FTM Newsletters

If there's an FTM or an FTM organization out there that would like a bunch of copies of the FTM Newsletter, let me know. The issues I have are #s 38 & 39, 41 & 42, 45 & 46, 48 & 49.

First come, first served.

The Answer: His Killer

The cover story of this month's Advocate wants to know who's to blame for Lawrence King's murder.

Their insinuation is that those who would have advised Lawrence to be open about his sexuality and gender identity are.

Bruce Parker at Bilerico has posted an open letter to LGBT Ally organizations that will be sent to The Advocate in response to this article.

The Courage of My Two Sons

When you first hold a brand new life in your hands, whether you are the father or the mother, your mind races on how they will turn out as adults. You could be holding a future President of the United States, or the next Ted Bundy. You never know what Fate has in store for your child, but you know part of their future is shaped by what you will do, or don’t do in the next 18 years . . . and beyond.

My two sons were born almost exactly 2 years apart and will be 26 and 24 in early June. Robert is the oldest and Bryan is the youngest. Bryan was born on my mother’s birthday and since the age of five he and her would go out to lunch or dinner to celebrate their birthdays together. Bryan never forgets.

(The Photo, left to right: Olivia [Robert's Fiancée,] Robert, Donna [my ex,] Bryan, Hilda [Bryan's wife, in the back,] Xavier [my grandson,] and me.)

Over the years, my ex and I did the best we could to raise Robert and Bryan, giving them as much freedom to do things so they could learn adult responsibilities. They rode the city bus by themselves to the mall at age ten and had a savings account at age twelve, learning to deposit and withdraw money on their own. At age 16, they worked in stores on commission and did a great job.

We also emphasized the importance of accepting all people, regardless of any differences. This was evident when they brought over friends of all races and colors to play at our house. Today, Bryan is married to a Hispanic woman and Robert is engaged to one. Both my ex and I really adore those two daughter-in-laws of ours.

As we all know, and many have experienced, transitioning for a transsexual can cause a lot of problems for their children. I’m sure that coming out as being a gay, lesbian or bisexual person can also cause problems with any children you may have. The only difference is the child doesn’t see their parent change appearance in a short period of time. When I started living as Monica in June of 1997, Robert and Bryan had many issues with it.

Robert told me he was harassed by friends at school and his response to them was that they were no longer his friends. He went through many other problems in high school, but his female cousin helped him get through those tough times. At age 20, he joined the Marines and since I served in the Navy, it created an instant bond between the two of us. To this day, we are very close.

Bryan appeared to be okay with my transition, not feeling uncomfortable being seen with me in public. I remember one Saturday we were in Home Depot getting supplies for large lizard enclosure he wanted me to help him build. I stood in the long paint line to get a specific color, while he and his friend rushed around the store finding parts we would need.

When Bryan found some hinges for the enclosure, he came up to me and said, “Dad, dad. I think these will work.”

“Sure, Bryan. I think they will, too.” Then, I looked around and other shoppers were staring at me. “Ah, Bryan. Maybe while we are out in public, you can call me ‘Monica’?”

“No Problem.”

Bryan and Robert came through those early years a lot less scathed then others I have heard of. And, in spite of the courage they have shown over the years, they will be stepping it up a notch in a couple of weeks when they attend the International Foundation of Gender Education’s yearly conference in Tucson, April 2^nd to the 5^th. Not only will they be attending one of the premier transgender conferences in the country, but they will be giving a workshop with Monica Canfield-Lenfest, a member of Children of Lesbian and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE.) Her father also transitioned as an MtF transsexual. The workshop is titled, “Children of Transgender Parents.”

“How do I feel?” you might ask. “Nervous” is one word that comes to mind. “Amazed” is truly one of my feelings. “Proud?” Absolutely. I told them to tell it like it was and not hold back on anything. Others need to hear what they went through in hopes it could help. Do I risk humiliation having that part of my transition exposed to the world? I don’t see that it will be an issue. The importance of showing others in our community that some children make it through okay and that they need to watch out for the pitfalls far out weighs any issues I could face from Robert and Bryan being there.

I love my two sons and they love me. What more could I ask for? I get to be with them at the IFGE conference and introduce them to my friends. I see that as a dream come true. I’ll write another piece after the conference on how it all turned out.

