My On The Issues piece, How a Feminst Found Her Sexism, is now up on Bilerico.
ENDA Introduced in Senate Today
The gender-inclusive version of ENDA is going to be introduced in the Senate today, & we REALLY REALLY need this, & so REALLY REALLY need you to contact your senators.
PFLAG has a tidy little letter to send to your senators.
PLEASE DO THIS.
Matt Barber’s Lobotomy Was Covered, Apparently
Matt Barber, the former policy director of Concerned Women for America, is raising the bogeyman of funding for trans genital surgeries being covered by the health care proposed by the Obama administration.
As a commenter at Pam’s House Blend has pointed out, however, there is no such plan.
An article at Oregon magazine quotes some of the language Barber is interpreting as being about transgender people/diagnoses:
“Page 972 of the House version of the bill (H.R. 3200) provides for “standards, as appropriate, for the collection of accurate data on health and health care” based on “sex, sexual orientation [and] gender identity.” The Senate draft indicates that the government will “detect and monitor trends in health disparities,” requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to “develop standards for the measurement of gender.” (i.e., officially recognize subjectively self-determined “transgender” or “transsexual” gender identities). It further mandates ‘‘participation in the institutions’ programs of individuals and groups from…different genders and sexual orientations.”
which comes straight from Barber’s article/press release which also appeared in Canada’s Free Press (which bills itself as a “conservative free press”). The bolded bits are Barber’s interpretation of what the House & Senate versions actually say.
You can email Matt Barber directly at jmattbarber@comcast.net.
TransPartner-phobia?
An MTF spectrum person murdered hir wife, & the Nebraska affiliate of ABC that reported it made this comment:
Experts on transgender and cross dressing say it’s unusual for such cases to end in violence, and when they do, it’s usually the cross dresser who is the victim.
& Granted, the phrase “such cases” is incredibly vague, but still, I want to know which experts they interviewed, because in all of the 9 years I have been working in the trans community, I have yet to hear of a case of a non-trans spouse murdering his/her trans spouse. I’m not saying it’s impossible – I’m just saying I’ve never heard of it. If anyone knows of a case, I would like to know about it.
However, there’s the trans woman who killed her husband in Cleveland, and the upstate NY crossdressing doctor who killed his wife, & now this case.
I am not saying that transgender people aren’t victims of violence way too often. They are murdered in hateful ways way too often. However, I have never heard of a trans person who was murdered by their own spouse. Instead they are often murdered by: strangers, johns, dates.
I am also not saying that trans people are homicidal, because they aren’t.
I am also not saying that partners of trans people are saints, by any stretch.
I would just like to know on what evidence this assertion by “experts” was based.
So this pisses me off, since the experts implied that spouses are often the murderers, when/if there is a trans person married to a non-trans person, and as far as I know, there is no evidence whatsoever to back up that assertion.
GRS: No State Obligation
In an article posted on Law.com today, this news: Federal Judge Says State Not Obligated to Pay for Sex-Change Surgery.
Western District of New York Judge Charles J. Siragusa in Rochester ruled that Morgana Ravenwood’s constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment were not violated by the denial of coverage.
He also refused to order state Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines to rescind 18 N.Y.C.R.R. §505.2(l), the 1998 law prohibiting state Medicaid funding for “care,” “services” or “drugs” related to gender reassignment surgery.
My thought is that it’s all well & good as long as they quit requiring genital surgery for gender marker changes, then.
Jim Collins Foundation (Info & Fundraiser)
A new organization called the Jim Collins Foundation has come into being; its goal is to provide financial assistance to transgender people for gender-confirming surgeries. From their website:
The Jim Collins Foundation recognizes that not every transgender person needs or wants surgery to achieve a healthy transition, but for those who do, gender-confirming surgeries are an important step in their transition to being their true selves. However, access to gender-confirming surgery is impossible for most. Discrimination against transgender people is so prevalent that many transgender people struggle to survive, never mind save for surgery costs. Even for those who have health insurance, coverage is systematically denied. Many insurance policies contain a “Transsexual Exclusion Clause” which excludes all medical procedures related to a person’s transgender status. For many transgender people, access to surgery is out of reach.
The Jim Collins Foundation raises money to fund gender-confirming surgeries for those transgender people who need surgery to live a healthy life, but have no ability to pay for it themselves. We recognize that for those people who require surgery for a healthy gender transition, lack of access to surgery may result in hopelessness, depression, and sometimes, suicide. The Jim Collins Foundation is a community-based initiative promoting the self-determination and empowerment of all transgender people.
So if you’re going to be in the New Haven area on 8/8, do go!
OPEN MINDS… OPEN MIC
a Benefit for The Jim Collins Foundation
Saturday August 8TH 8pm
168 York Street Cafe’ New Haven, CT
$10 Donation at the doorBring your talent and your friends ! Or just come to listen !
In Defense of Autumn
Autumn Sandeen used to cull stories for the Transgender News Yahoo Group; she’s been blogging for forever, and not long ago became a key poster and moderator at Pam’s House Blend.
