This past week I was at Butler University in Indianapolis, performing Uncovering the Mirrors and leading a workshop around trans issues. Everything went really well, and I met some great people. All in all a very good trip.
During the workshop, however, something came up that I had not previously considered. Specifically, someone asked about how trans youth are (medically) treated. I said that it varies, but that there’s an increasing use of hormone blockers to delay puberty. This allows a twelve or thirteen year old to age a few years and – hopefully – be able to make a more informed decision about transitioning. In my I-am-not-a-doctor opinion, it’s a good compromise: simply doing nothing can result in spending thousands of dollars to undo puberty, but launching fully into hormone replacement therapy opens the door to a twelve year old realizing they weren’t really trans at thirteen or fourteen.
Ultimately, I said to the questioner, there isn’t a perfect solution. Once a child realizes they’re trans, it’s a matter of picking the best choice from some bad options. Which, to be very clear, doesn’t mean that being trans condemns an individual to a life of misery. But it does, as far as I can see, necessitate some tough decisions and a difficult journey.
The questioner then posed something that has been bouncing around my brain this past week: Could allowing fifteen and sixteen year olds to be making informed consent decisions about their healthcare lead to the criminal justice system saying they were able to make informed decisions about crimes, and should thus be tried as adults?
With help from the peanut gallery. This is a mix of FTM, MTF, and general silliness, so don’t try to overthinkg ‘em. Feel free to suggest more in the comments!
I really transitioned to get into bars for free, without having to pay cover.
I really transitioned because I heard there weren’t enough women in science, and I wanted to do my part.
I really transitioned so I could drink sweet pink drinks at bars without being judged.
I really transitioned because when I paint my toes pink, I want to be a boy with pink toenails!
I really transitioned so I could wear tight pants all the time without looking like a member of an 80′s rock band.
I really transitioned because I wanted to save on car insurance.
I really transitioned because the clothes are *way* better (so i still wear BDUs and t-shirts most of the time)
I really transitioned because I was born on Stonewall Day.
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It’s unclear whether the State of Illinois has defined – through statute or the courts – what specifically “gender transformation operation” means. But it seems pretty safe to assume that the surgery I’m currently considering would fall under its purview. Surgery in which the “spongiform erectile tissue of the penis is removed, and the skin, with its nerves and vascular system (blood supply) still attached, is used to create a vestibule area and labia minora, which then are inverted into the neovaginal cavity created in the pelvic tissue.” That seems pretty gender transformative to me.
What’s interesting about the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan Act (or the ICHIP Act) is what other injuries, procedures, and categories of coverage are excluded. Gender transformation operations (item 14.iv on the list of exclusions) is lumped in with cosmetic surgery (item 1), anything which exceeds “reasonable or customary” cost (item 4), injury due to war (item 9) , services that are “not provided in accord with generally accepted standards of current medical practice” (item 14), contraceptives (item 19), weight loss programs (item 21), acupuncture (22). Interestingly enough, the act itself does not, as best as I could find, mention abortion or early termination of a pregnancy, but the ICHIP website stil says such services are excluded.
This post is in reference to this video (here’s my transcript). For more info check out this Washington Post blog post. In regards to my video, it’s not up to my usual standards but I wanted to get it out ASAP.
Dear Taylor,
I wish we could sit down and talk. I’d like to think you would be willing to have a conversation with someone who honestly wants to find common ground. I’ve watched your video, and it really moved me. You delivered your message with skill, grace, and emotion – I wish my high school students were as comfortable speaking in front of an audience as you clearly are.
That said, a lot of what was in your video was hurtful to me. I’m not sure if you meant to hurt my feelings, or the feelings of people like me, but your video was painful for me to see. Because I’m a transgender woman. That means that I was born in the body of a boy, but realized I was actually a girl. I’ve been on hormones for a few years now, to help my body match my mind. And a lot of the things you said about what it means to be transgender didn’t match my experience, or the experience of other trans people I know.
Since watching your video, I’ve been researching the Girl Scouts, and I’d like to print the Girl Scout Law, which I found here. I admit I don’t know a lot about Scouting, but I think The Girl Scout Law is a good place to start what I hope can be a conversation between you and I:
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.
