July 4, 2011

We, the transsexual people, hold these truths to be self evident.

We are an independent and distinctly different people who were born of a mind in contrast with our physical bodies.  We have a neurobiological imperative to seek a congruence of mind and body, and through our transition we relentlessly pursue the remedy and correction of our birth defect through hormonal and other therapies and sex reassignment and other surgeries.

It is this quest for congruence and wholeness that makes us who we are, who we must be, and that which drives us to do what we must do to attain what we seek.

Today we announce our Independence, Secession and Liberation from our captivity as an assimilated people who have been subject to the erasure of our identities, the silencing of our voices and the rendering of us as invisible and powerless in the service of a group of people collectively called Transgender.

And also we announce our Independence, Secession and Liberation from our subjugation as less than equal partners in a coalition known as Lesbian Gay, Bisexual, Transgender  (L G B T) who have also endeavored to erase our identities, silence our voices and render us as invisible and powerless.

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A Declaration of Independence, Secession & Liberation from The Dictatorship of the Transgender Variant Umbrella

As transsexuals, our identities have been stolen, co-opted and our legitimacy as persons with a bona fide medical condition used in furthering the agenda of a coalition of peoples who want to legalize the change of “gender” of male-bodied women once known as crossdressers, transvestites, drag queens, ladyboys, shemales, etc. and have them declared to be legally and fully female.   They want to equivocate a change of gender as being identical to a change of sex.

Laws have been made in many jurisdictions due to the testimony of post-operative transsexuals about the need for protective legislation to help those who are in a process of medical transition toward sex reassignment surgery.   What is not being testified to is the number of persons seeking legal status who have no intention of ever completing a process of sex reassignment- and as such are seeking perpetual transition protection.   They seek changes in law to make change of gender no different legally than the change of sex that transsexuals undergo to become female by body and by sex– where transgender ‘women’ don’t want to have any surgery and wish to retain maleness by sex, by sexual anatomy and male sexual and reproductive functions.

But transsexuals and their “medical condition” stand in the way of those who have no intention to change sex.  To obtain hormonal therapy and surgery requires a diagnosis and to the American Psychiatric Association.   in 1973 this led to the listing of transsexual as a mental disorder in the Daignostic and Statistical Manual III –  as if we had a pathological desire for self mutilation. By no small coincidence that same year, lesbian and gay professionals had succeeded in having homosexuality removed from that same list of mental disorders– thereby declaring that to be lesbian or gay is “normal”.

What the transgender advocates want to do and have been trying to do is to depathologize gender variance and make it to be normal.  That is to say that all humans have this “bigender” potential and that to suppress it or confine a person to one gender (sex) of a two gender (sex) binary is not natural but is instead confining and restrictive.

But it is against the best interest of those who wish to normalize transgender as identity to allow the medical diagnosis and treatment of transsexuals.  If gender expression and fluidity are free and “normal”, then surgery is not required for all those who wish to change gender role. and if it is unnnecesary for all who are transgender,  then maybe the medical transition of transsexuals is not really necessary, either.

They believe that all who are gender variant should be free to express gender without diagnosis or having to have costly, risky , invasive and potentially dangerous medical procedures to bring about a congruence of mind and body.  Since “sex” in their view is between the legs only and “gender” between the ears, all that has to be done is convince the transsexuals that they only have to change their concept of gender and role  and should learn to be content with whatever their anatomy was at birth.

To that end, “Transgender” inclusion has sought to erase the word transsexual.  At first the Transgender directorate colonized “transsexuals” under the hegemony of their expanding sphere of influence labeled the “Umbrella”.   Then someone decided that all colonized and assimilated people were to be collectively unified under the designated label of “trangender”.

It was this T and not the Transsexual T that was lobbied as the fourth party of inclusion in the new expanded league coalition of four teams, the L G B T.  Everyone who was not included in the Transgender Confederation, the members of the other three parties seemed to be ready willing and eager to embrace the new term as part of the expanding mantra of L G B T… “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender”.   L G B persons who had never used the word or had any regard for “transsexual” people found the word suffix of “gender” to be much friendlier than that of “sexual”.   But then again, they weren’t calling themselves “homosexual”, and no one was trying to force the friendlier word “homogender” on them,  either and no one yet had found a friendlier term for “bisexual”.

But the plan to abolish the word transsexual was set in motion.

A group caled the Transexual Menace was created not to promote the identity of transsexuals, but to assimilate  them into the L G B Transgender World order. They chose to give themselves the name “transexual” while removing an S in order to demedicalize or depathologize it as a diagnosis.  But their intention was to usurp transsexual identity and equivocate transgender as trsnssexual and change of gender as the same as change of sex.

The Seattle Gay News never used the word transsexual regularly in its Calendar pages until 1993 and it did use the word dozens of times each week until 2006.   Then suddenly the word disappeared almost totally and at the exact same time the leading “transgender” organization in Seattle, the Ingersoll Gender Center also abandoned use of the word.

In the Orwellian Newspeak of the book, 1984.   If you can successfully erase a word then people cannot conceive of opposition to collective mindthought.  That is, if the word transsexual is erased or deemed unpopular, then no one would want to identify with such a word.  The once popular word, transvestite was erased this way and it too was replaced by transgender.

Today there have been oxymoronic constructions of words used as a substitute for sex reassignment  surgery including gender “reassignment”, “affirming” or “confirming” surgery.  Oxymoronic because it is a sex change and not a gender change operation–  as surgery is performed on sex organs, primary and secondary sex characteristics, and not on “gender” organs.    But this kind of neologism extends further to cosmetic surgery.  Millions of natal females have had cosmetic surgery to enhance their appearance. But when trasnssexual and transgender women have it done it has been gender blenderized into “facial feminization”– as if whatever the other women were having done was something else.

Dr. Walter Bockting head of WPATH beleievs that transgender people collectively have a sexuality apart from those male or female which he calls “transgender sexuality”– so he has now created the oxymoron of “transgendersexual”.  But the sexuality of transsexuals, transgender and gender variant  people is still based on the sex organs brought in- and ends up being little different from conventional heterosexual or gay (lesbian) sex.

…”I think that there’s a need to affirm transgender identity and sexuality… transgenderism was all about men spending time as women, or men becoming women, and women becoming men. Since the 1990s we recognize that transgender people are different from both men and women, they have their own identity, and MTFs are not so much trying to make a transition from male sexuality to female sexuality, but rather are coming out and exercising their transgender sexuality. We need to increase our understanding of how transgender people are different from both men and women, and how their sexuality differs from both male and female sexuality….

… They have their own fantasies, their own behaviors, distinct from what non-transgender women and men experience.”

I AM NOT A TRANSGENDERSEXUAL! …NO MATTER WHAT MY PHYSICAL, GENETIC & BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES ARE, THEY DO NOT MAKE ME SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN, SOMETHING “OTHER” THAN A WOMAN. I DID TRANSITION TO FEMALE SEXUALITY- AND IT IS MY SEXUALITY– AND WHAT MAKES YOU THINK MY FANTASIES AND BEHAVIOR IS DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER WOMAN?

“Even transsexuals who want to change as much as possible, become a woman as much as possible, even they are recognizing that they are gender queer, like a bi-gender person is….

… We are now recognizing that a MTF transsexual is not simply a woman, or woman may not be the best way to describe that person’s experience, but instead realize that this person is transgender. That person probably has more in common with a bi-gender person.”

SORRY, I AM A WOMAN, SIMPLY A WOMAN, AND A WOMAN OF TRANSSEXUAL EXPERIENCE & HISTORY, BUT IT IS HISTORY!.

I AM NOT TRANSSEXUAL “INSTEAD” OF BEING A WOMAN.

I AM NOT TRANSGENDER INSTEAD OF BEING TRANSSEXUAL

I HAVE NEVER BEEN GENDER QUEER OR BI-GENDER AND I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH THEM!..

A major faction of the transgender dictatorship seeks the deconstruction of the dichotomy of human sexuality and abolish the sex binary of male and female to suit a minute portion of the population and to create a legal classification of persons other than female or male that some call a third gender (sex), including transgender, genderqueer, bigender, gender neutral, gender fluid, polygender, etc.  They would like to desegregate single sex-only spaces and establish gender neutral or multigender restrooms, locker rooms, schools, jails, etc. where all must be allowed in.

