Tag: transgender

I’ve been publishing  version of this every Martin Luther King Day since I joined in 2005.  It is especially apropos this year since it also represents part of my journey and so qualifies as a part of my autobiography.

If you haven’t been following along, but would like to, I have links:

One or more starts

Chapter

Comings Out (Adding Context)

Character Development

A Winter

Hippie Memories

Where ragged people go

Seeking love, finding only beads

Layers of Why (time for some theory)

Ketchup Soup

Interlude

A Gathering of Rainbows

Spirituality

I am an activist for my people.  As I have grown older, I have more likely performed my activism with my words, which is the tool I have had at hand.

Sometimes I am repetitive.  I am a teacher.  Some lessons are hard.  That’s a clue to the fact that they are important.  Important lessons need to be taught more than once, again and again, time and again, using different words, approaching the issue from different points of view.  That’s what I do.  Some of you claim that I do it “ad nauseam.”  It’s your nausea, not mine.

Many of you know me as the transsexual woman (or whatever you call me…I’m sure that it is not favorable in many instances).  Some of you know me as an artist or a poet.  Some of you see the teacher in me.  Or the glbt activist and PFLAG parent.  I am all of these.  I am a human being.

I was born in a place and time.  I have absorbed the life lessons presented to me since then.  I am still learning.

I’ve tried to pass on what I have learned.  I continue to make that effort, in whatever new venues are available, wherever I can find an opened eye or ear.

July 4th weekend, 1993

A little background:  On Wednesday, June 30, one of my students (named Rachel) suggested that I might be interested in attending the Rainbow Gathering near Mount Victory, Kentucky.  The Rainbow Family is a collection of assorted people, loosely categorized as “hippies” that have been meeting at a US national park for the last 22 years [+21–ed] in order to commune with nature, to seek self‑healing, and to try to join their energies in quest for world peace, social harmony, and ecological balance (and maybe get stoned a bit also 🙂 ).  

This is a part of my auto-biographical thingy…

If I have failed to convey that my life journey has been about finding a place where I belong, then I have managed to gloss over a large part of that which defines who I am.   My adult life has been built around teaching, which to me is about helping others find a place where they belong, where they are valued.  I’ve spent most of my life being told I should go away because I didn’t fit in, that if I had any value, it lay elsewhere.  Or at least that’s the impression I received.  As a kid.  As a hippie, As a Christian. As a PFLAG parent. As an LGBT person. As a lesbian. As a transgender person.  As a human being.

The next several chapters, starting with this one are going to relate my efforts to ameliorate those feelings, to open a few doors for myself, and by extension for other transgender people…to build some needed empathy.  It is what I do.  It is who I am.

It was late Spring of 1992 when I first recollect being the me who I am now.  It came as a result of my fifth life crisis.  I was alone in our house, precisely halfway between Central Baptist College and the First Baptist Church in Conway, AR.

At the time there was the previous me, trying to make a go of life and an unformed thought of the me of now, both inhabiting the same biological structure.

Previous Me was undergoing his fifth nearly terminal event.  He wasn’t prepared.  He’d thought that since it had been 17 years since the last event, he was safe.  Maybe he would have been, but stuff happens.

As in Crisis 4, the “stuff” concerned The Woman who had rescued him from Crisis 3, The Woman whom he had married and who had conceived his daughter.  But she was trouble, that one.  This time she had been arrested for embezzling from the university which employed them both.  As had been the case much too often in his life, he had felt obligated to pay for her transgression.  And she had repaid him by obtaining a boyfriend.  

So he was feeling cold and lonely in their house and it felt like the walls were closing in.  Too much damn pressure.  He’d tried to release at least some of it by Dancing to the Oldies with Richard Simmons, and had seen his weight retreat to its 1976 level of 155 on his 6’3″ frame, what he had weighed when he was rowing lightweight crew at Penn.  But it wasn’t really working anymore.  The walls still seemed to want to crush him.  He felt as if he could stand in the center of the living room and spread his arms to touch both of he walls.  

Conservative forces are concerned that the National Institutes of Health have awarded $189,186 to Emory University to study transgender mortality (project information).

PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The purpose of this study is to determine whether transgender persons defined as those who medically change the gender assigned to them at birth (male to female or female to male) have higher or lower risk of death and certain diseases than men and women that do not consider themselves transgender.  Participants will be selected from medical records of two large health care systems – the Veterans Affairs Administration and the Kaiser Permanente. Transgender persons will also be asked to join focus group discussions and share their views about factors that may motivate or preclude their participation in research.

Members of the transgender community and health care providers caring for transgender individuals express concerns about mental and physical health problems in this population; however longitudinal studies of transgender populations in the US have not been conducted.

