Subtle Hope

Crossposted at "A T Revival," Lori's blog (http://lorisrevival.blogspot.com/). If you haven't already, check it out. Lori kicks ass.

This past week, in preparation for the new Wolverine movie, I started devouring all things X-Men: I read through hundreds of pages of Uncanny and Ultimate X-Men, I re-watched all the movies, and the entire animated series (circa 1992-1997). Even now I like to pretend that I am one of the X-Men, complete with my own unique and intense mutant powers, protecting a world that hates and fears me. Sadly, reality is not such that I have the extreme telekinetic and telepathic abilities of my dreams; however, in many ways my imagined mutant abilities may not be relegated to the realm of fantasy. The connection between the X-Men universe and the struggle for LGBT rights is scarcely a novel idea, take this speech from Magneto: “We have seen communities torn apart…roving mobs of vigilantes seek out the infirm among us. Some mutants conceal their true power, living a charade of normality while their spirit suffocates…There are those who have tried nobly to enlighten their human brethren, to strive for freedom and equality for all men. Their efforts have been repaid with brutality and hatred.”

This statement lead me to think that the only real difference between the plight to the LGBT community and the mutants in Marvel’s universe is simply that LGBT people, unlike mutants in the comics, do not have the power to level cities with a single thought. Were we to have these sorts of powers, I fear our world would much more resemble that of the X-Men. For all the fundamentalist right-wing demonization of the LGBT community, you would image gay, lesbian, and transgender people to have those powers (hell, we’re supposedly more dangerous and destructive than the terrorists who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, right?). I’m going to change gears here slightly and take you back to Pullman, WA in October of last year. While the college was worried about football games and midterms, the LGBT community in Pullman was under attack. Homophobic messages were scrawled onto walls, doors and windows of queer students, folks suspected of being gay were antagonized at bars and in the streets, and two transgender students were physically assaulted. It felt very much like the “roving mobs of vigilantes” our friend Magneto was describing, and in this analogy I began to play the part of the “mutant” fighting for “freedom and equality,” and, like Magneto said, I found my efforts met with more hatred on behalf of the student body and members of the administration. It’s a frustrating battle and, keeping with the X-Men metaphor, I began to feel more and more like Gambit when he said, “I don’ know cher. We stay here fightin’ all the time, thing don’ get much betta’.” In my time working with the LGBTQ community in Pullman I have spent hours on the Speaker’s Bureau going to classrooms openly talking about transgender and gay issues; I’ve spoken out at protests and rallies, and I’ve worked to organize what few trans-related programs exist at this school. All the same, I’ve seen the social reception of transgender individuals gradually become worse in this town. Things don’ seem to get much betta, indeed.

That said I feel it’s important we focus on the subtle changes we make in this world. Oh, certainly you have your marriage equality in Iowa to celebrate, and I by no means wish to devalue the huge importance of that victory. But the Iowas are slow in coming, and they occur very rarely. This, hopefully, is changing, but we have a much better chance of effecting change in subtle, personal ways. Just this past weekend I had the opportunity to speak at the Social Justice Forum in Moscow, ID—a response to the city’s recent failure to extend nondiscrimination rights to transgender people. While I didn’t feel I was particularly articulate that night or informative, I do know for certain that at least three Moscow community members exponentially increased their knowledge of trans people simply as a result of conversing with me. I’ve had friends declare their allegiance to the trans community to me via facebook after I bombarded my profile with trans-related news stories. I hate to say it, but I’m aligning myself with the philosophy of Harvey Milk: we must come out and share our stories with the world if ever we hope to make it better. Milk is famous for saying:

Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I
know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you
in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends...
if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow
workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the
people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all,
break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their
sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from
Dade to Eugene.

While I’m still of the mind that all of us should be able to live our lives in peace, only sharing what we choose about ourselves, I likewise believe we shouldn’t have to hide away and stifle our spirits. In the ideal world the burden of educating the public about transgender people/issues and constructing solutions would not fall on our shoulders. Fact of the matter is it does, and in any case what would the alternative be? People ignorant of our life stories define us for ourselves? As Audrey Lorde said, “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” If you’ve never had the chance to read Lorde’s writing I highly recommend her. So inspiring are her words that I’m tempted to end this post with a list of her quotes. Instead, I’ll leave you with two thoughts: “Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded,” and “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

