Dana Beyer2013-05-24T12:59:34-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=dana-beyerCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Dana BeyerGood old fashioned elbow grease.LGBT Narratives, Memory and The Sense of an Endingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33215002013-05-22T18:33:00-04:002013-05-22T18:34:41-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/The Sense of an Ending, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2011. It's a beautifully evocative disquisition on the unreliability and fragmentation of memory and the self-delusions that we create for ourselves to maintain our personal narratives. Time, being an entropic phenomenon, wears away not only our bodies but the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and we seem to always be buttressing up those narratives so as to maintain our cognitive and emotional coherence. This book is one of mystery, a mystery that may or may not be answered in its last paragraph. Like most lives, that of the protagonist remains both historically and morally ambiguous up to the end. We can only glimpse a sense of his ending, and of ours as well.
The timing was particularly apt for me, as I've spent the past month immersed in personal nostalgia and remembrances: the 75th anniversary of the founding of my high school, which we called Science but which is known today as Bronx Science; a bar mitzvah celebration for the oldest grandson of former neighbors in Chevy Chase, Md., the patriarch of the family being a former president of the American Psychiatric Association; a stint as a panelist on the National Transgender Panel at the Equality Forum in Philadelphia; and, finally, my 35th Penn Med reunion at the old Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Center City, Philadelphia, the source of patients we treated in 1976 with a mysterious illness that was later christened "Legionnaire's disease." It was immersion in living memory, with evidence in the guise of my colleagues and friends reporting just how stable, or not, my memories have been over the decades. They often remembered people and events I had forgotten, as I had captured moments of their lives forgotten by them. We know enough about memory formation today (though still remarkably little) to understand that it's the emotional content of an event that plays a major role in how a memory gets created. So examination of comparative memory caches is really a comparison of which life events had the most emotional resonance for various individuals. An incident that caused a burst of joy or shame in one would be completely ignored by others.
That's a storyline from my life, and I imagine that's true for many other trans (and gay) persons. I carried the shame of my difference within, quietly; as a result, I viewed the world and lived my life with a far different emotional barometer than did my friends and neighbors. It is often said that the whole point of the LGBT civil rights movement is to normalize our lives. I certainly act with that as a major principle in mind: normalization for the sake of creating a level playing field so that all can then become remarkable. So in a more deeply existential manner, the point of coming out and living free and equal is to allow all to live and create historical narratives on that level playing field; to not have to create memories based on shame and fear; to allow a life and its remembrance to be based on the emotions that we all have as human beings but which are grossly distorted by the closet.
Trans personal narratives also play out in another manner, and this past weekend's publication of the DSM-5 highlights that as well. Transgender persons are no longer required to have themselves defined as pathological to gain access to health care. The new "gender dysphoria" diagnosis (replacing "gender identity disorder") is not stigmatizing in and of itself, and does not impose a lifetime mark of Cain on the individual. Today one can gain access to health care without said diagnosis, and with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, it should get much easier across the country. The persistence of the offensive diagnosis of "transvestic disorder," with its absurd, Freudian categories of autogynephilia and autoandrophilia, can and should be completely ignored by cross dressers. Just stay away, and let Professor Blanchard fade away into oblivion.
It was not that long ago, however, that trans women needed to revise their personal narratives to receive a diagnosis as a "true transsexual" and thereby qualify for health care and surgical reconstruction. Johns Hopkins, which offered the first university-based gender-reassignment program, had very strict rules about qualifications for transition. Put simply, only hyperfeminine women whose primary desire was to be penetrated by a man need bother to apply. When I sat down to fill out their intake questionnaire back in 1971, it seemed to me that 90 percent of the questions were about sexual activity and sexual desire. There was no sense that being trans was a form of being intersex, a basic type of human identity, and completely unrelated to sexual desire. That one could be a gay trans woman was worthy of ridicule, and divorce was required before surgery would be considered.
So to qualify for transition, one had to reconstruct one's life narrative to fit those criteria, and, as a result, trans women got the reputation in the psychiatric community of being liars. That is to some degree the bedrock upon which Dr. Blanchard concocted his Freudian theory, and it's not a great way to develop trust or determine the truth about people's lives. That basic level of mistrust is what still sometimes determines trans persons' relationships with the mental health community even today.
Our narratives, like those of all human beings, are subject to fragmentation, and, yes, we are all subject to some degree of self-delusion. To minimize that, and to provide gay and trans persons with the fundamental human right to self-determination, we must be afforded the right to our own narratives and histories.]]>Questions From Readers About Anti-Trans Violencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32830872013-05-17T16:19:12-04:002013-05-17T16:19:19-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/ My last blog post on anti-trans violence, like many of my previous blog posts, touched on issues that deserve far greater consideration than I'm capable of providing in one post. I'm writing for a national audience that often has had little exposure to the issues at hand, and, as a result, I make an effort to give sufficient background and references to help guide those who may be new to the topic. However, doing so takes up real estate and limits in-depth discussion. I also try to be timely and topical, further limiting the degree to which I can engage an issue.
However, the topic of anti-trans violence is not one that will be going away anytime soon, so this is my next effort at grappling with it. To start, one general complaint was that I, as a white woman, had no business writing about violence against women of color. I suppose that there are some who, when they see my effort, will simply move on and ignore my contribution. That's their right. As a progressive who works to make this country more welcoming to all, and not just to trans persons, I will continue my work. As a surgeon I didn't limit my practice to white people, I was often the only person in my town who accepted Medicaid, and, as a result, I had a higher percentage of black patients, as well as a higher percentage of poor patients who couldn't afford to pay for my services, obviously. I, like many others, have a long history of serving all, in this country and abroad, and will continue to do so the best of my ability. I hope that we can begin to move away from identity politics. It's much easier to do diversity, be it in legislatures or advocacy organizations, in a "paint-by-numbers" approach, but that often creates an even less productively diverse situation.
A common complaint was that I shifted focus from a brutal murder perpetrated by a man to a debate about pronouns. My point was that deliberate misgendering by society and the media contributes to the violence. Apparently the Cleveland Plain Dealerstill hasn't learned much from their recent experience reporting on the murder of Cemia Dove.
Another issue raised was that my organization, Gender Rights Maryland, was not doing anything in Baltimore to combat the problem. That's because Gender Rights Maryland is an organization with a legislative mission, not a broad social mission. We don't have the infrastructure or the funding to manage that type of mission, and we are fully volunteer-based. So we focus on our mission. However, as individuals, many of us do anti-violence work with our local governments and other advocates. I've mentioned the work I'm doing with True Child in D.C. to document the roots of the violence and to craft a program to respond effectively. That program, funded by the D.C. government, will learn from its experience and then create a template that others can use throughout the country. Similarly, I've worked with the DC Trans Coalition, the National Center for Transgender Equality, Get Equal and other organizations that deal in whole or in part with violence, and I work on publicizing the incidence of intimate partner violence in the gay community. Many of my fellow board members do the same or similar work, in addition to leading support groups and labor and religious social action groups. None of this work is easy, and all of it is necessary. Just keep in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are many who do this work and are not recognized; I'm fortunate to have this platform for outreach.
Then there's the question of male violence in general. I touched on it in passing, putting the anti-trans violence into perspective. Black men are the perpetrators and victims of violence to a degree way out of proportion to their population. It is a huge societal problem, with all its consequences of incarceration, gun culture, broken families and loss of hope in many American communities. It's also a problem that I hope President Obama will engage now that he's been reelected. I know that he's the president of all Americans, not just of African-Americans, but he has the ability to play an outsized role in confronting this scourge. He's done so much for the LGBT community, particularly by speaking in favor of marriage equality one year ago last week. He can do the same for the black community.