Another group wants to legalize and equivocate momentary gender expression as equivalent to permanent sexual identity, particularly among those once known as crossdressers, drag queens and transvestites.  These persons primarily describe themselves as belonging to their birth sex but occasionally they “express” as the other sex.   And when currently expressing a different “gender” (sex) they want the legal right to enter sex segregated spaces of that expression regardless of their primary sexual identity.

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Origin of Bisexual & Transgender Inclusion

Why Were Bisexuals & Transgender People Included in L G B T?

Bisexuals were not included into G & L before 1989.

Before then they were told either to go away & come back when they make up their minds to be “gay” (lesbian) or to go away & never come back at alI!

I rode in a Long Beach, California Pride Parade in 1988.

Marchers were yelling,  “2, 4, 6, 8…    1 in 8, We’re not all straight!”

No one knew how many L & G people there were, and everyone wanted to believe that in major cities that they were 1 in 10 (10%)1 in 8 (12.5%) or even 1 in 6 (16.67%).

A study was done around that time, but the results were disheartening. They could not find any data to show that gay men were any more than 3% of all men and lesbians 1% of women.

Sociologists who study the nature of political power, would say that it is difficult for any minority group to demand a share of power through representation when such a group is less than 10%. Populations in the U.S. of persons of African, Hispanic and Asian heritage have reached that 10% threshold nationally and therefore have a substantial stake in participation in power and authority, particularly in city councils and legislative bodies of 5 to 9 members where 10% could mean at least one seat.

But a 1%- 3% share is not enough to get a piece of most power pies.

20 years after Stonewall, the community was in the midst of the early AIDS epidemic that would take its toll on a generation of gay men.

There seemed to be no way to increase numbers beyond the 3%, until the community began to look at dis-included people, and the largest of possibilities was bisexual. But how many bisexuals were there and how many would be willing to return to a community where they had not been made welcome?

A recent study suggests that bisexuals slightly outnumber gays and lesbians in the adult population (1.8% to 1.7%), so that in theory, if you could bring bisexuals back, then you could perhaps double the percentage of L+ G + B. The inclusion of bisexuals was a begrudged one, with not much of a welcome mat and bisexuals receiving a third class status of three , and no one wanted them to mention any heterosexual relationships. The Gay Softball League in 1977 allowed heterosexual players on their teams, but bisexual players were allowed and counted as “straight” toward a quota limit on straight players even in 2011.

And bisexuals were still being seen as a major AIDS vector that brought AIDS as a “gay men’s disease” and had it cross over to women and later to heterosexual men.

But by 1994, it would appear that even at an optimum inclusion level that the “verified” (countable) GLB population was not more then 3.5%, still not enough to demand a seat at the table.

I am sure that sincere people–  gays, lesbians and bisexuals were looking for a way to get the numbers up and turned to the most rooted yet ostracized group in the community, drag queens. Drag queens were seen as both the highlight and the bane of community pride celebrations.. But they were also often the partners of so many gay men- and many of them were devoted to charity, fundraising and community service at a time when the community was in crisis.

Queer theory and queer identity politics made it important to include these people as the same sex partners of men. This became confounded when folks began to see the entire LGB community as vulnerable to a charge of “gender transgression” or “nonconformity” and here was the opportunity to include mass numbers of gender outlaws and genderqueers who defy the “gender binary” and rebel against sociocultural gender roles.

And nothing was more visibly and apparently queer than a “male-bodied woman”– “transgender” women who wanted to keep their penises and be the queer sexual partners of the gay men who wanted them for male sexuality– for gay sex.   The problem was that if you designate them as “women” is the sexual partnership now a heterosexual one?  Is a person who once identified as a gay man and as a drag queen, going to buy a label of a full time, male bodied but heterosexual woman?

Ru Paul is  the epitome of what some regard as drag “divas”  “She” has no problem with people who use female pronouns in regards to “her”.  But the original definition of “drag” and the original code in the art of female impersonation put forth the philosophy that the performer who expresses as female is doing so for the show only and traditionally at the end of the show the wig comes off to show that this was truly a man performing his art.  But drag queen performers by definition are defined as male and since Ru Paul has not been seeking sex reassignment surgery, it is apparent that “she” brings a penis and testicles to a sexual relationship.  If you bring male anatomy and sexuality to a sexual relationship with Ru, it will look like “gay” sex.  If you are sexually, anatomically female, it would look like heterosexuality.

Drag queens may be pleased with their status and L G B T inclusion, but a large percentage of them, if not the majority do not identify as female by sex, and many are only “expressing” gender as female on an occasional or part-time basis..   To include them as “transgender” is to have to invent a special  legal category of  “rights of gender expression” that some will try to equivocate as being the same as “gender identity”.  But much of the existence of drag queens is in a homosocial world of gay men.  They are in fact the only “women” among gay men.   Are they supposed to accept and permanently live as women when other women are mostly strangers to their world?

Then there were another larger group of male-bodied women that were not interested in gay sex. They had once been called heterosexual transvestites, crossdressers who like sexual relations with women while dressed. But why would they want to be in the gay community?  So someone thought the way was to “queer identify” them and call them “transgender lesbians” who as women could have sex with other women!  But is a person who once identified as male-bodied, heterosexual man who expressed a femme side when dressed want to be known forever as a male-bodied lesbian?

Most of them do not identify as women and they would require the legal sanctioning of gender expression.  But what are they doing in L G B T?   They are not interested in sex with gay men and the lesbians don’t want anything to do with male-bodied women.   They may come to identify themselves as women and even as male-bodied lesbians, but the lesbian community is not going to offer them validation of their womanhood or the sex partners they seek.  But are they really willing to give up a male identity and the associated power and privilege for what is at best a peripheral membership as a nominally “queer” male-bodied lesbian?

Virginia (Charles) Prince was the primary promoter of transvestism as an identity and lifestyle choice preferable and superior to being transsexual. “He” had coined the term “femmiphilia” as “lovers of the feminine” to explain how men could be men and yet express a feminine side.   As transvestites and men they expressed a heterosexual interest in sex with women while dressed as women.  As early as the mid 1970s, Prince had pondered the notion of the “transgenderist”  as the person who dresses and lives full time as a woman but does not have or want sex reassignment surgery.  As “she” grew older, Prince became an enigma.  While denying that transvestites want to be women and that they want to maintain a male identity, Virginia is said to have had some kind of surgery, which in effect could have had “her” expelled from the femmiphile organizations she founded.

And what of those former drag queens and crossdressers who want to be women, but only part-time, occasionally, or infrequently?    How do you identify by gender expression rather than sexual identity?  It is not surprising that in spite of community inclusion, a large percentage of crossdressers and drag queens refused to identify as being female or even being transgender.

Of course the lesbian community never bought into this new “lesbian” identity.

Lesbians, mostly since Janice Raymond’s “Transsexual Empire” were having enough difficulty with post-operative transsexual women. Some lesbians were sympathetic to the idea of post-operative transsexual inclusion, even at the Apartheid Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

But the new Gay World Order was bringing a massive influx of these former labeled transvestites as “new women” and “instant Lesbians” and Lesbians fearing being overrun by the invasion of “rapists in sheep’s clothing”– and they then took efforts to exclude all who were not “womyn-born womyn, not being able to tell transsexual from transgender women without an inspection.

And the former crossdressers were going have to find their female sex partners somewhere else.

Transmen are also face a dilemma in that many lesbians are more willing to include them as “womyn-born-womyn” than they are willing to accept transsexual lesbians.  This is because so many transmen and their female partners had once both defined as lesbians and as a lesbian couple who are now seen as heterosexual-  and both had once felt ostracized, he as a traitor to lesbians as a butch who has gone too far, and she as a dyke who has suddenly gone “straight”.  But does acceptance among “womyn” invalidate their identities as men and are they going to find a female partner who is heterosexual, does not have a history of identification as a lesbian and will she see her partner as a man in full and not some fancy kind of butch dyke?

With the state of the art of surgery not being sufficient for most transmen to create a fully functioning penis, most transmen have chosen to not have this kind of surgery until the results are improved– and have chose to have other surgeries including hysterectomy and chest surgery foremost instead.  But this makes sexuality and relationships problematic for those heterosexual women who have come to expect that sex with a man would involve his penis.And if this lack of available surgery and the excessive cost plus other social difficulties weigh down on the mind of a transman and would he be willing to surrender his efforts at becoming a man in full to settle for a less burdensome and less demanding identity as a genderqueer person?