Angie

I’ve had her faced seared into my mind for weeks now. Remember back in July when the news first broke? I was adjusting again to life in the Palouse, relatively unaware of the world outside my window—everything was disjointed, I only heard murmurs of the girl murdered in Colorado. In case you hadn’t heard, Angie Zapata was brutally beaten to death with a fire extinguisher last July; she had been involved with a man who, upon discovering that Angie was trans, felt the appropriate reaction was a hate-fueled murder. This horrific tragedy rekindled debate in the trans community concerning disclosing trans status to friends and lovers, along with a broader discourse of the Deception Myth. I’m sure anyone keeping up with blog is well aware of my stance regarding the deception myth and the plethora of bullshit assumptions that accompany it.
But I don’t want to trudge through the quagmire of these ridiculous conversations; in relation to the atrocity of the crime and in the wake of Angie’s life, these discussions are somewhat irrelevant. What is important here is the life of Angie Zapata—a tenacious, strong, courageous, loving, beautiful life that inspired the best in her friends and family…and though I’m hesitant to speak for the trans community I’d like to say her life has inspired the best in us as well. I’ve been thinking about Angie a lot lately, holding vigil over the details of her crime, trying to piece together what I can of the girl left in the wake of violence.

Angie is haunting me. Hers was a genuine life, lived to its fullest, filled with beauty and pure potential; the profound grief of losing her is something I’m not sure words can articulate justly. In the face of this tragedy there is but a little solace to be had that Angie left behind her seeds of strength. Hers was the strength and the courage to take risks, to radically accept herself and share that self with the world.

The trial of Angie’s murderer, Allen Andrade, has been exceptionally difficult to watch. I’ve heard the way Andrade described Angie, referring to her as “it,” saying, “Gay things must die.” Andrade said, “It's not like I went up to a schoolteacher and shot her in the head or ... killed a law-abiding straight citizen” and “Did you see that thing in make-up?” He never showed any remorse for what he did—never even acknowledged Angie as being more than an inanimate object. He even jokingly suggested he could sell his story—about killing Angie—for $50,000. His attorneys were not much kinder in their treatment of Angie; they only referred to her with male pronouns and only with the name “Justin” Zapata—they made their argument not about whether or not Andrade did the crime, but on Angie deceiving him. They said, “Justin Zapata deceived a number of people. He was not a girl; he was a boy,” and “Andrade reacted to the deceit not because of Zapata's transgender status.” They accused Angie of lying to people—minimized her murder, saying it was heat of passion, merely a reaction to deceit; minimizing Andrade’s use of the pejorative “it;” all the while the defense constantly said “Mr. Zapata,” “He,” “Him,” “Justin” in reference to Angie. They were attempting to erase the reality that Angie was a girl. Overall the defense’s case was disjointed, sloppy, hard to follow, and weak. They relied on the jury having a gut reaction to Angie—they relied on the myth that transgender people are deceptive, and this strategy blew up in their face. The DA said it best: “Is she supposed to where a sign that she's transgender?”

The jury returned verdicts within two hours: guilty of identity theft, guilty of vehicle theft, guilty of bias motivated crime, and guilty of first degree murder. The defense, at sentencing, said “Mr. Andrade is not some kind of monster." I obviously disagree, and the defense, in the way they handled this case, was likewise monstrous (or at best highly unethical). This trial has left many words seared into my mind: Andrade’s hate-filled phone calls from prison and his dehumanization of Angie; the defense impugning Angie’s character and the validity of her identity; the DA being the soul voice defending Angie…and Angie’s mother, speaking at sentencing: “your honor…I lost somebody so precious....It's so bad. I feel so alone...He took my baby away from me in such a selfish act."

Today, nearly a year after she was taken from us, we have justice for Angie. And you will hear how important this case was, being among the first (if not THE first) case in which the murderer of a trans person is also being tried with a hate crime. We have justice for Angie, and some precedence for those still to come. Tonight, nearly a year after she was murdered, I find myself missing Angie Zapata, even though I never met her. She’s had a profound impact on my life—she has called me to question…Tonight I will light one more candle for Angie, and remember.

Myths of Inclusion: The Vanishing T in GLBT

In July of 1969 a “little” riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn lead by Sylvia Rivera, a transgender woman. It’s widely recognized that the Stonewall riots kicked off the gay civil rights movement in America; however, what is not well known is that many of those individuals leading the charge against police raids at the Stonewall during the riots were transgender. In the years that followed three transgender people, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Angela Keyes Davis, played important parts in the organization of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. In 1971, the GAA wrote and introduced a bill to the New York city Council that was meant to protect gay people from discrimination. This bill did not, however, include any protection for transgender individuals. This bill was a major betrayal of the transgender population at the hands of the gay community. Sylvia Rivera, in disgust, said to the leaders of the GAA, “It’s not us that they are afraid of — its you! Get rid of us. Sell us out. Make us expendable. Then you’re at the front lines. Don’t you understand that?”

The exclusion of gender identity from early non-discrimination bills was only foreshadowing the major backlash that was to come. In 1973 Beth Elliot, a trans woman, was elected vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitus, a nascent lesbian organization. Elliot was outed as transgender at a major feminist conference and then trashed by her fellow lesbians and feminist as having “insinuated herself into a position of power over women as a patriarchal man, a propagandist ploy that was to become common when attacking other transgendered people” (Kay Brown). In the 1970s the lesbian community had aligned itself with separatism and radical feminism, both of which actively excluded transgender individuals.