Recently, people have given her holy hell for shutting down the use of the words cisgender and cissexual because they were being used in the context of an argument that was only estranging members of the LGBT community from each other (& I’m not linking to all the posts about it intentionally as I have done so before and had my say otherwise).
The Trans-Ponder podcasters Jayna and Mila called for some perspective this past Sunday night when it came to Autumn, particularly, citing the invaluable work that she has done on behalf of the trans community, and explained that even if you think someone’s wrong – in what opinion they hold, or in terms of something they’ve done – you don’t need to let the anger cause you to throw out the baby with the bathwater. (Their thoughts on the subject start around 53 minutes into Podcast #129.)
Dallas Denny said a long time ago that we tend to “eat our own” and in an interview with her a few years back, she clarified, in response to my 3rd question, the ideas she was trying to express when it came to trans community politics.
As someone who has taken heat for lots of things over the years, and someone who has seen even the champions of particularly useful ideas about trans subjectivity take heat for her own ideas, it makes me sad to see Autumn suffer so much. It is not easy work to build bridges within the LGBT, & Autumn has, in my opinion, done an extraordinarily good job of it. I’d like to see her keep doing that cool work, and even if she occasionally takes a mis-step — as we all do — the benefit of what she does far outweighs the mistakes she’s made.
I guess I’d ask, too, that people try to pay attention to the ratio of what they do to what they criticize. I’ve noticed that many people online who have the time & energy to work up a head of steam over what some other activist has said or done don’t necessarily spend as much time on positive activism as they do on the fine critiquing of others’ work. I am not saying that critics don’t do anything; I AM saying that anger & criticism sometimes are best-served by doing more instead of talking more. I say that as someone who has put my foot firmly in my mouth instead of doing something positive to fix what I saw as a problem. (As Betty and I like to joke about that one support group member who is constantly yammering on & on & on & repeating the same issues they always bring up, try not to be the person who seems to be saying, “I’d listen but I’m too busy talking.”)
In a nutshell: I’d like to thank Autumn Sandeen publicly for the work she has done, and to thank all the numerous people who keep working to build bridges within our communities.
From a Child of a Trans Parent
This is B.’s reaction to the Chloe Prince documentary that was on the other night. Since I’m a partner, & have a soapbox from which to talk about my reaction as a partner, I thought I’d open my blog to the child of a trans parent on her feelings.
She’s 15, and her father, now female, transitioned about five years ago. She was about the same age as Prince’s eldest when she as told of her father’s imminent transition.
At first all I really felt was sadness for the children and the wife. The poor woman had to watch her spouse say on TV that she thought she might not have transitioned if she had stayed with her ex-girlfriend, something that must have felt awful and been humiliating to watch. I was shocked that the children’s reaction to the fact that their father was going to become a woman had been recorded in the first place, let alone aired on TV. As the child of a transgendered person I would be horrified if my initial reaction was shown to people all over who I didn’t even know. It’s an incredibly private moment that the rest of the world doesn’t have any business in watching.
As the show progressed I started to feel increasingly angry, and not just because she seemed to me a parody of a woman, intent on acting like a stereotype of how a woman “should be” and appearing very feminine, or because despite this femininity she still did all the “masculine” chores around the house, and we got to see pictures of her working with tools and at her job (I would have expected someone who had undergone a male to female transition to not be sexist).
I wanted to punch a hole in the wall every time it was mentioned that the children had “lost” a father. I never lost my father, just because she’s a woman doesn’t make any difference to the fact that she is my father. A sex change operation doesn’t change that. Chloe had no right to be upset about being missed out on the mother’s day photo- it was for mother’s day, not father’s day. Those children are going to have a hell of a time growing up now, and will have to deal with people they don’t know recognizing them and even judging for something they didn’t even do.
Thanks very much B. for sharing your thoughts with us. I would love to read comments from other trans people with kids, if their kids watched, what they thought.
Alcohol Poisoning
Sadly, it was a lot of the same old same old: cursory interest in parent, partner, & children. The kids were adorable. The wife was determined. The father was exhausted.
- Multiple shots and references to surgery, instead.
- Trans woman discovers surprising, sudden interest in men.
- Expresses longing to be mother while wife is pregnant.
- Voiceover talking about wife meeting her husband for the first time “as a woman” post Thailand, even though the husband had been living in female gender role for a year as per SOC.
Atypical trans documentary bits?
- Added insult to injury for wife, while trans woman wonders – fleetingly – if she’s married her ex-girlriend if she’d have needed to transition. Fleetingly, stressed by Prince, but goddamn do wives of trans women everywhere hate her for that one. Yeah, thanks, it’s our fault you needed to transition. Do you really think we don’t wish, sometimes, that you’d married your ex-girlfriend, too?!
