#RealLiveTransAdult

My wife is a #RealLiveTransAdult who is 45, works at at university, and would love to take your photo.

#RealLiveTransAdult, which was started by none other than the amazing Red Durkin, is making the rounds on FB and on Twitter and I’m borrowing it because there are so many people out there who would have helped Leelah and who still want to help others like her.

It’s a great response to what is heartbreaking news: this young girl who knew she was trans and whose parents dismissed her and cut her off from all possible support by pulling her out of school, taking away her phone and any/all access to the internet.

Leelah, we love you.

Sadly, her parents have now been doxxed and no doubt are already receiving hate mail. I can’t say they don’t deserve it – they do – but they were, we have to remember, acting in what they thought were the best interests of their child. They were terribly, tragically, wrong, but they were acting, too, no doubt, on the advice of Christian therapists and other people who Still Don’t Get It, people who think that if you are stern enough, or determined enough, you can force your child to be some other way, to be not trans.

This beautiful young person is dead and her parents, who are, no doubt, grieving the loss of this beautiful child, are getting hate spewed at them by people who know better.

The only way through this and the only way to get through to people is love.

If you are alone and suicidal, you can call The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386 or the newly-minted Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860.

NYC

I’m on my way to spend most of the holiday season there because I can. My mom is 84 and not in awesome good health (that said, she hasn’t been for nearly a decade now) so it’s nice to be home and feel like I’m home and go visit her when I can.

Otherwise, just friends and bagels and decent slices and a lot a lot of walking.

I’ll still, of course, be making calls for The December Project and otherwise trying to get some work done, but I may not blog much.

#blacklivesmatter

Oh, #alllivesmatter people, please, just listen for a minute.

For those of us in communities that are targeted for violence – from both people who hate us and often the police who are supposed to serve and protect us – we’re aware that our lives are supposed to matter. We know our own lives matter.

But for LGBTQ people, that is not often the case.

For trans people, it is rarely the case.

For Hispanic people, it is rarely the case.

For black people, it is almost never the case.

The reason #alllivesmatter is an insulting response to a racial problem is because it whitewashes the problem. Being more humane doesn’t work; racial prejudices and homophobia go so deep historically, personally, unconsciously, that unless we pay special attention to the kinds of hatred that fuels the killings of trans women and black men, trans women of color in particular, young black men in particular, our systems don’t get any better.

Look, the hippies tried loving everyone and that was a long time ago, and if the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner teach us anything, it’s that people refusing to call our national race problem a race problem is part of it.

Please. Of course #alllivesmatter. But as Orwell once wrote, the problem is that some lives matter a hell of a lot more than others, which is why we need to highlight that #blacklivesmatter and #translivesmatter and #queerlivesmatter.

Step away from your white privilege. We are part of a system that kills black men and imprisons them and throws them away. “Universalizing” is exactly what disappears black lives in the first place.

Arthur Leipzig, Photographer

NYC has lost one of its greats – Arthur Leipzig, photographer. So many of the classic shots of NYC are his – kids playing stickball, the opening night at the opera, sunbathers at Coney Island. He was 96.

Mr. Leipzig’s 1943 photograph “King of the Hill” — in which two Brooklyn boys square off atop a mound of dirt — was chosen by Edward Steichen, director of the Museum of Modern Art’s photography department, for his celebrated “Family of Man” exhibition of 1955. The show’s theme was the universality of human experience.

To look at these pictures today is to catch intimations of the evanescence of both youth and a city. In his 1995 book, “Growing Up in New York,” Mr. Leipzig called himself “witness to a time that no longer exists, a more innocent time.”

“We believed in hope,” he wrote.

These are two of my favorites, but there’s more and more and more.

The December Project 2014

Hello there!  For the fourth year in a row, we are doing THE DECEMBER PROJECT.  The plan is simple.  If you are trans– or if you love someone who is trans– and you need a friendly voice, email us and we will call you on the phone.

Jennifer Finney Boylan began this project in 2011 because she had been thinking about how hard the holidays can be for people– but they can be especially hard for trans people and their families.  Charles Dickens had it right when, in the CHRISTMAS CAROL, he suggested that it’s Christmas, not Halloween, that’s the most haunted of holidays.  Our memories are heightened at this time of year– we think back to our childhood, to our many struggles.  For some of us it’s a time when we’re acutely aware of how cut off we are from those we love.  The world is full of transgender people who are unable to see their children, their parents, their loved ones, all because of the simple fact of who they are.

We cannot undo all the hurt in the world.  But what we can do is CALL YOU ON THE PHONE and remind you that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  You don’t have to be in crisis to take advantage of this project.  All you have to do is want a friendly voice.