A question was raised as to the incidence of violence against trans men. It does occur, with the murder of Brandon Teena being the most famous (it was the basis for the 1999 film Boys Don't Cry), but there are other incidents, including the killing of Evon Young this year. However, the rate of violence against trans men is much lower than that against trans women.
Finally, I'd like to reiterate my belief that the most important tool in creating freedom and equality is being out working for it. For some, being out is far more problematic, or even far riskier, than it is for others, but we will not be respected by others until we respect ourselves, as a community out and proud. I've been blessed in many respects in my life, so I can afford to do this work, and I do so gladly. However, I cannot make the same impact by showing up that a black trans woman can make in her church, or a Latino trans man can in his corporation. We need more role models who are captains of industry like Martine Rothblatt, and more world-class inventors like Lynn Conway, but in the end it will be trans Americans of all social strata and life experience who come out in their communities all across this country who will change this nation at its roots. When you're out, just remember that you should interact with others as you would have them interact with you. Make your anger and disappointment work for you, channel it and change the world.]]>It Really Isn't Getting Better for Some Trans Womentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32317382013-05-09T21:49:28-04:002013-05-09T21:49:38-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/published a piece with input from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) and the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC). What have traditionally been local tragedies are now beginning to get national exposure. Local bloggers are now getting picked up by those with greater reach, and these stories are no longer being lost in the cyberverse. Monica Roberts is doing a particularly good job on this issue, having persevered for many years to gain greater public exposure.
Over the past 13 years the trans community has come together on November each year to memorialize the trans persons -- generally women, and generally women of color -- on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is the only national day shared by all the various arms of the trans community, and until recently it was only focused on grief and anger. Over the past few years, however, various communities, including mine in D.C. and Maryland, have linked the memorials to days of education and advocacy, transforming the grief to work dedicated to preventing such tragedies. These efforts are helping the community get greater traction in the larger gay community, and beyond to the mainstream media, including The New York Times. As these stories about everyday life become more common and the trans community becomes humanized, the hope is that violence will be reduced.
The main issue here is assault and murder. Every other issue pales in comparison. We know, however, that violence does not occur in a vacuum. Murder is usually personal, and these murders of trans women are so horrific that they are clearly driven by intense personal animus. We can't begin to reduce the incidence of violence until we understand the underlying causes. We can't ignore the daily dehumanization some trans persons suffer and pretend, for instance, that simply focusing on male violence in the abstract will solve the problem.
The most recent killing was that of Cemia Dove Acoff, known as CeCe, in Cleveland last week. This story gained traction in the LGBT media because of the grossly negligent manner in which the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported it. The paper misgendered her, described her clothing in detail and referred to her as "it." The AP Stylebook has guidelines for referring to trans persons, but the reporters for the Plain Dealer clearly didn't bother to read it. Granted, reporters often take their basic info from police reports, which in many jurisdictions routinely misgender trans persons, but the AP Stylebook is the reference for journalists and lays out the rules quite clearly. There is no excuse.
Misgendering has implications beyond murder and is often used both by religious and feminist fundamentalists to dehumanize trans persons. It is the root of the "bathroom bill" meme, fostering fear about "men" in women's bathrooms. It is the root of the "gay panic" defense, the belief of men that when they discover that their female partner is a trans woman, they are instantaneously "gayed" as a result of contact with the woman. In some cultures the trans woman needn't be preoperative, with OEM genitalia, to induce the panic; a history of gender transition may be sufficient, and with some just talking to a trans woman is sufficient to transmit those poisonous gender cooties. It is this ignorance-driven fear that leads to the ghastly killings of people like CeCe Acoff.
Riki Wilchins, Executive Director of True Child, whose organization has done a lot of great work on our codes of masculinity and femininity, is conducting a project in D.C. in alliance with most of the local LGBT organizations and the D.C. government to get to the root of the gender-based violence in southeast D.C. She's run multiple focus groups and is currently working on training members of the community where the violence is most prevalent to serve as ambassadors to bridge the transgender and cisgender communities and help initiate dialogue between straight, cis men and straight trans women. One of the most telling discoveries from the project was, as described by one interviewee, the perception that "transgender is just a longer word for gay." For these young men there is often no difference between a cis gay man who is violating the codes of masculinity by behaving in a feminine manner (choosing a male partner is viewed by many as feminine behavior) and a straight trans woman who has completed surgical and hormonal treatment. They are both viewed as men who have failed to live up to code and betrayed the community of men and, as a result, are less than human.
So once again we get back to the fact that discrimination against trans persons is sex discrimination, and we see that discrimination against gay persons is also sex discrimination. The common core is misogyny, which leads to both homophobia and transphobia, a misogyny that is also still too prevalent in the fundamentalist communities.
I have one last point. The murder of trans women, particularly African-American trans women, is terrible and needs to stop. Given the national homicide rate of 4.8 homicides per 100,000 persons, however, it is not statistically out of line. (There may, of course, be cases that are unreported, though it seems that we're getting better, both within our community and without, at recognizing and publicizing these murders.) When that rate is calculated for the black community and broken down by sex, it is still less common than we would expect (at a rate of 11.3 homicides per 100,000 black females between the ages of 20 and 29, we would expect 40 African-American trans women murdered each year, given that there are 350,000 adult trans women in the U.S.). We should not lose track of the fact that while the perpetrators of anti-trans violence are almost always men, the predominant victims of violence in America are young African-American men. We are a violent, sexist society, in spite of the fact that the homicide rate is at a four-decade low, and there is much work that needs to be done to reduce the violence. Being black and trans may compound the risk, but it is already shameful that our country throws up its hands to the violence endemic in our society.]]>ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) Redux: Its History and Importance for All of Ustag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31867932013-05-01T18:27:36-04:002013-05-01T18:30:19-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/bill, in its current form (with the exception of trans inclusion, first offered in 2007), has been considered in every Congress, with one exception, since 1994, and originally was introduced in more comprehensive form back in 1974 by Congresswoman Bella Abzug. While today's bill is limited only to employment protections, this has been, and continues to be, the signature federal LGBT civil rights bill.
Contrary to the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, including, reportedly, at least one senator, it is perfectly legal to fire or refuse to hire gender-conforming gay, lesbian and bisexual people. Given that ENDA has not come up for a Senate vote since 1996, it's hard to believe that a Senator would believe it had already passed, but that most Americans, who as Americans strongly oppose discrimination as a core moral imperative, believe it should be law is not a surprise. Look at the progress we've made in this country, particularly under the Obama administration -- how could it possibly be legal to discriminate? And now that a majority of Americans support marriage equality, does it really make any sense that gay persons can get married but can be refused a job, or denied housing, or be discriminated against in a restaurant or movie theatre?
One ironic little twist is that while transgender and gender non-conforming persons are currently protected under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the majority of gay persons who happen to be perceived as gender-conforming are not yet covered. The irony derives from the particular difficulty the trans community has had historically being considered along with the gay community for anti-discrimination protections, a difficulty which exploded around ENDA in 2007. Since then, every bill has been trans-inclusive, and with last year's Macy decision, the trans community leap-frogged the gay community in obtaining employment protections. Those protections apply in the 50 states, the federal government, and the federal contractor workspace.