Around this time transgender individuals were being marginalized from the queer community from within. The gay community began to exclude trans people from Pride parades in hope that without the “flamboyance” of transsexuals, drag queens, etc., the media would pay more attention to the fact that gay people were just like everybody else [honestly, I don’t see the logic, as so many gay boys and the dykes on bikes are far more flamboyant than the average transsexual]. Also, at the same time, Carol Katz, a trans woman, was a security coordinator for Gay Pride Parades and for Take Back the Night, but she was forced to resign because so many in the gay and feminist communities disapproved of a transsexual participating in their activities.
The attitude of the time was that transsexuals were masquerading as another sex, that they would hinder the progress of civil rights movement, and that they were mentally ill. Janice Raymond published her book The Transsexual Empire in 1977, saying that “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female for to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.” And that trans women were “patriarchy’s shock troops, medically constructed pseudo-females created to infiltrate the lesbian community and destroy it.” However horribly those words sound, they are not the most harmful things Raymond has done towards the
transgender community:

Far worse was a United States federal government commissioned study in the early
1980’s on the topic of federal aid for transsexual people seeking rehabilitation
and health services. This paper, not well publicized, effectively eliminated
federal and some states aid for indigent and imprisoned transsexuals. It had a
further impact on private health insurance which followed the federal
government’s lead in disallowing services to transsexual patients for any
treatment remotely related to being transsexual, including breast cancer or
genital cancer, as that was deemed to be a consequence of treatment for
transsexuality.

Raymond’s writings are also closely associated with those of Mary Daly who describes transsexuals as “Frankenstein’s Monsters.” These opinions, archaic and hateful though they seem, are still alive and well.

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival has, since 1976, been a safe haven for women, and has indeed become a major lesbian event. However, the MWMF has, since 1991, had a womyn-born-womyn only policy, meaning that anyone who was not born biologically female AND raised as a girl is barred from attending the festival. In 1991 Nancy Burkholder was expelled from the festival after revealing her trans status, even though she had attended the festival in years prior without incident. In a feminist event and a feminist attitude that women are not defined by their genitals, it seems that trans women can still be excluded on the basis of their genitals.
In the 1993 March on Washington, transgender activists worked for months to gain inclusion, and to have transgender included in the name of the march. When trans inclusion was denied, there were cheers of joy from the gay and lesbian community. This sort of exclusion still occurs today. As the Employment Non-Discrimination Act was waiting in Congressional limbo, gay blogger Chris Crain said, “HRC says it won’t support workplace protection for gays unless trans rights are included. That mind-boggling decision is wrong politically, legally and morally.” According to Crain, this “trans-jacking” of ENDA would prevent the bill from being passed and therefore prevent gays from getting the protection they deserve [to hell with trans people]. In the end, HRC eventually gave support to a non-inclusive ENDA.

And where are we today, even after ENDA? Many GLBT organizations include the T only because the letters G, L , B, and T seem to roll off the tongue so easily. If not GLBT, then the organization becomes something along the lines of GSA—which seems completely non-inclusive. We have lesbians and feminists referring to trans women and male-to-constructed-female, still suggesting the nature of a transition is artificial, and that genital states at birth and the way a child is raised dictate gender (which in many ways seems contradictory to their positions as feminists…I suppose those theories and assumptions only apply if you’re a womyn-born-womyn). I watch the L word and have an OurChart account, both of which have insinuated horribly oppressive things about the transgender community, mostly that transitioned individuals are not “real” women or men. Many of these problems seem to come from a general misunderstanding of the terminology associated with the transgender community, namely what is transgender? What’s the difference between transgender, crossdresser, transvestite, transsexual, drag king/queen, genderqueer, and intersex (even though intersex really doesn’t concern transgender identity)? What’s the difference between sex and gender? And, most importantly, what motivates transgender expression, identity, and transitions? It’s often been misinterpreted that transsexuals will transition as a means of fitting in—either they couldn’t stand being gay or lesbian, or they couldn’t stand being a feminine man or a masculine woman. Those things generally don’t motivate a transition. There’s a misconception that a trans-identity or post-op sex/gender identity are somehow less valid than women-born-women and men-born-men. There’s a misconception that transsexuals are somehow trying to reinforce the paradigm set up by an oppressive patriarchy—a theory that strikes me as absurd, conspiracy-theory, militant bullshit. A fear that trans women still maintain a masculine energy, and that they might, in fact, rape women at the MWMF.