CNS (which is Cybercast News Service, even though many think of it as Christian News Service) felt it necessary to inquire as to whether this was an “effective use of taxpayer funds.”

The NIH funded project began in August, 2013 and runs through May 2015

A warm case, a cold case, and the end of a long battle against cancer are the focus of this New Year’s Day post that wishes for better days ahead.

An arrest has been made in the October 2nd East Hollywood shooting death of Aniya Knee Parker.  Los Angeles police are seeking two more suspects.

Parker was confronted by three Latino men as she walked down a sidewalk.  Apparently the men determined she was trans and punched her.  As she turned to flee, one of the men pulled out a pistol and shot her once in the head.  Parker managed to make it across the street before collapsing.  She died in surgery.  Police referred to the incident as “an attempted robbery gone wrong.”

The suspect in custody is said to be a minor, so his name has not been released, but reports are that he will be charged as an adult.

With all the hacking attacks recently, it was bound to happen that someone would try to hack Santa’s mail and share it with the world.

With Congressional action on the Employment NonDiscrimination Act distinctly absent for the past two legislative sessions, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder provided employment protection for gender nonconforming people through another means yesterday.

Holder issued aa memo informing all Department of Justice component heads and United States attorneys that the department will no longer assert that Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex excludes discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender discrimination.  This reverses an earlier Department of Justice position.

Title VII makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate in the employment of an individual “because of the individual’s…sex. ” among other protected characteristics.

I have determined that the best reading of Title VII’ s prohibition of sex discrimination is that it encompasses discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status

This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status.

This will help to foster fair and consistent treatment for all claimants.  And it reaffirms the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting the civil rights of all Americans.

–Attorney General Holder

In an interview with Capitol Download’s Susan Page on Wednesday Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said that the ban on transgender troops is likely to be reassessed in the near future and that she believes it should be lifted.

Times Change.  [The current policy] is likely to come under review in the next year or so.

From my point of view, anyone who is capable of accomplishing the job should be able to serve.

You know, I think that is likely to come under review in the next year or so. So I think we should stand by, and times change, and we’ll just have to see what happens there.

–Secretary James

James is the first secretary of a branch of the armed forces to openly support the idea of ending the ban on transgender troops.

The Williams Institute has estimated that there are currently about 15,500 transgender people now serving in the US military.

Conservative forces say allowing transgender troops to serve openly would create complications on issues of housing and health care.

Aaron Belkin of The Palm Center called James’ remarks a positive step.

President Obama is the commander in chief and is ultimately responsible for setting policy, and it is imperative for him to clarify his position as well.

–Belkin

[James’ remarks] provide further proof that it is only a question of when, not if, the outdated, discriminatory ban on transgender troops will be lifted.

–Ian Thompson, ACLU

BiPM includes a poll in his Friday C&J to select who won the week.  I decided I needed to riff off that for my title.

I don’t know that I have ever read the magazine Glamour.  I mean, I may have done so, once upon a time.  When I was a child, I read whatever I could get my hands on, just for the joy of reading.

On November 10, Glamour honored its 2014 Women of the Year award recipients at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Glamour’s annual Women of the Year Awards is one of our favorite issues of the magazine, and the event marks one of the most inspiring nights of the year; it’s a chance to celebrate trailblazing women from all walks of life-Hollywood stars, political and cultural leaders, groundbreaking scientists and researchers, and more come together to honor the women who helped to shape and change the year. But let’s not forget that phenomenal women are all around us; to celebrate the spirit of Women of the Year, we named 50 standouts-one for every state. Flip through to see the hometown heroes whose work we recognize this year.

Flipping through the inspiring women from each state, one eventually encounters…

North Carolina police are searching for a Rowan County transgender woman, Elisha Walker, who has been missing since October 23.  Her mother reported her missing on November 11.

Elisha normally stays in contact with family and friends via phone calls, texts, and facebook [sic] postings, but has done none of that since October 23rd, when [she] had contact with a cousin on that date.

–Rowan County sheriff’s office

Last Sunday Sampson County authorities found Elisha’s silver 2000 Pontiac Sunfire near the town of Clifton, NC.  It had been intentionally torched, in the opinion of investigators.

Her car sported a homemade license plate.

An officer from the Salisbury City PD ran the tag for the Pontiac Sunfire on October 30th, after spotting the car, using the paper tag, traveling on Hwy 150 out of the city limits. The officer ran the tag and no problems surfaced.

The officer had no probable cause to stop the car at that time, and it was last seen traveling on Hwy 150.

–Rowan County sherrif’s press release

In times of trouble federally and at the state level, the battle for equal treatment and access moves to the local level.

In recent times I have written about current attempts to move us forward in South Florida and Northeast Ohio.

Miami-Dade commissioners unanimous in support of transgender protections (preliminary vote)