigating social spaces as a female when you used to be perceived as male or vice versa create a powerful change in the way you see the world. To put it another way, the effects of transition can be, under the right circumstances, very enlightening.

Most importantly, just like with sexuality, people should be afforded the right to express gender in any way they see fit. Frankly, I, and others like me, just like being perceived as a female better than being perceived as a male (and like being perceived as something else entirely even more). It shouldn’t be up to anyone else what gender category an individual chooses to be categorized as.

What’s the point of all this? Instead of making rules for what experiences people can have, let’s all choose to embrace the differences in each other and respect the choices each of us make in our journeys through life.

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Madeline is a writer of speculative fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She writes short stories, flash fiction, and is currently working on several longer projects. She has also written for several periodicals and maintains a blog at apheline.tumblr.com which discusses gender, sexuality, disability, and other activism.

Special Note: Autostraddle’s “First Person” personal essays do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Autostraddle or its editors, nor do any First Person writers intend to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. First Person writers are simply speaking honestly from their own hearts.