Transmen are thereby left with finding women who accept them as they are and that may mean that they may have to convert a lesbian-identified woman to accept them as male and their relationship as heterosexual.  But there is always the thought that if technology or genetic engineering ever creates a fully functioning penis– that this is more than what some female partners of transmen are prepared to deal with.

And strangely some transmen and their female partners, who as couples had once both identified as lesbians began to be included by lesbians at MWMF and other “safe” women spaces as womyn-born-womyn, with the transmen perhaps as womyn-born-myn.  The transmen who accepted the invitation, had to swallow their dignity and look the other way while they were being misgendered, perhaps as a butch who had gone too far who was now a “traitor” to lesbians.

Some Lesbians came to accept the inclusion of all transsexual and transgender women, but only as “transgender” and not as a real woman or lesbian–and only allowing the “woman” to associate only with her “own” kind, the mostly male-bodied denizens of the gender variant zoo, including genderqueers, transgenders, drag queens, etc. and to stay far away from the real lesbians!

Ultimately bisexual inclusion was a proposition that could increase the numbers of people identified as gay and lesbian. But transgender inclusion was never really meant for transsexuals.

It was mostly a gay-directed attempt to retain a larger number of male-bodied women by men who like male bodies– or a crude attempt to increase the “queer-identified” to queerify by granting the lesbian sex fantasies of crossdressers.

This was against the will of the lesbian community and it ultimately resulted in the discrimination excluding all labeled as transgender women, even against those transsexuals who became women congruent in body and mind, those who had the greatest stake in identifying as women, and the ones most entitled to lesbian acceptance and inclusion of them as real women and even as real lesbians.

Genderqueer

The problem with those who wish to defy and deny the binary by those who define themselves as 3rd gender, transgender, bigender, genderqueer, genderfluid, polygendeer, etc.  is that regardless of their non-binary identification, they still bring binary sexual anatomy to sexual relations and they tend to select partners on that basis.

Simply put, Leslie Feinberg, born female by sex has assumed the mantle of transgender as genderqueer and eschews conventional pronouns like he, she, his her and instead wants pronouns like ze and hir. But by not having sex reassignment surgery, “ze” brings into a human sexual relationship a preponderantly “female” body.  “Ze” is not having sex with a penis and is not denying the use of hir vagina and clitoris.   “Ze” has chosen a wife and partner who appears to be unremarkably female and binary and I suspect that their sexual relationship resembles that of a lesbian couple

Kate Bornstein had sex reassignment surgery 25 years ago and has lived to regret it.  “Ze” has also taken up the mantle of the “3rd Gender” and also wants to be addressed with gender neutral pronouns. But  “ze” has kept the female name Kate, and has continued to present “en femme”, “ze” says as a matter of self-defense against those who would do hate violence against  “hir”.   But “ze” has not expressed an interest in male “reconstructive” surgery and continues on as a sexual being bringing a preponderantly “female” body to sexual relations.  And like Leslie Feinberg, ze has chosen a partner who is unremarkably female and binary and their relationship appears to be lesbian.

Thomas Beatty, a transman became notorious and nationally famous as the “Pregnant Man”, although he was not the first ever to become one.    This stretches self-identification to the limits of absurdity.   It is readily understood why some people would want to become parents before transitioning, as it maybe the last opportunity they have before engaging in a transitional process that may terminate their reproductive capacity.   But no one knows of the uncertain risk of a transman who has been on testosterone for any length of time and what harm it could do to an ensuing pregnancy.   But in any case he will have to see an obstetrician/ gynecologist (a woman’s doctor) and if he goes to a hospital he will get to stay in the women’s obstetrics ward with all those binary-adhering “mothers”.

I had a friend once who was a transman.  He “detransitioned” when He fell in love with a man that he wanted to marry as a woman.  They were engaged.  Their relationship ended when “she” discovered his stash of “kiddie porn” and he had been violent towards “her” and “she” had him arrested.  So “she” re-transitioned back to male.  And then “he” discovered “he” was pregnant!  Now he could have gone the route of Thomas Beatty or he could have use a  “man’s right to an abortion” (actually a woman’s right) to terminate the pregnancy fathered by a pedophile.  But at last word “she” had decided to carry the baby to term.

But like the facetious “man’s right to an abortion”, how did we ever get to where it was OK for a man have his wife artificially impregnate him with a turkey baster through “his” vagina into his uterus so that he could carry the child that she could not?  For Thomas Beatty, it was such a noble, chivalrous, manly thing for him to do. and then he could show off his ever expanding belly and flat male chest!

The Bisexual Inclusion around 1990 and Transgender Inclusion and  Revolution of the mid 1990s can be seen as an attempt to expand the scope, power and influence of the collective “community” by creating a broad coalition of sexual minorities.  In a sense all sexual minorities can be read as transgressors of gender to the extent that queer-identified are not doing what is expected of them as men and women.

What was problematic with this kind of inclusion is that it attempts to both queerify and equivocate all forms of differential sexuality, yet champion a wide range of diversity.  You cannot destroy the binary while attempting to shoehorn everyone under the transgender umbrella.  Bodies and human sexuality is essentially binary and even attempts at defining transgender depend upon binary terms to explain it.

Bisexuals are only accepted and included and in L G B T when they exhibit or show their “queer” sexuality and not any “straight” inclinations.  Lesbians have excluded bisexual women in order to preserve ideological lesbian “purity of the revolution”.

To be trans- “sexual” is to change sex.  And the change of our sexuality is the last word in our revolution and the last word in our transition  that did not begin and end with the  change of a gender role.  A transsexual journey is a journey on the road to happiness through the attainment of a congruence of mind and body.  Transsexuals will settle for nothing less than congruence.

We terminate our membership in our sex of birth and end our ability to function in that sexuality and instead have enabled our sexuality as the sex we have transitioned to.

“Sexual Identity” is whether you agree or disagree that you are a member of the assigned sex and whether or not you accept the sexuality and the sexual and reproductive role of that sex.

Postoperative  transsexuals who are heterosexual  are lost in their incorporation and inclusion in  L G B T.  They are not interested in having sex with gay men.   Gay men regard them as traitors who denied their being “gay”. And they are not interested in lesbians, many who don’t accept or regard them as real women anyway.

Those transsexuals who are lesbian don’t find themselves invited in or affirmed by Lesbian separatists.. They certainly don’t want sex with gay men- but find that most lesbians are only willing to accept them as “transgender” women if they accept them as women at all–  and they find themselves told to go be with the other “male-bodied” gender variants and stay away from the “womyn-born-womyn”!

Transsexual women had been vilified and purged by lesbian separatists from women’s spaces since the 1970s and expelled from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. And by gays who saw them as traitors to gay men. Some lesbians were inviting transmen in –where they and/or their partners had once defined themselves as lesbians.  So when Transgender  people were invited I kept looking for the apology, the invitation or the “Welcome Sign” for me, a transsexual lesbian who was distinctly a victim of discrimination by lesbians and gays for having had sex reassignment surgery. To this day, I still don’t know what kind of “transgender” women they had in mind to invite. Even some lesbians would be willing to surrender their lesbian identity and partner with a transman rather than be with a lesbian transsexual.

At best, we have been regarded as “separate but equal” and told to go be with our own kind in our own T room as if all gender variants belonged together, transsexual, transgender, drag queen & crossdresser, which would be a fine political coalition- but the Lesbians have effectively locked us out of the “L” room and none of them or any gays are willing to fight the Janice Raymond- born Separatist Apartheid.

To be trans- “gender”  is to change gender role.  Gender is a sociocultural role construct that is a cluster of roles played that conform to the societal expectations of behavior and identity by those sexually assigned.female or male.  Change of gender is the last word in the transition of those whose journeys stop– ending midway to becoming unified in body and mind.

Transgender people are willing to settle for less than what transsexuals are seeking.

“Gender Identity” is whether or not one accepts the associated gender roles that are societal expectations for those persons assigned a given sex.   While there many be an infinite number of gender role possibilities that are presented as a choice by gender, it is indeed most likely that other than in the strictest biological, reproductive or physical sense, that there should be very little of human endeavors that cannot be accomplished by persons of either sex.

To accept sexuality as a male or female by sex  or to accept a cluster of gender roles assigned to a given sex is to subscribe to the gender binary of male and female.  But despite the infinite gender role possibilities, the fact is that with rare exception among people who are intersex– most people who are sexual beings bring into relationships only one set of sexual apparatus and engage  in the sexuality of that set regardless of whether there is a confirming or congruent sexual (gender) identity.