There’s a video on YouTube which – along with its message – has stirred up quite a controversy. The video, posted by username HonestGirlScouts, is a girl explaining why Girl Scouts should boycott selling cookies, and the American public should boycott buying them. That reason, of course, is Girl Scout’s support of transgender girls. Here’s the video:
But for those of you who don’t have the energy to watch eight minutes of anti-trans rhetoric, or in case the video is taken down, here’s a transcript. I was as accurate as possible, and will be responding to the video (and the boycott) itself in a later post. There were text overlays throughout the video, but I included them only when they seem important. The video uses incorrect pronouns throughout.
Hello. I’ve been a Girl Scout for eight years. So why would I ask you to boycott Girl Scout cookies?
One reason is that I have been taught by Girl Scouts to advocate for my beliefs and to discover, connect, and take action when I see something I want to change in the world.
The problem is what I want to help change is Girl Scouts. Right now, Girl Scouts of the USA (or GSUSA) is not being honest with us girls, its troupes, its leaders, its parents, or the American public. Do you know that in Oct 2011 Girl Scouts admitted that they allow transgender boys from kindergarten through the twelfth grade? In fact, CO Girl Scouts VP for Communications Rachel Trujillo was quoted in an article by Baptist Press. The article, entitled “Girl Scouts Admitting a Boy Draws Backlash,” has Ms Trujillo saying this,
“We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl, and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.” [EDIT: I can't find this original article. If anyone can, I'd love to see it.]
That means that as long as a boy wants to be a girl, they’ll let him join based solely on his wishes and desires.
OVERLAY TEXT: “Transgender Girl Scout = boy who wants to be a girl”
No one looks like they're enjoying this situation, to be honest
In Which A Question Is Asked
What does it mean to be a sexual trans person? A sexual trans woman?
Sidenote: I’m looking for my copy of Fucking Trans Women, an awesome e-zine available at http://fuckingtranswomen.com/. I know I bought and downloaded it, but am having trouble finding it. I emailed the site owners, tho, and hopefully they’ll be willing to send me another copy. At the very worst, I can spare another $5 for their great project.
Back on topic, I think being trans and sexual is tough for me (gonna try to use ‘I’ statements in this post, and not make generalizations) in part due to the huge variety of mixed messages I’ve received over the last 27 years. I’m sure I’m missing some categories, but here’s what I’ve come up with:
Messages about male sexuality, even though I didn’t identify as male
Messages about female sexuality, which I picked up even though I wasn’t yet presenting as female
Messages about heterosexual sexuality, mainly from when I was presenting as a straight male
Messages about queer sexuality, both before and after I came out
Messages about specifically lesbian sexuality, again from both before and after I came out
And last-but-never-least, messages about specifically trans sexuality, limited primarily to ‘chicks with dicks’ and ‘she-male’ porn
Had a chance to see Kate Bornstein speak today at Chicago Kent College of Law, which was lovely. My dad teaches at the law school, and I found out about the event through him. My notes are kind of disjointed, since I was only jotting down things that struck with me and don’t have the whole arching narrative of her presentation. That said, here are some things that stuck with me.
Kate talked a lot about things which were familiar to me, even if much of the audience hadn’t been previously exposed. Things like identity politics, the importance of allowing existence outside the binary, and how hierarchical systems of identity (where this age/gender/race/religion/class/etc is better than that age/gender/race/religion/class/etc) inherently create problems.
I liked her Venn diagram about “why live?” a question she examined in Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide. Kate argued that our whole person-hood consists of overlapping components of Identity (sex/gender/race/all that other stuff), Desire (what we want) and Power (our ability to get what we want). More specifically, they’re all interconnected: Our ability to get what we desire depends in part on our power which depends in part on our identity which depends in part on our desires, and so on and on.
Part of the reason binary systems create problems, she said, is that they limit all three of those components of our personhood. As she put it (which I love), “To see in binary is to lose your imagination.” (That may not be word-for-word, but that’s the idea.)
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