Tag Archive | rants

An Absurdity of Trans Self Hatred And My Response

Jan9

On a forum where I am not allowed to post my thoughts without censorship, a post as made that trans folk should be like a starfish opening a clam, slow steady pressure that eventually succeeds. This is pretty wise advice for most cases and I had no quibble with that advice. But another poster came in and posted complete and utter nonsense. This poster has waged a war against transition itself and urged trans people to always “sit in the back of the bus” if even a single cisgender person objects. Here is what she said:

Yet a very relevant digression because that sort of militant action created many negative reactions and created opponents, opponents who could have cared less but were forced to become opponents because of the offensive behavior and not just fighting for gay rights but attacking many non-gays for their beliefs. Beliefs which by and large had nothing to do with gay issues.

The turning point for gays was when non-militant folks started coming out and demonstrated gay people can be decent human beings and all weren’t such offensive people.

You message here Becky is a very good one and illustrates that desires can be obtained, respect and acceptance achieved by being a decent human being first and using slow and constant change. There have been thousands just like you who have provided positive examples who have been instrumental in achieving so much for trans.

It seems more and more a certain portion of the community seems focused on flushing all this good will folks like you have earned for trans by becoming more angry at non-trans and not pushing for needs but pushing for things that go well beyond the needs of trans and not respecting things most people will find offensive.

This is my response, which I cannot post there because of censorship.

Once upon a time, most whites found the mere presence of blacks offensive. White women argued that black women would prey upon white women in integrated restrooms. Sound familiar?

There are certain things that are morally abhorrent regardless of how they are done. I take great exception to the “stay at the back of the bus” mentality. Coming out gently, the “starfish” approach doesn’t mean not rattling cages. It means doing things in a slow steady forward progression. But people can still be exceptionally stiff necked, cruel, rude, and even dangerous when faced with change they dislike. Should someone stop transition at a certain point just to satisfy family members yet remain in a suicidal depression by doing so? I don’t think so. Should a trans person be denied restroom access to simply empty their bowels or bladder because some bigot is upset that trans folk merely exist? That’s the narrative of Pacific Justice Institute – that your mere existence is harassment of cisgender women.

Among my friends and family, I’ve achieved a more than 90% success and acceptance rate among the people I know. Yet there are losses and those losses were not caused by me. Those losses were the deliberate choices of those people to reject me, despite multiple health care professionals all agreeing that this was what I needed to do. And those losses remain very painful.

Your frequent harangues against transition and against not upsetting anyone amount to allowing one family member to tell you to not seek cancer treatment when ill with cancer. That’s absurd, isn’t it? And it’s just as absurd when applied to therapies that mental health professionals can statistically prove are highly likely to succeed in reducing stress and anxiety brought about by gender dysphoria.

No one is “forced to become an opponent”. That’s an absurd rationalization for bigotry, hatred, and injustice. Becoming an opponent is a choice that the opponent makes not the trans person, not the gay person, not the black person, not the hispanic person. George Wallace chose to become an opponent of blacks. Every single person who chooses to oppose equal rights for transgender people is making exactly the same sort of choice as George Wallace. All that black people did was stand up and say, “I want to be respected and treated decently.” What George Wallace did, and what trans bigots do today is respond with, “Hell no! We’re never going to respect you! We’d turn the dogs on you, the water cannons, and we’d round you up and ship you to camps if we could!” This isn’t even an exaggeration either because trans opponents have made exactly those sort of arguments, from the Tennessee state representative who promised to “stomp a mudhole” into any trans woman he saw enter a restroom, to a North Carolina GOP state organizer who wants to send every trans person off to camps, to even my eldest son who says I need a tattoo on my forehead and arm that tell the world I am trans. (Does that sound familiar?)

Your argument is an “Uncle Tom” argument. Your argument is fear and loathing of what you and other trans folk are, and a choice to allow your rights to be trampled and yourself to be bullied, all so you don’t upset the bigots. I do not accept your choice. You’re free to sit in the back of the bus, but I won’t.

I’m not even sorry to say this, but to hell with you and your fear mongering about who we are. You are a menace to young trans people everywhere by sowing excessive doubt and worry. My only regret is I cannot post my frank opinion of your complete and utter bullshit right where it would matter.

Thanksgiving? Giving thanks, despite it all.

Nov28

I sit alone at home today and no, I won’t be invited anywhere. I do have friends but they are all away for the holiday or live far enough away that going to their homes was not practical this year. But this doesn’t upset me.

My daughter and her family are visiting elsewhere, or they’d likely have me over. My sons? No, of course not. I am a pariah to them.

And yet today I am amused. I wonder how I could have raised such a gracious and loving daughter yet have raised such vindictive and hateful sons. But friends have reminded me that neither of them grew up that way. One, who was a long time friend of my eldest son, and simply let that friendship slide away, and did so because he watched my son go from being an open-minded, accepting person early in college, to the close-minded, spiteful, angry creature he’s become today after he married into a rigid Southern Baptist clan. So I take solace in the fact that no, I didn’t do that. They did.

