Community? What Community?

I spent yesterday on another day project with De. We always have the most thought-provoking conversations. She asked me if, in my internet travels, I had encountered a spirit of "divisiveness". I have.



I hear a lot of talk about the "GLBT community", and including all under a queer umbrella, but what I see is a lot of factionalism, splinters and groups crying out to be separated from one another. Without naming names, let me cite a few examples I've seen or experienced.

When I was in college, we had a so-called "Gay-Straight Alliance" that didn't have many (or any, at one point) straight people in it. When I first started to get active in things, I met lesbians who didn't want to be "lumped in" with gay men. The support group I used to belong to in Charlotte had its dinner meetings at a popular lesbian hangout. The staff loved us, but sometimes the other customers would act like "Why are they here?" At Charlotte Pride two years ago, there were only six or seven trans people (that's including drag performers) out of the thousands who attended the festival. Earlier this year, I read a story about intersex people not wanting to be grouped with transgender people. Then there are the post-op transwomen who say they're not trans anymore, and go "stealth", and sever their ties to the community. Just yesterday a blogger on the Bilerico Project posted a nasty piece that said there's no such thing as transgender. I was going to write a nasty, underhanded rebuttal to said piece, but the editor there apologized, so I'll abide. It's a shame, though, because I had such nice things to say. ;)

Often I've felt like the "T" in GLBT (or LGBT, according to your preference) was a dangling participle. It often feels like we trans people have thrown our lot in with the gay community because no one else will take us. Don't get me wrong. I've got gay friends, and they're among the best and brightest I know. I just don't always feel like the larger community has my back. ENDA was making in-roads with Congress two years ago, and the bill lost its support when the HRC said they were willing to set aside protections for gender identity and expression if that's what it took to get protection for gays. A few months ago they reversed their position, saying they only backed a trans-inclusive bill. It's been tabled by a House subcommittee, and slated for review when Congress come back from their holiday break. With healthcare reform, the wars and all the other issues, I worry sometimes that we'll be set aside again, but I still have hope.

Workin' for a Livin'

I wrote a little about working with De on Sunday. Yesterday we rolled back out to Kathleen's to finish the work on the dock. Some of you may remember me writing about the storm that rolled through last month. During said storm, tides on the river rose so high that Kathleen's floating pier floated off of its pilings and landed on the dock. We fabricated a superstructure for raising the height of the pilings, so that future flooding won't loose the pier. It's not my usual kind of work. It's kind of ironic. I'm trans, and I got together with a trans friend to do supposedly macho work for another trans friend.

After the pier was finished, we hauled a chair from Kathleen's house to Bud's apartment in Norfolk. Bud has the cutest long-haired cat, a critter named "Monkey". Monkey was a little skittish around strangers, but I am an instinctive cat person, and we hit it off almost immediately. I forgot how therapeutic stroking a long-haired cat could be. Monkey liked it. I liked it. I had a hard time walking away. The endorphin rush was HUGE. It left me breathless.

(Yes, I realize I've made petting a cat sound like sex, but I couldn't help myself.)

That Was the Week That Was

It's been a long, long week. Long and stressful. The hotel is as slack as I have ever seen it, even going into a holiday season. The owner's a tight-fisted bastard, so they've been steadily cutting everyone's hours. A month ago, I was working forty-hour weeks. Then they cut me down to thirty-nine hours, so I couldn't get any overtime. I could live with that. Thirty-nine hours became thirty-six, then thirty-four. I came into work two nights ago and found the schedule posted for next week. They'd cut me down to three nights and twenty-two hours. There's no way I can pay my bills on those kind of hours, so the job search has begun anew. While my bosses were looking for ways to save, our business picked up next week, in a big way, so I got another night and about ten hours back, but my days with this place are numbered.

On the positive side of things, I spent Monday helping De move some furniture for some friends, and I picked up some extra cash along the way. The friends live in Norfolk over by the base, so in between loads I was treated to flybys by E-2 Hawkeyes, C-2 Greyhounds and assorted fast movers. Towards the end of the day, De dropped a closet on the back of my head, but I'm okay now.

The rest of the week is a blur to me. Work sucked, and I whiled away my down-time on the net, or reading, and slept a lot. I'm reading Tanith Lee's Piratica , which is a delightful fantasy. Bioware churned out a couple new videos promoting Mass Effect 2, which can't come out soon enough (January 26, 2010, if anyone's counting).

Saturday was my GEM meeting. I haven't been for a couple of months, and once again, there were some new faces. It's always nice to see new people. We had a potluck dinner, and Kathleen did the most awesome chicken legs.