That is the state of LGBT discrimination in this country today, and why ENDA has been reintroduced. One more irony is that the vast majority of federal contractors and Fortune 500 companies already protect LGBT persons. Very recently it was reported that 98 percent of the Fortune 50 protect gay workers and 88 percent protect trans workers. Sixty percent of small businesses already have gender identity protections, and, unsurprisingly, 63 percent of small business owners support ENDA. And Congress has still not passed ENDA.
Last year the Senate held a panel on ENDA, the first such panel with testimony from a trans person. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who chairs the Senate HELP Committee (Housing, Employment, Labor and Pensions), and plans on retiring next year, remarked at the close of the panel that it was way past time to finally get this bill passed. With support from a wide range of businesses and advocacy groups, including unions, with 46-52 percent of Americans already living in jurisdictions with state and/or local protections, it's long past time to get this done on the federal level. Please note that there are the usual exemptions for very small business and religious organizations, exemptions that were first instituted in the 60s. Religious freedom is a foundational American value, and should be respected alongside the value of equality for which we are fighting.
Now, it has been asked, that since transgender persons are already protected under Title VII, should they be lobbying for ENDA as well? For me, personally, I believe we should "leave no gay behind." I advocate for civil rights for all, not just myself, so for me that's an absurd question at its root. I also realized the other day that I am often perceived as a gender-conforming gay woman, so I can easily empathize with those who are currently unprotected. But there are other, equally valid reasons.
Just as we aren't satisfied with protections at one level of government, and keep pushing for state and local protections in addition to federal protections, adding more explicit federal protections can only help the trans community cement its protections. It also important, symbolically as well as practically, for our contemporary Congress to state explicitly that gay and trans persons deserve equality with all Americans.
Maybe most importantly is the opportunity for educating the public, which as I mentioned earlier already believes we have these protections in law. I don't see law as a tool for punishment; I see law as a means of educating people to do the morally correct thing, making them aware of problems they might never have thought to consider. Once they've pondered the issue, they are far less likely to run afoul of the law, and generate lawsuits, both because it's the right thing to do and because it would be embarrassing and expensive to act otherwise. We see HR departments re-writing their policies to accommodate the Macy decision, and media coverage of ENDA will remind those who have yet to follow through to get their act together. Passage of ENDA in the Senate, and, finally, in the House, and a signing ceremony at the White House will add more pressure, and the cultural climate will continue to evolve so that discrimination becomes less and less common.
There will be a Congressional Lobby Day next month on June 17th, organized by NCTE, in association with the Trans People of Color Coalition.]]>Gay vs. Trans Cultural Influence, and the Slow Evolution From Ignorance to Acceptance Within the LGBT Communitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31185382013-04-22T17:43:10-04:002013-04-22T17:44:45-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
Once Shocked's rant went viral, fans boycotted her shows, and promoters cancelled her performances. She was so infuriated that she herself lashed out with some performance art and the usual unapologetic "apology." The consequences of her words led to what now seems an unremarkable, well-organized response from the gay community and its allies. The well-oiled machine that is the gay communications "war room" primes a community that is no longer willing to tolerate abuse and puts into motion with remarkable efficiency a potent campaign response. It works, the mission is accomplished and the story fades, and one hopes that others with feelings similar to those of Shocked, like Dr. Ben Carson, stop and ponder their beliefs and begin to change their behaviors.
The recent contretemps with the MWMF, however, was a much more placid affair, one that has played out many times over the past 20 years since the actively trans-exclusionist policy of the festival was made public. Change, if it happens, will continue to be incremental, a slap on the wrist and not the kind of punishment meted out to Shocked. A change.org petition made the rounds, the Indigo Girls made a statement and Lisa Vogel, the MWMF's only director for the 38 years of the festival's existence, replied with a non-apology. This included a comment about the event's desire to "recognize and honor diverse gender expression among womyn," a remarkable statement that persons who were assigned female at birth (obviously only on the basis of their perceived genitalia) and then raised as girls are uniquely "womyn-born womyn" and constitute a unique gender identity in themselves. She also highlighted in her response the fact that at the time the festival was created, "the mere idea of a female identity autonomous of male identity was revolutionary."
And therein lies the rub. Ms. Vogel has not evolved over the past four decades from a second-wave-feminist, Manichean worldview that sees two warring camps, male and female, and she follows the so-called "feminist" philosophy that trans women are simply tools of the patriarchy. It is also doubly ironic that when modern feminism developed in the mid-20th century, the fundamental point was that reproductive biology was not destiny, and yet today we have "feminists" lauding the beauty and function of their reproductive systems as the reason to exclude trans women from the set of all women.
I support the right of all to freely associate. That includes lesbian separatists as well as bigots. As former Vice President Dick Cheney memorably said, "Freedom means freedom for everyone." If our community accepts this overt bigotry, however, we send the wrong message.
Now I will wade in more deeply. MWMF is simply the tip of the cultural iceberg. I wish that Lisa Vogel and Janice Raymond and Julie Burchill and the rest of them were simply a small group of loud outliers. Unfortunately, they are not. While we have a remarkable group of cisgender lesbian allies, my experience, and that of many of my 50-plus-year-old trans women friends, is that many cis lesbians do not view trans women as women, nor do they view trans men as men, which is probably even more offensive.
This reality is covered up by civility and the willingness of many of these women to work for the LGBT community to improve the lives of trans persons. But when it comes to real friendships, and, more importantly, to intimate relationships, trans women are invisible to these women. The term "cotton ceiling" has been coined for this divide. We are in an era of a gay Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. We can work together. We can go to school together. We can advocate together for us all, for marriage equality and civil rights. We can party together. But partner with one another, or live together? Still uncommon. Trans women are not visible as potential partners, just as interracial relationships were taboo and rare 60 years ago. And God help the cis lesbian who dares partner with a trans woman. Many of those I know who have done so are then ostracized by their lesbian friends.
And to compound it all, there are the trans men who were the lesbian partners of women who have remained in those relationships and suffer in silence the indignity of not having their true sex recognized by their partners, partners who see them as deluded women. Sometimes it's hard to believe that we're 13-percent into the 21st century already.
The good news -- and there is good news -- is that the Millennial generation doesn't buy into any of this nonsense. They weren't raised on second-wave-feminist bigotry, so to them it's just dry history, and they go happily into their pansexual futures. And just as our children's generation has been powering the drive toward greater equality that benefits us all, I hope their social lives of greater mutual acceptance and respect will benefit their elders, as well.]]>Covering in Katmandu, and the Uncovering of an American Trans Icontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30398762013-04-10T16:15:15-04:002013-04-10T16:11:06-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
One of those trips followed the completion of my ophthalmology residency in 1982, when my ex and I ended up in Nepal. I went to work for the World Health Organization's (WHO) Nepal Eye Project, performing eye surgery in Dhangadhi, Nepal, far to the west of Katmandu. I got to help those residents of the Himalayas who had never before seen an eye surgeon, and who were not only legally blind, by Western standards, but totally blind -- what we call "bare light perception." These patients came down from the mountains single file, holding on to the one in front, the blind literally leading the blind, and presenting with "ripe" cataracts, a total opacification of the lens rarely seen in the United States even in 1983. It was extremely satisfying to make such a huge difference so quickly in the lives of so many, many of who told me they had never expected to see again.