And 99+% of the people on earth accept their binary role all though they may indeed push the boundary of arbitrary cultural gender role expectations, that is they still want to be male or female.  The 3rd gender or genderqueer identified people are not going to convince 6 billion people on this planet to overturn the gender binary for the sake of a minute few.

The time has come for the campaign of hatred by the Phallocentric Pharaohs of the Transgender Dictatorship to cease there vitriolic hate of transsexual women because of their medical need to transition to become congruent in mind and body.  They must stop calling us “elitists’, “separatists”, gender essentialists, the Transsexual Taliban or even racist like WWBT (White Women Born Transsexual) as if no Black woman in her right mind including Janet Mack or Ashley Love would ever identify as transsexual rather than transgender.

They disparage the quality of our surgery as if we have been maimed, scarred or butchered. They suffer extreme castration anxiety at the thought of losing their male gentalia as a source of pleasure that they are so very much attached to.  They decry us for having fake, plastic, makeshift vaginas made from altered, whacked, hacked or folded penises as if we were no different from them as male bodied gender variants — those who continue to use their penises and engage in male sexuality in the guise of womanhood. And they deride us because we don’t menstruate, or don’t have a uterus for pregnancy. But our vaginas are functional and our pleasure is enhanced and our female sexuality is enabled. They think our fake vaginas are inferior to their anuses as substitute vaginas. They think their penises are better than our clitorises. But they still want to be regarded as women.  But they are not the same sex we are. All I ever wanted to be was a woman, nothing but a woman and a female bodied one at that.   And that is what I became.

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Origins of this Declaration

I posted an original Facebook essay on August 25, 2010 entitled The Declaration.

It was the culmination of my three years of effort and of frustration in Seattle trying to connect to the new L G B T (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community, including the new lesbian and transgender communities,  communities I had not known and had not been involved in for almost 20 years of exile after my ejection from the Womanspace, the Lesbian Community and from my job as a counseling intern in The Center (Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center) Garden Grove, California in 1988.

It was a also a peak of my effort on Facebook begun in February 2010 of my advocacy on a national and international basis to state the collective grievances of transsexual, intersex amd transgender people toward an often indifferent  L G B T community where we have been included as much less than equal partners in a coalition of sexual minorities  where our voices were never heard, our views never represented in organizations where we can never lead.

This was not a Declaration of Independence.   But it was listing of grievances that would be the grounds for secession if unanswered.  In 1776, when the American colonies revolted against British rule and declared their independence, they were out of patience.  They were done trying.

On August 25, 2010, we were not done trying with L G B T!

I was trying to promote a  2 T & I inclusion,  a full inclusion of transsexual, intersex and transgender people as full and equal partners to those Lesbian Gay & Bisexual allies who would listen.

When we filed for divorce from England in 1776,

We did not “try” again! We were done trying!

We are not done trying with L G B T yet!!

But if we are never going to be regarded or treated as equals.

Then if at last we do not succeed… Divorce is inevitable!!!

At the end of The Declaration I state:

If at first you don’t succeed,  Try try again!

If at last you don’t succeed,  Secede! Secede! Secede!

But Now… The trying time is over!

The time for Independence, Secession & Liberation for Transsexuals is Now!

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The Declaration of Independence, Secession & Liberation from the Gay Mindset Dominated Dictatorship of L G B T

This is a message addressed to the collective community known as Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender

And also to the Gay-centric organizations that have excluded transsexual and transgender people from their boards or kept us as mere tokens in our representation without power and influence. Accoding to eQualityGiving these national organizations have 725 Board members with only 20, less than 3% trans representation, when a recent survey suggested that collectively that transsexual and transgender people may be 8-10% of L G B T. And of course in these non-trans specific organizations we can almost never lead.

These organizations have others who speak for us, label us, act for us  and include us without our permission.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

ALCU LGBT & AIDS project, Center link, COLAGE, Council of Global Equality, Equality Forum,l Family Equality Council, Freedom to Marry,Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute,Ground Spark, Immigation Equality, In the Life Media, Lambda Legal Defense, Log Cabin Republicans, MAP, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, SLDN, SAGE, The Trevor Project, The Williams Institute

All the above listed national LGBT organizations have 0 transsexual or transgender members.

And most other organizations have only 1 or 2 members who are trans-identified.

Jennifer Finney Boylan became the first to join GLAAD as 1 o f 22,

Marsha Botzer of NGLTF (The Task Force) as 1 of 25.

Meghan Stabler of HRC is 1 of 49

Kimberly Reed as a new 1 of 24 at GLSEN

Julie Nemecek as 1 of 21 at PFLAG

But Boylan, Botzer  and others like Autumn Sandeen identify only as Transgender and not as Transsexual, yet they are supposed to be representing us.  But how can they represent us?

Because she disagrees with me, Jennifer Boylan has deleted me from her friends list!

And there are also organizations that have erased the word Transsexual from their names and declare us all to be Transgender.   Including NCTE, IFGE, WPATH, TG Michigan, Transgender Law Center,

We Must Fight For Our Future, For Transexual Rights Now! Because the Future is Now!

I have always believed in the inclusion of transsexual people in a unified sexual minorities coalition  with lesbians, gays and bisexuals, as people who share a common struggle for our Human Rights, Equal Rights, and Civil Rights where we are all discriminated against on the basis of our sexual orientation and sexual identities. Inclusion in LGBT implies that we are full and equal partners as members of one of four separate groups, yet no one recognizes how pluralistic we are and that lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals express sexual diversity.

But we are not full and equal partners in LGBT, We are so much of an afterthought, that we are not even regarded as fourth class in a coalition of four. Many organizations, groups and media still call themselves Gay only, as in the expressions, “Gay” Community, Rights, Gay Marriage or by those who were fighting against Gay Bullying and Suicide.    Over time some evolved to become Gay & Lesbian as in the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation or the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. About 1990, Bisexuals, once shunned and excluded, were now included in “L G B”. And the community cry out was “Les-Bi-Gay” Rights Now!

But Transgender inclusion, which began in the mid 1990s has not been universal.

And the new umbrella of Transgender left people wondering just who was inviting who in. Drag queens, long beloved and hated by Gays were invited in as were crossdressers– as the new TG majority.

But we are underrepresented and do not have a real voice in LGBT., We barely have a voice and we certainly don’t have the power or influence in these organizations, since apparently we can almost never lead an LGBT organization.. And in the fight for our rights as long as we accepted only in this tiny minority position– it will always be Gay 1st, Lesbian 2nd, Bisexual 3rd– Rights Now and Transsexual & Transgender Rights, later.

We may not ever be able to achieve a national non-discrimination law in our behalf as long as we remain under-represented.. We have had more success and more power in changing state and local laws. But the only way it will get any better is for us to demand real representation in LGBT and keep on demanding until we get our numbers of our people to represent and speak for us. If those organizations who don’t have us on Board, don’t make an effort to bring us on Board, then we should be protesting or boycotting these organizations until they do. If in the end they still don’t let us in and let us have our fair share of the power to act in our interests, then all we can do is separate or secede from L G B… But they don’t think were strong enough and they think we’re so dependent on the kindness of less than perfect strangers that we won’t ever leave.

But the time for Transsexual Rights is Now, today!  And Now we have to go it alone. But if we have real allies among the L G & B, we need to find them fast, form a new coalition, one where we can be never ess than full and equal partners, where we can be the lead in T I  & B L G… We need to fight for our own future.   Because our future is Now!

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THE DECLARATION OF TRANSSEXUAL INDEPENDENCE, SECESSION & LIBERATION FROM THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE L G B TRANSGENDER UMBRELLA  JULY 4, 2011

Transsexual World Empowerment Now!

We hold these truths to be self evident

Human Rights, Civil Rights, Equal Rights Are For Everyone!

Homeless People Included!*

Not just for Straight White Men,

Not just for Lesbians, Gays & Bisexuals & Transgender People

For Transsexual &  Intersex People!

We are not the Last Words in Your Revolution!

We are not an afterthought for your generosity in victory

We refuse to depend upon the kindness of less than perfect strangers!

We are not subservient to Your Dreams

And you will not defer and delay Our Dreams

So that Lesbians, Gays, & Bisexuals  can be the first among Less-than-Equals!

