Category: trans

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Passing Privilege and Maine Politics

Last week, Jennifer Finney Boylan spoke to the Maine legislature over gender inclusion in Maine’s non discrimination laws. She writes:

Yesterday, I spoke to the Maine legislature’s Judiciary committee. A bill has been proposed to “exempt” transgender people from protections under the Maine Human Rights Act, which went into effect six years ago. Currently, Maine protects GLBT people from discrimination, and this includes a so called “public accommodations” provision of the very sort that was, in part, the deal breaker in the Maryland law that was shelved last week. (Although I should make it clear that the Maine law has been on the books for six years without problem, and the proposed legislation is to REMOVE the protection for trans people; Maryland currently has no such provisions and the shelved legislation would have put these protections into place.)

She made some lovely remarks to the Maine legislature’s judiciary committee, which she’s reprinted in full on her blog, but the issue that comes up is that of passing privilege: how people are more than ready to have trans people who pass in their transitioned gender protected and welcomed in gender-specific spaces, but that the people who don’t pass are suspect.

That’s obviously a problem, since it’s exactly the trans people (and cis people, for that matter) who don’t have “acceptable” or culturally legible genders that need the protection most. No one asks for anyone’s ID on the way into a public bathroom after all; we are carded by our gender expression, and if our gender isnt normative, there’s often trouble, whether the person is trans, butch or some other gender that doesn’t stick closely enough to “man” or “woman”.

A quick thanks to Boylan for the heads up and for speaking up, too.

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Thailand’s Got Talent

This performance has upset a lot of Western trans people, who find the attitude of the judges, and the singer hirself, as somehow demeaning or belittling of this person’s trans identity.

I would argue, however, that unless you’re Thai, it may be very difficult to understand the place of trans people in their own cultural context. That doesn’t mean it’s entirely 100% great to be what’s called a ladyboy (or, more properly, Kathoey) in Thailand, but the singer’s experience of being trans might be entirely different than a US trans woman’s.

Anyhoo, I think she rocks.

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Suspicious Death in Sydney

A woman named Veronica Baxter died in police custody a year ago. Inquiries into how she died and what the circumstances were surrounding her death have gone unanswered: local activists call it a charade and have reasons to be suspicious, including emergency calls made by Baxter the night of her death, and reports that she was happy and smiling.

The inquiry revealed Baxter made four emergency calls during the night of her death. No witness addressed if those emergency calls had been answered, or by who.

The inquiry also revealed all the psychological assessments made of Baxter before her death said she was not suicidal. One counsellor said she was “smiling, happy and talking”.

I hope they can get some kind of definitive answer, and justice if there was any wrong doing.

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Discrimination Suit: Man Enough

A man whose job it was to make sure men in recovery don’t switch their urine for someone else’s got fired because he wasn’t born with a penis.

TLDEF brought the case, which has now been reported in The New York Times.

So here’s how you tell this is discrimination: if a man who had lost his penis in an accident had this job, no one would have fired him for being penis-less. If a man who had hypospadias & had to pee sitting down had this job, likewise. If a man who had a penis that required a catheter for him to pee had this job, he wouldn’t have been fired.

THUS: El’Jai Devoureau was fired for being trans. As a culture, we still haven’t worked out how wholly incorrect this “genitals at birth determine gender for a lifetime” idea is.

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Lesbian/Trans Communities

Safe Space Radio, who did an interview with me a few weeks back (and who just celebrated their 100th show!), has just done an interview with Jen Hudson on the intersections of the lesbian & trans communities.

Jen speaks about how delicate the relationship can be between two oppressed and marginalized groups, and her intention to speak only about her particular experience. She described the forces that bring the two communities together, including gender variance, oppression and risk of violence . . . Jen also spoke about tensions within the communities about the F to M transition and whether it reflects a misogynist rejection of femaleness.

Do give it a listen.

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Film about Angie Zapata

A film made about the life & death of Angie Zapata is premiering this week in Denver:

This local story is told by local filmmakers. Denver company Loco Lane Filmworks, helmed by Director Alan Dominguez, created this 1-hour documentary by speaking to Angie’s family and friends as well as showing photographs of Angie. Scored by Mackenzie Gault (of Flobots fame) and featuring a song by L.A.-based band Ozomatli, the film focuses on Andrade’s life as remembered by her family as well as the trial of her killer.

It’s called Photos of Angie.

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“Gay” Caveman Wasn’t Gay…

…. she was trans. After one researcher comments that “he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transvestite. What we see here does not add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms” because of the position she was buried in and because of the implements she was buried with.

Why must otherwise intelligent, educated people conflate sexual orientation and corss-gender identity? At least one of the other researchers seems to know what’s what:

Another member of the archaeological team, Katerina Semradova, said that colleagues had uncovered an earlier case dating from the Mesolithic period where a female warrior was buried as a man.

She added that Siberian shamans, or witch doctors, were also buried in this way but with richer funeral accessories appropriate to their elevated position in society.

‘This later discovery was neither of those. We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a transvestite or third-gender grave in the Czech Republic.’

That said, we don’t know that she wasn’t gay, either: maybe some of the things she was buried with were given to her by her wife.

All kidding aside: ze could have also been part of a third gender tradition, male-identified but fulfilled a woman’ role.

Or ze might have been trans in a period before people used hormones, identity documents and surgeries to transition. That is, we seem to know a little something about this person’s own gender role, but not necessarily about hir gender identity, and we absolutely don’t know who this person desired, partnered with, had sex with, or loved, while ze was alive. Therefore: we really don’t know anything about hir sexual orientation whatsoever (or rather, no indicators of such were mentioned in the article).

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1374060/Gay-caveman-5-000-year-old-male-skeleton-outed-way-buried.html#ixzz1InnbGDRT

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Offensive: Mockumentary about Musical of Boys Don’t Cry

I know we’re going to get into a new round of conversation about art and humor and whatever the fuck else, but I’m horribly offended by the idea of a “mockumentary” about a supposed musical based on Brandon Teena’s death.

Just stop it already: leave trans people out of this bullshit.

It would have been just as possible to create a mockumentary about how stupid & shallow musical theater people can be without dragging that young man into it.

Ugh. Bad taste doesn’t even begin to describe my disgust.

And no, I don’t have to see the goddamn thing. I barely held back the contents of my stomach watching the short preview.

I did actually check to make sure this wasn’t published on April Fool’s Day, in some hope that it was a joke. It wasn’t, and it isn’t.