This was the hospital when I served there, with the instruments hanging on the wall. No, I'm kidding, but the surgical tools were nearly as primitive and limited as that strip of wrenches which did hang on the operating room wall. A recent episode of Grey's Anatomy showcased a similar situation with Syrian physicians emulating the battlefield conditions under which they must operate in their civil war. Today, this is the new hospital in the photo below, providing much higher quality care with better equipment and routinely staffed with trained personnel.
While I was operating in western Nepal I could bury myself in my work, pushing aside the desire to just finally come out and transition. One experience in Nepal exemplified my inner conflict, and that was the Passover seder we created in Katmandu that year. Being different, hiding that difference, or even simply covering that difference, applies to many forms of diversity. There is nothing singular about being trans, or gay, or Jewish, when it comes to différance. What holds for one aspect of the human condition holds for any other.
When my ex and I traveled, and we traveled a lot, we weren't traveling as Jews, or Jewish Americans. We were young adults who identified as travelers, rather than tourists, spending time in different cultures to which we contributed our work in exchange for the experience of living with others. We would seek out Jewish cultural institutions abroad, and connect with families on occasion, but we were just Americans, doing what many of our generation did during the 70's and 80's. When we passed through Muslim territories or nations, we particularly covered our heritage, out of fear. Occasionally we even hid the fact we were Americans, posing as Canadians or Finns. It seemed silly at the time, but considering that we were in Kabul just before the Soviet invasion and Tehran just before the Khomeini coup in 1978, in hindsight it doesn't appear silly at all.
That mindset worked until Passover approached. A that point the desire for a seder, even what felt like a physical need to participate in one, grew so intense that we were willing to break cover and organize the event in what seemed to be an environment alien to such a religious and cultural practice. At first coming out was difficult, and my initial steps were awkward. But within a day I was biking around the city and its suburbs looking for other Jewish travelers to invite to the seder. I found five the first day studying in a Buddhist monastery, and we didn't stop there, posting invites around town. It was a rather gutsy action, in such an isolated country, but the act of coming out had opened many opportunities to connect to the resident culture and ultimately allowed for an experience which could not be replicated again. Even today, when the seder routinely attracts over 1000 guests, I have a feeling the experience is nothing like that first time. Usually no experience is.
My theme is that authenticity is a worthy goal, even though at times it is dangerous to be authentic, as when she and I covered our Jewish and American backgrounds while in Pakistan and Iran, or when I buried my true gender for the first five decades of my life. Those situational compromises may have been necessary at the time, but I know I paid a heavy price. That is why I encourage everyone to live authentically, even when there may be serious costs, because in so doing we improve conditions for everyone and that redounds to our benefit in the long-term as well.
Lynn Conway, a friend of mine from Eve Ensler's all-trans production of The Vagina Monologues in 2004, whom I consider one of the iconic role models of the trans community, and who is one of the creators of our modern digitally connected world, is just now coming out fully and reclaiming her position and legacy. I don't know where we'd be today without her -- still waiting in line to submit our batch cards for mainframe processing? -- and her courage in transitioning back in 1968 fills me with awe. I understand her reticence which led her to live a covered life throughout her career in an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, but I'm thrilled now that she's going public, not only for her but for the further impact she will have on the trans community and the larger culture, particularly young women, as well. We need more role models like Lynn, and I'm proud to be her friend.]]>A Seat at the Table, and the Consequences of Not Having Onetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29997672013-04-03T09:00:01-04:002013-04-03T09:00:36-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
There are a myriad of backstories in the legislative history of this year's failure of Maryland's gender identity anti-discrimination bill. There's a very colorful cast of characters, from the governor down through the state Senate committee where it died. There are Democrats standing proudly in the 21st century, and Democrats who have yet to have to leave the 19th. There is the usual collection of personality quirks and family secrets that contributed directly to the unfavorable report. There were warring factions of advocates, and factions within factions, so characteristic of progressives of the past 40 years.
But it was a single act of the Maryland Senate president upon the beginning of the new year that settled the fate of this bill. It was done for a very good reason, a reason that I support, but one of its consequences was the failure of this bill. Maryland state Sen. Victor Ramirez (D-Prince George's) was a staunch ally of the trans community; state Sen. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George's) has stood against this bill for seven years now. What would have been simple became complex, so complex that a series of maneuvers in committee could not be coordinated to get the bill out with a favorable report.
One major irony is that the majority of the American people believe that these anti-discrimination protections already exist nationally. Ruth Marcus of The Washington Postnoted such last week, and polls on this issue are very consistent. Yet we have two senators from Baltimore County, which has comprehensive anti-discrimination protections, one from a pretty liberal area and one from near the area where Chrissy Polis was brutally beaten in a McDonald's two years ago, who won't stand for fairness. We have a state senator from Prince George's County who has eloquently related his own history of discrimination but was unwilling to support his trans constituents, persons who have no protections in his county today.
Instead of sailing through committee with progressive Democratic support, the bill hit a stone wall (no pun intended) and again suffered defeat. It turns out that, this time, the outcome wasn't different after all, but the solid majority support we have in the Maryland General Assembly overall is different. And it gets back to the structure of the state Senate and the lack of democratic action in the institutional politics of the chamber that allows such outcomes.
There are always winners and losers in legislative systems, and we have to play the game that exists. It's particularly heartbreaking when a citizen comes to testify and pours out her heart, expecting legislators to be moved to action, and then watches the system take on a life of its own and completely ignore her plea. However, that's reality in any given session, with 2,500 bills being considered by 188 people, and it's personal relationships, the persuasiveness within those relationships and perseverance that ultimately gets results.
We can work to democratize the chambers, yielding greater transparency (committee members should have their votes on amendments recorded, the amendments should be downloadable, and the voting sessions should be open to the public and webcast as well) and thus accountability. The legislators should get to organize their own committees and elect their own chairs, just as they do senior leadership each year.
We can work on this project the way the system is designed to work -- by electing people who are committed to clean and open government, who are willing to stand and fight for an ethical, accountable system of representation that is responsive to the people. We can do this if and only if we educate others on the importance of our state and local governments, get them involved and encourage qualified individuals, with a diversity of skills, experience and perspectives, to run for office. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it, and it might as well be 21st-century Democrats who want to leave a more progressive America for their children and grandchildren.
Last week we saw remarkable events at the Supreme Court of the United States relating to marriage equality, equal protection and federalism, events that were unthinkable a few years ago. When Justice Elena Kagan read from a 1996 committee report from the U.S. House of Representatives in support of DOMA, the crowd gasped. How far we've come in overcoming one form of moral animus in this country! When questioned about the proceedings by Alex Wagner on MSNBC, HRC President Chad Griffin came back to his fundamental message, "Come out, come out, wherever you are," so that we will see more and more people coming out and becoming known by others at an accelerating pace. What has held true for gay persons, black persons, Hispanic persons, Jewish persons (Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in the DOMA case, is Jewish, as is her attorney and three of the justices) and so many other American minorities also holds true for trans persons.
Quoting Justice Anthony Kennedy from 2001, the Solicitor General remarked that prejudice can arise not just from hostility but from "the simple want of careful reflection or an instinctive response to a class of people or a group of people who we perceive as alien or other." We certainly had our share of that in the Judicial Proceedings Committee of the Maryland Senate.
