REBECCA KLING: How long have you been writing?

KATHERINE SCOTT NELSON: I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing, and I decided I was going to be a writer when I was pretty young – probably grade school, if not earlier. I also grew up in an unusual household – my parents ran a home-based graphic design business, back in the early 1980s, when nobody did this – and the house was always full of papers and inks and adhesives and stencils. So my sister and I grew up making our own picture books from scraps of material and old art supplies that were lying around. One of our grandparents was a working artist, and we watched our parents spend all day writing and drawing and making things, so “I want to be a writer when I grow up” didn’t seem that abstract or unattainable to me.

(It would as I got older, though. I’m still kind of stunned that all these things are actually happening.)

RK: How has growing up in/around Chicago impacted your experience as a queer person and/or as an author?

KSN: Being queer in and around Chicago is completely different now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago, when I lived in the semi-rural northern suburbs, I was really suffocating. I kind of wrote off the entire Midwest when I moved out to San Francisco. But every time I came back to visit, there’d be more visibly queer folks, more local advances in LGBT rights, and finally things reached a point where I started to wonder “Why am I in San Francisco again? What could I be doing there that I can’t do here?”

As an author, it’s a bit hard to tell what has come from Chicago that wouldn’t have come from another city. I will say, though, that Chicago LOVES its underdogs and its local kids who make good, and so it’s been an extremely encouraging city to write in. In SF I had people lined up around the block to tell me why it’d never work.

RK: Have your works always involved LGBT themes?

KSN: I started putting LGBT characters and themes in my work when I was a teenager, and first started to understand that LGBT people existed. Some of my work has LGBT-specific content, some doesn’t.

RK: Do you like “Have You Seen Me?” being classified as an LGBT book? Why or why not?

KSN: On one level, I think it’s completely accurate to describe Have You Seen Me as an LGBT book – it’s about the experiences of two queer teenagers who are very much marked as “queer” in their community, and about the narrator’s fumbling search for self-definition and self-acceptance as a queer man, and as a sexual being.

But I also get the sense that you may be asking about the cultural dynamic in which this same story, if it starred two straight teenagers, would be considered a “universal” coming-of-age story. Rather than trying to remove the “other-ness” that’s projected onto stories by and about LGBT people, I think that “default” or “unmarked” state that’s attached to cisgender heterosexuality needs to go away.

RK: That’s something I’ve thought a lot about in my own work. I’m very much a trans performer (and I market myself as such) but it’s also really important to me that my work be artistically valid . I think we’ve all seen or read or heard overly self-indulgent performance or prose or music that may be emotionally cathartic for the creator, but ultimately isn’t good. One of the things I loved about HYSM was that it felt first and foremost like a good story, and the characters (though I hate this cliche phrasing) “happened” to be queer.

KSN: Believe me, I’ve got four drafts of a full-length memoir, sitting in a drawer, that I’ve since reread and decided “Uh… no.” Though I think there’s something to be said for the transformative potential of bad cathartic art, I know exactly what you mean.

And I hear you on “just happened to be queer.” A lot of people have expressed the exact same sentiment to me – they don’t want to use dismissive language like “just happened to be queer,” but they also feel that I haven’t written Chris and Vyv according to a laundry list called “Things Queer Youth Think/Feel/Say/Do.” I think we desperately need different ways of talking about art made by and about LGBT people - ways that don’t keep trying to locate it in relation to “normal.”
Let me see what I can do…

When I was Chris’s and Vyv’s age, I felt very insulted and caricatured by the stories that were supposed to speak for me.
Yes, my queerness is a major influence in my life and in my writing, I went through a very intense struggle with my sexuality and my gender identity, but if you were to take a snapshot of my life at any of those points, there was always more going on. That’s what I’ve tried to bring to Have You Seen Me – a more complete picture – and I think people are responding powerfully to that.

RK: With that in mind, What was accomplished in HYSM by the inclusion of LGBT themes/characters?

KSN: In a lot of ways, Have You Seen Me is the book I didn’t have when I was growing up. When I came of
age, in the late 1990s, the “just like everyone else” narrative was really taking off, and the story I heard from the gay and lesbian mainstream was “You can still have a wedding, you can have a respectable career, you can join the army and buy a house and have kids, just like you’d always wanted.” But for a kid who’d always had this grand ambition to be a great writer, that promised future actually represented a huge step down to me.