- Newly female husband going up telephone pole in gear
- ” ” ” mowing lawn with reference to still “wearing the pants”
- ‘out of the mouths of babes’ testimony that natal female still does all the parenting and housework
- bee stings lead to discovering of IS condition which justifies transition. (the years of crossdressing certainly don’t count for shit, right?)
So yeah, I’m drunk.You?
They all seem like reasonably nice people. I hate documentaries about teh trans. Hate ’em. I hate the way our lives our distilled into reverse camera angles and earnest questions across kitchen tables. I hate how the beauty of a trans woman admitting that she still sees her wife the way “he” did is degraded by the “sudden interest” in men. I hate the sad, confused, tendentious quality of trans women’s wives who are obviously overwhelmed with the whole business and still in love with their spouses.
* sigh*
Having been someone who has done shite like this, my only excuse is: it was in my contract. Not that that’s much of an excuse, but you do usually have a clause saying that you will in good faith blah blah blah consent to blah blah blah that will help sell the book. I’m not sure there’s any other reason to do these things anymore, but I hope, for Rene’s sake, & the boys’ sake, & the dad’s & Chloe’s, that this one will be forgotten when it’s Sweeps Week next year or in five years. Not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t. There are things I said and wrote at the time of My Husband Betty that embarass me now, as well as plenty that I”m still happy about. But I wrote a book, so when I”m lucky, you can see its brown spine in the LGBT section of bookstores these days. But a show like this is going to be dredged up at 3am for a few years, and every once too often, Rene and Chloe and her boys and dad will be online at the supermarket / drugstore / in the waiting room / at the doctor’s office / showing up for parent teacher night when someone they’ve never met couldn’t sleep and saw them on the TeeVee. And then, well, then is when you wish you could change your name and move to Timbuktu.
My best to all of them. Can we stop making these now?
Trans Documentary Drinking Game
In light of the documentary about Chloe Prince that will air tomorrow night, I thought we should all be prepared for what looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a predictable documentary.
So, the rules, such as they are, for watching a trans documentary:
- Putting on makeup. Two drinks for reverse camera shot into mirror.
- Doing anything better done in jeans and sneakers in heels and a skirt. Examples: cleaning the house, shoveling the sidewalk, yard work, walking the dog.
- Before picture shown. Two drinks for picture in stereotypical male mode (sports team, facial hair, military, wedding tux)
- Camera shot putting on or taking off a bra.
- Photo of any wig, breast form, padding, etc.
- Surprise disclosure, when a trans woman is introduced and then partway through the piece, her secret is revealed.
- Camera focus on masculine body parts: hands, feet, Adam’s apple, height, etc.
- Any reference to genital surgery that refers to “becoming a woman” or “finally a woman”
- Minor chords played softly on a piano
- talk show host saying “you go girl”
- any discussion of plumbing or electricity
- black and white childhood shots, MTF with cap gun and cowboy hat, FTM as ballerina.
- Trans woman saying, “I am not a crossdresser. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
- Trans woman clutching large teddy bear in hospital bed.
- Birthday balloons after surgery.
- Trans woman with new boyfriend (after shot of tearful ex-wife).
- Trans woman sitting in chair in above-the-knee skirt, posed so you can see what great gams she has.
- Patient wheeled off to surgery …
- … lingering shot of the hospital bed with the teddy bear (or wife) left behind.
- Shot of protaganist sitting at the computer keyboard, looking at a trans support website or surgeon’s website….
- Any helping professional teaching deportment
- Camera in the operating room – just drink the whole bottle
- Any and all deployments of soft focus = 1 shot
- Close up of dotted lines in magic marker on pale fleshy body parts = 1 shot
- Earnest surgeon describes his motivation as “to help [girlname] become the woman she’s always really felt herself to be” = 3 shots
- Before picture with extreme facial hair – 1 shot
- Before picture in uniform – Military, Football, etc… – 2 shots
- Video from hair removal session : Laser – 1 shot, electrolysis – 2 shots
- Before picture – Last time she wore a dress (F2M) – 1 shots
- Breast binding – 2 shots
- Taking Hormones – Self-injecting -3 shots, orals – 1 shot
- Did anyone mention an arduous and lonely childhood?
- Meeting the school bully as “the new me” at the High School reunion?
- Looking at the old picture of self and saying something to the effect of “he was a nice guy….” or “Ken was a lot of fun, but his time is over. It’s Ginger’s turn now!”
- Trans woman claiming to have IS chromosomal pattern, an affinity for washing dishes, a sudden dislike of sports, etc.
Believe it or not, these are not the most snarky suggestions by some of our mHB board members. Also remember: there are quite a few people who hang out on our boards who have done this kind of media work, including me & Betty, of course, but also Jenny Boylan, amongst others. We need to laugh at ourselves as much as we laugh at the inanity of it all.
Twelve-Steppers should find their own version, of course. Maybe those ice cream poppers? But the point is to feel as physically ill by the end as the drinking crowd.
(Thanks and love to Gwen Smith who wrote her own version of this back in 2005 and to anyone else who has posted their version of this game.)