Tag: transgender

Riley Matthew Moscatel came out as transgender in 11th grade English class at Bucks County Technical High School this past spring.  From all reports, his transition had gone well at school.

Everyone supported him.  Everyone loved Riley.  He was everyone’s best friend.

–Kate Cimino, a friend

Other friends noted that Riley suffered from depression in the past but appeared to have improved.  But, they say, he had become increasingly uncomfortable with his body.

Riley uploaded a message to his Instagram account on Monday.

My mirror reflects Jessica, my heart and mind say Riley … You see me as the happiest person in school, I’m a prisoner of my own body …

Police have recovered surveillance video that shows Riley stepping in front of an Amtrak train early Monday afternoon near his home in Bristol.

I suspect that some of my readers must be wondering by now why I haven’t responded with my thoughts on the recent outbreak in the transgender/TERF hostilities.

In case yoIu have been completely unaware of the issue, TERF stands for “trans exclusive radical feminists,” although I’ve always thought they were more reactionary than radical.  I should note that they don’t like the term, viewing it as an insult, even though it was invented by other feminists…feminists who wanted to distance themselves from the TERFs.

Although the hostility has been simmering for quite awhile, the most recent outbreak can be traced to the publishing of an article in The New Yorker by Michelle Goldberg, entitled What is a Woman?, which presented a very one-sided treatment of the dispute.

To quote a TERF, from the beginning of the rift in 1973:

I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain?  No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.

–Robin Morgan

On July 30 a 15-year old trans girl boarded a Metro green line train in the District of Columbia with a couple of her friends.  One might assume that was a peaceful act.

But when 24-year old Reginald Anthony Klaiber of Greenbelt, MD boarded the same car on that train, he reacted to the trans girl violently.  At first he disliked her hair color (the girl was wearing a red wig).  Then he questioned her clothing.  When the girl asked him to leave her alone, her friends say he asked her, “Are you a boy?  Are you a boy?  …Why are you looking like a girl?”

He came to my friend and said you have red hair.  My friend said ok, and then he said, ‘Oh, you’re a man!’

Then he started bothering my friend.  My friend got up out of her seat to go by the door while the train was moving and told him to please leave her alone.  He faced her and said I will stab you up and blow your brains out.

—Jae-la White, friend of the victim

Petticoat Fair is a well-known Austin lingerie shop specializing in “custom filling of women’s intimate apparel since 1964.”

Kylie Jack is a transwoman who went to that store for a bra fitting recently.  Last weekend she posted to her Facebook account:

Hello Austinites:  today I went for a bra fitting at Petticoat Fair, where an employee humiliated me by asking for ID stating I was female and saying I needed bottom surgery in order to get a fitting.  If you are in solidarity with trans women, please boycott Petticoat Fair until they remove their transphobic and cissexist policies.  Please feel free to share this post.

A store employee first asked Jack to see her ID in order to prove that she was legally female.  That was followed up by a statement that she would have to have had bottom surgery in order to be served by a fitter.

None of that seems to make much sense. Trans women may or may not choose to undergo surgery for any number of reasons, which are their own, and genital surgery is irrelevant to bra-fitting anyway. I’ve been wearing bras since I was 12, and I’m fairly certain that bras and vaginas have nothing to do with each other.

—Elizabeth Licata, The Gloss

Forty-five years ago tomorrow, just after midnight, when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, the police handcuffed transgender women, sex workers, and homeless youth, who were herded out of the bar and loaded into paddy wagons.

That was all routine.  What was not routine was that the people being rounded up fought back.

TransJustice, sponsored by the Audre Lorde Project celebrated today as the 10th Annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice, gathering at Christopher Street Pier from 2pm to 5pm.  Representing Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) People of Color, TransJustice insists, among other items, that it is time for TGNC people to take back Stonewall from its whitewashed history.

We live in a time when oppressed peoples including people of color, immigrants, youth and elders, people with disabilities, women and TGNC people, and poor people are underserved, face higher levels of discrimination, heightened surveillance and experience increased violence at the hands of the state.  We must unite and work together towards dismantling the transphobia, racism, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia and xenophobia that permeates our movements for social justice, while also celebrating the victories and strides for the rights of TGNC POC.  Let’s come together to let the world know that TGNC rights will not be undermined and together we will not be silenced!

Alessandra Bernaroli has been battling with the Italian government for the past five years to keep her legal marriage in tact.

When I was small I liked to play with little girls, I was looking to understand their femininity.  I dreamed of becoming a woman but I had no idea what trans-sexuality was.

—Bernaroli

The 43-year-old bank employee from Bologna was living as a male when she met her wife in the mid-1990s.  The couple wed in 2005.  It was only after the marriage that Alessandra exposed her transgender feelings to her spouse.