So that’s why the narrative arc in HYSM follows something very different from the traditional teenager-coming-out story. Most of the problems that Chris and Vyv have wouldn’t be solved by them falling in love with same-gender partners, or coming out to their families, or meeting other LGBT people, or moving to a more tolerant town. At the same time, I’ve tried to crack that story open and show some of the potential power that can come from living as an LGBT person in this world. And that’s the message I want people to take away from the book, particularly the last few scenes – that you can have transformative experiences, you can make soul-deep connections with other people, you can change yourself and your world, you can inspire the people around you, and you can do it with your own unique subjectivity.

RK: Are there any biographical moments from the book?

KSN: Not moments per se – the biographical aspects of the book are mostly about feelings, themes, emotional struggles, and so on. But my high school friends had a lot of fun trying to recognize people and landmarks.

RK: In your bio you mention speaking on a panel at your high school. How has it felt going back to your high school to be an advocate and role model? That’s something I’ve thought a lot about, and am still not sure how I feel doing it, so no need to be cohesive. ::grin:: More broadly, do you consider yourself an advocate of genderqueer identity, a role model, an
activist, all of the above, none of the above, something else entirely, etc, etc, etc?

KSN: Oh, actually, it was another panelist’s high school. My high school is currently bragging that Rick Santorum graduated from there.

As for being a genderqueer advocate or activist… yeah, it’s complicated. I think I’m a terrible advocate, to say nothing of *gulp* role model – and with few exceptions, I don’t enjoy doing that work. In a better world, I’d step aside and let the people who are good at it and passionate about it take over.

But when I first made the decision to be out, in my public life as a writer, I realized very quickly that I was going to have to do at least some 101 work to bridge the gap if I wanted to appeal to an audience broader than the gender-aware LGBT world. (This is why, for example, I have a post on my site explaining why I use ze/hir pronouns and have two first names.) And in many of the circles I travel, I’m often the first non-binary person anyone has met – and I’m always
aware of that dynamic.

I also keep finding myself in these situations where I know that if I speak up, the next person who comes along will have it ten times easier – and I usually can’t resist that opportunity. So I’d say I do what I can, where I can, but it’s much more out of a sense of duty than of a true passion for the work.

P.S. I vote “yes” on going back to your old high school as a visiting speaker. I hear that the sense of closure is incredible, at the very least.

RK: On the topic of making a better world for queer youth, what do you think of things like the It Gets Better project? Putting my own cards on the table, I think they’re a great start, but worry they become a way for people to feel like they’re contributing without getting off their butt. As Chris and Vyv figure out, sometimes you have to make it better. I think this is particularly true for trans or generqueer individuals where – as you say - the narrative of “You can be normal, too!” often falls apart.

KSN: If I were a teenager right now, I would probably have a huge chip on my shoulder about the It Gets Better project. I agree with you that it’s great that people are feeling outraged about the pervasive violence that so many queer kids face, and great that they want to change those conditions. And while some people have made some excellent videos, I think the way the project is set up really centers the needs of adults, and encourages a way of thinking about queer youth – “those poor children, we have to save them” – that’s very paternalistic and disempowering. That impulse to help needs to be backed up by some hard-core commitment, self-reflection, and above all, listening.

I read in cycles: for a few weeks, I’ll read constantly, plowing through book after book. Then I’ll pause, only to gorge myself on Netflix Streaming. I’m pretty predictable in that way, and take time to build up a list of to-read while I’m working my way through The Wonder Years or Scrubs. I’ve just finished my Netflix phase (and rewatching The Office was delightful), so here’s my book list:

I just started rereading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. He, along with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein, are the Big Three of classic science fiction, and Foundation doesn’t disappoint. It’s modeled after History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, following the waning days of the twelve thousand year Galactic Empire, and the scientists (the titular Foundation) attempting to avoid a dark ages expected to last thirty thousand years.Foundation is simply good fun: classic sci fi, galaxy-spanning conflicts, and – like most Asimov – full of intelligent and believable characters trying to do their best in an imperfect universe. Asimov kept adding to the Foundationseries, but start with Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, in that order. If you’re dying to keep reading after that, you’ll still have lots more set in the Foundation universe to keep you happy.

