I’m trying to create a ‘how to be a trans ally’ worksheet to hand out at workshops, and would love thoughts or feedback. I’m trying to keep it to a single page, which is limiting, but also get a bunch of good stuff in there… Here’s what I have so far:
THE EASY STUFF
Be open to using the pronouns/labels/language a trans person wants you to use. If you make a mistake, quickly correct yourself. This is the most important step of being an ally: allowing another to define their own identity.
If you don’t know what pronouns to use, ask. Politely and respectfully. This is a simple way to show your respect for someone else’s self-identification.
…but don’t pry or make assumptions. Don’t ask if someone had surgery or if they are on hormones or plan to do either of these things. It is invasive and personal. If someone would like to share that information with you, it is at their digression. Also understand that not all trans people choose medical to undergo medical intervention, and that not physically transitioning, taking hormones, or having surgery does not invalidate their trans identity.
Remember that gender is not the same as sexual orientation. Being trans does not mean a person is gay, and being gay doesn’t mean a person is trans. Sexuality is about attraction, gender is about a personal sense of self-identity.
Don’t out anyone. If someone tells you that they or someone else are trans, please do not share it with others unless you are told that it is okay to do so. They are trusting you, so don’t break their trust. Continue reading 'Trans Ally Worksheet'»
Originally posted at In Our Words, reposted with permission.
As a teacher who works with children in middle and high school, I understand the relationships and intimacy which can develop between teachers and students. I’ve worked with some of my students for over a decade, seen them grow into confident young adults, and watched them go off to college. Some stay in touch, and some cross my mind from time to time as I wonder what they’re up to today. I hope I do a good job steering them in through tumultuous childhoods and teenage years, and aim to leave them better people than they were when the first came to work with me. I’m also a theatre instructor who generally sees my students once a week, so I have limited impact, but I can still dream of making a difference; I know how powerfully my teaches — even those I saw infrequently — affected my development into an adult.
All these thoughts crossed my mind as I heard that the Arkansas Supreme Court had struck down a law 4-3 which forbade teachers from engaging in sexual activity with students who were under the age of 21. I feel pretty strongly that behavior outside of one’s employment shouldn’t be a factor in how they’re viewed as an employee. I hate the stories of teachers who are fired for having drunk pictures show up on Facebook, and I think drug screening for applicants is inherently unjust and offensive. For me, as a transgender lesbian, it’s all too easy to imagine my “personal life” being viewed as offensive or unacceptable when it comes to my professional life. Indeed, I was fired from a teaching position for being trans, which has nothing to do with my ability to teach a class.
So, my gut reaction is that, yes, if the relationship (in this case between an 18 year old student and her 36 year old teacher) is legal outside of school, it should be legal in school. Continue reading 'Consenting Adults – Arkansas Court Allowing Student/Teacher Relationships'»
“If, in cases of antipathic sexual instinct [homosexuality] thus developed, no restoration occurs, then deep and lasting transformation of the physical personality may occur. The process completing itself in this way ma be briefly designated eviration (defemination in women). The patient undergoes a deep change of character, particularly in his feelings and inclinations, which thus become those of a female. After this, he also feels himself to be a woman during the sexual act, has desires only for passive sexual indulgence, and, under certain circumstances, sinks to the level of a prostitute.”
From Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 12th edition, originally published in 1906, page 297
I just came across this book in a used book store, and of course had to purchase it. Of its approximately 600 pages, almost 150 of them are devoted to “antipathic sexual instinct” (homosexuality), “metamorphosis sexualis paranoia” (trans inclinations), androgyny, and the like. Quick note for the stuff I’m quoting, parentheses () are in the original text, while brackets [] are my notes. From a case study:
At the age of twelve or thirteen, I had a definite feeling of preferring to be a young lady. A young lady’s form was more pleasing to me; her quiet manner, her deportment, but particularly her attire attracted me. But I was careful not to allow this to be noticed; and yet I am sure that I should not have shrunk from the castration-knife could I have thus attained my desire….In my heart I always envied them [girls].
On account of unhappy circumstances, I twice attempted suicide.”
Ibid, page 307 and 309 from an account written in 1890 Continue reading 'Psychopathia Sexualis – Trans issues in 1906'»
A recent piece I performed at The Encyclopedia Show.
I have a question for the audience. By a show of hands, who here was happy with the changes they experienced during puberty? There’s no right or wrong answer, I’m just curious. Now, by a show of hands, who was unhappy?
I was unhappy when puberty hit. Miserable, actually. On-and-off suicidal. I’m transgender, which means I was assigned one gender at birth (male) but identify as another (female). So when puberty hit, around thirteen, I began developing in all of the ways which are normal for boys: Hair started growing in places I didn’t really want hair to grow (namely, everywhere), my voice dropped, I didn’t grow boobs or get all curvy, I discovered how great masturbation is, and I was slightly irritable, angry, or depressed for the next seven years; any normal boy’s puberty and trans girl’s nightmare.
The things happening to my body felt totally foreign, and not simply because puberty was changing my body from a child to an adult. They felt foreign because my body was changing from a child to a man. Continue reading 'Delayed Puberty'»
Originally posted at In Our Words, crossposted with permission.