And so that Transgenders shall be those who rule over us and subjugate us

And force our assimilation against our will into a transgender variant zoo

We will not have our history denied, erased, borrowed or stolen to serve an L G & B agenda

Nor to the service of our Transgender overlords, people who are not us, not like us and who hate us for being who we are and for what we do to become who we were born to be.

All we ever wanted to be was a woman (man) and nothing but a woman (man), a respected woman (man) among women (men) and a female (male) bodied one at that.

And that is what we did strive to become and that is what we became.

Nor will we be labeled, gendered, degendered or regendered and we will not be sexualized, desexualized or resexualized to that end and to some else’s benefit other than our own

We will not be made into victims of transmisogynistic gay establishment media where we are depicted as as caricatures of women and not even human beings and where media exploits the blood and the suffering of us as victims of violence as comedic entertainment.

We will not serve in any Coalition organization where we are not made to feel welcome, where we can never lead, where others speak for us and against us , where we must remain invisible and silent and where we are regarded as less than full and equal partners!

L G & B Separatism “Separate But Equal” is Not Equality!

It is Transsexual- phobic Exclusion, Prejudice, Bigotry & Apartheid!!

In Separatism There Is No T in L G B T Unity!!

We are the First Words in Our Revolution!

We will form Our New Coalition of Friends that are outside, above and beyond the Box you tossed us into!

We will take the Lead in Our Revolution and We will never be less than Full & Equal Partners

Our Rights– For Our Dignity & Respect

To Be Welcome & Accepted

Our Marriage & Family Rights

Our Right to Work, Housing & Safe Shelter,

Health & Health Care, Safety & Well Being

Are just as Important to Us and We Will Not Be Denied Our Rights to Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness!

That Includes a Transsexual-Inclusive Employment Non Discrimination

Act (ENDA) & the End of L G & B Separatist Apartheid!!

No More Exclusion of Transsexual Women & Men  by Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual People & Organizations!

Any Organization that Endorses & Supports such Exclusion shall be Boycotted, Sanctioned & Banned!!

We are women and we are men just like you.  We are everywhere.  We are white collar professionals and blue collar laborers.  We are parents and school teachers, doctors and lawyers, scientists and engineers, artists, entertainers, politicians and public servants.  We protect and serve as police and in the military.  We are the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the middle class and the middle of the road.  We are liberal and conservative, progressive and reactionary, religious and secular humanist, evolutionist and creationist.  We are the homeless and the housed,  the healthy and the sick,  the single and the coupled.   We are racial minorities and of the silent majority.  We are all of the above and none of the above and something in between.

We aspire to all the good things that life can bring, We have a right to live out our hopes and dreams in peace.

Today is the Day & Now is the Hour for Our Rights!

We Will Enable & Achieve Our Own Empowerment!

We have Earned Our Victories & Your Respect!

Our Revolution is Here! It Might Even Be Televised!

What We Require is Our Own Stonewall!

We Must Storm Our Own Bastille!

We Must Take On & Overcome Our Oppressors Because Our Cause is Just!

We Must Nail Our Message to the Doors Where We Are Locked Out!

Today is the Day and Now is the Hour

of Our Independence, Secession & Liberation from Our Oppressors!.

Let Freedom Ring & Proclaim Our Liberty Throughout The World!

We Stand in Support of Universal Human Rights for Everyone!

For Transsexuals, the Intersex

and for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community That We Have Left Behind!

We as members of the new Transsexual Republic are willing to establish diplomatic relations with our former captors!

But only as the 1st among equals in a coalition where we shall lead and our voices are to be heard and where we are respected.

Happy Independence Day To All Transsexual & Intersex People and To All Freedom Lovers Everywhere!  The Umbrella Is Dead!  We Are A Free People!

(c) 2011 Teresa Ellen Reeves

Lance Reyna, victim of bashing during Houston GLBT Pride

Over the past week, I’ve struggled with the best way to recount the long and sometimes painful story of how Houston’s Covenant House youth shelter began supporting Houston’s homeless transgender youth population. My own history as an advocate within the transgender community is directly tied to Covenant House’s refusal to shelter homeless transgender youth. I believe it was in 1999 that Brenda Thomas brought a homeless trans youth to me and explained that Covenant House had just thrown the kid out due to her inability to act like a boy. I took the youth to the GLBT Community Center when it was located at 803 Hawthorne and began calling local homeless shelters only find that all of them banned transgender people.

My response was to get angry. I organized a rather large, vocal and embarrassing  (to Covenant House) community response and they finally agreed to allow Brenda Thomas and I to train the Covenant House staff about the needs of the transgender population and how they, as a service provider, might best address those needs in the least disruptive way possible. The day we offered the training, we were asked that we tone down the community outcry while they worked to address their policy issues – which we naively did.

As soon as we took the heat off, Covenant House went back to conducting business as usual and stopped returning our calls. In fact, they refused to meet with me for a number of years. Then, five years later, the Montrose Counseling Center basically experienced  the same song and dance with Covenant House. Throughout the years, I’ve watched one young life after another destroyed because Covenant House refused to work with the homeless transgender youth population.

Fast-forward to June 11, 2010

After 10+ years of watching our youth be thrown away by this organization, the trans community redoubled its efforts. Unknown to Covenant House, the trans community had become far more politically savvy since we last went toe-to-toe a decade ago. We were able to get a Houston City Council member to broker a meeting with the Covenant House Executive Director. Additionally, we were able to have another Houston City Council member attend this meeting. The last time the trans community had engaged Covenant House, were were fairly unorganized. This time, we showed up to the table with an engagement plan and political muscle.

During the meeting, Covenant House vigorously denied that any queer youth had ever been mistreated, bullied or denied services. However, after some intense questioning by Councilwoman Jolanda Jones, the Covenant House Director/CEO Rhonda Robinson admitted that Covenant House had no policy whatsoever concerning the equal treatment GLBT youth and that equal treatment was, in fact, discretionary for staff. Under pressure, Director Robinson promised to forward relevant Covenant House policy to the meeting attendees so that we could assist her in creating policy that would protect GLB and specifically TG youth.

Unsurprisingly, weeks and then months went by without any action on the part of Covenant House. Sticking to their decade-old playbook, Covenant House continued to completely ignore all of our correspondence and attempts to reengage in a dialogue.

Fortunately for our queer homeless youth, we were prepared this time. Council member Jolanda Jones stood squarely behind the trans community and took on Covenant House. Additionally, Josephine Tittsworth brought the gravitas of the National Association of Social Workers to the table. Darin and I represented the Transgender Foundation of America and brought our contacts, networks and community action machine to the table.

August 24, 2010

Dear Director Robinson,

Greetings. This letter is a follow up to the meeting on July 6, 2010, at the Houston Covenant House. You informed the attendees that by July 19, 2010, you would provide the Transgender Foundation of America (TFA) with Policies and Procedures as it applies to Intake, Assessment, Placement, and Discipline regarding transgender youth. We were also to be notified on a follow-up meeting to discuss solutions.

To date, it is my understanding, the TFA has received nothing from you as promised. I have checked with my staff and have also looked into my files and have no indication/evidence that any of this information was carbon copied to and/or received by my office. If you sent the afore-referenced information to my office and my office has somehow misplaced it, please resend it as soon as possible. If you have not sent the information, I look forward to it within the next seven (7) days.

To that end, I look very forward to your expeditious response to this correspondence as you are well over a month late on the promised information. Most importantly this is a very important matter and dignified treatment of transgender youth is a cause we should all be committed to. Receipt of this information is the first step to resolution of this matter.

The People Are the City,

Jolanda “Jo” Jones

City Council Member

At-Large Position 5

Historically, Covenant House would simply ignore us until we got tired. So, as Emeril Lagasse might say… I kicked it up a notch

First, I contacted Josephine Tittsworth and we agreed on a specific plan of engagement. Unfortunately,  it’s way too early to go into exactly what that plan was.