Today I was back at Kathleen's with De working on a floating pier. There was no airshow on this outing, but the display of waterfowl was stunning. There were ducks, geese, cormorants, gulls, a pelican and a number of snowy egrets.

Now I'm watching Robin Williams on HBO and preparing for bed. I'm going back to Kathleen's tomorrow to help De finish the pier modifications.

Uncertainty

I've been kicking around a column for the last few days. It's another of those where I go through draft after draft, and end up discarding them all. Then something happens out in the world that casts my own thoughts on to the back burner.

Mike Penner was a sports writer for the Los Angeles Times. He made headlines in 2007 when he came out as transgendered. He was taking a vacation, and when he returned, it would be as Christine Daniels. Christine continued to write for the Times, and she wrote a blog for the paper wherein she recounted her ongoing transformation. In November of last year, she wrote that she was stopping her transition, and she went back to using the name Mike Penner. There was a story in USA Today about this, and what they called "reverse transitioning".

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-02-24-transgender-penner_N.htm

I even did a post about it. It was one of the first relevant news items I remember posting. I remember concluding that I did not want to reverse my changes. I have hardly begun to transition in any meaningful sense. I could not then see any reason to stop, or to go back. "The only way for me is forward," I said.

That is still true, though I have come to recognize some of the obstacles in my way. Just a week ago we were memorializing the victims of hate and violence on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It seems we forgot to look out for those who fall to their own doubts. Mike Penner was found dead yesterday, apparently of suicide. I lost track of him after the USA Today story. I am subject to the same sort of internet-derived short attention span as everyone else. I suppose it didn't help that I'm not much of a sports fan.

This isn't the time to wallow in uncertainty. I've got to go on. More than that, I need to support my friends. Every time I hear about a suicide, I wonder who that person didn't talk to. Who didn't offer them a friendly ear, a supporting shoulder? If there's anyone out there who feels like this, please talk to me.

The Power of Memory

This is one of those times when I don't have to worry about writing the same sorts of things as other bloggers, because we're all writing about the same things.

Thursday was Thankgiving Day. I won't waste any wordage here about the historical significance of the day, or the revisionism, or any of that dreck. Nor will I recount the contents of the feast (though it was fine), or reminisce of dinners past. No, I just want to say that I woke up this afternoon to the aromas of a traditional dinner, and for a moment, I was twenty, and ten, and five, and I took a deep breath, and all was right with the world.

Another Year

Last night my friends and I marked the eleventh Transgender Day of Remembrance. We marched down Brambleton Avenue in Norfolk from Scope down to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (an obelisk), carrying the signs we made Wednesday. My friend Tracy and a lady named Vega read off the names of the fallen, then we walked back to Scope and adjourned to TACT for refreshments.

There weren't any ugly incidents while we were out. There was an old homeless man we encountered on the way back. I think he wanted to get to know some of us better, but he eventually went on his way. I did get a couple of nice complements on my outfit. I wore my purple sweater from Dots with a grey plaid skirt and purple tights, with a pair of black l.e.i. boots I scored at a thrift store in Churchland last year.

I got lost a couple of times heading to TACT. For some reason, I thought it might be reasonably close to where we marched. It was way, way down Granby Street, almost in Ocean View. I got there just in time for a quick snack and a sit-down with Julian and LLLLL before they kicked us out. I went home and changed for work. Nate had cooked while I was out: barbecue chicken and rice. And he baked brownies! I had one before I came to work, and it was incredible.

Preparing to Remember

Last night I drove over to Norfolk to help put together signs for our TDOR march on Friday. Most of the signs show the names of everyone who has died since this time last year. The names and their stories come from this website:

http://www.transgenderdor.org/


There are a lot of names. I wish I could say I was surprised. What did surprise me was how many of the fallen are unidentified, especially in Central and South America. It's like without names, these people didn't exist. That hurts as much as their dying. There was another murder this past weekend in Puerto Rico. The suspect went looking for a "date" in the red light district, picked up the victim, then flipped out when he discovered she was male. He then proceeded to decapitate her and chop off her limbs. When the case first came to light over the weekend, a detective in PR was quoted as saying

"Someone like that, who does those kind of things, and goes out in public, knows full well that this might happen to him."

Makes it sound like she was asking for it. I've been lucky. I haven't seen a whole lot of violence in my life, and haven't experienced anything worse than name-calling when I was out as myself. I wish there was something I could do about it.