Finally, another political epigram remains in play: If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. It's been true for every minority community in America, and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) frequently repeats it in her speeches. Yet there is not a single trans person around a legislative table anywhere in America. So come out, get out of the house and get involved -- and run for office while you're at it.]]>Time for a Rapprochement Between the Trans Community and HRCtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29809362013-03-29T19:03:19-04:002013-04-02T12:24:57-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
What continues to be a problem is the cold war that is ongoing between the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the trans community. I don't remember a time when there was an absence of conflict, and having served as an HRC Governor during the last decade, I was present for some of the worst of the confrontations. It is true that HRC was late to the community's acceptance of trans inclusion, adding the "T" to "LGB" only in 2004. The worst experience was the 2007 debacle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), when virtually the entire LGBT community organized for trans inclusion, leaving HRC alone in support of an exclusive ENDA. HRC's support for marriage equality has been robust and intense, but not so much its support for trans equality. Internally HRC has no trans staffers and only one trans board member. Worse, it has rarely been any better than that, and this is an organization with nearly 50 board members. Being tasked with increasing national trans board representation, I know that HRC does not stand alone as an outlier. But given that HRC is unofficially the national voice of the entire LGBT community, a role embraced by the organization, that lack of representation does stand out. This needn't be the case.
This past week there was an event that reopened the scab of the past two decades of wounds. It was reported by Matt Comer that a trans flag was removed from an event at the steps of the Supreme Court by an HRC staffer. I don't know the facts, though I lean toward supporting Jerame Davis, Executive Director of the National Stonewall Democrats, and his take on the incident. Maybe there were only American flags planted at the podium, in which case the trans flag would have been inappropriate. Maybe there were other rainbow flags, in which case the action would not have been appropriate. Regardless, this is just one more instance of institutional bad blood between the two communities.
It's time to resolve this problem, and this is a very opportune time to do so. The trans community has scored many great victories recently, the most recent being the reconsideration by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of coverage for genital reconstruction surgeries. The gay community has also scored impressive victories, both last November, with the marriage referenda, and this week, with the oral arguments in the Supreme Court. We can come together in strength and equal standing.
It's also an opportune time for a rapprochement because of the recent changes in senior staff at HRC. Regardless of where one wants to place blame, those changes with a new team in place allow for a fresh look and a fresh start. I know that President Chad Griffin is committed to better relations with the trans community, as is his newest hire, Jeff Krehely, formerly of the Center for American Progress.
This effort need not be only morally grounded, in that it's the right thing to do for all of us. Yes, many trans persons are gay, and many gay persons are gender-nonconforming. There is so much overlap that it becomes silly at certain points to be arguing. Just as self-interest has propelled the gay community to focus primarily on gay issues, the increase in exposure of the trans community and the rise of our particular issues means that not only do we need the support of our gay friends and allies, but they also need us to remain relevant and a part of the ongoing civil rights discourse.
I was taught to be very wary when someone presents a deal as "win-win." He is often just trying to pick your pocket. Sometimes, though, the situation has become so toxic that inaction means more "lose-lose," and regardless of who benefits more when a deal is reached, there is a general overriding benefit for the larger community.
I hope Chad and Jeff take the time over the next few months, before the Supreme Court justices rule in June, to sit with the trans community to find a way past injuries and old wounds. If Israel and Turkey can resolve their differences, surely HRC and the trans community can. Maybe it's time for Nixon to revisit China. And this season of liberation and rejuvenation might just be the ideal time.]]>Pope Benedict's Abdication -- Is It Good for the Trans Community?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28843602013-03-15T15:04:41-04:002013-05-15T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
First, a little of my history with the Catholic Church. When I was 12 I was admitted to my local Catholic hospital with kidney failure and sepsis, a severe blood-borne infection with impending circulatory collapse. I had last rites performed (no, my Jewish parents were not pleased), then suffered cardiac arrest and was resuscitated on the operating table (what we today call a "code," but which was far more primitive in those days). Forty years later, after having lived as Dana for six months, I underwent genital reconstruction at Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad, Colorado. Both times I remember the care of the hospital staff as exemplary, so I'm biased towards the good the American church performs for many.
I learned as an adult, however, that both those experiences were the result of the reforms promulgated by the Vatican of Pope John XXIII. The man was revered even in the Jewish community of my youth, for his efforts to save Jews during the Shoah, or Holocaust, and was known for his liberalizing tendencies, in particular the Second Vatican Council, still followed by so many American Catholics. For instance, a 2011 poll showed 93 percent of Catholics supported gender identity and expression anti-discrimination laws. That's right -- 93 percent!
But since his passing, the Vatican has propelled itself steadily downward to the extreme right, leading now to the abdication of the man, Benedict XVI, who once served in the Hitler Youth and presided, in various offices, over the Church pedophilia scandal and cover-up. As far as the trans community is concerned, his representative in America has been Vatican advisor Paul McHugh,
Emeritus Professor of Johns Hopkins University. Serving from 1975 till 2001, McHugh led the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, having been hired in 1975 to oppose Professor John Money, one of America's leading sexologists, and to shut down its path-breaking gender reassignment program. He accomplished this in 1979, as recounted by Laura Wexler.
Thankfully, due to the "Law of Unintended Consequences," his closure of the nation's leading academic gender identity program (which I had visited in 1972) led to the privatization of gender reassignment, ultimately serving many thousands more here and abroad than could ever have been accommodated in teaching hospitals.
Professor McHugh wasn't finished, however, writing for The American Scholar, the Phi Beta Kappa journal, in 1992, a piece called "Psychiatric Misadventures." I was so appalled that a society to which I belonged would publish such garbage that I wrote to the editors and to Dr. McHugh himself, my first public outing as a trans woman. In 2004 his colleague, Professor William Reiner, America's leading clinician dealing with intersex children, published in The New England Journal of Medicine his proof of the existence of gender identity, or brain sex.
In spite of that evidence, McHugh didn't stop, publishing in the right-wing Catholic journal, First Things, in 2006 (by this time no reputable scholarly or medical journal would publish his biased ranting) his article, "Surgical Sex." Some of his comments in that piece -- adult "males" who undergo surgical reassignment fall into two main groups: (1) "conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men" and (2) "heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females." In addition, "they [trans persons] were little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled."
These canards have been used by the fundamentalist opposition to trans protections now for over a decade, though they have had much less impact since the Hopkins Sexual Behavior Consultation Unit clinical faculty, led by Dr. Chris Kraft, has become fully supportive of trans persons over the past decade. That, combined with the declassification of Gender Identity Disorder as a mental illness in the DSM 5 last year, pretty much exiles Dr. McHugh to the same lonely abode on the margins of respectable society where John Money landed after he was exposed for falsifying data to buttress his theory of the purely social determinism of gender identity. Both men learned that science can be a harsh mistress, and that twisting one's data to fit one's thesis will ultimately backfire.
To show that, when it comes to sexual minorities, he is an equal opportunity anti-LGBT extremist, McHugh made a motion in 2010 in United States District Court, Northern District of California, to file an amicus brief in the case of Perry et al. v. Schwarzenegger et al. that stated in part:
"Amicus seeks to provide information to this Court bearing on its decision of whether to endorse a legal declaration that orientation is a fixed and immutable characteristic similar to race or gender.
In the proposed brief, Amicus points out two highly relevant facts: (1) there is no scientific consensus on what homosexuality is, and the number of people who fit in the class "gay and lesbian" varies widely, depending on which definition of homosexuality is used and (2) there is no scientific consensus that homosexuality is exclusively or primarily genetic in origin."
