Resolve This!

Normally I would have posted this one last week but was so moved by the impact and significance of MILK and activism in our transgendered community, I delayed this one a week to post my thoughts and feelings on the film MILK. However, the turning of the New Year brings me to a point where I should evaluate my life and make some adjustments for the upcoming year. So here it goes …….my New Year’s resolutions for 2009 and they are not in any particular order but more just as they come to my mind.

1. I resolve to be more active in my community and supporting the movement of greater rights and dignity for those in the LGBT communities. I have been involved in the past but not to the extent I could be by any stretch. I want to be more supportive of the NCTE who works so diligently to promote the rights of transgendered community. I want to get involved with Trans Ohio beyond attending some events and writing an article or two. I would like to help in planning of the Trans Ohio Symposium this August, assist in lobbying legislators in Ohio to change the archaic laws regarding changing the birth certificates and gender marker on them even though I thankfully escaped this mess by being born one mile below the Ohio Rover in Kentucky. I also plan to attend with Paula in April the Transgendered Right Lobby Day sponsored by NCTE in Washington where I will work to lobby US Congressman and Senators to support the Hate Crimes bill, ENDA and other legislation to benefit the LGBT community. I am already in progress of setting up a meeting with my US Congressman (a conservative Republican from rural central Ohio) to try and sell him on this legislation I am sure his narrow mind and religious right wing upbringing will lead him to oppose with vigor. That shall not deter me one bit! I also plan to attend rallies where I can and stand with my sisters and brothers in the struggle for rights and dignity of the LGBT community.

2. I resolve to find a career that I love and that makes me want to spring out of bed each day and head off to work and one that provides some benefits and is more full time than I can do now in my piece meal contract work. I know the next six months will be a time of strive and trials for me as I push through two major operations that will radically alter my body to finally conform to my inner soul as a woman. The surgeries and recoveries will put a test on me as well helping Paula get through hers, but when all is done, I will no longer be trying to find work while needing all this time off for surgeries and recoveries. I can emerge as a stronger woman now focused on finding the position that brings joy as well as challenges for me and a steadier stream of income for sure. I have some talents and education as well as passion and with it will be a renewed vigor for new challenges in a career. Hopefully this year will see a recovery from some of the economic mess the current government regime has led our country into these past eight years. The man will go down as one of the worst Presidents to ever hold the office for sure.

3. I resolve to try to repair my relationships with my family who has tossed me into the wind for sure. Often those of us in the transgendered community are made to feel that we “abandoned our families” when in fact it is them who abandoned us. I can understand some anger and confusion and some time to search things out but being ostracized by our families simply because we came out after years of conflict and raging internal battles and told them who we really are as people is not right at all. I use to some conversation with my ex-wife although it was mostly bitter tirades by her but since the day of our divorce my e-mails have gone without response. I have never been told my children’s e-mail addresses and my written cards and letters go to them without any response. Gifts I send are never acknowledged. I am sometimes at a loss over what to do. I feel as if pieces of my heart have been torn out ….in a span of few short years I lost my father, mother and brother to deaths and my children and ex-wife to being cast aside like the past never happened. I must find a way to let time heal some things but I must find a way to reconnect with them for sure. They will find a different person both physically as well as emotionally and spiritually when they do in Melissa. However, the pieces belong back in my heart without question and we belong in each other’s lives.

4. I resolve to continue my spiritual journey. I have struggled for some time on this issue and now that I am out as transgendered it has become even more complex. I am a very open minded liberal thinking humanist/ Christian blend that seeks a place where friendship and love abounds and no one preaches at you but only makes you think out spirituality and the concepts of the Creator and Creation. I seek a place where all are welcomed even those with grave doubts. I seek a church that actively, openly and lovingly welcomes those of us from the LGBT communities and accepts us for who we are as people without condemning us for being such. Paula and I have begun the search and we have found some success. We were particularly impressed by the those at North Congregational UCC in Columbus which opens its doors freely to us and even has a special large exhibit in their hallway to the transgendered community featuring local and national people in the community and a tribute to those who have been victims of death and violence. I was very touched by this indeed.