Switching gears slightly, last week I finally received my Q&A T-shirt in my work mailbox. For those of you who are not familiar with the queer traditions at WSU, Q&A is a recent reincarnation of the Gay? Fine By Me T-shirt campaign—a campaign started at Duke University in 2003 as a means for allies to show their support for the gay community as well as combat the perception that Duke was homophobic. The Gay? Fine By Me T-shirt program spread nationwide and was readily adopted at WSU. In 2007, however, the GLBTA at WSU began rethinking the Gay? Fine By Me T-shirts, feeling they were not inclusive and somewhat patronizing. The phrase “gay? Fine by me” evoked images of the gay community asking for permission to be gay, and limiting the language to the word “gay” seemed to exclude lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, omnisexuals, queers, and the transgender community. It was decided, then, to change the shirts to Q&A: Queer and Allies (ask questions, get answers). Here, the word “queer” was assumed as a catch-all in order to be all-inclusive. And this is how the Q&A program ran at WSU for two years. This year, however, was very different; this year the GLBTA decided to define the words “queer” and “ally” on the back of the shirts. The definition of “queer,” specifically, was the issue here:

Queer- (kwîr) noun- An umbrella term used by individuals who identify with
gender expressions and/or sexual orientations that are outside of the
mainstream.

There are a lot of things wrong with this definition—and certainly there was faulty logic behind the advent of the Q&A program itself. First is the notion the word “queer” could be reduced to one definition. One needs only look to a dictionary to see the great diversity this word carries:

queer (kwîr)
adj. queer·er, queer·est
1. Deviating from the expected or normal; strange:.
2. Odd or unconventional, as in behavior; eccentric.
3. Of a questionable nature or character; suspicious.
4. Slang Fake; counterfeit.
5. Feeling slightly ill; queasy.
6. Offensive Slang Homosexual.
7. Usage Problem Of or relating to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, or transgendered people.
n.
1. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a homosexual person.
2. Usage Problem A lesbian, gay male, bisexual, or transgendered person.
tr.v. queered, queer·ing, queers Slang
1. To ruin or thwart:
2. To put (someone) in a bad position
queer ish adj.
queer
ly adv.
queer ness n.
Usage Note: A reclaimed word is a word that was
formerly used solely as a slur but that has been semantically overturned by
members of the maligned group, who use it as a term of defiant pride. Queer is
an example of a word undergoing this process. For decades queer was used solely
as a derogatory adjective for gays and lesbians, but in the 1980s the term began
to be used by gay and lesbian activists as a term of self-identification.
Eventually, it came to be used as an umbrella term that included gay men,
lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people. Nevertheless, a sizable
percentage of people to whom this term might apply still hold queer to be a
hateful insult, and its use by heterosexuals is often considered offensive.
Similarly, other reclaimed words are usually offensive to the in-group when used
by outsiders, so extreme caution must be taken concerning their use when one is
not a member of the group.

The evocation of eccentric behavior or fraudulence in the definition of “queer” are clearly troublesome to a trans person, but going beyond this to the reclaiming of “queer” as a catch-call is still somewhat erroneous. Queer has more often than not come to imply a quality of nonconformity, progressive attitudes, and a refusal to accept without question the status quo. But this is simply a minor problem with the definition the GLBTA chose. They decided to make queer a catch-all, but in doing so they explicitly excluded the phrase “gender identity.” This means that while they include gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, crossdressers, drag queens/kings, genderqueers, genderfucks—everything under the sun EXCPET transsexuals. The ironic thing about all this was the timing; the shirts were meant to be worn on the same day the Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center (GIESORC) was co-hosting a panel discussion about queer-friendly campuses—this at the culmination of GIESORC’s annual Week of Dignity.

Frankly, I love the idea of dignity simply because the qualities of dignity essentially make up three of the four deficiency needs in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: safety, love/friendship/belonging, and esteem. Each of these needs, I argue (and argued at GIESORC’s panel discussion) can be satisfied with inclusion, affirmation of identity, respect, and acceptance. Funny how the GLBTA, in their exclusion of transsexuals, denied transsexuals all of these ingredients necessary for meeting the deficiency needs. How, exactly, was this supposed to cultivate dignity?

By no means was this the first time the GLBTA discriminated against trans people; when I was a member I had to fight tooth and nail for any trans inclusion, and if memory serves me they never even intended to include the T in their name—it was all a clerical error that they let stick. But all of this is not meant to chastise the LGB community (although some sects of that community certainly deserve to be verbally berated). Instead it is to prove a point and raise the question: where does the T belong? Where do we belong?

Sometimes it feels like transsexuality is a labyrinth I get lost in; a dark phantom through which I catch glimpses of the world around me. It’s sometimes like a prison and I am trying to readjust to life back on the outside. Sometimes I want to be surrounded with fellow trans people—people who understand first-hand what all this is like and who can empathize with what I’m going through. Sometimes I wish I could just let go and fully integrate back with society, leaving the shadows of my past behind me. Neither allows me to fully develop a sense of dignity—there is balance that needs to be sought. We belong somewhere in the middle…somewhere that does not yet fully exist in society because it does not yet fully exist in the imaginations of most—that we are nonetheless men or women, despite not being born in that visible physicality. We are a strange dialectic, still carving out its niche.