As much as I enjoy rereading old favorites, I’m also excited to dig into some books I haven’t read before. Top of that list for this summer is To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Williams. I heard this mentioned on NPR one day, and jotted it down in my ever-growing “Read These (Someday.)” list. Released in 1999, To Say Nothing is described as “science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel.” It’s also supposed to be very funny. As someone who enjoys sci-fi/fantasy, time travel, and humor, I’m excited to see how this turns out.

Moving away from sci-fi, there are a few memoirs I want to check out this summer. First is Lying: A Metaphysical Memoir by Lauren Slater. Slater uses her life’s story as the basis for her memoir, but also openly questions the truth in her own writing. She discusses her childhood illness (assuming she was really sick), her seizures as a reflection of her emotional state (if she wasn’t faking them), and her artistic creation as an outlet for her physical self (assuming she didn’t make the whole thing up). The book is marketed as fiction, and I’m interested to see how (if!) Slater can both successfully construct a narrative and openly question the narrative itself. I also want to check out The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston. Kingston’s family came to California from China when she was very young, and she uses her memoir to describe the tug of the reality she felt around her and the stories her mother told her of life back in China. The book weaves Kingston’s own experiences with fairytales and stories of Chinese woman, and I’m excited to see the result.

I’ve covered fiction, I’ve covered memoir, but I also have some more traditional nonfiction on my list. First is Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine. I’m fascinated by the history of Israel, particularly as a Jew who is not very supportive of the State of Israel itself. This book is supposed to teach the same time period of the last hundred years, but show both what Israeli students are learning in their classrooms and what Palestinian students are learning in their classrooms. I hope the book will tease out some sort of truth somewhere in the middle. I also love pop science books, which is why I have Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer. This book, which seems to follow in the footsteps of Freakonomics and The Tipping Point, examines how common sense works (and often doesn’t work). In particular, it examines things that – in retrospect – seem obvious (although the book description is short on what that list might look like).

I could go on and on, and probably won’t even make it through these books before I’m distracted by something else. To put my cards on the table, my book lists (one for fiction and one for nonfiction) currently have over one hundred books on them, and I add more at the rate of one or two a week. Please let me know in the comments what other books I should add, and help me reprioritize the ones I’m already eyeing.

And happy reading!

I hope you’ll be able to chip in, even if it’s just a few dollars. Thanks!

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health is NOT an insurance company. It is subject to its own enabling Act, and is neither an entitlement nor a welfare program.

Gender dysphoria is broadly defined as Section 7, operated by a board of directors pursuant to the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan Act (215 ILCS 105/1 et seq.)

Discomfort or distress that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth must be eligible for this state program.

Transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals who plan to change gender roles permanently will result in termination from the program as of the date required by state law.

The following is a brief description of the benefits provided by CHIP for covered services, drugs and supplies:

• surgeons
• patients
• mental healthcare professionals
• other health professionals
• clinical care

CHIP will not pay for any expense or charge set forth in more detail in any benefit plan booklet.

Transgender adjective must continue to meet all of the CHIP eligibility requirements.

Transsexual adjective must continue to meet all of the CHIP eligibility requirements.

Services, drugs or supplies that are for, or resulting from, surgery or surgeries performed in connection with sexual reassignment or gender transformation are often applied by the medical profession (referred to herein as Section 15).

Section 15 is neither an entitlement nor a welfare program.

Mental health professionals who plan to change gender roles permanently must be eligible for this state program before you can enroll.

The Illinois General Assembly- broadly defined as discomfort or distress – will not pay for any expense or charge.

Senator Durbin,

I have lived in Illinois my entire life. I am almost always in agreement with your legislative viewpoints, and appreciate how accesible and responsive you are to your constituents. And so I ask you: Please raise my taxes.

I’m a freelancer. I make less than $20,000 a year. I work in the arts, with children, with colleges and universities, and receive most of my income as 1099. That means I feel the weight of my taxes directly – they aren’t split between myself and my employer. I have bills, rent, medical expenses. And yet, I want you to raise my taxes.

With all the talk of budget deficits, the worries about angering voters by even mentioning raising taxes, and obstinant insistance by the GOP to refuse to raise taxes, I want to make my voice heard, too. As an American, taxes are part of the responsibility I bear to pay for the government services I enjoy. When I fly to visit family in California, I want to know my planes are inspected by government officials, and airports protected by others. When I drink water, I want to know the tap water I enjoy in Chicago is held to the same basic standard as in Portland or New York. While I disagree with much of our current military policy, I am ready to help pay for the defense of the United States. Everyday I am aware of the countless ways in which government helps make my life easier and safer. And I want to help pay for it.