So to answer the question, "Is the Pope's abdication good for the trans community?" I would say "yes." Of course, things can always get worse, depending on the behavior of his replacement; Pope Francis has a long history of homophobia and transphobia, even though he was a presiding cardinal in Argentina, which has enacted marriage equality as well as the most progressive trans equality laws in the world. The world has changed for the better for the LGBT community so much these past few years; however, that I'm hopeful Pope Francis will do much better than appoint the next Paul McHugh as an adviser to torture our community.]]>Anti-discrimination Politics From 500 BCE Persia to 2013 Marylandtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28392952013-03-12T20:43:34-04:002013-05-12T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
Regarding masquerades, I have never been one to indulge, for one simple reason -- a mask is placed on a face which must be anchored in reality. If there is no reality there, the mask will float away. Before I transitioned, and was living what I felt was an existentially fraudulent life, putting on a woman's mask would have called attention to the unreality beneath. Today I am uncomfortable reconnecting to that sphere -- the memory of that anxiety is still too raw.
I bring up the Purim story because in Maryland we are finally moving a bill in the state legislature to ban discrimination against trans and gender non-conforming persons. We have built support over the seven years during which this bill has been introduced, a period that began in 2007 just before trans issues hit the national LGBT stage in force with the introduction of an Employment Nondiscrimination Act inclusive of trans persons. That experience kick-started the open debate about trans inclusion in the larger gay community, a debate which led last year to victories in the 11th circuit and the EEOC.
One particular facet of that support over the years has been the state's civil rights commission. This is not a new phenomenon; civil rights laws are often sparked into existence with the support of local commissions which have been tending to such matters for many years before legislation is even a possibility. That was true for our Montgomery County law in 2007, for instance, where our County Executive, Ike Leggett, who signed the legislation, had sat on the County Human Rights Commission twenty years earlier, his first appointed office in the county.
The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights has supported us each year, but this year, because of the appointment of two new members, orthodox religious believers, support for the bill was questioned. The appointment of these believers is indicative of the growing clout of the fundamentalist community over the years, even in Maryland, though it feels to me that their degree of influence has peaked. What became evident, particularly from testimony in opposition to the gender identity bill, was just how out-of-touch these people are, speaking of the trans community in terms redolent of the '50s and '60s.
I can discuss questions of human sexuality as they relate to Jewish tradition and Jewish law. One basic point that is raised is that since Jewish society was strictly sex-segregated for the past 2000 years, it should continue to be so. This isn't a particularly anti-trans position; rather, it is a generally anti-modernist, sexist one. Such a questioner has the sense that most trans persons are simply male cross-dressers, not understanding that not to be the case, nor knowing that a majority of those who identify as cross-dressers would transition if they were able. And, of course, it completely ignores the other half of the trans community, composed of transgender men. They are ignored out of willful ignorance, because they cannot be described as male predators; they are viewed by our opponents as female. This undermines the "trans woman as male sexual predator" theme, and is therefore almost invariably ignored.
This attitude is actually demeaning to the Jewish community. A large majority of Jewish residents of Maryland are not fundamentalist in any sense of the word, and would agree with none of these arguments. Judaism, being a highly decentralized system, deliberately allows a wide variation of beliefs, and few Jewish leaders would try to make a case in a secular legislature for the entire Jewish community, particularly one based on a very narrow reading of halacha, or Jewish law. More important, however, is the fact that Jewish law and tradition have a very progressive history, with an understanding of sex, and in particular, intersex conditions including transsexualism, that date to the Hellenistic period as written down in the Talmud. Those rabbis recognized a variety of human manifestations of intersex conditions, and even five hundred years earlier the prophet Isaiah wrote about the sarisim, or eunuchs, which included transsexual women, in deeply honorific terms, praising them above common men and women (Isaiah 56:4-5).
Such a culture, including responsa, or legal decisions, handed down in modern times in favor of trans women by orthodox rabbinic scholars, such as Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg is a far better representation of the Jewish social practice manifest in the phrase tikkun olam, or repairing of the world. Jewish tradition, similar to the American civil rights tradition, seeks to expand its embrace of all. The Maryland Commission, understanding the fundamental principles of the progress of civil rights in this country, reversed its position and stood with us, once again, in the Senate. We thank them and are proud to be a part of that tradition.]]>A First Step for Maryland's Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Acttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27830882013-03-01T22:56:24-05:002013-05-01T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/This week the effort to make Maryland the 17th state to provide comprehensive gender identity protections in employment, housing and public accommodations made its first public legislative appearance in Annapolis. Testimony in support of S.B. 449 was heard from over 40 proponents and about a dozen opponents in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, chaired by Sens. Brian Frosh and Lisa Gladden. The proponents' testimony was well-received, as reported in our local news outlets, and I left with the feeling that the legislators realized that the time had come to finish this civil rights job. After six previous attempts and the passage of city and county laws covering 47 percent of the state's population, it is time to cover the entire state and stake out Maryland's position as a civil rights leader. As one proponent said, "It's 2013. Really."
We are fortunate to be led in the Senate by passionate allies, Sens. Raskin and Madaleno, who spoke first and fielded some questions from the panel. Then came my turn:
Mr. Chairman, Madame Vice Chair and honorable committee members:
I'm Dr. Dana Beyer, Executive Director of Gender Rights Maryland, asking you to vote for S.B. 449, the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2013. It's a privilege to speak with you this afternoon, as it has been for many years now. But this year is different.
This year we are led by Gov. O'Malley, who signed the first such anti-discrimination bill in Maryland. We have the support of senior legislative leadership. We will present testimony from the lead sponsors of the three counties which have passed similar laws, the benefits accrued and the complete lack of untoward consequences that had been feared by some.
But this year is different because last year was historic. In December of 2011, President Obama proclaimed, and Secretary Clinton echoed, "The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to the United States commitment to promoting human rights."
That same month the 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, which covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama, next door to a state which, just last week, ratified the 13th Amendment, ruled that transgender persons are a protected class under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. And Howard County passed its gender identity law.
Two months later Baltimore County followed suit, joining Montgomery County from 2007 and Baltimore City from 2002. Then, in April, the EEOC ruled that trans persons are covered under the definition of sex discrimination. In May the president, coming out in support of marriage equality, memorably told us of that "brilliant, radically simple idea of America, that no matter who you are or what you look like, no matter whom you love or what God you worship, you can still pursue your own happiness." As a result, marriage equality was approved by Maryland voters on Nov. 6, clearing the way for this legislation.
One week earlier, the vice president had said, "Trans rights are the civil rights issue of our time." On Dec. 1 the American Psychiatric Association undid the classification of gender identity difference as a mental illness, finally freeing us from that unconscionable stigma based on outdated and unscientific prejudices.
As the president closed out the year, he told Time magazine in his "Person of the Year" interview, "One of the things that I'm very proud of during my first four years is I think I've helped to solidify this incredibly rapid transformation in people's attitudes around LGBT issues -- how we think about gays and lesbians and transgender persons."
Finally, last month, in his Second Inaugural, President Obama explained why we're here today, why we stand for full equality for all residents of our state, how our passion is grounded in the most fundamental of American ideals: "We the people declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall."
Forty-four years ago it was the trans community, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan, that kicked off the LGBT civil rights movement. I know: I was there. And what began there is now being brought to its culmination here, this year, as Maryland does its part to make this a more perfect union.
This year is different. This year the arc of the moral universe will bring justice to Maryland.
Dana Beyer, M.D.
Executive Director, Gender Rights Maryland
Feb. 26, 2013
Barring surprises (always a possibility in the political realm), we are hopeful that the bill will be voted out of committee next week and sent to the Senate floor. We have the votes we need, with 23 senators already committed as co-sponsors and 24 needed to pass.