Beauty/Appropriation

It’s true, I suck as a blogger. It’s been nearly a month since I last wrote anything, and in a medium dependent primarily on the written word, that makes me pretty crappy at this. I intend to make up for this shortcoming today with a blog focused on two subjects! (Two for one deal, you should consider yourselves thrifty readers…or at the least partially reimbursed for my untimely absence).

I really wish I could say I’ve been away doing something of critical importance: advocating for LGBT equality, saving the rainforest—hell, I’d even settle for practicing my violin (which I’m sad to say I’ve been neglecting). The truth is, though, I’ve been watching Ugly Betty. Watching this show is actually somewhat of an act of subtly irony—the premise of Ugly Betty is focused on inner beauty and adhering to Polonius’ advice (“To thine own self be true”). This theme is embodied in the show’s main character, Betty, who despite an “ugly” appearance (oh my god she has glasses and braces!) is really a beautiful person, and her true, inner self is what makes her attractive and likeable. The irony in this is twofold: first, Betty works at a fashion magazine (and fashion magazines exemplify shallowness and vanity), and second, America Ferrera, who plays Betty, is actually damn gorgeous in real life. I completely support the message of Ugly Betty; it is inner beauty that makes a person attractive, and indeed physical beauty is not much more than an illusion. More than that, people ought to be able to be themselves and be loved for who they are, rather than succumb to a hollow and essentially meaningless societal standard of beauty/value. Initially I was going to tear into this show for having people who fit the societal mold for beauty playing supposedly unattractive characters—on one level the casting makes the show’s critique of beauty somewhat of a farce. But maybe on another level this is part of the brilliance of Ugly Betty: beauty and ugliness are both illusions and can often be easily crafted, but true beauty or ugliness (i.e. who a person actually IS beneath it all) transcends the façade of culturally accepted standards of beauty; that, in fact, ugliness and beauty are little more than cultural constructs. Just as the character of Betty can be constructed to appear “ugly” with the addition of fake glasses and braces (or think of Nicole Kidman’s fake nose in The Hours), appearances can be constructed to be pretty with makeup and photoshop—but all are just construction; lame illusions and artificial to the bone. I’m reminded of the writings of the great philosopher, Margaret Cho:

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has
nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the
power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope
for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease
to be. Because we are all what we choose.

The reason I started watching Ugly Betty to begin with, however, had nothing to do with challenging assumptions of beauty; instead my motivation centered entirely on one person: Alexis Meade. Alexis is difficult to describe: she’s cunning, competitive, fiercely intelligent, stunningly beautiful, tenacious, and ambitious. She fights to be the best at what she does and she is not afraid to be herself, even though she is not accepted. I’m sure the matter of Alexis being a transsexual had nothing to do with my interest in her. The interesting thing about Alexis is that even though she is the epitome of drop-dead-gorgeous she is nonetheless treated several times as though she were ugliness exemplified. (One episode even involved a man at a bar hitting on Alexis as a joke, later referring to her as a “dude,” saying, “I don’t hit on freaks unless I’m getting paid.”) When I first tuned in to Ugly Betty I had completely expected to be extremely jealous of Alexis—she was everything I wanted to embody. She had killer looks, she stood up for herself, and she was radiant and tenacious, so much so the general atmosphere of a room became brighter, more fabulous when she entered. She is what I want to be: a strong, self-actuated, self-assured woman. But watching Ugly Betty I rarely compared myself to Alexis Meade in these ways; instead her character inspired me to find those qualities in myself. Generally I consider this a major victory for myself, as I’ve historically based my value by earmarking what I’ve seen in others, then comparing what I see in myself to those standards. It’s a terribly unfair way to go about judging oneself; Ugly Betty, the character Alexis Meade, and the wise words of Margaret Cho have been helping me break down this hierarchy of artificial standards of beauty/value—they’ve helped me realize that we are what we choose, we embody those values we find within ourselves.