Lambda Lit Transgender Finalists

But despite the absence of Whipping Girl, I do want to congratulate the finalists:

• Transparent, Cris Beam (Harcourt)
• Male Bodies, Women’s Souls, LeeRay M. Costa, PhD, (Haworth)
• The Marrow’s Telling, Eli Clare (Homofactus Press)
• What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz (University of Nebraska Press)
• Nobody Passes, Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Seal Press)

I have an essay in Mattilda’s Nobody Passes of course, but I especially wanted to congratulate Eli Clare and thank him for all the work he’s done in/for the trans community.

Whipping Girl

The Lambda Literary Foundation’s list of finalists for the 2007 Lammies is out, and She’s Not the Man I Married didn’t make the cut. And I’m okay with that; it can be a little tiring to see how even trans people don’t seem to care, often, about how loved ones see/relate/deal with transness, but I’m getting used to it. Besides, I got my props the first time around, when My Husband Betty made finalist.

That said, Whipping Girl didn’t make the cut and that is absolutely 100% wrong. & I’ll tell you why.

Whipping Girl is, to date, the only book to address, theoretically, the uneasy relationship between trans people - specifically MTF transsexual women - and feminism, and that work was long overdue. It addresses sexuality, media representations, the historical pathologization of trans people by psychologists, the fetishization of tans women’s sexualities, the inherent misogyny of a feminist politics that mocks femininity, and then some.

It has been personally & politically important to me in confronting what remained of my own “natural attitude” toward my own gender, what Serano calls cissexism (and rightfully so) and proposes the concept of “subconsious sex” which did more to explain transsexualism to me than anything ever has — outside, maybe, of Betty’s “because” model.

It’s a real shame that this book was not recognized by the Lambda Literary Foundation. It will be considered a classic, revelatory and ground-breaking book in time; it’s just sad the Foundation’s judges don’t have the foresight to give it its due now.

Julia, personally: thank you. I always appreciate when anyone, with their words and logic and anger, can make me a little less of an asshole, and Whipping Girl did that in spades.

It's (not) All About Me

Talented journalist, author and Trans Group blogger Jacob Anderson-Minshall contacted me recently with an expressed interest in interviewing me for his syndicated column, TransNation. Of course I was (and am) honored and quickly said yes to his request.

We met on a lovely day in early March at a terrific coffee shop in Portland called "World Cup". After expressing a mutual appreciation for each other's work he broke out an awesome, vintage Panasonic cassette recorder and we settled in at a table outside for a little taste of Jenn al fresco.

You can read the article here...and I must say that he did a wonderful job of turning my "stream of (un)consciousness" ramblings into a relatively coherent collection of observations. Thank you, Jake!

http://www.sfbaytimes.com/?sec=article&article_id=7707

As we talked I found my mind wandering frequently to the spectacularly ordinary nature of what was happening. There I was, a mature (NOT old) transwoman being interviewed about my work with gender non-conforming children by a handsome and fascinating transman while sipping a hot chocolate (Jake was having tea) on the sidewalk of a major American city that wasn't New York or San Francisco.

It may not seem like much of a big deal to many, but for a girl who quite clearly remembers a time when such a scenario could only have happened in a Gene Roddenberry teleplay, it was yet another powerful moment.

It was a pleasure to just sit with Jake and share our observations about how this culture processes and responds to gender non-conformity. One man, one woman, both of trans-experience discussing ways to make the future brighter for trans and gender non-conforming children, youth and their families.

I may have been the subject of your article, Mr. Minshall....but you are the object of my admiration and respect. Thank you, Jake. You are, by anyone's definition, a role model for all people, but especially other young men.

more Dreger/Bailey stuff

For those interested, I wrote a column that was just posted on Feministing.com that discusses a few recent developments regarding Alice Dreger’s “scholarly history” of the Bailey controversy.

Also, I am happy to say that my “peer commentary” on Dreger’s article was accepted for publication, giving me the surreal experience of being able to say that I have a paper coming out in a sexology journal. Anyway, you can download a PDF version of my commentary here:

I also recorded a somewhat long-ish podcast where I talk in detail about all of the problematic aspects of Dreger’s paper (there were too many to fit into my commentary). If you’re interested, that can be found here:

enjoy!
-julia

(Partner) Anger & Trauma

I wrote this piece for our message boards in a thread about how/if trans people deal with their partners’ anger. It reiterated, for me, why I want to see the trans community understand feminist issues a little better & bring them more to the fore.