My daughter did have me over for dinner the night before last. She wanted to do something for me before she and her family went to visit in-laws for Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful dinner and I got to chat with her, enjoy her hot-lemon-honey-cinnamon drink that she’s created from the lemons from the tree in her backyard, and chat with my eldest granddaughter.

But then I had to excuse myself and went outside and cried. She came out and consoled me, hugged me, and just stood with me. You see, my eldest son is playing a game. He’s threatening to cut off contact with my daughter and my daughter’s children if she lets her children know about my transition. Since my granddaughter by my daughter and my granddaughter by my eldest son are just one year apart, they are close friends. Thus, she’s having to make a choice. And right now she wants to protect that childhood relationship between her daughter and his daughter, which I understand. She doesn’t like this and she has promised that it won’t stay this way, but this is what she’ll have to do soon and for the immediate future. It’s not right now but it’s coming, as I move further along with my transition and things become more and more obvious.

As I told her, this is not an act of love. It’s an act of raw hatred, anger, power. An opportunity for my son to further split our family against me, or at least he believes so. We discussed my eldest son’s wife, a woman who has been jealous of me for years because of the close relationship I once had with my eldest son. She’s done everything she can to break that up and this was the ultimate chance – cut off that competition. And now that she’s done so? She hardly includes my son in anything other than to just let him babysit their two girls. And her? She’s off running with her friends, or visiting her side of the family. She’s ignored my daughter and not been friendly or open to her either.

I had my cry. I was consoled. And I got over it. Today I’m writing about it and I am sadly amused. Sad for obvious reasons but amused because my son’s close-mindedness would deny his daughters a loving grandparent solely for his “superior moral view”.

Let me relay a story about the reality of my son’s hatred. I’ve seen my older granddaughter by my son just once in the last 16 months. It was last spring, the spring of 2013. We had gone to Denny’s for Sunday breakfast because we enjoy Denny’s pancakes, french toast, etc. And it was busy, as usual on a Sunday morning so we were waiting in the lobby. And who walked up to the cash register? My eldest son, who looked at me, grunted a hello then turned to the cashier. Right behind him, I heard a squeal. “Grandpa!” She ran to me and hugged me, saying, “I miss you so much. I love you.” I smiled down at her and replied, “I miss you too, honey. I love you.” And at that moment, her mother snatched her by the collar, dragging her out the door, with everyone staring and my granddaughter having this frightened, hurt look on her face as she was dragged away from me.

That is the reality of my life. That is the reality of my eldest son and his open bigotry, all in the name of Southern Baptist fundamentalist evangelical hatred. So those who wonder why I take a dim view of fundamentalist Christians, this is why. When you and yours openly scorn me, do not expect me to embrace your bigotry. Tolerance does not mean accepting someone else’s bigotry. That is not an act of Christ. That is an act of a Pharisee.

Thus I sit home alone today, debating what to make for myself for Thanksgiving. I have a few ideas and we’ll see what I decide. And I do give thanks, for my daughter, for my close friends, for my siblings, and for my transgender friends, all of whom have stood beside me.

Finally, just for further reading and viewing about trans experiences, here are two links. Neither is what I would call a perfect instance of journalism. The Rolling Stone piece is laced with binary gender assumptions despite its attempt to be generally positive but they do document different aspects of life as a trans person. The video is one trans person’s experience and is valid for her but each of us is unique and though we share so much, we also walk different paths in certain respects.

About a Girl: Coy Mathis’ Fight to Change Gender

I Am Not My Body

Enjoy and may each of you have a happy Thanksgiving and joyous Hanukkah.

About HRC.ORG and why I refuse to donate

Nov21

I support a number of trans supportive organizations, but not one of the largest ones, the Human Rights Campaign. People sometimes ask me why and it’s because HRC has frequently, in the past, treated the ‘T’ in GLBT as a stepchild not worthy of full consideration.

Now, I would love to support HRC but because of their past actions, they need to make that up to the trans community. The presence of trans folk on their staff has always been minimized. They’ve released trans staff over what appear to be minor issues while retaining gay staff, some of whom have been openly transphobic.

So, since I could find no place on the HRC website to provide feedback to their email they sent soliciting donations, I’ll state it clearly here – HRC will get my support when they prove that trans folk matter as much as gay folk to them. And until they do that, my donations will go elsewhere.

The Tea Party’s Roots in Southern Slavery

Oct4

I do occasionally write politically here but with this government shutdown, I tire of the nonsense that we are supposed to have a “small and limited” government. This essay is to show the historical roots of the “small and limited” government movement.

People forget that Republicans opposed Social Security, claiming it would cause the “end of the republic” and had similar dire claims about Medicare when it was passed as well. None of those “the sky is falling” claims ever came to pass. Yet they are all based on the erroneous belief that we are supposed to have a “small” and “limited” government.

