Man enough to be a woman and still rock’n'rolling [theindependent.co.uk]

by Matilda Battersby / theindependent.co.uk

It has been all over the newspapers that Against Me! singer Tom Gabel has decided to live as a woman. The Mail Online’s headline shrieked: “Punk rocker says he is having a sex change operation to become a woman… but he’s STAYING with his wife.” Another read: “Drugs, Sex(uality) and Rock’n'Roll”.

It was quite a surprise that the frontman of a rather macho band (all black jeans, tattoos and growling guitars) should have felt this way. During an interview with Rolling Stone magazine she described plans to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery, after which he will be named Laura Jane Grace. “I’m going to have embarrassing moments,” she said. “But [I'm] hoping people will understand, and hoping they’ll be fairly kind.”

The news reports have not all been “fairly kind” and a couple were not very understanding at all, revealing thinly disguised ignorance about transgenderism. Several made inferences about Gabel’s sexuality and the implications for his marriage, confusing Gabel’s gender dysphoria (where you feel trapped in a body of the wrong sex) with questions about whether being a woman and having a wife makes her gay. Most strikingly, several of the reports lauded Gabel as “the first major rock star” to come out as transgender. While it is undoubtedly the case that in 2012 transgenderism is still a taboo, the statement that it has taken this long for a major musician to “come out” as trans simply isn’t true.

Fans of Jayne County will already know this. Born Wayne Rogers in 1947, County began performing as Jayne in 1979. With a signature track titled “Man Enough to Be a Woman”, County is acknowledged as one of the earliest, probably the first, transgender rock star. Despite never quite achieving the commercial success of some of her peers, the American was a big part of the English punk scene, forming Wayne County & the Electric Chairs in 1977. David Bowie, Patti Smith and Lou Read have credited her with influencing them.

There are more recent examples of high-profile musicians who have changed gender: Mina Caputo, formerly Keith Caputo, singer of heavy metal band Life Of Agony, confirmed last year that she was transitioning. German pop singer Kim Petras is probably the world’s youngest transgender musician (and one of the youngest post-operative trans people, full stop), after having sex reassignment surgery in 2009 aged 16. Jethro Tull keyboardist Dee Palmer (formerly David) transitioned at the aged of 67, long after he’d left the band.

The word “transgender” doesn’t refer to people who have had sex changes. It is an umbrella term used to describe those who identify with a gender which isn’t the one they were born with, or with no particular gender at all, regardless of whether they have sex reassignment surgery or take hormones.

Another famous muso, Antony Hegarty of the Mercury Prize-winning band Antony and the Johnsons, was born male, but is transitioned. “Do I feel female? You know, I feel like a mixture. I feel pretty mixed. I probably would identify as transgender,” he told NME. Similarly, Genesis P-Orridge of 1970s band Throbbing Gristle, sees himself as “pandrogynous”.

It’s not only rock and punk that have a healthy number of trans representatives. Jazz bassist John Leitham became Jennifer Leitham in 2001. Dana International, who won the 1998 Eurovision song contest for Israel, released her debut album soon after having sex reassignment surgery in 1993.

Regardless of whether Gabel is the first rock star to admit to being transgender, he is still brave to go public. The paradox of the music industry is that, despite nurturing talent and putting musicians with unusual or distinct sounds in the spotlight, there is still a perception that artists need to be squeaky clean and conventional if they’re to sell. Record labels have been known to advise against lifestyle choices that are celebrated and accepted in wider society, such as being gay, for fear that fans will no longer fancy their pop stars or believe that one day they can marry them – and that this will dent sales. Their attitude may be repugnant, but you can understand it from a business point of view.

Of all the companies I called, only one would speak to me on the record. That was Brighton-based Fat Cat Records, whose founder, Dave Cawley, spoke very supportively of trans artists but agreed he wouldn’t be surprised if pressure was applied at the corporate end of the industry not to come out.

Several people I spoke to off the record made it clear that the mainstream music scene is not a happy place to be transgender. One industry executive, who did not want to be named, said: “Trans musicians are treated in much the same way as gay artists. The straight men who run the music business aren’t ever particularly comfortable knowing how to work them and there is pressure not to come out.”

I contacted seven transgender musicians for comment, receiving polite refusals from Gabel, Dee Palmer and Justin Vivian Bond, and silence from three others.

Our Lady J, a gospel singer who has a growing following and counts Daniel Radcliffe among her fans, launched her musical career after transitioning from male to female. She told me: “There is a responsibility to educate that comes with being trans if you have any hope of surviving. I think this often keeps people from transitioning. There are huge risks, both professionally and personally.”

Joan King, chair of The Gender Trust, has worked as an artist manager in the music industry for two decades. “There is pressure not to come out as transgender in the music industry,” she said. “But I don’t think this is any different from boy bands being told not disclose that they have girlfriends and wives.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/man-enough-to-be-a-woman-and-still-rocknrolling-7766426.html

Transgender Employment & Training Outreach Services

Offered by MCS Hollywood WorkSource Center in Partnership with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center

Need a job?  The Hollywood Worksouce Center is a safe and welcoming place to get help with finding employment, developing essential skills, and referral services.