Afterwards, I began video taping the testimony of queer youth who had experienced problems at Covenant House. I then began collecting  stories from other social service providers whose clients had bad experiences with Covenant House. Then I uploaded it all to YouTube and created a website to leak the information to the public:

You can still watch some of the video testimonials here:

- Covenant House Rejects Homeless Intersex Youth

- Covenant House Watchdog: Brooklyn’s Story

- Covenant House Watchdog: Patrick’s Story

- Covenant House Watchdog: Joseph’s Story

Council member Jones began investigating where Covenant House got it’s money from and if any of it came from the City or HUD. While Council member Jones had been told by Covenant House that they were not funded through the City and that they did not receive HUD funding, Jones discovered that the opposite was true. But before we had a chance to take our case to Covenant House funders, a Covenant House Board member began attempting to counter my videos and posts about their treatment of queer youth online. Most significantly, this represented a the first correspondence Covenant House had with us after months of silence:

At that point, I began engaging the Covenant House representative and imediatly brought Council member Jones, the Mayor of Houston, Josephine Tittsworth and others into an email dialogue.

After a great deal of online discussion, a meeting was set on December 9, 2010 (a full half year after our initial meeting) at Council Member Jones’ office. Those who were at the June 11, 2009 meeting attended this meeting. Additionally, Chris Kerr with the Montrose Counseling Center and a representative from the Mayor’s office were in attendance.

The meeting was quite intense, to say the least. I felt that the representative for Covenant House, Andrea Moore, was somewhat taken aback with the level of frustration we expressed. While she initially towed the Covenant House line about there not being a problem at Covenant House and that no policy changes were necessary, she began to change her tune around the second hour of the meeting.

At the end of the meeting, Moore agreed to get the Covenant House Board to review and possibly accept some new GLBT inclusive policy, look into implementing a GLBT SAFE Zone and to consider if Covenant House staff should undergo more training. After the meeting, most of us felt only somewhat hopeful about any meaningful change at Covenant House. Part of what was discouraging to us was that Moore seemed reluctant to believe that Covenant House treated our homeless youth poorly. Specifically, she maintained that Covenant House staff referred to trans youth using the correct pronouns as well as their preferred names and housed trans youth according to their gender and not their birth sex. We who represented the community knew the opposite to be true and both Chris Kerr and I were particularly vocal about our skepticism. The meeting went on for around 3 hours and another meeting for February 1, 2011.

The following day, I called Covenant House as a secret shopper. I posed as a case manager who had a homeless female-to-male transgender youth she wanted to refer for services. When I asked staff what pronouns they would use, they said they would use she and her and not the gender appropriate he and him. When I asked what name they would use, they replied that it was Covenant House policy to call the trans youth by the name that’s on their ID. When I asked where the trans youth would be housed, they said that it was up to a manager to choose. All of this directly contradicted what the Covenant House representative reported to me the day before.

During my investigation, I spoke with a couple of employees. I specifically asked to speak with one particular employee because I had received complaints from trans youth about him. When he answered the phone, he proceeded to engage me in a 30-minute power game. Instead of directly answering my questions as the other Covenant House staff did, he spent the next 30 minutes evading my questions and insinuating that I was being incredibly unreasonable.

Fortunately, I had the video camera taping the entire conversation. Afterwards, I immediately sent the video to the Covenant House Board of Directors member Andrea Moore as well as the other December 9 meeting attendees.

At this point, Josephine Tittsworth moved into particularly supportive role for Covenant House. After my direct actions, Josephine helped Andrea Moore with policy revisions, resources and gentle suggestions. In the coming months or years, I might talk more about the specific way Josephine and I worked together as a team inspire Covenant House to move in a way that supported the best interests of our homeless queer and questioning youth, but it’s not appropriate to do so today.

Fast Forward to February 1, 2011

By the February meeting, Andrea Moore reported that on January 25, 2011 an inclusive policy had been approved by the Covenant House Board of Directors:

Covenant House Texas values the complexity and diversity of the world in which we live and seeks to be a community that recognizes the dignity and inherent worth of every person. Covenant House Texas is committed to the principles of fairness and respect for all and believes that a policy embodying these principles fosters a community that favors the free and open exchange of ideas and provides its residents and staff with the best environment for study, work and fellowship. Accordingly, no employee, volunteer or individual sheltered at Covenant House Texas shall willfully harass, discriminate against, or interfere with the activities or legitimate rights of any person in a way that deprives that person of due consideration as an individual.

In compliance with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal, state and local equal opportunity laws, and in accordance with our values, Covenant House Texas will not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, disability, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or gender expression in any phase of its admissions, programs or activities.

The Director of Human Resources for Covenant House Texas will be the Coordinator for compliance issues pertaining to this policy.  Questions or concerns regarding compliance issues should be directed to Director of Human Resources, 1111 Lovett Blvd., Houston, Texas 77006; 713-523-2231. The Federal Government resource on such issues is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., 20202.

A. Definitions

1. Discrimination is an act or communication that interferes with an individual’s or a group’s ability to participate fully in Covenant House Texas’ services and programs on the basis of race, gender, disability, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or gender expression.

2. Harassment is conduct and/or verbal action which, because of its severity and/or persistence, interferes significantly with an individual’s or a group’s work or education, or adversely affects living conditions.

Harassment includes but is not limited to incitement to or threat of violence; epithets referring to race, gender, disability, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or gender expression; and/or physical conduct that is unwelcome, hostile or intimidating.

Covenant House Texas recognizes as harassment conduct and/or verbal communication that is derogatory, hostile, intimidating, threatening, “bullying,” humiliating or violent, although not necessarily illegal.

- A portion of the New Covenant House Policy

Additionally…

- The Houston Covenant House is now acting as a pilot program for the rest of the nation. If the new policy and programming changes go well in Houston, they will be exported to other Covenant Houses throughout the nation.

- Staff training will take place. Additionally, all staff and volunteers will receive ongoing training on GLBT issues.

- Signage had been placed in the Covenant Houses intake area welcoming transgender youth.

- A SAFE Zone will be implemented. A Safe Zone orientation training has been scheduled.

- Old Covenant House policy that banned crossdressing was repealed.

- It’s now policy that all trans youth will be referred to using proper pronouns and names (she & her for MTFs and he & him for FTMs).

- It’s now policy that all trans youth will be referred to using the name they commonly use instead of going by the name on their ID.

- It is now policy that trans youth will receive housing based upon their gender expression and not their birth sex.

- Restroom and shower facility issues were addressed in a way that we are very supportive of.

- Explicit procedure was developed for how to deal with bullying.

- Queer youth will now be able to attend off campus support groups.

There are a number of other improvements/plans that are in the works that will help ensure that queer youth feel welcomed, supported and affirmed at Covenant House. However, since they are in the development phase, I can’t yet go into them.

Another meeting is scheduled for June 1st 2011. During this meeting, we will reassess how effective the recent changes have been. Additionally, the TG Center and MCC will monitor the feedback from GLBT youth and we will assist them in filing complaints if they feel they encountered discrimination at Covenant House. During the upcoming meeting, all complaints will be reviewed and changes to the current Covenant Houses non-discrimination policy (to further protect GLBT youth) will be considered.

I am exceedingly grateful to my “partner in crime” Josephine Tittsworth. I firmly believe that without her partnership, we would have never moved forward. I am also grateful to Andrea Moore with Covenant House. When she found that there really was a need for change at Covenant House, she was willing to make it happen. Additionally, I am grateful - almost to the point of tears – to Council Member Jolanda Jones. I’ve never before encountered a political figure who went to bat for the community the way she did!

While it took more than a decade, Covenant House should be congratulated for doing the right thing. In the coming weeks, I will be reworking my Covenant House watchdog site (covhou.com) into a virtual Safe Zone for queer youth who are staying at Covenant House. As Covenant House continues forward as a safe place for our homeless youth to seek shelter, I intend on becoming a huge Covenant House supporter!

I am incredibly happy to be at the end of a decade-long battle with Covenant House.  It still feels wonderfully strange to think that homeless trans youth have a place to be. I can’t express how sweet this victory is for me or how meaningful it is to our homeless youth!

Many of you know about the very recent study that showed cross-sexed brain morphology in both MTF and FTM pre-hormone therapy transsexuals. Specifically, they found cross-sexed brain morphology in the area of the brain responsible for body mapping. This study was different than the other various studies over the years that found cross-sexed brain morphology in the so-called “gender” area of the brain. 

Body mapping is responsible for phantom limb problems people deal with after amputations. In light of this study, I found it interesting that the one population with the highest rate of penis & breast amputations also has the lowest occurrence of this issue. I think this may have something to do with the seeming fact that for a FTM transsexual, their body map area of the brain is male patterned and for a MTF transsexual, their body map area of the brain is female patterned. This means that when a FTM transsexual has their breasts removed, unlike the general population of females, they probably won't feel as if they still have breasts post-surgically. Instead, they will most probably feel that their chest is correctly structured. The same seems to apply with genital reconstruction surgeries for both MTF and FTM transsexuals. 