That notion, of a small and limited government, is clearly refuted by the historical documents of that period itself. The anti-federalists were so alarmed at our constitution that they wrote things like this:

“This government is to possess absolute and uncontrollable power, legislative, executive and judicial, with respect to every object to which it extends. … The government then, so far as it extends, is a complete one. … It has the authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and the property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or the laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given.” ~ New Yorker Robert Yates.

Some state delegates from Pennsylvania said this:

“We dissent … because the powers vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from their ruins one consolidated government. …

“The new government will not be a confederacy of states, as it ought, but one consolidated government, founded upon the destruction of the several governments of the states. … The powers of Congress under the new constitution, are complete and unlimited over the purse and the sword, and are perfectly independent of, and supreme over, the state governments; whose intervention in these great points is entirely destroyed.”

So very clearly, from the beginning, the constitution that was mandated by federalists like George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton was intended to be a powerful central government.

In Article 1, Section 8, the Framers included language giving Congress the authority to “provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States” and “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”

As historian Jada Thacker has written, “The Constitution was never intended to ‘provide limited government,’ and furthermore it did not do so. … This is not a matter of opinion, but of literacy. If we want to discover the truth about the scope of power granted to the federal government by the Constitution, all we have to do is read what it says.”

Given the malleable phrase “general Welfare” and the so-called “elastic clause” for passing all “necessary and proper” laws, Thacker notes that “the type, breadth and scope of federal legislation became unchained. … Taken together, these clauses – restated in the vernacular – flatly announce that ‘Congress can make any law it feels is necessary to provide for whatever it considers the general welfare of the country.’

“Lately there has been an embarrassingly naïve call from the Tea Party to require Congress to specify in each of its bills the Constitutional authority upon which the bill is grounded. Nothing could be easier: the first and last clauses of Article I, Section 8 gives Congress black-and-white authority to make any law it so desires. Nor was this authority lost on the Founders.”

That authority is what generated those anti-federalist responses! It did result in the Bill of Rights but it never, ever cut back on the power of the central federal government. So the calls for “limited government” are erroneous and not based on history itself.

Thus we find the entire tea party movement to be grounded in something other than respect for the constitution, which apparently they have not studied nor the circumstances surrounding its creation.

So what is the historical basis for this belief in limited government? It is none other than the South’s infatuation with slavery. And who most clearly proved this with his own words? What would such power do? It would bring about, said Patrick Henry, what “I have ever dreaded—subserviency of southern to northern interests.” By which he meant, as he had phrased it more succinctly three years earlier in opposing the Constitution, “They’ll free your niggers,” was what Patrick Henry told his fellow Virginia delegates when he saw the central power of the federal government.

It took decades but that is indeed exactly what happened. So the belief and the desire to return to limited government is rooted in a combination of historical Southern bigotry coupled more recently with Ayn Randian based greed, anarchism, and narcissism. That’s the true history of the movement to limit the central government.

As Elizabeth Warren recently said, “The threats may continue but they are not working. And they will never work. Because this is a democracy. And in a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t otherwise win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights in Congress, can’t win their fights for the presidency, and can’t win their fights in courts. For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left – a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the results of our democracy.”

Further references:

http://www.alternet.org/how-gop-extortion-rooted-southern-slavery

Some small progress in Texas

Sep19

Yesterday, Nikki Araguz had her appeal heard by a 3 judge panel in the 13th District Court of Appeals in Texas. Now you have to remember that the person who started all this legalistic crap was Thomas Araguz’s former wife. You need to remember that the lawyer she hired was so slimy that he’s been barred from further law practice in Texas. You have to remember that Judge Randy Clapp accepted a bad photocopy of Nikki’s voided California birth certificate from said lawyer, which the state of California has publicly stated is not valid and then used that as his basis for declaring that Nikki is not female. You have to remember that when presented with further evidence he denied a rehearing saying any evidence wasn’t going to change his bigoted mind. And then you have to remember that is how he made his ruling.

The hearing yesterday is very likely to rule in Nikki’s favor as is the full appeals court when the ex-wife appeals the panel’s decision. You also have to remember that the Texas Supreme Court is packed with anti-gay activist judges who are likely to rule against Nikki on completely unconstitutional, religious, and spurious grounds.

At that point, all this will end up headed for the Supreme Court and I can’t see the Supreme Court not taking this because we have two states disagreeing about identifying documentation which Texas is required, under the 14th amendment, to accept. No, the 14th amendment doesn’t say that explicitly but case law has established that fact. And I cannot see Texas winning this purely on those grounds alone. Texas will be forced to accept that birth certificate, and having done so, will be forced to recognize Nikki (and every other transgender person in Texas) as legally of the gender which they claim. So why all this hoopla? It’s standard for radical right wing extremists and will then further give Greg Abbott more ammunition to talk about Texas seceding from the US because the rest of the country is beginning to recognize the basic civil rights of transgender persons. This is all political theater and also because evil men like Greg Abbott appear to actually enjoy hurting other human beings in order to shove their religious beliefs down your throat.

Here’s a good summary of the current situation from Cristan Williams who has been writing about this case for a few years now.