It’s that time of year: When the weather in Chicago fluctuates madly–80 degrees one day and 40 degrees the next. Shorts and tank tops are quickly pulled out from that box under the bed and worn to the beach, only to be put away when it snows twenty-four hours later. It’s also the time when most people decide to pull their bike out of storage or the garage or that street sign where it has been locked since October. (For those of you who have been biking all winter, I salute you. This piece still may have some tips for you, though.)
A few weeks ago, I rode my bike for the first time this year. I’m one of those obnoxious bikers who always wears a helmet, and bothers her friends to do the same, uses hand-signals while turning, and doesn’t blow through stop signs without first slowing way down to check for traffic and pedestrians. I’ve also been doored (when a driver opens their door into the bike lane, hitting a biker), flipped off my bike, skidded out when an asshole in a sedan turned without signaling, and generally been knocked about. Yet I still hop on my bike regularly, for transportation and exercise, and feel safe doing so. Let’s talk about what’s keeping me safe: three rules that apply to everyone, anywhere, and a fourth that’s slightly more Chicago-specific. Continue reading 'A Guide to Bike Safety in Chicago (and everywhere else)'»
This post was originally featured on In Our Words, and is reposted with permission.
I love This American Life (TAL). I love it as an NPR fan, I love it as a Chicagoan, I love it as a storyteller and strong believer in the power of the spoken word. That’s my bias, and I don’t apologize for it. But it means I’ve been following the TAL retraction of their Mike Daisey piece with particular attentiveness. Briefly, TAL did a show consisting of an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s one-man show, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, Daisey discussed his trip to China, interviews with workers, and how utterly horrible the conditions were for Chinese workers. It was an extremely emotional and blunt piece about the unseen price of American electronics.
Oh, and a lot of it wasn’t true.
As a child, I would fantasize about not being trans. Not that I’d fantasize about “really” being a boy. Rather, I’d imagine what life would be like if I were “really” a girl. I dreamed about developing along with the other girls, growing breasts and body hair and geting my first period. About sleepovers and braiding hair and bikes with streamers on the handles. I didn’t imagine a wholly different life, in a different city or with different parents, simply the proper life; the life I should have had. The life I deserved. Too much normality is boring, but I was dying to feel a bit more like everyone else.
I’ve revisited this question from time to time: Would I wish to not be trans, if given the opportunity? I wrote a story about that question last year. I should try and expand that story, since I sort of dodged the actual question. Because the short answer is, I don’t know. If our lives consist of diverging possibilities, the roads not taken, every day takes me further down the road of being trans. Put another way, every day makes my identity as a trans woman a bit more concrete, a bit less theoretical something to consider for “the future.” The future is here, I’m considering The Surgery. Being not-trans, a cis woman, might make my life prior to transitioning more enjoyable, but it would effectively reshape my life since I began to transition into something unrecognizable. Continue reading 'The Queer Body and Healthcare'»
My body is a weather system, complete with bright spring growth, warm summer days, pounding autumn rains, and frigid winters’ nights. An entire world, enough to give climatologists years of data, dissertations worth of study. Yet my seasons have nothing to do with a changing calendar, they are unheralded by the phase of the moon or the tilt of the earth. I am not a closed system, but one whose course is altered by mood and emotion, shifting slowly over years or changing drastically within a single, brief instant.
Spring causes my roots begin to flex and contract. I sprout flowers from the tips of my fingers. The grass that is my skin begins comes to life once again. I am alight with budding leaves and the constant sound of birdsong. The cute waitress flirting with me causes my hair to stand on end and cool ice-melt streams to run down the crevasses of my body. A friend’s laughter causes burrowing animals to stick their heads above ground. Every fibre of my being grows toward the rising sun.
Summer is flush with life, my blood pumping and lungs full of air. My body is made of chlorophyl, converting every moment into pure joy. The wind plays through my hair, and my toes dig into the living earth. My face is a flower, turning toward love and happiness as if following the sun. The days of my body are long in summer, insatiably hungary for sensation, to touch and to feel. I ache for sex, for skin on skin. I cum like lightening cracking in a summer storm, and the rain pours down. Continue reading 'Storms Beneath Her Skin'»
Originally posted at In Our Words, and reposted with permission.
March 1998, from March 2012
Dear Rebecca,
Can I call you Rebecca? I know you haven’t told many people that name. It’s one of the names mom and dad chose for you before you were born, one you’ve been using in your head since mom mentioned it while working on that genealogy project with you. I know it’s a private name for you right now, but things change. I promise they do.
This letter is coming from the year 2012, fourteen years in the future. You’re thirteen, I’m twenty-seven. You’re exploring your identity on the Internet, trying to figure out what “transgender” means and whether it applies to you. I’m writing about my identity on the Internet, trying to explain to others what “transgender” means and how it applies to me. And, from that perspective, I wanted to write you this letter.
Don’t let anyone tell you who you are. You know who you are. You know what you are. Doctors and therapists and family can help with that journey, but that can’t decide it for you. They also can’t do it for you. I know you’re dying for someone to step in and take the lead, to transition for you, to tell you what to do. And you’ll find doctors and therapists who will help along the way. But no one does it for you.
Put another way: it doesn’t get better. But you will make it better. Continue reading 'It Doesn’t Get Better (But You’ll Make It Better) – A letter to my younger self'»
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