So, I had to tell you all of that to get to this…

It's a really odd situation I recently became aware of and it seems to be tied to the whole brain body-map issue. One of my post-op transsexual friends said that she was having a hard time remembering what it was like to be pre-op. I rolled my eyes when she said that. My immediate thought was, “How the hell could you forget something as awful as that!?!” However, when I tried to remember pre-op life, I was surprised to find myself using imagination instead of recall.

I don't know about you, but imagination and memory “feels” different. I can remember opening and closing my hand.  I can recall what my 10 year old legs felt like when I was running away from a dog that was chasing me.  However, if I try to think about what it would be like to have wings, that mental image “feels” different than a memory. 

However, unlike memories of say… making a fist, when I try to remember pre-operative life, I draw an immediate blank that lasts for a second. I then have to engage a mental process of trying to force a memory and I have to draw upon imagining what the opposite of the current reality would be like. Yes, I can remember specifics, but it's in an abstract way. When I try to grasp a memory of what it was like to have those body parts, I find it difficult and I can't do it without engaging my imagination. Pre-op memory recall seems very different than say… a memory of closing MY hand, wiggling MY toes or blinking MY eyes.  

When I first became aware of this issue, it kind of threw me. I've not talked about it much because it's kind of difficult to explain and I remember that I initially rolled my eyes at the idea. So, for those trans folks out there who have undergone corrective procedures… have you found you experience anything like this?

BTW: If you'd like to read the study I talked about: http://tinyurl.com/4z5ozsf

Today, January 18, 2011 marks 1 year since Myra Ical was murdered and still no justice! This case, like many trans murders in Houston, is now an unsolved cold case and HPD will NOT give this case another glance unless someone steps forward.

The following paper was presented at the 2010 Rice University SWGS Symposium by Laura Richardson on March 26, 2010. The paper is perhaps the most articulate and insightful deconstruction of the postmortem violence inflicted upon Myra Ical’s humanity.

For more information about Myra Ical, the media and the community’s response, please click HERE.

Syntactical Distancing in the Case of Myra Ical

Myra Ical, a transgender woman, was murdered on January 18^th of this year and found in a field on the 4300 block of Garrott Street. In the police report of the incident and in many of the early media responses to the crime, Ical was identified as a man, by her birth name, and with male pronouns. One report by Houston Press, which has since been revised, even went so far as to claim Ical fooled or tricked police – as if her dead body was telling a lie to law enforcement officials who initially recognized her for what she really was: a woman. This identification serves as a second type of violence inflicted on Ical – a representational injury that amounted to a disavowal of her person.¹ As with the visibility the transgender community received after the rape and murder of the transgender man Brandon Teena in 1993, the story of Ical’s violent death mobilized Houstonians and stimulated a moment of a higher level of recognition for the transgender community in our city. Over two hundred people attended Ical’s candlelight vigil, held a week after her death in the same field where her body was found. Multiple local news stations also attended the memorial, and several concerns of the transgender community, including the guides available to help media outlets write respectfully about transgender individuals and the fact that under the Texas James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, transgender people are not protected, received increased press coverage. Ical’s death provided an opening through which transgender civil rights and rights of representation were made visible. Although her violent passing did receive a lot of coverage, there is still much to be said for Ical, the events surrounding her death, and her physical, verbal, and written victimization, for there was a third type of violence inflicted on Myra Ical. Several reports, including the original police report (which still stands unedited), labeled the field where Ical’s body was found as an “area [] known to have incidents of prostitution, drug use and homeless camps,” failing to mention that the 4300 block of Garrott is just a few blocks from a metro station, multiple bars and pubs, and a 24-hour restaurant. Several online and televised news reports of the crime also included the information from the police statement about the location where Ical’s body was found in their coverage of her murder, including Houston Press and The Houston Chronicle. Why did the police and the media insist on “clausing” Ical’s murder with a sentence qualifying that the area where Ical was found was known for illegal acts of prostitution and drug use, as well as for being a site frequented by the homeless? An interpretation of two sentences of the HPD report of Ical’s murder, “Mr. Ical was found partially clothed in a field and had no identification. The area is known to have incidents of prostitution, drug use and homeless camps,” reveals the ways in which the police and media displaced Ical’s identity as a woman, scandalized her murder, and fell back on discriminatory caricatures of transgender people when representing her body. Ical was strangled to death and then identified as a man – physical and discursive violences done to her person, but the qualifying sentences of the police report inflict yet a third type of violence on Ical and the transgender community: a dictional and syntactical violence that works to distance readers from the suffering of a woman.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLADD, created a Media Reference Guide, now in its eighth edition, to promote the fair and respectful representation of LGBT stories. This reference guide is simple, short, and easily accessible online. In the section that pertains to the representation of transgender people, the guide explains that when reporting about a transgender person, writers and newscasters should always use the person’s chosen name. Furthermore, the pronouns used to refer to the transgender person should be determined by asking the person which pronouns he/she/ze would prefer. If the media outlet is unable to ask the transgender person about such pronouns, it should always “use the pronoun that is consistent with the person’s appearance and gender expression” (GLAAD Media Reference Guide 11). Although the HPD recognized Ical as wearing a “black blouse,” it nevertheless insisted on using male pronouns and privileging Ical’s birth name. Furthermore, HPD’s claim that Ical “also went by the name of Myra Chanel Ical” is incorrect and misleading: for as many as two decades, Ical identified herself as Myra (Williams). To claim that she “also went by the name of” is to relegate her status as a woman to the position of a nickname or pseudonym. Houston Press’s current version of the report of Ical’s murder is titled with Ical’s birth name and then followed by, in parentheses, “(a/k/a Myra Ical),” while part of the URL for author Chris Vogel’s short article about the crime reads: “cross-dresser_beaten_death.” The abbreviation a/k/a works in a similar way as does “also went by the name of,” but has connotations of criminality, implying a suspect, “who are you really?” status. Additionally, Myra Ical was, in fact, not a cross-dresser, but a transgender woman. The GLAAD Media Reference Guide defines cross-dressing as: “To occasionally wear clothes traditionally associated with people of the other sex…. ‘Cross-dresser’ should NOT be used to describe someone who has transitioned to live full-time as the other sex or who intends to do so in the future” (GLAAD Media Reference Guide 9).

The diction and syntax of the police report and the two news stories from Houston Press and The Houston Chronicle are working within a framework of identity displacing. I employ “displacing” instead of “displacement” to separate my use of the term from its psychological implications. By “displacing” I mean, in a simple fashion, removing from “the proper place,” with the negative connotations of “expel[ing] or forc[ing] to flee.” The substitution of male pronouns for female pronouns, the primary positioning of Ical’s birth name, and the relegation of Ical’s recognized name to a marginal status all serve to separate Ical’s identity as a woman from her person, forcing male-ness onto her body and victimizing her once again. These are all injuries that occur at the level of diction and syntax, and are displacing mechanisms in the sense that these words and their positioning work to remove Ical’s feminine identity from its rightful place: her body and the recognition of her person. Police and media representations of Ical’s body created a lack or a gap in their stripping of Ical’s identity by this act of displacing and then attempted to fill the space, cover it over, and suture it with heteronormative discourse. This space created by displacing was what community responses to Ical’s murder addressed, protesting the removal of her feminine identity and refusing to allow that discursive displacing to continue.

