Excuses Excuses: Suicide Prevention

There are two things I could pass my clear failure to keep my promise on. The first is my dead laptop charger, which I couldn’t afford to replace until recently. The second is the fact I have hit a rocky spot in my personal life (which DOES exist, you know), and ultimately came pretty close to dying myself.

Suicide is a huge problem in the GLBTQ community. Statistically, queer (gay/lesbian/bisexual etc) youth are four times more likely to attempt it than heterosexual youth. Transgender youth often have even less places to turn, and arguably even more isolation and confusion to deal with; thus, trans youth are even more at risk. In fact, I don’t think I know more than a couple transgender people who have never seriously considered suicide. It’s depressing, but that’s the reality.

Suicide comes from feeling helpless and hopeless, which is why transgender allies like us can be so important; we provide that help and hope. It’s tempting to pass off a comment about suicide as a joke or a moment of melodrama; everyone wants an excuse not to believe that the person is serious. Even really fantastic people, or people with counseling training, don’t want to admit that someone they love could be struggling. Trust me. I know.

Luckily, Suicide Prevention programs and hotlines exist EVERYWHERE. The first, and most well-known, 24/7 Suicide Prevention Hotline for GLBTQ youth is called the Trevor Project. The project was born from a short film, called Trevor, about a suicidal gay boy; the creators used the money from the film to start a resource to help people in Trevor’s position. Phone counselors go through 40+ hours of training and can be reached at ANY time at 1-866-488-7386. The website, www.thetrevorproject.org, has plenty of other resources too!

It’s scary, but not impossible, to help someone who’s contemplating suicide—but the first and hardest step is to admit that it’s a possibility. Don’t look for excuses to shy away from the word or the person; ask outright, and keep checking in. Chances are, just having someone to talk to frankly will help that person dramatically. But remember too that YOU are not a professional—so after that initial conversation, be sure to get outside help for that person. Call the Trevor Project, or if it’s a real emergency, 911. Ze may be mad at you for a day or two, but ultimately, ze’ll thank you for saving hir life. Trust me.

Springtime Promises

Hi all. It’s time to confess that I’m having some trouble. See, I love to write. I love the trans community. I love doing what I can to help the people in, or affected by, that community. And, of course, I love to write about the trans community in the hopes of helping the people in that community, or touched by that community. Makes sense, right? Unfortunately I have this problem. It’s called I’m ridiculously busy, and lately, I’m ridiculously unmotivated, and the bottom line is that my poor little blog suffers on the back burner with my laundry and homework. This is a problem for me, because this is what I live to do!

It’s springtime now, which is clearly a time for renewal and growth and change and rebirth. I am trying to reflect the energy I see all around me in myself and in my life. One of the things I want to change, of course, is the fact that I keep skipping updates on this blog! To that end, I am making you a springtime promise. I intend to update this blog every Sunday or Monday—at LEAST. I need a new motivator, so this is what’s happening; every time I don’t update by Monday night, I owe you five dollars. Every time I do update but it’s a really bad post, I owe you two dollars. Sound good?

I can’t actually send five dollars to everyone who happens across this blog. So, I’m going to track how much money I owe ‘you,’ and at the end of the year, I will be donating that much money to a queer charity. At the moment, I am thinking True Colors, simply because I have always enjoyed volunteering for this organization. Additionally, Connecticut’s Imperial Sovereign Court (more on them later) is donating all the funds they raise this year to True Colors, and I would like to do what I can to help out.

So. That’s how it’s going to work. I skip, five bucks. I suck, two bucks. BUT. YOU HAVE TO CALL ME ON IT. So, if it’s Tuesday morning and my last post is from eight days ago, you’ve got to comment on that last post and remind me that I owe you five bucks. If I post something really awful or lacking in substance, you can call me on it, and I’ll tack two bucks onto the total. Just don’t tell me every single one of my posts sucks or I’ll be very sad :-P I’ll try and figure out how to keep a running total in the margins.