One thing that I wasn’t aware of & only recently discovered: it turns out that anger is one of the symptoms of trauma. There are so many of us women raised female with trauma in their lives - & in a lot of cases, with unexpressed or untreated trauma. Even treated PTSD doesn’t mean it goes away, but only that it’s there to be managed.

So I suggest, delicately I hope, that sometimes the transition of a spouse that has provided a sense of safety & security otherwise can be a kind of “last straw” for a woman raised female who has lived through other kinds of trauma.

The cycle of trauma that women can deal with goes something like this: (1) bad shit happens to you, which increases (2) your need for an SO, which creates (3) anger & self-criticism due to feeling that you need/are dependent on anyone for any reason, which fuels (4) anger that said security/safety is being taken away by transition, which is all exacerbated by (5) complete lack of awareness that most/any/all of this is happening, and (6) your spouse’s inability to understand that most/any/all of this is happening too, which is further frustrated by (7) an inability to talk about the trauma, the self-criticism, the dependency, or the anger.

Which is why, once again, I wish there were more awareness of feminist issues within trans communities. I have heard too many trans women react to their insanely-angry wives with hostility & even derision, & that maybe, if they understood women & their lives a little better, they might riddle that frustration with empathy.

We have been through shit too. Trans people are not the only ones who suffer, or who want relief from pain & maybe even to feel something like “normal.” & Goddamn when you have found your pain relief, in the form of a gentle man who provides you with solace & laughter & stability, only to find out that he is not who either of you thought she was.

Tribeca Film Festival's trans "humor" (the sequel)

Over at Bilerico someone posed the question about whether I was being ashamed of trans hookers and couldn't the ad be viewed as a message of tolerance, i.e. "hey it's OK to be a lawyer by day and a crossdressing part-time hooker by night."

For the record, I don't think sex work is something to be ashamed of, nor should we be ashamed of trans hookers.

But the premise of the joke was that the mom with her kids was utterly blase about something that we the audience are supposed to find freakish and probably shocking. You could've substituted a talking dog and the premise would be the same. Ever in my rewriting of the ad, the joke remains premised on the crossdressing lawyer being a "freak," but at least my version tries to show something unexpected about someone who's perceived that way. Similar to a "Sex and City" episode I once saw where one of the characters was upset about the boisterous trans hookers outside her window, but through some plot twist that I don't remember, she ends up befriending them and discovers they're human too.

It's true the ad could be viewed as "hey there's nothing wrong with that" and if there was a lot of other kinds of protrayals of trans people in the media I might agree. Or had the scene been played straight and not for laughs. But let's be honest, the vast majority of Americans (even New Yorkers) do see prostitution as disreputable -- otherwise "whore" wouldn't be an epithet -- and the ad clearly seems to be making the lawyer a hooker for the additional shock value.

But the other part of what makes the ad problematic is that it's trafficking in stereotypes, i.e. if someone's trans, we obviously they must be a hooker.  It's similar to historical complaints about blacks and Latinos only getting roles that depict them as crack dealers and gang members, gays only getting roles that depict them as stereotypical caricatures, etc.

Tribeca Film Festival's trans "humor"

While this ad for the 2006 festival (which recently resurfaced on YouTube) was undoubtedly meant to be edgy and funny, it's belittling and reinforces stereotypes that all trans people are prostitutes. The key is that we're not laughing with the lawyer/hooker, we're meant to be laughing at her.

And yeah, it hurts more when it comes from folks who undoubtedly would be horrified at equivalent humor aimed at minorities. Do you think they would've done an ad showing a black lawyer who moonlights as a crack dealer? Or a female attorney who moonlights as a hooker? I thought not.

The truly sad thing is that the ad's joke about jaded New Yorkers could have just as easily been accomplished with a positive portrayal (and just a few minor changes in the script). For example, the crossdressing lawyer could have been out for a walk with her wife, who she introduces to the the mother with her kids, who's just as blase about it all.

OK, maybe I'm being humorless, but having two trans people (Cameron McWilliams and Simmie Williams) and a gender-variant kid (Lawrence King) who might (or might not) have later come out as trans gunned down in apparent hate crimes within less than a month kind of leave me not in the mood for this sort of "humor."

Tragedy After Tragedy

If the killing of Lawrence King wasn't sad enough, there are too many other stories -- all murders of trans POC that took place this year.

This article from The Root has a list.

And this murder, committed a little while back, has recently come to more widespread attention, as has the murder of Simmie Williams.