But at the same time as police and media reports were forcing a masculine, heteronormative discourse on Ical’s body, these accounts were also invoking cultural stereotypes of transgender people. In an interview I conducted with the director of the Transgender Foundation of America (TFA), Cristan Williams, she discussed the past hundred-year history of the representation of transgender individuals. One of the many incredible services TFA provides for the Houston community is its archival collection of pieces of transgender history, dating back as far as 1750 (TFA Library and Archive Home Page). Williams noted that in her research through the archive she has discovered that “this sensationalistic, sexualized notion of transgender expression” really only emerged about a hundred years ago, and that

It wasn’t until after the bringing in of entertainment and that image to the public conscious that I began finding the moralistic language or sensationalistic language of transgender expression that has lasted all the way up through Jerry Springer. Most of the movie posters we have going back years and years… every representation I can think of is used in a sexualized manner…. I think that our cultural reference for transgender people is muddied with a lot of references that go back to entertainment industries that have little or nothing to do with real transgender people. (Williams)

The facts that the police and media reported that Ical was “partially clothed” and found in an “area [ ] known to have incidents of prostitution, drug use and homeless camps” speaks to what Williams identifies as the “cultural reference for transgender people.” I read over sixty HPD press releases of Houston murders from October 2009 to this very week, and not one of the accounts commented on the state of the clothing victims were wearing. Additionally, not one of the reports I read made any qualifying statements about the areas in which the murders were committed. Ical’s body was found in the Midtown neighborhood, which, according to the online database Houston Crime Maps, is not even in the top ten Houston areas for reported criminal activity. The Montrose neighborhood, which is close to the 4300 block of Garrott, is ranked the tenth highest neighborhood for crime in Houston, but has less than half of the reported criminal activity of the neighborhood that comes in at number one, the Alief area, which is located west of Loop 610, between Highway 59 and West Loop Parkway. Furthermore, the Montrose area was rated by the American Planning Association in 2009 as one of the best neighborhoods in the U.S. There is no evidence that Ical was using drugs or involved in prostitution, and she was not homeless. She cleaned homes and offices for a living and had attended a concert the evening she was murdered. Given that the area where Ical’s body was found is no more dangerous than many other areas of Houston, and given that Myra was not known to be associated with drugs, prostitution, or homelessness, why are these two sentences in the police report? Why are these two sentences the ones upon which media outlets initially seized?

The answers to these questions lie partly in the structure of the HPD press release about Ical’s murder. The report first gives Ical’s birth name, then notes that she “also went by the name of Myra Chanel Ical,” identifying Myra as a transgender woman without explicitly stating the information. The report then moves to the two sentences with which this paper is primarily concerned: “Mr. Ical was found partially clothed in a field and had no identification. The area is known to have incidents of prostitution, drug use and homeless camps.” The progression of the report, then, identifies the victim, calls attention to her status as a transgender woman without directly addressing it, adds that she was partially clothed, and then offers information that serves as “explanations” as to why the crime occurred. In this way, the development of the report scandalizes Ical’s murder. The identification of her body as partially clothed, which several news sources inverted to “half naked,”² suggests that Ical was participating in a sexual activity or was sexually assaulted. Moreover, the development of the report implies that the crime was either understandable (because of the area’s association with criminal activity, which is an exaggerated claim) or caused by the victim (as in Ical was engaging in these activities, which is why she was murdered). It is almost possible to hear the coordinating conjunction “but” between the last two quoted sentences above: “Mr. Ical was found partially clothed in a field and had no identification, but this area is known to have incidents.” What is ultimately accomplished by the word choice and sentence structure of the police report and the various media accounts based upon it is the syntactical work of distancing non-transgender people from those who are transgender. The report seems to be saying that if Myra Ical was a transgender woman who was engaging in prostitution or promiscuity, using drugs, and homeless, the Houston community does not need to mourn her death or worry that it could also be the victim of such violence. Like the displacing of Ical’s identity as a woman, this distancing works to forge a space between Ical’s experience and the experiences of not only other victims, but the community as a whole. Again, the outcry from hundreds of Houston residents found fault in this aperture and filled it with the noise of their emails and letters to the media and the noise of their collective voices at Ical’s memorial service, where they shouted, used noise-makers, and blew whistles in protest of both the physical and representational violence inflicted on Ical and the other six unsolved murders of transgender people in Houston since 1999.

The Houston community was able to rally around Ical and protest the displacing and distancing done by police and media reports, but while TFA director Cristan Williams says that Ical’s vigil was “probably the largest single transgender action in Houston,” Williams has seen no increased involvement or attendance at TFA events since Ical’s murder. “But you have to put that question in context,” she says:

Most of the community members have known people who have been murdered or have friends who have [committed] suicide or have been beaten up themselves or have their own story of victimization to tell. While the story itself is tragic, it’s not something that is shocking to the community. To give more context: for most transwomen who get ready to leave the house, for whatever reason, it takes about two hours to get ready. It’s not to look like a diva, it’s taking time to look passable so that you’re not beaten or harassed…. You’re spending that much time just to get out of your house, month after month, day after day. That is the reason why most of the clients we work with have symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. [They] know[ ] friends who’ve been beaten, murdered, [and] fear[ ] those things themselves. (Williams)

Increased exposure to violence highlights the intense vulnerability of the transgender community. That vulnerability is heightened by police and media reports that “ignore industry standards” and perpetuate what Williams identifies as the “boilerplate representation” of transgender people (Williams). She locates the community’s strong response to Ical’s murder in “the disrespect shown by HPD and local media, [ ] trying to hide who Myra really was in favor of falling back on a tired, old, caricature of transgender people: the freak, the prostitute, the other” (Williams). “Falling back” on these “tired” representations underscores the displacing and distancing done by the HPD report and media coverage of Ical’s murder. These spaces created within the body of Myra Ical and between her body and the bodies of Houston residents are openings that must be addressed over and over again in order for the larger community to recognize her suffering and the suffering of transgender people, the majority of whom have been victims of violence as a result of a history of cultural prejudices surrounding the transgender person – a history partly comprised of displacing and distancing, creating spaces that must now be filled with noise. At the end of our interview, Williams concluded her answers to my questions with a poignant call to the best way to address this distancing and make a difference for the transgender community:

Our goal in the event that we held [memorial for Myra] was to inspire that part of yourself that is really, really natural and is in every single person. That when you see someone suffering, that there’s a natural response to help. When things like this happen, what we try to do is call attention to that part of each person’s self that innately sees beyond the cultural conditioning to recognize that this person is – that we’re talking about – a human being who suffered, and that even after she suffered there was more wrong done to her…. Fundamentally, what I hope that that consciousness raising produces is an intolerance of intolerance, a sensitivity or a new awareness of the game that’s being played…. And so… that’s how you and everyone who came to the vigil and everyone who saw the news report [reacted]. My hope is [that] on that level, that personal level, that it does spark those kinds of interactions where when our culture’s representation of transgender experience is brought to a fore, that people have a desire or a willingness, drive, to be able to address that appropriately. (Williams)

David Valentine, in his 2007 book, Imagining Transgender, spends a chapter exploring the ways in which a theory of violence can be a useful tool for political activism for the transgender community. He writes that “for violence to be understood as violence, a story must be told about it” (Valentine 228). What this statement points to is also what Williams articulated to me at the end of our interview: that it is only in the recognition of the suffering of others and in the responses to that suffering on an innate, emotional level that violence can be properly addressed, condemned, and eliminated. This personal level is precisely what those two sentences in the police report and media coverage of Myra Ical’s murder sought to distance themselves from and is a violent action because it is ultimately injurious to the transgender community and to the memory of Ical. This created space, this aperture formed by stepping back, is an opening for political, social, and emotional responses of people protesting, making noise, and then closing the distance.

Works Cited

“Displacing.” Merriam-Webster Online. < http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/displacing>.

“Transgender Community Seeks Answers to Murder | MyFoxHouston.com.” Web. 30 Mar 2010. <http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/100125-transgender-murder-victim-vigil>.

GLAAD Media Reference Guide. 8th Ed. January 2010. <http://www.glaad.org/Document.Doc?id=99>.

“Great Places in America: Neighborhoods.” Web. 21 Mar 2010. <http://www.planning.org/greatplaces/neighborhoods/2009/index.htm>.

“Houston Crime Maps | Super Neighborhood.” Web. 21 Mar 2010. <http://houstoncrimemaps.com/neighborhood/>.

Houston Police Department. Press Release. “Deceased Victim Identified in Incident at 4300 Garrott.” 20 January 2010. < http://www.houstontx.gov/police/nr/2010/jan/nr012010-1.htm>.

Lezon, Dale. “Houston police seek clues in death of man left in field.” The Houston Chronicle (Chron.com). 20 January 2010. <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6826157.html>.

Transgender Foundation of America. Library and Archive Home Page. < http://www.tgctr.org/tg-library/>.

Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print.

Vogel, Chris. “Ruben Dario Ical, 51 (a/k/a Myra Ical), Bayou Body Count No. 17.” Houston Press. 20 January 2010. <http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/01/cross-dresser_beaten_death.php#comments>.

Williams, Cristan. Phone Interview. 23 March 2010.