I am very thankful to all those who contributed at this hearing, either in person or via written testimony, and those who have worked behind the scenes to bring us to this moment.]]>The Ethics of Gender Transitiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26664382013-02-12T15:11:47-05:002013-04-14T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/posted about my own transition and its impact on my family. I said that it's important to hear both sides of this story, particularly as the process of transition interacts with the evolution of the structure of the American family, marriage equality, and our understand of gender. This leads to fascinating debate on very many levels, from many perspectives.
Last week "The Ethicist" in The New York Times posted a question and response on this very issue. I'd like to say that preventing this pain and suffering is why I, and so many other activists, do our work -- so that the next generation can become themselves early enough in their lives that there will be no such collateral damage downstream. It's sobering for me to reflect on the reality that women like me, with my life experiences, will, in all likelihood, no longer exist in two generations. That's a good thing, on balance.
We should step back a moment and recognize that this column would never have been published a decade ago, let alone two. In that respect it marks significant cultural progress. Twenty years ago trans parents almost always got divorced, lost custody of and, many times, any access to their children. Until a decade ago divorce was a prerequisite for genital reconstruction. That seems silly today, with a majority of Americans in support of marriage equality, which is legal in nine states plus DC. But that change was part of the cultural shift away from defining women in strictly sexual terms, and accepting only one way of being a woman. When such surgery began fifty years ago in this country it was assumed trans women were transitioning simply to be able to have heterosexual sex with men. No other reason was even considered. That has now changed completely for the better.
The core issue for the trans community has been the columnist's comment, "Your sadness is tragic, but at least it's confined to yourself." This is something with which every adult trans person with a family I know has grappled. The best transitions are not easy, and I've had one of the best. Spouses and children must deal with the consequences, whether in a supportive or a hostile environment. I know no one who wished this social and personal trauma on her family. My exes are supportive, we still get along. My children have been very supportive, and very resilient. I do know, however, that none of them considers my transition the preferable outcome for themselves. From their own self-centered perspectives, life would have been (easier, happier, simpler . . .) had I not transitioned. That, however, is not a simple calculus, because a broken spouse and parent will do unintentional harm to the family as well. And that harm may include suicide and its sequelae. So our sadness, or more accurately, existential angst, is rarely confined to ourselves, even if it may appear that way from the outside.
We should recognize that children are far more resilient than we believe they are. Love, and honesty, go a very long way, even with severe social and personal stress. And thankfully we're mostly past all that Freudian nonsense about absent fathers and clinging or refrigerator mothers.
As an aside, it seems to me that The New York Times continues to struggle with trans issues. While they have Professor Jenny Boylan writing occasionally, and have done some wonderful magazine stories over the years, their reporting leaves much to be desired. And, clearly, there is no oversight on columns such as this one by Mr. Klosterman. I'm not one who believes that only experts in their particular little subspecialty should be speaking about their field, so I don't want to see only gender specialists respond to questions like this one. We need more generalists, and public intellectuals, as we had back in the 1940s-70s - people like George Orwell, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould and Christopher Lasch. Today it's easier than ever to bone up on one specific issue before commenting publicly. I wish Mr. Klosterman had taken the time to do so.
I hope people take from this that one can have a superficially successful and happy life, with a spouse, family and career, and still be completely miserable and want to kill oneself. The existential happiness under consideration here may seem abstract, but it's a fundamental aspect of being human. Socrates said, "Know thyself." Sometimes that knowing leads to pain and suffering. I work for the day when honesty and understanding precludes these situations from ever having to occur.]]>Dan Massey, Renaissance Man, Androgyne and Longtime LGBT Change Agent, Passes Ontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26069462013-02-05T21:15:00-05:002013-04-07T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
I have a hard time thinking of Dan as separate from his partner and wife, Alison Gardner. More than most coupes, they truly complemented one another, working synergistically to fulfill their mission. The culmination of their life's work, a book on the connection of sex, gender and spirituality, was recently completed. To outsiders Dan was the heavyweight intellectual of the couple, brooding in the background and writing manifestos while leaving the socializing to Alison. Knowing them well, however, I could sense that although there was a division of labor in many cases, they functioned far more often as a unit than not. It's hard to imagine Ali managing without him, but their profound spiritual beliefs allow her to keep him close by even now. I envy her that comfort.
Dan was a true intellectual thinker, a graduate of Harvard and MIT, a world expert in information technology, including artificial intelligence, mathematical linguistics, experimental psychology and metamathematics. There were times when I could picture this self-described queer fighter for sexual freedom sitting around a conference table with Frege, Hilbert, Gödel, Russell and Quine. I imagine that they would have been quite cool with him, and -- who knows? -- they might have even been willing to contribute to Sen. Baldwin's campaign at one of the many fundraisers that Dan and Alison hosted in their D.C. penthouse for the candidates and causes in which they believed.
Most important, however, was Dan's passionate advocacy over the years in support of social justice for all. Never afraid to be in the avant-garde, Dan and Alison were early and fervent supporters of the trans community in the D.C. region. Serving as a home base, feeding the troops, engaging in debate and never failing to keep the ball moving forward, they exemplify the meaning of the word "persevere." I think I know why President Obama used the word twice in his Barnard commencement address: He was thinking of couples like Dan and Alison and the others whom they've inspired. They are what community organizing is all about.
However, what separates them both from other activists for me was their willingness to be critical of movement leaders when they felt that the proper change was not being effected. All movements, and particularly those that spawn bureaucracies, have a tendency toward ossification. Dan often spoke his mind, in a respectful but firm manner, and somehow was able to stay actively in the mix. Many activists are quick to take offense, but Dan and Ali were able to push the envelope and survive the internecine wars in our community. Maybe it's because they were primarily accountable to their own immovable sense of equality rather than to any organization or person. And though they often had strong opinions and tried to proselytize when opportunities arose, they never demanded compliance and always left people room to be themselves and maintain their friendship.
They had a remarkable circle of friends, the kind about whom biographers often write when telling the life story of colorful historical figures. I was honored to be in attendance at Dan's surprise 70th birthday party five weeks ago, when he seemed a little rundown but was truly amazed to see his close friends turn out for this milestone. It was the best gift that Alison and their lovely children, Tiye and Ross, could have given him. Dan, a man who did not suffer fools or doctors, and particularly not foolish doctors, kept his own counsel on his health. By the time we discovered that he was terminally ill, there wasn't any pain or suffering. It seems fitting that he left this world as he had lived in it: doing it "his way, all the way."
We will miss you, Dan. May you rest in peace.]]>Remembering Dr. Leah Schaefer, the Sweet Singer-Turned-Psychiatrist Who Healed a Generation of Trans Womentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25691232013-01-30T20:38:33-05:002013-04-01T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/DSM-5, this past December.
I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to collaborate with her in the late '90s, when I was researching the link between fetal DES (diethylstilbestrol) exposure and transsexualism. The possibility intrigued her, and she supported my work on endocrine disruption before others in the profession were even willing to consider the possibility. She was professional and gracious, which fit with the description others had shared with me.
One of my earliest post-transition relationships was with a woman who knew Dr. Schaefer professionally, and it was clear from her stories that the trans community of New York felt blessed to have her as a counselor and general resource. At a time when most trans women had been excluded from society, receiving just a modicum of kindness would have seemed like a lucky thing. But Dr. Schaefer not only cared deeply for her patients; she offered them hope.