My students have asked, because they're reading Stone Butch Blues, if the violence against gender diverse people is still as bad as it was then. And what can I say? Ask Lawrence King? Ask Adolphus Simmons? Ask Sanesha Stewart? We can't. They've all been killed as a result of trans/homophobic violence. The daily threat might not feel so great for many of us. But that doesn't mean people who don't conform to gender norms aren't at greater risk.

I so long for a new president who will get gender identity included in Federal Hate Crimes protection, whether it does any good or not. What I want is to see articles written about people like Sanesha Stewart that at least respect their choice of pronouns, as well as articles that don't ask what the person was doing at the time - as if what a person is doing at the time she's murdered makes it more acceptable for her to have been murdered! When are the powers-that-be going to understand is that sometimes all you have to "do" is be queer to be killed?!

The news also came through this week that Gabrielle Pickett, twin sister of Chanelle Pickett, was killed during the summer of 2003. Chanelle was killed in 1996.

I'm just tired this week. Tired of counting the dead. Tired of feeling so sullen and leaden with grief.

RIP Steve Dain - FTM Pioneer

So, I found out recently, that Steve Dain died of cancer at the age of 68. Steve Dain was an FTM who transitioned in the late 70's and lost his teaching job, he was a gym teacher in Union City. This was a big scandal and made the San Francisco papers, including the gay paper that was then -- "Coming Up" instead of "The Bay Times". I remember being 24, in late 1981, and reading about Steve in the local gay paper "Coming Up" and feeling an odd mixture of shock, excitement and queasy fascination. I remember accounts of him changing his ID, and speculation by the lesbian and gay press as to his motivations for changing his sex from female to male. Of course, I had heard of sex change, even female to male sex change. but what I had heard was vague. Later, I saw a picture of Steve, it was scratchy and dark in the San Francisco Chronicle. I had never, ever seen a photo of an FTM before in my life. I found it disturbing and unspeakably magnetic.

Those two articles were about Steve Dain and his fighting for his job as a teacher, a battle that he lost. Although the court would eventually decide in his favor, and allow him to go back to teaching, he was not able to find a school that would hire him.

After hearing about Steve, I did not hear of female to male sex change for another 7 years. The next time I saw anything about transsexual men would be in "On Our Backs", the lesbian sex magazine in 1988. There I spied the tiny ad that Lou Sullivan placed in the back pages for a support group for "Female to Male Transsexuals and Cross Dressers". He also offered information with a newsletter and handbook. I wrote to the address he listed in time, and began my own transition.

Later, I would meet Steve Dain. Steve had been Lou's hero. In those days, most trans men in the Bay Area went off on a pilgrimage to meet him as we entered medical transition. Lou had met with Steve years before when he began his transition, and Jamison Green would meet him a short time before I did. It was nearly a ritual, a rite of passage to meet with Steve. There were no trans men that we knew of who had come before him, Mario Martino was on the east coat, living in a safe obscurity, although some were in communication with him, and Rupert Raj was in Canada. Steve was nearby and our most visible example, and someone who each one of us hoped would confer wisdom, and a kind of blessing or validation. I think we all were a bit awestruck. And, Steve didn't let us down. I know he didn't let me down. I still remember meeting him in Union City, he picked me up from BART and I was taken with his easy and total masculinity. He was hirsute, and handsome, confident and kind. He was sensitive to each question I asked and his answers would influence me for the entirety of my transition.

I am so sorry that he is gone; time goes by quickly. He was about my age now when I met him, and now, was 68 when he died -- of cancer recently on Oct. 10, 2007.

Here is a clip of Steve Dain from a film he was in called, "What Sex Am I?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcXLoLYXuCo&feature=related

"What Sex am I?" was ground-breaking in its time, even with its confusion of "female transsexuals" and "male transsexuals" -- and when I saw it in 1988 at an FTM support group meeting, I found it informative and enthralling. However, I remember that the film also had what a friend described as "hospital music" and the narrator was omniscient and oppressive with a tone of medical pathos; I wanted the documentaries I was in later to be dramatically different, and they were, starting with "Max" filmed in 1991. However, this film was not made by Steve, and its faults are not his. He was one of two FTMs in the film, and his presence was calm and confident -- he even had a bit of a swagger and a palpable pride in his masculinity. I owe him a great deal as does every trans man who came after him.

Rest in Peace Steve- and thank you, thank you so very much for being yourself and being brave enough to share that, with me, with other FTMS, and the world.