The project this year will be run by five people – four to make calls, and one to organize the emails. Dylan Scholinski, director of Sent(a)mental Studios; Helen Boyd, Professor at Lawrence University; Allyson Robinson, pastor-teacher, and Brynn Tannehill, journalist and educator. We are two trans women, a trans man, and a spouse of a trans woman.  Between the four of us, we have heard many different kinds of trans narratives.  If we can help you, we would be glad to do so. Our fifth person, who will receive your emails and get the right ones to us callers, is Donna Levinsohn, a lawyer and old, trusted friend of Helen’s who has been involved in trans activism for years.

How do you get us to call you? By emailing decemberproj@gmail.com. If (1) you have a particular preference to talk to one or the other of us, let us know– although I can’t guarantee that you’ll always hear from the person you request.  Also (2) please tell us the time of day and the date you’d be free for a call; you might want to give us a couple of options.  And of course, (3) tell us your phone number.  WE WILL KEEP YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENTIAL.

We will start with calls as soon as possible after December 1, and keep this going until New Years.

Sound good?  I hope so.  We hope we can help, even if just a little.

Three other caveats I should mention at the end here:

1) First, no one in the December Project gets a dime out of it.  This is a shoestring operation, largely consisting of four people trading phone numbers.  If you want to support our causes, you can let us know, and we’ll tell you how to give.  But this is not about that.

2) If you are in serious crisis, please bypass us and go directly to the national suicide prevention lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. WE ARE NOT TRAINED AS THERAPISTS or as counsellors for individuals in crisis.  If you need something more serious than a “friendly voice,’ please call the lifeline.

3) For the moment we are content with this project consisting of only a few of us;  in past years, we have been a little overwhelmed (and yes, deeply touched) by the many, many of you who have wanted to join us.  While we thank you for your grace and your love, it’s also overwhelming for us to sort through the requests; we hope you’ll understand if we ask that folks writing us be primarily those who want a call. There are many ways you can get involved in your own community, and we heartily encourage everyone who wants to spread some love around to do so in their own way, starting right at home.

Thanks so much!  Wishing you all the best for a positive, hopeful, loving holiday season!

Sincerely,

Helen Boyd, on behalf of the December Project

The December Project is Coming

As with previous year, I’ll be participating in The December Project, the brainchild of Jennifer Finney Boylan, who, because of all the email she gets and all the sadness she sees on FB, decided that we, as a community, need to find ways to make the holiday season a little easier on us all. She enlisted four of us — JFB herself, me, Dylan Scholinski, and NCTE’s Mara Keisling — to call anyone who wanted to hear a friendly voice.

This year there will be a few changes – for starters, Jenny Boylan won’t be able to organize things this year (due to moving and a super booked December), but the rest of us will, and we’ll have a few happy additions to help us do our work: Brynne Tannehill & Allyson Robinson, for starters.

So stay tuned. We’re getting the thing organized so that we can get it up and running for December, but know that we’re here, and we care about each and every one of you, even if we don’t even know your names yet.

In the meantime, if you’re in a bad way and need to talk, there is this amazing new Trans Lifeline service as well as other call lines:

  • Trans Lifeline can be reached at 877-565-8860.
  • For LGBT youth (ages 24 and younger) contemplating suicide, the Trevor Project Lifeline can be reached at 1-866-7386.
  • The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 can also be reached 24 hours a day by people of all ages and identities.

Love and thanks for the honor and privilege of working for and in this amazing trans community.

On Robin Williams & Giving Thanks

Robin Williams was in my dreams last night.

Robin Williams was in a movie, maybe, in my dreams last night.

He was playing someone like himself or like one of so many characters he played – like Perry Williams in The Fisher King – a disappointed but joyful romantic of sorts, wound up and anxious but reluctantly hopeful.

And he was with a woman – I don’t know who, but the kind of actress who could play against his manic energy with something like bemused compassion – and she had finally told him she was his.

Their figures were framed by a mountain range, romantic, sunny, cold. Every word they said could be seen by the breath that encased it. I think they were the Grand Tetons, because my brain has its own sense of humor. I don’t think she said anything but waited, instead, for him to understand that they were for each other, and he did, and he realized it the way only he could have acted that scene – with a dizzying monologue about how he had always wanted and always known and disappointment had taunted him and kicked him but fuck you disappointment and he looked at her and pulled her shirt up and exclaimed, loudly, “boobies!” with that kind of barbaric yawp that he was such a master of.

There are still a lot of days when I think about him, his life’s work, all that joy and enthusiasm he kept throwing up against despair. He must have terrified so many people all his life – I don’t mean most people, who just laughed at his antics and didn’t seem to know he was a depressive – how could anyone not have known? That look in his eyes all the time – he looked like a good, honest kid who has just discovered how cruel people can be, how depraved the world is – and it is. It’s as if his whole career was about that second of realization, of knowing how beautiful it can all be and delighting in it only to realize cars hit dogs and deer and people act in the shittiest ways most when they’re scared. It’s only as a kid you realize how fragile and beautiful a bird is and that you probably know someone who seems perfectly normal who would kill one just because they can.