It's not easy today, even for those of us who lived through those decades, to remember the depth and brutality of the ostracism. For me it was even more intense because my professional colleagues were among the worst. I spent years combing the stacks of my university library and the libraries of the other Ivies whenever I got the chance, to learn about who I was. And everything I discovered in the psychiatric literature during the '70s and '80s was uniformly vile and hateful, until I happened across Drs. Harry Benjamin and Leah Schaefer.
It's hard to believe that physicians, including psychiatrists, could so totally lack compassion and understanding. In one respect, reading the work of Drs. Benjamin and Schaefer highlighted the contrast even more. How could these two be right and everyone else wrong? I won't comment on the humanity of the majority, but Dr. Schaefer certainly was a woman of compassion and loving kindness. She and her mentor were also scientists, however, and they refused to be overwhelmed by religious sensibilities and the pseudoscience known as Freudianism, which was the cultural consensus among psychiatrists during those years.
I had learned from the eminent Jewish writer and philosopher Elie Wiesel that all it took was a single human being to be witness to one's suffering to find sufficient hope to get through the worst that life can dish out. Certainly Professor Wiesel's experiences during the Shoah proved that point, and I discovered it to be true as well. Before I started medical school my witness was Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, the Tzitz Eliezer, Israel's leading bioethicist. He had ruled that trans women were to be welcomed into the Jewish community as women. This from a leading Orthodox rabbi, mind you, a fact that, to this day, drives some of the fundamentalist community insane with rage. However, it should be said that in traditional-Jewish-legal-reasoning mode he clarified his ruling to say that while he accepts women post-transition (b'dieved, in Talmud speak), he couldn't in good conscience encourage a pre-operative trans woman to undergo genital reconstruction (l'chatchilah, in Talmud speak). That would be such a waste of a perfectly good pair of testicles!
Once I got to medical school, however, all my behavioral science and psychiatry texts had nothing but the most demeaning and denigrating things to say about trans persons. All this while an affiliate hospital of the University of Pennsylvania system, Pennsylvania Hospital, was performing genital reconstruction on trans women. Fortunately we don't live in a totalitarian society, as Professor Wiesel did in the '30s in Central Europe, so opposing attitudes and behaviors could happily coexist. But I needed another witness to keep me moving forward, and that was Dr. Schaefer.
Dr. Schaefer went on to become a founding member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), now far larger and known as the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH). The first trans conference I ever attended was the HBIGDA meeting in New York in 1993, 10 years before I transitioned and joined the organization. Dr. Schaefer was president when I first met her at the conference, and she authored the first five versions of the Standards of Care, beginning in 1979. Today we use version 7, published in 2011.
In 1974 she published the very well-regarded tome Women and Sex, one of the first of its kind to document the full range of women's sexuality, an outgrowth of her Columbia University doctoral dissertation. And appropriately for a woman who has encouraged so many women to become themselves and fly, she was a professional singer and recording artist in her youth, heard on the radio as the lead of Leah and the Barries, and was in love with Johnny Mercer, known for "Moon River" and "That Old Black Magic." America certainly got talent with Leah Schaefer, who overcame the black magic of transphobia that was poisoning psychiatry and used her voice to liberate not only the trans community but her colleagues as well.
Listen to Dr. Leah Schaefer sing "Heather on the Hill":
]]>Obama's Second Inaugural Address and My Personal Journey From the Stonewall to the National Malltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25431972013-01-24T15:22:00-05:002013-03-26T05:12:01-04:00Dana Beyerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/
Standing on the Capitol grounds listening to Obama's second inaugural address, I heard the president say:
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall, just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
The president, 150 years after Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and 50 years after Dr. King's grand moment on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, named a Methodist church in upstate New York, a bridge in Alabama and a bar in Greenwich Village as way stations along America's road toward fully upholding the ideal that all are created equal. Not only did he highlight the unalterable link between the LGBT civil rights movement and both the women's and African-American civil rights movements, which has the potential to revise the way black and white Americans engage with the LGBT rights movement, but he alliteratively identified our quest for equal rights as gay and trans Americans as part of the fundamental quest for freedom that is America. I can't imagine any rhetorical device more powerful than that.
I am a veteran of language wars with black fellow activists in the progressive community. For years there have been arguments and debates over whether LGBT rights are truly civil rights or "merely" human rights. Personally, I have always believed that human rights trump civil rights, because we push for freedom and equality even in regions of the globe where there is nothing that could be considered "civil" society. The Declaration of Independence, which the president paraphrased, begins, "When in the course of human events," further emphasizing the precedence of human society over civil society. But I'm also aware that, at least in progressive circles, the term "civil rights" has a resonance that is unmatched in engaging allies today, particularly those who are African-American and for whom the experience of the '60s is a part of their soul, such as Washington Post editorial writer Eugene Robinson. When I'm able to tell my story in the language of the '60s (and in the language of Jewish history, which was often borrowed by the black community during the '60s and in centuries prior and used to remarkable effect, particularly when used poetically), I find that not only is support given but zeal develops that reminds me of those years. Ben Jealous and Julian Bond, the NAACP's current and former presidents, respectively, are wonderfully adept at this rhetorical technique.
The president's words, however, struck me to the core. Just as I became an accidental activist when I transitioned, I was an accidental participant in the Stonewall uprising when I stumbled upon the chaos when I was trying to attend a concert at the Village Vanguard on the night of June 28, 1969. Having been there -- confused, panicked, hiding my true self from my girlfriend, fearful of exposure yet drawn to this eruption of anger from my community -- I couldn't help but reflect on those days as I listened to the second inaugural address of an African-American president of the United States nearly 44 years later. I know this sounds hackneyed, but the uplifting spirit of those words, particularly for those of us who've fought for civil and women's rights, is simply indescribable.
It has been noted that the president did not use the word "transgender." I noticed that, too, but I paid it little mind. I know that not only has the president done a remarkable amount of good for trans people (in some cases more sweepingly than for cis gay people), we were also there at Stonewall. We have had disputes over who cast the first stone at the bar, but what is not in dispute is that trans women and gender-transgressive drag queens played an integral part, perhaps even a leading role, in the uprising. So when the president links Stonewall with Selma (which also happens to be my mother's name) and Seneca Falls, I feel that he's speaking to me as well as all my gay friends and allies.
Old barriers are falling, and new alliances are being formed. This inaugural address was the first since 1964 that I would call "liberal-minded." It's about time. As an adolescent I had hoped, even expected, to grow up in an increasingly progressive society. That hope was not realized, but I am beginning to believe that my children will fare far better in that respect than I did. And there is nothing more satisfying to a liberal-minded parent than that.]]>
This was the hospital when I served there, with the instruments hanging on the wall. No, I'm kidding, but the surgical tools were nearly as primitive and limited as that strip of wrenches which did hang on the operating room wall.
A recent episode of Grey's Anatomy showcased a similar situation with Syrian physicians emulating the battlefield conditions under which they must operate in their civil war. Today, this is the new hospital in the photo below, providing much higher quality care with better equipment and routinely staffed with trained personnel. 
Mr. Chairman, Madame Vice Chair and honorable committee members:
There were times when I could picture this self-described queer fighter for sexual freedom sitting around a conference table with Frege, Hilbert, Gödel, Russell and Quine. I imagine that they would have been quite cool with him, and -- who knows? -- they might have even been willing to contribute to Sen. Baldwin's campaign at one of the many fundraisers that Dan and Alison hosted in their D.C. penthouse for the candidates and causes in which they believed.