I’m ready to pay more, for a sane government hand in healthcare. I’m ready to pay more, for a substantial government hand in education. I’m ready to pay more for a government hand in highways, bridges, science research, space exploration, national security, and on and on and on.

Please, raise my taxes.
-Rebecca

Chicago Women’s Health Center (CWHC) is a non-profit health collective that provides sliding scale services including basic gynecological care, health education, counseling, massage, acupuncture and alternative insemination. The Trans Greater Access Project (TGAP) is an agency wide initiative to increase access to sliding scale health care services or trans individuals. As we look at ways we can better meet the health care needs of transfeminine communities, we are seeking input from trans women to inform our services.

The purpose of these focus groups is to:

• Assess how we can meet health care needs of transfeminine communities;
• Learn from transfeminine individuals’ experiences initiating hormone therapy in order to inform the development of our hormone administration services.

We are seeking both:

• Transfeminine individuals of any age who would like to share their thoughts and experiences regarding personal or community need for health care services.

AND

• Transfeminine individuals 18 years of age or older who have been on hormone therapy for a minimum of 6 months.

Focus groups will occur in May 2012.
As a participant, you will be provided with a cash incentive to thank you for your time.
Food provided.
If you are interested in participating, please call Jess at 773.935.6126 X222

[X] – Pick up groceries
[X] – Do laundry
[X] – Get gas for car
[X] – Go to the gym
[   ] – Turn my penis into a vagina

With the last entry circled and underlined. I’m imagining the show title at the top and then ticket date/times/locations at the bottom. I like it, but also don’t want people to think it’s only about surgery.

Any thoughts?

As you can see, this emotional identity experience began as a low pressure system off the coast. While a close observer can note the swirling patterns of confusion and building frustration, most people would simply see a windy day.

As the system moves closer to land, its effects begin to become apparent. Heavy rainfall and high winds, coupled with personal doubt and suicidal tendencies, plague the area for months or years. Because these violent weather systems have no where to go as they beat themselves on the shore, it’s possible for them to last indefinitely.

Will and action shouldn’t be disconnected. The existence of the latter should – in the case of will – lead to the former or – in the case of action – imply the latter. But it’s a curious system where will and action don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other to the outside observer.

To say I didn’t take action to transition until 22 means my will wasn’t strong enough prior to that, which is something I can’t accept. My desire and emotion and need pressed at my limbs and my chest and my throat and between my legs until I ached to take knife to flesh and let blood rain down like water. To look back from the outside is to say “it was too hard, you were too young, you didn’t know any better, to remove the agency I feel now. But I can only see myself as a child from my perspective as an adult. I don’t know how to be an outside observer. I can say the words: It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my responsibility to take control of my development at the age of eight, or fourteen, or eighteen. Give yourself a break. Give myself a break. It was your parents, your therapist, your friends, your family, it was literally anyone but you. But if I am where I am today because of who I am and the choices I’ve made aren’t I not somewhere else for the same reasons?

And I can’t summon the emotional energy to blame my parents, to blame my mom. I hold grudges, I feel things deeply, and I worry that one slip into “it wasn’t my fault” will quickly burry me in “it was their fault, her fault.” And I don’t know how to go there and come out the other side.

I will my will, I willed my will, I will my will and it wouldn’t, didn’t, couldn’t, left me crying in bed under the covers at night and alone, with stuffed animals for comfort.

The weather report for today looks superficially sunny with dark patches of clouds if you know where to look for them. The weather report for today looks back and back and back into time before time into time before will into will before time and attempts to extract some narrative, some purpose, some reason why and whyn’t. The weather report for today looks cloudy with gusts of wind reaching into forever and a night time blacker than when you close your eyes and see flashes of light behind the lids. The weather report for today is the same as yesterday is the same as tomorrow is the same as it always was and always shall be. The weather report for today is an effort in rewriting the past. The weather report for today is an effort in uncovering the truth of the past. The weather report for today can’t get out of bed out of the weight of its body. The weather report today wishes it could find understand in itself. The weather report today will be communicated through gusts of wind and moments of sunshine rather than through words, because the only way to understand a thing is to be the thing itself.