That’s my deal for you, dear readers. Take it or leave it!

Transfolk in Music

Anyone ever tell you that nobody ever talks about transgender issues? Have you ever heard anyone argue that you never hear about them outside of queer events or culture? Do you think trans issues don’t make appearances in mainstream movies, shows, stories, or music?

Have you heard any of these songs?

“Lola” by the Kinks
“Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man,/ But I know what I am and that I’m a man,/ So is Lola.”

“Somebody Told Me” by the Killers
“Somebody told me you had a boyfriend/ Who looked like a girlfriend/ That I had in February of last year.”

“Turn the Page” by Bob Seger
“Most times you can’t hear ‘em talk, other times you can/ All the same old clichés, is that a woman or a man?/ And you always seem outnumbered, you don’t dare make a stand.”

“Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed
“Plucked her eyebrows on the way/ Shaved her legs and then he was a she.”

They say any publicity is good publicity, but you’ve got to wonder. Aside from the Bob Seger song—which is interestingly written in the second person, and largely about feeling like an outcast—the majority of these songs are about transgender prostitutes. The majority of trans characters on TV are cast in a similar way (think Law and Order or CSI). Why do you think this is? What can we do to change it?

So What's Intersex Mean?

In the last post, I mentioned the term “intersex.” While this term is thrown around a lot, it’s largely misunderstood. The intersex community is sometimes overlooked even by the bigger transgender community to which it theoretically belongs. Is it because an intersex (or “intersexed”, I’ve heard both terms used as adjectives) person was simply “born that way,” while many transfolk have to rearrange everything in their lives in order to live openly? Not EVERYONE in the trans community overlooks the “I” in GLBTI, of course, but it’s a phenomenon worth noticing.

Being intersex technically has nothing to do with gender identity; it is a term that applies purely to a person’s physical, biological body. There are several ways to be classified as intersex, which is really more of an umbrella term than anything else—just like “transgender” is. Sometimes, people are considered intersex because they have a different chromosome set than males (XY) and females (XX). Most common is Klinefelter’s Syndrome, which occurs when a ‘male’ has an extra X chromosome. It’s more common than you’d think; you can’t trust everything you read on Wikipedia, but the article suggests one out of 500 males is born with an extra sex chromosome.

Other times, a person is declared intersex because ze has ambiguous genitalia or reproductive organs. Although it’s not very carefully tracked, it’s estimated that one out of every two thousand children are born with some physical traits that are male while other traits are female. Doctors sometimes choose to “fix” this ambiguousness at birth with surgery in the hopes that the baby will be able to grow up “normal.” Of course, if this actually worked, we wouldn’t know about it! There are several published cases—and certainly many more private ones—in which a child was born intersex, operated on, and carefully raised as a gender-conforming boy or girl. Often, this child grows up to come out as transgender or genderqueer later in life. You can read about several of these cases here, courtesy of Cosmos Magazine.

Not all intersex people grow up to be gender-variant. Does everyone remember Caster Semenya from the Olympics last year? Semenya’s sex was called into question based on hir impressive performance; multiple tests revealed that Semenya did indeed have an intersex condition.

For more information, check out this article by Alice Dreger that appeared on Fathermag.com. It explains some things better than I could!

Aren't There Only Two Genders?

I love this question.

Gender is a social construct based on assumptions about biological sex. The first assumption is that there are two biological sexes: male and female. The second is that there are two opposing genders, one attached to each sex. The third is that there is a correct way to be one or the other.

First of all, there are more than two sexes. Newsflash! It’s called “intersex,” and it’s estimated that one out of every two thousand children are born with ambiguous genitalia. Usually, this means that the child’s body shows some traits of both binary sexes. Often, a doctor will seek to “fix” this ambiguousness with surgery while the baby is still very young; the idea is that if a biological sex is assigned, the gender socially connected to that sex will be accepted by parent and child alike. We’ll have to explore this topic another time, but suffice it to say, this proved false.

