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Phyllis Frye Becomes Texas’ First Trans Judge

Phyllis Frye has been a long-time advocate on trans and queer issues: this is exciting news!

Phyllis Randolph Frye, longtime legal advocate for the transgender community, was sworn in this morning as the state’s first transgender judge. Frye was appointed by Houston Mayor Annise Parker as an Associate Municipal Judge. The city council unanimously approved her appointment, along with a couple dozen other appointments, with little fanfare and no dissent.

It was only 30 years ago that Frye risked arrest every time she entered City Hall. At that time the City of Houston and most American cities had ordinances criminalizing cross dressing. Frye defied the law to fight for it’s repeal, which finally happened in 1980.

It’s kind of hard to believe that it was illegal to crossdress in so many states and cities as recently as 1980, but it’s true. Making crossdressing illegal was, of course, a way to restrict and criminalize members of the LGBT communities – whether those people were butches, queens, or transgender.

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Happy Halloween!

Ah, the only internationally recognized holiday of the crossdressing world is upon us again, & I had an interesting experience shopping for Halloween costumes & party decorations with Betty.

We were looking around at the mass-produced costumes, me mostly cursing about the oversexed women’s and girl’s costumes (the girls’ costumes show more skin than the ones for adult men, for crying out loud) and Betty thought maybe she’d figure out a costume around an interesting wig. But: I found myself getting uncomfortable when she started trying them on. It was just too much of the past, & started messing with my sense of her gender. It was a Big Deal when she finally got to grow her hair long enough, and have it styled unisex/feminine, that the wigs brought me right back to when she couldn’t do that and had to have men’s cuts (since she was a leading man onstage) and so had to wear wigs in order to go out “en femme.”

So no wigs for us, but we did use spray-on black hair dye (so she could be Wednesday Addams & I could be Frida Kahlo, unibrow & all).

Halloween is still far & above our favorite holiday, but it’s definitely taken on new meanings in this post-trans life of ours. My feminism is more tweaked when she wants to wear short skirts & fetishy shoes because I expect her to say no to all this bullshit objectification of women — and that’s in addition to the absolute bullshit of this culture agreeing that it’s okay for women to be sexual once a year (& once a year only).

So what about you? Has Halloween changed for you in the context of your trans identity/journey? I’d love to hear.

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My Husband Bitchy

Every once in a while, I will hear that some MTF trans person has vigorously insisted that I am a bitter feminist nightmare and that no married crossdressser or transitioning transsexual should “let” their wives read My Husband Betty.

Really, “let.”

Usually, this charge is on the grounds that I ask people who are MTF trans identified – if they are not living as female & aren’t feminist – to maybe do some research into women’s lives before deciding they will and can live as one (& before expecting absolute, unquestioning acceptance of their trans nature from their female spouse).

Recently I decided to respond:

Asking a trans spouses, especially one born and raised male, to be aware of modern women’s lives isn’t too much to ask, I don’t think, if what the CD/TG is asking for in return is acceptance of their trans nature. In a nutshell, it’s a lot to ask of a spouse or a girlfriend who has just been broadsided by their partner’s trans identity. There is often an expectation that the partner will want to know things, and learn things, and go to support groups, or accompany their spouse to outings. Their gendered feelings may also need to be expressed during sex.

That is, the raised-male spouse is asking his/her wife (depending on how the person identifies) to learn a whole lot about gender variance.

In exchange, I recommend that the person raised male learn something about being a woman, to learn about feminism, discrimination, sexual harassment and violence. Most women know most of these things as a result of living in the world as a woman (and many trans women come to know these things a few years after transition). But while a male-bodied trans person is living in the world as male, they won’t be exposed to these things. (Some MTF trans spectrum individuals, like some males, are feminist and always read about these things. I’m talking about the ones who don’t.)

In a sense, then, you could say I’m asking a lot, if you think asking the trans spouse to learn as much about his/her wife’s experience of life in her body and her gender as s/he is asking her spouse to understand about what it’s like to be trans.

You know, equality, even-steven, a little give and take. It’s a nutty idea, I know.

So crossdressers: read as much about women’s lives as you want your wife to read about crossdressing, and then read some more.

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His Son’s Dress

I don’t know why these stories depress me so much, and really, it’s the ones with the cheerfully liberal dad who really is trying his hardest not to be a dick.
And yet, he is.

Sigh. And we didn’t even have to wait until Halloween this year.

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Crossdressing Still Illegal?

Who knew? Crossdressing is still illegal in Oakland, California, & has been for 130 years. Maybe it won’t be soon:

“These laws have a history of being used as a tool of oppression,” said Kaplan, Oakland’s first openly lesbian elected official. She said laws similar to Oakland’s have been “an excuse for persecution” against the LGBT community and people who don’t conform to traditional gender rolls.

She noted that police in New York City used a similar statute when they raided the Stonewall Inn in 1969, setting off demonstrations in an event that became a seminal point in the gay-rights movement.

In Oakland, the cross-dressing ordinance is not enforced and hasn’t been in recent memory. City officials also believe it is unconstitutional. But a report from Kaplan’s office noted that under the existing language, women in uniform working in the police and fire departments could be subject to arrest and misdemeanor charges.

Final vote to repeal the law is on May 18th.

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Happy 100th Anniversary, Die Transvestiten

It’s been a hundred years since Magnus Hirschfeld published The Transvestites. The earliest bibliographic entries Ray Blanchard tracked down are these:

Die Transvestiten – Eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb [Transvestites – A Study of the Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress], Pulvermacher, Berlin, 1910.

Co-authored with Max Tilke: Die Transvestiten – Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb [Transvestites – The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress], Illustrierter Teil, Pulvermacher, Berlin, 1912.

How cool is that? I couldn’t help but think that Virginia Prince died only last year, at the age of 96. Imagine, she was born only a few years after that book was published, when the idea of anyone being “out” about crossdressing was – to borrow from Hirschfeld’s language – verboten.

It’s hard to imagine what might have been, if the Nazis had not destroyed Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sex.

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Crossdressed Protest

It’s kind of amazing, the idea of Iranian men wearing traditional head scarves to show their allegiance to the insurgence, but that’s what they’re doing.

Thus the new protest also speaks to the societal aspect of Iranian women being forced to accept a dress code, according to Dabashi.

“Proud to wear my late mother’s rusari, the very rusari that was forced on my wife in Iran, the very rusari for which my sisters are humiliated if they choose to wear it in Europe, and the very rusari that the backward banality that now rules Iran thinks will humiliate Majid Tavakoli if it is put on him — He is dearer and nobler to us today than he ever was.”

In a speech before his arrest, Tavakoli played on the theme of the day’s historical significance in light of current anti-government protests.

“We Iranian men are late doing this,” Dabashi said. “If we did this when rusari was forced on those among our sisters who did not wish to wear it 30 years ago, we would have perhaps not been here today.”

(thanks to Jade Catherine for the tip)