On Monday I found myself walking downtown through the heavy snow and ice; stupidly I had decided to wear a skirt (though intelligently I was also wearing knee-high boots). The music of the Tossers (a Celtic punk band, go check them out) rang through my earbud headphones in eager anticipation of the coming St. Paddy’s day. As I walked I slowly began to slip into my alter-ego (who I hope to someday make more prominent, and I swear I don’t have multiple personalities): Adeline, the French-Irish gypsy. I love this alter-ego because she is the essence of all those qualities I desire to see in myself (as I just outlined in my discussion of Alexis Meade), but lately I’ve been seeing a couple issues with Adeline. First is the obvious: she is not my primary ego. Why should all my desired traits be relegated to a semi-fictional character in my head? I would prefer to break down those barriers and manifest those qualities in my primary self (shyness and humility be damned!). The second issue I have with this character is that she is a French-Irish gypsy. My entire life my mom had told me that I was of French, Irish and German descent, but I recently came to learn that none in my family are of French heritage. For a Francophile, such as myself, this was a horrible blow. I’ve generally dismissed my German heritage, not really wanting anything to do with Germany as the Germanic culture doesn’t become me. But I was always so content with my Irish and (now fictitious) French ancestry. The addition of “gypsy” to my title was really more of an attitude, a Kerouacesque quality that is romanticized in our popular culture and pulp fiction (think Carmen, Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or “La Vie Boheme” in RENT). Obviously pop culture has equated gypsies with Roma, an ethnic group originating from medieval India that has a long history of being oppressed and persecuted. While I know a good deal about the Romani people, I’m far from an expert and I am certainly not of Roma descent. This makes me wonder if my incorporation of this attitude and thought pattern—something I (along with this culture) have come to describe as gypsy—reeks of cultural appropriation. Is this any better than blackface? Or have we (me and my fellow bohemians) simply been drawn to these customs and ideas that are now associated with gypsies; have these qualities melded with our own? As the world shrinks I feel that some level of cultural appropriation is to be expected, perhaps even encouraged. In a blaze example, a lot of Caucasian people have been attracted to Japanese anime, and in that medium have incorporated a lot of Japanese culture into their lives. In America I’ve seen similar appropriation of Native American culture—hell, I’m partly guilty of this, having been raised in New Mexico and exposed early on to a lot of indigenous culture. On one level, cultural appropriation demonstrates a willingness to experience and integrate with cultures and ideas outside those we’re raised with. On the other hand, it can also easily become the rape of marginalized cultures without proper understanding of the cultural nuances and history of systemic oppression. I’m not going to pretend to have any answers on this one because I understand all too well both sides of the issue.

I’ve never been comfortable with destiny—the notion I have no consent events or conditions essential to my life seems to me like rape of my free will and right to self-determination. As a geneticist I am aware that certain aspects of life remain outside my control, though in the case of genetic fatalism I can take some comfort knowing that destiny comes from within me. It’s these exterior definitions of qualities that unsettle me. I was told I was French only to find out I don’t have a drop of French blood in me. I desperately want French heritage, but does that desire give me authority to simply claim it? Would I be any more or less French if I had never been told of my true ancestry? Is it only the most technical of constraints that prevents me from defining my own heritage? Would choosing my heritage for myself be tantamount to denying who I supposedly am—even if that identity is in complete contradiction to who I am? This question is, in many ways, reminiscent of the questions many parents ask their transgender children. If a child is born one sex but cross-identifies as another, is acting on that identification any sort of denial of the self? Arguments have been made that trans women appropriate the bodies of women, an action some feminists have described as rape. These Raymond-esque arguments are eerily familiar to the arguments denouncing cultural appropriation. And while I’m very much aware cultural and ethnic heritage are greatly different from sex and gender, I’m left with the question of whether or not cross-cultural identification is an unethical appropriation.

Tattoo / Trans Stigma

Earlier this week while in the company of two trans bois I began to question my own trans status; here I am, fully transitioned, and I (for the most part) seem to blend in with the crowd. Unlike these trans bois, I do not fuck with gender, and unlike these bois my body has been altered to such a degree that even gynecologists cannot tell I was not born this way. In these avenues of conformation, and in light of my last post, I’ve begun to wonder if maybe it is more “deceitful” to say I am transgender—obviously I’ll always be trans on some fundamental level (therefore neither saying I’m trans nor saying I’m a girl are in any way acts of deception), but I think you know where I am going with this.

Come to today: one of my best friends calls me, asking how I’ve been along with other generic “catch-up” kinds of dialog. At some point in our conversation I tell her about my designs to get a full sleeve tattoo on my left arm. There’s a moment of dead silence on the other line before my friend asks why I would want to do this to myself. Why would I want to hide away my “beauty” (her word, not mine)? Don’t I realize that having that many tattoos send mixed signals? The way she sees it, I’ve worked so hard to become a girl that getting all these tattoos counteracts my transition. In other words, my tattoos make me more masculine or otherwise negate my femininity and hide away any traces of beauty I may have at the same time they provoke others to see me as an aggressor or a biker chick. Oh, and the tattoos will make it impossible for me to find employment. As if to stress just how fucking manly I am, upon hearing all these arguments I begin to cry. This is like all those other times people have gendered me incorrectly—assigned a masculine gender to me or seen through me—seen me as a boy or a freak. So what was that I was saying about not feeling “trans” anymore?