There are days when the burden of enthusiasm is too much for me; I can’t imagine what the weight he carried was like if he had to conjure such amazing energy and fun against it. I have always felt fortunate that I can live in the world something like sober most of the time and that I have never needed a whole lot of illusion for what is and what isn’t, what can and can’t be. I had a Buddhist once tell me I was a natural Taoist; the world is bad and that’s just how it is: people kill birds because they can, and beat children, and rape women, and bash queers, and all of what they do is about suffering and feeling insubstantial and alone and scared, and everything the rest of us do in response is, too.

You can’t really teach gender studies – which is, after all, the study of oppression – and not go through life knowing exactly how fucked up things are. They are. It’s not okay, and it’s never going to be okay. Sometimes, in darker moments, I expect that things are going to get worse as our resources become scarce, but then, too, I know we will see remarkable acts of kindness and generosity at times when you’d expect the opposite. Look at every hurricane, tsunami, bombing: you see extraordinary acts of love and the heroic. You see what Mister Roger’s mom called “the helpers”. Disasters are some of the only times that people can actually live as hugely, as passionately and compassionately as they want to all the time. Most of us aren’t Robin Williams; we are self conscious and want to fit in, keep our jobs, not freak out the neighbors. We want quiet kinds of joy, maybe a contented happiness, instead of the extremes that lead to or are expressions of depression and euphoria.

But wow does his memory make me want to live harder and happier and with far more defiance in defense of what I know to be right. With joy and wild enthusiasm, wild, untamed, amazing enthusiasm, I would like to be able to live in the world as that child who can see how amazingly, stunningly, unbelievably beautiful every single thing is but who knows how all of those things are only ever tentative when they’re not momentary.

That kitten you hold in the palm of your hand will be the cat you will bury if life goes according to plan, Neil Gaiman once wrote. Whose plan? What plan? What the fuck kind of plan is that?

I woke up this morning stuck somewhere between a sob and a laugh. The holidays are upon us. I miss the innocent, joyful ones I used to have. I have no family nearby but for my wife this year; no lover; two of my friends I’ll spend Thanksgiving with are very ill; a third won’t be around because his parents are. And that’s it, isn’t it? I know there are people who have so many things – their parents still alive, their spouses’ parents, beautiful children, heterosexual privilege – and I can’t imagine it anymore. I had a couple of years like that, when I was partnered and then married and everyone I loved was still alive. Some days it makes me want to try again, to go back to being heterosexual so that I can have again the luxury of complaining about having to spend time with my family. Now? It breaks my heart that I can’t, not just because of geography but because my family of origin is estranged within itself, and my family of choice is everywhere all over the globe.

I’ll go to a north Wisconsin town and drink with writers and queer friends. I’ll get into a hot tub, maybe, if I can get past my own self consciousness and feel safe enough to do so, and I will feel very, very lucky and full of gratitude that there are people whose sense of thanks includes me.

I wish all the same to all of you out there. Boobies, like the dream Robin Williams said. Let your joy fly in the face of your disappointment.

No Justice, No Peace: UVA & Marisa Alexander

A first year student was gang raped at UVA, and it took a Rolling Stone article (TW) to get anyone to pay attention.

It turns out UVA doesn’t even expel people who have admitted to rape.

Those of us who teach gender studies are assumed to be pessimistic at best and paranoid at worst, but you read two facts like that and wow, we’re just right.

Or you read that Marisa Alexander – the woman who fired a warning shot because she feared for her own life after her husband barged through a door she had locked herself behind and grabbed her by the neck – and all that 9 days after she’d given birth – was convicted and given 20 years in prison. She managed to plea down to 3, but why is she serving any time at all? She didn’t, mind you, kill or injure anyone.

Jeff Severs, a friend of a friend, after reading Wilson’s testimony about Mike Brown – which is something like a compendium of the racist imagination of black bodies as monstrous – wrote that “Brown’s body is bound to bear so horribly, impossibly much”.

As was that student’s, as was Marisa Alexander’s, and in none of these cases is there any justice, any condemnation of the objectification and othering of these bodies and the lives they carry.

I hate being right. I hate that my view of the world as unjust-by-design is so obviously, patently true. You can explain away Grand Jury history (well, actually, you can’t) or you can point up the peculiarities of the criminal justice system, but really, when university administrators are ignoring rape confessions and a woman who was defending herself is found guilty and given 20 years to serve – and who was, mind you, statistically more likely to die at her partner’s hands precisely because she was pregnant or had just given birth – that is, she had a better reason for self-defense than most, and far more than Darren Wilson ever needed – you have to know this system was designed to keep most of us in our places.

Bill Hicks was right, too, except they don’t even bother to tell you to pick up the gun anymore. They don’t have to.