I hid my inner torment from my wife but I felt trapped in a prison, in a body that had become an enemy to me.  I suffocated my true identity.

–Bernaroli

After Bernaroli came out to her wife, her wife agreed to stand by her throughout the process.  Alessandra underwent a series of operations in Thailand in 2009.

When they returned to Italy and sought to update their national identity cards, they were informed that they would no longer be classified as married.

Sometimes satire fails.  Even if you are Stephen Colbert, satire can fail.  

Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement.

When Colbert decided to use his inimitable charm to take on the subject of transgender seniors gaining the possibility of Medicare coverage of gender confirmation surgery, he neglected the fact that the majority of his audience are opposed to that coverage.

The assumption that all liberals would support transgender-inclusive healthcare ignores reality.  Prachi Gupta at Salon addresses the issue.

Even more disturbing than the idea of Nana and Pee-Pop playing Mr. Potatohead downtown is that it violates the tacit agreement we have reached with the transgender community,  I agree to be totally cool with it – which I clearly am [footage of his interview with trans activist Janet Mock], which Time Magazine clearly is, and which all the people lobbying for this transgendered woman [Carmen Carrera] to be a Victoria’s Secret model clearly are – as long as you are hot.  But now you want me to accept unattractive transgender people?  Where does it end?  Will I have to accept unattractive non-transgender people?  What am I made of?  Humanity?

–Stephen Colbert

It has been a long, hard struggle.  

And it is not over yet.

But this is progress.  Time Magazine has declared that this society has reached the “transgender tipping point.”

I’m not a subscriber, but Zack Ford at Think Progress informs me that June 9, 2014 issue of the magazine includes “an extensive Transgender 101 article” that covers many of the issues affecting our community, photo essays of some of the transgender people who have influenced American and world culture (no, I am not included)…both living and dead (Kye Alums, Cassidy Campbell, Carmen Carrera, Candis Cayne, Lynn Conway, Caroline Cossey, Laverne Cox, Paisley Currah, Jamie Ewing, Fallon Fox, Rose Hayes, Christine Jorgensen, Isis King, Lana Lawless, Ashton Lee, Chelsea Manning, Janet Mock, Mike Penner/Christine Daniels, Renee Richards, Sylvia Rivera, Amanda Simpson, Lea T, Jenna Talackova, Brandon Teena, Billy Tipton, and Lana Wachowski), and an interview with Ms. Cox.

I’ve got a couple of stories I am cobbling together to support the title thesis…which should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody.  I mean, it’s nearly a tautology.

Big surprise.  Maryland recently became the 17th state to offer anti-discrimination protections for gender non-conforming people…so immediately the people who voted against it and lost started howling…and lying and fear-mongering…hoping to cajole the Maryland public into dispensing with the new law.

Incredibly, the conservatives’ main line of attack is that the law will turn women’s restrooms into fertile ground for peeping toms disguised in dresses and wigs, even for similarly attired rapists.  This is middle school trash talk disguised as policy analysis.  There is no evidence that this is a statistically detectable problem in other states that have banned discrimination against transgender people, nor in Maryland localities, such as Montgomery County, that have had similar statutes on the books for years.

…

More broadly, opponents of the legislation tend to miss its central point, which is to ban the blatant discrimination that transgender people report is pervasive.  In a 2011 survey conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, 71 percent of transgender people in Maryland said they had experienced harassment or mistreatment at work and 18 percent said they had lost a job or been denied a promotion as a result of their gender identification.  Seventeen percent reported having been denied housing.  Shocking numbers of students in public schools report harassment (81 percent) and assaults (38 percent).

—Washington Post Editorial Board

The Post rightly points out that although recall leader Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Asshole) has concentrated on raising fears about behavior in bathrooms, he opposed transgender protections at every turn when they didn’t include public accommodations.

On my last day of actual teaching (only Finals Week to go before my retirement), I am proud to announce a major breakthrough in the rights of transgender and other gender-variant people on the federal level.

On Tuesday the Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights issued a letter barring all schools which receive Title IX funds from the Federal government from discriminating against gender-nonconforming students, entitled Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence.

Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such complaints for investigation.  Similarly, the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school’s obligations.  Indeed, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth report high rates of sexual harassment and sexual violence.  A school should investigate and resolve allegations of sexual violence regarding LGBT students using the same procedures and standards that it uses in all complaints involving sexual violence.  The fact that incidents of sexual violence may be accompanied by anti-gay comments or be partly based on a student’s actual or perceived sexual orientation does not relieve a school of its obligation under Title IX to investigate and remedy those instances of sexual violence.

If a school’s policies related to sexual violence include examples of particular types of conduct that violate the school’s prohibition on sexual violence, the school should consider including examples of same-sex conduct.  In addition, a school should ensure that staff are capable of providing culturally competent counseling to all complainants.