I wasn’t really planning on doing my post about body modification just now—I still have a lot of research to do, especially concerning intersections with Queer Theory and the Cyborg Manifesto. With that in mind, this will only be a mini-introduction, seeing as it’s mostly a response to gendering bodies. Whether or not you recognize it as such, genital reassignment surgery (GRS)—indeed the totality of transitioning—is a form of body modification. Generally trans people view the transition process as a kind of transformation—the butterfly’s metamorphosis has been used as a trans symbol so frequently it has become cliché. Getting tattooed, in some ways, is analogous to the transition; Kip Fulbeck, a professor at UC Santa Barbara said, “Choosing to get tattooed transforms you—sometimes innocuously, other times with profound significance…Getting tattooed transforms how others view you, and often how you see yourself.” If you replace the word “tattoo” with “gender transition” you have, in a nut shell, the transsexual experience. In a more queer sense, body modifications such as tattoos or GRS are means of reclaiming the body. We are born without any consent or control over how our bodies look or how society will gender our bodies. In these modifications we transform and redefine our bodies on our terms to fit our designs.

There’s a problem with the reclamation, however, in that through these modifications other doors of judgment are opened. Each of my tattoos means something significant to me—each carries with it symbolic representation of my soul; to have this intimate expression then turned back around on me—for others to use it as a means of re-gendering me back into masculinity and as a fixture on which to base assumptions and meaning about me—it’s a gross abuse. Why should being born with a male exterior make me any less of a girl? Why should a plethora of prevalent tattoos detract from either my femininity or my beauty? Get to know me first: though I’m fairly ambitions and assertive I’m anything but an aggressor. I can cry easily and I have a touchy-feely girly side resting just below the surface. Bodies matter, but the heterosexist values used to create assumptions based on those bodies are misguided. My tattoos have marked me on a very visible level as permanently trans; tattooed bodies are today seen as an act of transgression, they are (on women) often associated with a challenging or rejection of traditional gender roles. In this way they are assigned, even in the queer community, a more powerful and masculine meaning, therein propagating the traditional gender hierarchies. The question still remains: who has control over my body; who has power to assign or reassign meaning to my body? Regardless of how we modify ourselves there are always those with power to assign their own meanings to us despite our actions of transformation or reclamation. This is the burden of visible difference—this is the consequence of open transgression: a constant disport in social oppression.

The Deceiver

Because I’m a masochist—and also partly because I have a foolish optimistic hope of progress towards acceptance—I watched the sixth episode of the “Real World: Brooklyn” today. This week was the week Katelynn finally told the rest of her roommates that she is, in fact, transgender. Now, all throughout the show all the boys would joke about her, making jokes that questioned her gender identity, objectifying her body, and generally speaking about her as though she were a side show freak. It’s lovely, right? There was even one point in the show that her gay male roommate outted her to the rest of the boys, discussing her surgery and otherwise compromising the trust Katelynn had placed in him. In all these ways the “Real World” has disgusted me. Tonight was no different. The guys made jokes at her expense, ridiculed her behind her back, and complained that she still had not come out to them. The way the guys talked implied they felt privy to these very intimate details—they have the right to know all the “dirty” secrets, dammit, and it’s an insult that she isn’t opening her entire biological history on the couch or letting the boys poke around her genitals. Okay, that’s an exaggeration…but only a very small exaggeration!

Katelynn touched on this in her blog: the deception myth. There’s a long-standing trend to blame trans people for all the violence that befalls them. Oh, you were raped, beaten, strangled and shot three times in the face? Silly you—you deserved it. After all, you didn’t walk around with the word “transgender freak fuck” tattooed on your forehead. No. You deceived us. You lied to us, seduced us, sexually assaulted and harassed us. You deserved it.

You may think I took irony a little too far just now, but I disagree. The attitudes shown on the “Real World” were subtler, less violent than the case I just sarcastically described—but that “sarcasm” is, sadly, a reality. One year ago today Letitia King, 15, was murdered by a one of her male classmates because she loved him. If you haven’t heard of Letitia, maybe you’d recognize her by the name Lawrence King. After she was murdered, many in the media decided to depict her as something of a sexual predator: she “is portrayed as having stalked, sexually harassed, and bullied Brandon [her killer] into a corner where his only possible response was pulling that trigger” (Alex Blaze). And even when Letitia was depicted somewhat sympathetically in the media, her gender identity and preferred name were erased, and in their place the name “Lawrence” and male pronouns dominated. People said Lawrence was murdered because he was gay.

How Letitia was treated in the media, as I said, is not uncommon. Remember Angie Zapata? When she died there was a huge outcry—even within the trans community—that she should have been out about her trans status, that because she wasn’t honest she brought about her own murder. The same arguments flew around when Gwen Araujo was murdered: this idea that trans people are actively engaged in deceiving people, seducing them, and therein deserving of the violence enacted upon them.