Second: if there are more than two sexes, you’d better believe there are WAY more than two genders. I really hate the terms “opposite sex” or “opposite gender” for this reason. An either-or approach just isn’t practical; how boring would the world be with only two kinds of people in it? There’s nothing wrong with using a binary label, man or woman, to identify with; the issue, and the tough part, is remembering not to label anyone else. There are men and women, but there are also bois and gurls, womyn and burls, genderqueers, genderfucks, drag kings, drag queens, transsexuals, and countless other labels to choose from. Soon, we’ll dedicate a post or twelve just to vocab.

Third: gender rights and wrongs are learned. We are taught at a young age that we must act a certain way to be accepted, based on whether our parents dress us in pink or blue—and we carry that lesson with us all our lives. Some sociologists say we don’t “have” a gender, we “do” a gender. Every single thing you do during your day has the potential to be a gendered action. There’s a feminine way to walk, sit, stand, talk, eat, just as there’s a masculine way to do it. Gender isn’t a trait; it’s a performance, a contest, a game. Luckily for us, the rules are changing.

We’ll explore these ideas a lot more, but for now, I’ve rambled long enough. I’ll leave you with this video to help you get a better idea of the many different genders out there. The video is of a spoken word piece called “3rd Gender” by Kit Yan from the performing group Good Asian Drivers. They’re fantastic and so is this piece. Watch it. Love it. You’re welcome.

Kids Say The Darndest Things

So, the other day, I took my girlfriend to an appointment. This is not unusual. What was different was hearing the words, “is that a girl?” the second we stepped off the elevator. Being me, I naturally whipped around ready for a fight. I’m a little touchy about these things, you know? Not about the gender of my partner—that’s a whole different story, one I’m sure we’ll get to—but about strangers applying gender labels to people they’ve never even spoken to. When I realized the speaker must have been about seven years old, though, I relaxed considerably.

Little kids have this habit of saying whatever they think; society hasn’t taught them to have a filter yet. Very little kids also tend to act, dress, and play the way they want to—regardless of gender roles. As kids grow, they begin to feel the pressures of society around them; girls start playing house because they want to be like their mothers, while boys play catch outside to get Dad’s attention. Seriously, you can google all kinds of studies on this stuff. People—not just transgender people, either—have been fascinated by children’s abilities to resist social pressures for a very long time. Most sociologists agree that gender-based behaviors are not ingrained; they are learned.

The kid’s mother didn’t really take a stance on the matter. She didn’t explain to her daughter that gender has many forms, but she didn’t use us as an example of the devil’s work, either. I’ll take it as a draw.

I know I’m not the only one who’s ever had experience with a little kid and gender; in fact, I’ve got several stories left to share. But what about you? Have you ever explained a friend’s transition to a five-year-old? Fascinating stuff, isn’t it?

Transwoman Amanda Simpson appointed by Obama

This bit was actually emailed to me by the VP of Student Affairs at my school the other day. Yeah. That’s the kind of email I get. Anyway, the news piece was about President Obama’s recent picks for various government posts. Apparently, one of them—a woman who was actually beaten by Obama for New York senator at one point—is also transgender.

Amanda Simpson is now working as a senior technical advisor to the U.S. Commerce Department. She has a pretty impressive history, having received awards and recognitions from various organizations, as well as run for various government offices. She has been quoted as saying to the National Center for Transgender Equality, “as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds.”

There have been, of course, some nasty things said by various people and organizations; it’d be pretty impossible not to expect that to happen. Just remember, though—every time something positive about the transgender community or even a transgender person makes the news, a few more people are going to realize that a trans person is, after all, a person, not so different from them. Even the negative press brought about by events like this can serve that purpose!

Appointing an openly transgender woman sends the message that Obama believes that trans people are just as capable and important as gender-normative folks, which is a huge plus for the transgender community. This is the kind of support we need from country leaders, and it’ll make a difference, one step at a time.

You can google “Amanda Simpson” for more info. To start, you can read the “dscriber” article I was emailed here.