5. I resolve to strengthen my love and relationship with Paula. I love waking up to her each day and the time we share together. We support each other and accept each other openly. Sometime this year we plan to celebrate our love in a commitment ceremony we hope to share with our friends. By the middle of the year both of us will have some new body parts that will clearly impact our intimacy and will take great patience and love to explore. She is my life and my love and we grow closer together each day. However, I believe we can never stop growing in our relationship for it to continue and I resolve to become more open to exploring and new ideas and to continue to share our thoughts and feelings and we move forward in our lives together.
Well there it is ….a big chunk of resolutions if I must say but all good ones in my quest to live my life to the fullest and with dignity, love, passion and a commitment to my community I am very much a part of in this life. I hope each of you find some things to strive for in this year and beyond and I wish all the peace and happiness to each of you in 2009 and for the many years to come afterward!

Harvey Milk, Closets, Fear and Transgendered Power

Paula and I just got back from viewing an evening out in which we dined at an Irish pub near the OSU campus and took in a movie. The diner was delightful as always love good food and Irish ale and Paula and I chatted about many things in our lives currently. However, despite the fact I love her company and good food and drink, all of that paled in comparison to the movie which we saw- MILK! If you have not seen this film you need to do so my friends! It is an extraordinary and powerful film about the life of Harvey Milk, the first gay man elected to a prominent position when he took office in 1978 in San Francisco. Sean Penn is fabulous in the role of Harvey Milk and clearly captures his essence as a human being. The film is sad at the end because of his tragic, premature death as the result of a man tormented by his own demons (It was suspected Milk’s killer who held the same elected position as that of Milk was a deeply closeted homosexual who tried to live a life of a traditional Irish catholic and “moral” life as a married man with children). The end is a perfect example of the dangers of putting handguns in the hands of mentally disturbed individuals filled with anger and repression and way too much testosterone!

Harvey Milk could have done so much more for the rights and dignity of people if he had not been tragically killed that morning in his own office along with the mayor of San Francisco at that time. The event came shortly after two major victories won by Milk and his allies- the defeat of proposition six which would have made it permissible to fire any school employee in California for being gay or simply supporting the rights of gays as well as the enactment of city wide ordinance protecting individuals from housing and employment discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation. This ordinance has since been amended to include and protect those of the transgendered community. Harvey Milk left a great legacy in the world and many have followed in his footsteps but most importantly he set the example for leadership and changes in our struggle for dignity and human rights.

What I admired most about him was his courage and there is part of the movie where in order to win the tide to defeat proposition six against the likes of a right wing religious zealot and “Nazi” Senator at that time supported, of course, by the likes of Anita Bryant and her “Godly inspired” crusade against rights for gay people. In order to win the vote against the tide of money and power displayed by the so called “Christians” Harvey Milk encouraged his friends and supporters to break down the doors of their own closets and come out to their families and friends as well as their employers so that people could know and connect with a gay person and find out that their sons and daughters and employees were simply people who were gay. According to Harvey Milk the greatest thing holding back the community was the fact that many lived in the closet and only by coming out and coming clean could the movement grow. Power ONLY comes from being free and without power nothing important can ever be accomplished. It takes great courage to let people who you work for and love and care about know who you really are as a person. That courage is what gives you power and with that power much can be accomplished. But courage is what brought about Harvey’s accomplishments personally as well in his movements and causes. It gave him and those that followed and supported him power. I will state this as bluntly as I can put it …… if the transgendered community does not show the same courage we will be left behind in the struggle for dignity and human rights that all people deserve!