The viewpoints of this artist do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of other transgender, transsexual, trans, genderqueer, or otherwise non-normatively gendered individuals. In addition, there is no hierarchy of gender. Any individual who places one’s gendered experience above another’s should be viewed with skepticism.

Common hierarchies include but are not limited to (in ascending order) fetish cross dresser, social cross dresser, private drag performer, public drag performer, closeted transgender, individual, out transgender individual not planning to have surgery or hormone replacement therapy, out transgender individual on hormone replacement therapy,  out transgender individual planning to have surgery, out transgender individual who has had surgery, or (in descending order) androgynous and gender fluid individuals, non-operative transgender individuals, drag performers, cross dressers of all types, and post-operative transgender individuals.

Side effects may include a wider world view, more inclusive attitude, questioning of self-identification, and erectile disfunction. In the event of a contradiction, please allow each individual to self-identify and self-define their life experience and their own identity.  Please consult any such individuals in your life before applying the viewpoints of this artist to them.

Needless to say, the US Military probably wouldn’t want me, should they reinstate the draft. I’ve transitioned since turning eighteen: gotten hair removal, grown my hair own, grown breasts, legally changed my name from Jared to Rebecca. Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell means gays can legally serve in the military, but being transgender is still considered cause for medical discharge, under the same clause which forbids servicemen and women from sexually abusing children. Which, not surprisingly, doesn’t prevent transgender people from existing in the military. There’s a slowly growing lobbying effort by trans veterans for better treatment while in the military and better healthcare once out. Transgender people are everywhere. Even a Miss Universe pageant.

I don’t follow pageant culture. My attitude about the trans woman attempting to compete in Miss Universe is pretty simple: good for her, and how silly to forbid her from doing so. I can even imagine the allure of competing in a pageant, particularly for someone who might feel themselves as less than a “real” man or woman. Winning a pageant, or a beauty contest, or ILM (International Leather Man), or the like would give the winner a sense of validation: See? I am real. This panel of judges just proved it.

And yet, forbidding trans people from beauty pageants seems particularly odd to me. Few people pretend that pageants are an examination of “natural” beauty. Even without considering plastic surgery, pageant beauty still consists of plucking and waxing and primping and curling and painting and suck in here and lift up there and twirl now and there that’s better. Plastic surgery simply extends that effort at beautification beneath the skin. When considered in pursuit of the ideal of beauty, what’s the difference between a dress which hides fat and a surgeon who removes it?

But to be trans is, apparently, to go too far. Because – as the presidential primaries have brought to light – being a real woman is about one thing: The ability to bear children, whether you want to or not. Or, at least, the hypothetical ability to do so – no one is seriously proposing that a woman loses her womanhood after her childbearing years are over, or whether a woman rendered barren by genetics or medical necessity becomes neuter. But for trans women, there is no hypothetical – it was never in the cards for me to give birth, and so I must not be a real woman.

There’s a joke among gender reassignment surgeons, that one of the standards for surgery is for the new vagina to look so good “not even your gyno will be able to tell.” Some even go further, saying, “not even god will be able to tell.” Because aesthetics is all they offer. It’s no small offer, to be sure: aesthetics and sensation and orgasms and a cherry on top. But can it be imbued with whatever essence converts fantasy to reality?

Once upon a time, it was thought that there was a life force which separated life from that which didn’t live: the dirt and rocks and water and sky. When you died, your life force left. Tales ranging from golems to Pinocchio  to Frankenstein’s monster dream of giving life to that which is not living. What’s to say my surgically constructed vagina, if and when I have one sculpted from the flesh between my legs, won’t need the same thing? What makes an elbow an elbow, and not a knee? Function? Aesthetics? Or its life force?

One of the things which has been frustrating for me is the knowledge that my life force, my pure force of will, has not been enough to reshape my body. No amount of wishing or hoping or pleading or crying was able to do what pills and lasers have done. And so I consider going under the knife. Not for bigger breasts or a firmer ass, not for a reshaped jawline or to pin back my ears. I consider going under the knife for something most people will never see. It won’t grant me better vision, a stronger heart, not even the ability to store spare change in my cleavage. Common English even puts its use as a passive one: to be penetrated, fucked, taken, won, defiled.

Perhaps common English is wrong. Perhaps I won’t give birth to new life, kicking and screaming and bloody from between my legs, but to a new self, kicking and screaming and bloody all the same.