This is what they call cis-privilege. It’s that trans people are expected to disclose their history and their genetalia while cis people are not. It’s that trans people are still seen as deceivers and frauds when cis people are not. When speaking to some folks about being transgender, some have said to me, “Wow, I never would have guessed you were…I mean, you look like a girl.” I know what they’re trying to say, and I know they’re trying to give me a compliment, but what they’re saying is “Wow, I would have never guessed you weren’t a girl.” Thanks for the back-handed compliment. The non-transgender world has positioned itself with this perceived power to invalidate the identity of trans people—to paint us as perpetrators of violence and deceit while those who actually beat and kill us are victims. It is ridiculous that this is used as an excuse for violence, and just as frustrating that these same belief structures are used to deconstruct a person’s identity into genitals—organs that may or may not adequately reflect that person’s perception of self.

Being transgender and living my life on my terms—being myself—is not deceit. It’s hard enough to go through life with the fear that should I entrust my gender history to friends and loved ones they might abandon or harm me. While sharing this information should not negate my sex or change who I am in any way, often this information is used to define me and to devalue and objectify me. I’m a girl, just as Gwen was, and Letitia was, and Angie was, and Katelynn is. Our presentation as such is not a deception, but rather the opposite: it is authenticity. Our transgender status or identities or histories does not change the fact that we are women. And those who know who I am and know about my transsexuality should consider themselves damn privileged and honored that I entrusted them with this information—that I decided to share this intimate piece of myself—because you are not entitled to this knowledge.

Stuck in the mud

I feel pretty pathetic for not having posted anything here in so long; I’d planned at one point to have three new blogs up by now—and, indeed, I have half of each written—but sometimes life gets in the way (or some analogous cliché). The past week has been…no. The past three years have been obscured. It’s like driving around at night in a dense fog, my brain feels clouded, as though all my intellectual faculties have become this nebulous mess that I’m trying to see through. I don’t know what happened: in high school I spent 100% of my time completely devoted to academic success, and I was pretty damn brilliant—and that’s not me bragging; really, I was amazing and fabulous—second in my class only because the valedictorian had one or two more AP classes than I did. I had this intense affinity for mathematics and biological science; it was as though I breathed them. I suppose this momentum continued into my first semester of university. That fall I took second semester chemistry, second semester biology, French film, and an art history class, and I pretty much rocked the world of every class. I passed biology with a 100%--a 98% in chemistry. I wrote French as though I were fluent in the language, and art…well, any buffoon could excel in that class with their eyes closed. I had a 4.0 GPA, just like in high school, so what happened after that first semester?

Beginning in 2006 I felt my powers slowly slipping into this haze, just under the surface where I could not get at them. You might be able to guess, but the dimming of my academic brilliance (or, rather, what I perceive to be a dimming of such) coincided with the beginning of my transition. It started out slow: that second semester I only had one A- (that was organic chemistry), but every step thereafter I felt as though I was performing well below my potential. I got (gasp!) more A-‘s, even a couple of B’s! The horror! But joking aside, I know damn well I was capable of graduating with a 4.0, even with the student groups and “social activities” I had going on. And now, over a year after graduation, I feel so stagnant, as though all my powers have not been exercised in four years. They’re begging to be brought back to the level they were in high school. Problem is I don’t know if that’s possible.

It’s at this point I really want to make a joke about this all being a symptom of woman’s intellectual inferiority, but I don’t know who reads this, and I don’t know if you’d appreciate my twisted sense of ironic humor. There is that fear, however, that somehow my transition has diminished my intellectual abilities in some way—or rather clouded my mind. I’m passive to these complex ideas that float around me all day. I’m not engaging Queer Theory at the levels I should be, and I’m not delving into my biological studies the way I used to. It’s as though all that raw power is just out of reach. I can see it, but not tap into it. It’s like being chained back behind a translucent curtain. And I’m not sure if that makes any sense to anyone—I don’t know if you’ve felt this strange combination of stagnation and dimming and clouding of the mind. And I know this doesn’t really have much to do with transgender anything—it’s really more my long drawn-out excuse as to why I haven’t been writing real blogs posts…and why I don’t feel like I’ve made any intellectual achievements in three years. I used to sit around and think that maybe this was a symptom of redirecting my energies from academia to personal issues—that’s in some ways what I did when I began my transition, and anyone who has made the dramatic switch to estrogen can probably attest to the fact that it makes you confront emotions on a more intensive level than testosterone does. But now I’m not so sure that excuse holds.

I guess this is when Sisyphus watched the rock roll back down the mountain. It's a moment of brief clarity (if you can call it that). I'm feeling a huge disconnect between me and my intellect, between me and my own academic future, and between me and this activism that just two months ago was so important to me. I feel like I've somewhat slipped away from my own life--or at least from some major aspects of my person. I need to wake up and somehow figure out how to get myself back.