So those of us who are transgendered in any way (crossdresser, transvestite, undefined transgendered, pre-op transsexual as well as post- op TS better heed the warning and get out of their damn closets and show some courage and take a voice in our community if we ever want to be able to accomplish anything in this society, achieve power and find ourselves victorious as Harvey and his followers did thirty years ago. The main problem is so many people in the transgendered community live in the closet, fearful of letting other human beings who supposedly love and care about them know about their true selves. So what if your friends desert you and so what if your family casts you aside like some weird freak. As Harvey Milk talks about in the movie….if your friends reject you- they were NOT really your friends and if your family rejects you THEY don’t deserve you! Some of them may later come around and that is great if they do- but do not let the fear of them rejecting you paralyze you and don’t let your family blackmail you into silence because they will cut you off if you come out and come clean. I know I was guilty of the same for so long. The day my ex-wife confronted me she awoke something in me and I decided I needed to come clean. She does not realize the long dormant activist she awoke inside me. Every person I told thereafter gave me more courage and more freedom. I lost friends and family like they were going out of style, BUT I hide from no one and I am truly free. With this freedom, power can come. Fear captures us as humans and the courage found deep inside all of us can overcome that fear and free our soul and our determination to bring about change.

As I have pointed out before transgendered people live in closets both prior to and after transition if they are TS. Cloak and stealth are just more ways to define closets and they keep us from moving forward in achieving rights and dignity for our community. Running and hiding from your past will only leave you without strength and courage and to be quite honest, true stealth and cloak are not really possible in today’s technology driven society. It is a myth! Just for shits and giggles, I used the internet to track down the past history and such for three of my transgendered friends who have transitioned and live fulltime as the men or women they are in their souls. It was done with little effort and almost zero cost. People you are only fooling yourself and no one else if you truly believe you can live in cloak or stealth. The problem in our community and why we will not likely prevail in achieving many of the goals that those in the lesbian and gay communities have and will achieve, is that society only sees a tip of the iceberg of our community and thinks we are a very small, minute group of freaks. Most of the community lies under the water- afraid to emerge from the comfort of the closet, stealth or cloak they have attempted to create in the murky waters below.

We are already a much smaller group than those of the gay and lesbian communities as it is and if most of our community remains hidden, then plain and simply we will find ourselves left out of society and existing with few if any rights and we will have no one to blame but ourselves! Someday someone will tear down your closet and you will be outed but when that day happens and you find yourself with little protections or rights don’t come crying to those who have come clean and let the world know who they really are- whether that be a man who likes to dress and express his feminine side on occasion or a post operative TS who lives life as a man or woman in a gender opposite that of their birth. I am not advocating running around and always announcing yourself to everyone but don’t play the game of denial to those who confront you. We have nothing to be ashamed of as transgendered people. So get out your closets and get living life without fear and with courage. You will feel empowered! Give up your stealth and cloak and be proud of who you are-even your past.

I know many post operative TS who try to pretend they have always been living life in their true gender despite transition. Everyone one of us in the TS community was born either male or female in our outer, genetic gender and we lived life for sometime this way as difficult as it may have been. We transitioned and now life in our true gender but we should not be ashamed of who we are or our past life. I will never be a genetic female no matter how much surgery I incur or hormone compounds I ingest. The very fact I was born genetically male and transitioned to live life as female because it is who I am as a human being means exactly this- I am a transgendered person! I am and always will be transgendered! If I deny who I am as a human being or the existence of part of my life in another gender, even as improper as that past life was to my soul, then I live in shame of who I am as human being. If we act like that in our community then how are we ever to achieve anything in our community or even individually. How are we ever going obtain power? Just as Harvey Milk did in encouraging his community to come out and be open we must do the same to let others know WE EXIST and that we are just people like everyone else: fathers, mothers, spouses, sons and daughters, lawyers, architects, doctors, teachers, bartenders, carpenters, truck drivers and every other profession under the sun- but people who just happen to be transgendered. When we do this we will not only find our personal freedom and power but we will find ourselves accomplishing so much more as a community. “Milk” is about a man’s accomplishments in life when he found his courage and passion for what he believed in and left the confines of his closet at age 40 to live a life without fear and even in his death his work and legacy carried on long afterward. Let’s hope we all find our courage as Harvey Milk did and get involved in moving our push for human rights and dignity forward as transgendered people. Tear down the closet doors and turn off the stealth and our power awaits us!

The Pursuit of Happiness and the Puritans (Summer 07)

The Pursuit of Happiness and the Puritans by Melissa Ann Pink

This week our country celebrated the Fourth of July and with it, a celebration of the documents and principles that define our nation. I thought this would be a good time to examine these principles in the context of the transgendered and GBLT communities. Our founders, all males and presumably most of who were straight Anglo Saxon males and at least no known transgendereds (although history is filled with many secret transgendered people who were royalty and with much power and money) set forth basic principle that all “men” (reflecting the clearly sexist period in history when women were treated as second class citizens)and now refined to be all people (supposedly in the broadest sense – all humanity) are created equal and that we all have equal rights and opportunities in our society. Furthermore, human beings were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights –largely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What if that pursuit of happiness or enjoyment of life and expression of liberty involves being attracted to someone of the same sex even to the point of choosing to want to spend the remainder of one’s life with that person? What if that pursuit of happiness and enjoyment of life involves expressing one’s self in a manner opposite one’s genetic birth gender? What if it involves transitioning to the preferred opposite gender including the legal rights of such including name change, insurance coverage, employment and avoidance of discrimination so that one can pursue other aspects of life in the pursuit of happiness? Did our founding fathers envision those in the society that were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered? The pursuit of rights for those of us in these communities is a long and complex subject for discussion in this particular forum and is more geared for a course at university or a book or treatise.

However, I have a theory as to why acceptance and progress has been slow in these areas and why society still fights the trend to expand the rights, privacy, dignity and liberties of human beings of the GBLT communities. It is because society in America has been hindered ( at least way behind many European countries ) and crippled for many years is still extensively affected by a disease called “Puritanism” This culture is of course named after the Puritans who settled early America. The Puritans left Europe (which is why Europe may have faired much better than the US in its progress and attitudes) to escape “religious prosecution” so that many years later, they could persecute others (sorry hypocrisy is always one of my favorite subjects. These Puritans brought us the Puritan work ethic which has prevailed for centuries in this country. Americans work harder and longer and with fewer amounts of time off than our European counterparts. The Europeans always have an attitude to work hard but they realize there is more to life than just working one’s self to bone and they take times both during the day and during the year to relax and enjoy a bit of life as well. Americans following this puritanical work ethic which has driven us for centuries work excessively long hours as companies squeeze more and more out of less and less and our people are made to sometimes even feel guilty for taking breaks or vacationing. People even try to work while on “vacation”.

The second thing that the Puritans gave us was religious intolerance and persecution of anyone that seemed different or who ran afoul of their strict societal and religious rules. Case in point is the famous book “The Scarlet letter”. Other wonderful examples include the burning at the stake of so called “witches”. The Puritans were a very strict- minded Bible centered group which were the forerunners and major influence for the “religious right” that stands today as the greatest barrier for the rights and dignity of those of us in the GBLT community. Their intolerance of others that are perceived to be “different” and belief that we all are an abomination of deviants undeserving of the same rights and dignities of those that are “pure” stems from the early roots of the Puritans and their influence on our society’s development throughout our history. The so called ‘religious right” or ‘moral majority” (which in both cases is neither) has its roots and origins deeply embedded in our Puritan ancestors.

Wonderful people ……..these Puritans….oh yeah! So next time you feel a little stressed from all your work and lack of free time to pursue happiness or you feel your rights and liberties are being denied and squelched as a member of the GBLT community, just blame it on those @@##&&& Puritans !!!