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Hollywood WorkSource Center

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PDF Document: Transgender Employment PDF Flyer

Marriage and Equality

Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen [slate.com]

By Nathalie Rothschild / slate.com

By most people’s standards, Sweden is a paradise for liberated women. It has the highest proportion of working women in the world, and women earn about two-thirds of all degrees. Standard parental leave runs at 480 days, and 60 of those days are reserved exclusively for dads, causing some to credit the country with forging the way for a new kind of nurturing masculinity. In 2010, the World Economic Forum designated Sweden as the most gender-equal country in the world.

But for many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. The idea is that the government and society should tolerate no distinctions at all between the sexes. This means on the narrow level that society should show sensitivity to people who don’t identify themselves as either male or female, including allowing any type of couple to marry. But that’s the least radical part of the project. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels.

Activists are lobbying for parents to be able to choose any name for their children (there are currently just 170 legally recognized unisex names in Sweden). The idea is that names should not be at all tied to gender, so it would be acceptable for parents to, say, name a girl Jack or a boy Lisa. A Swedish children’s clothes company has removed the “boys” and “girls” sections in its stores, and the idea of dressing children in a gender-neutral manner has been widely discussed on parenting blogs. This Swedish toy catalogrecently decided to switch things around, showing a boy in a Spider-Man costume pushing a pink pram, while a girl in denim rides a yellow tractor.

The Swedish Bowling Association has announced plans to merge male and female bowling tournaments in order to make the sport gender-neutral. Social Democrat politicians haveproposed installing gender-neutral restrooms so that members of the public will not be compelled to categorize themselves as either ladies or gents. Several preschools have banished references to pupils’ genders, instead referring to children by their first names or as “buddies.” So, a teacher would say “good morning, buddies” or “good morning, Lisa, Tom, and Jack” rather than, “good morning, boys and girls.” They believe this fulfills the national curriculum’s guideline that preschools should “counteract traditional gender patterns and gender roles” and give girls and boys “the same opportunities to test and develop abilities and interests without being limited by stereotypical gender roles.”

Earlier this month, the movement for gender neutrality reached a milestone: Just days after International Women’s Day a new pronoun, hen (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the online version of the country’s National Encyclopedia. The entrydefines hen as a “proposed gender-neutral personal pronoun instead of he [han in Swedish] and she [hon].”The National Encyclopedia announcement came amid a heated debate about gender neutrality that has been raging in Swedish newspaper columns and TV studios and on parenting blogs and feminist websites. It was sparked by the publication of Sweden’s first ever gender-neutral children’s book, Kivi och Monsterhund(Kivi and Monsterdog). It tells the story of Kivi, who wants a dog for “hen’s” birthday. The male author, Jesper Lundqvist, introduces several gender-neutral words in the book. For instance the words mammor and pappor (moms and dads) are replaced with mappor andpammor.

The free lifestyle magazine, Nöjesguiden, which is distributed in major Swedish cities and is similar to the Village Voice, recently released an issue using hen throughout. In his column, writer Kawa Zolfagari says, “It can be hard to handle the male ego sometimes. I myself tend to get a stinging feeling when a female friend has had it with sexism or has got hurt because of some guy and desperately blurts out some generalisation about men. Sometimes I think ‘Hen knows me, hen knows I am not an idiot, why does hen speak that way of all men?’ Nöjesguiden‘s editor, Margret Atladottir, said hen ought to be included in the dictionary of the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Prize in literature.

Hen was first mentioned by Swedish linguists in the mid-1960s, and then in 1994 the late linguist Hans Karlgren suggested adding hen as a new personal pronoun, mostly for practical reasons. Karlgren was trying to avoid the awkward he/she that gums up writing, and invent a single word “that enables us to speak of a person without specifying their gender. He argued that it could improve the Swedish language and make it more nuanced.

Today’s hen champions, however, have a distinctly political agenda. For instance, Lundqvist’s book is published by a house named Olika, which means “different or diverse.” Olika only publishes books that “challenge stereotypes and obsolete norms and traditions in the world of literature.” Its titles include 100 möjligheter Istället för 2! (“100 possibilities instead of 2!”), a book for adults who “want to give children more opportunities in gender-stereotyped everyday life”; and Det var en gång … en ritbok!(“Once upon a time there was … a drawing book!”), the first “gender-scrutinizing” drawing book for children that “challenges traditional and diminishing conceptions of girls and boys, men and women.”

But not everyone is keen on this political meddling with the Swedish language. In a recentinterview for Vice magazine, Jan Guillou, one of Sweden’s most well-known authors, referred to proponents of hen as “feminist activists who want to destroy our language.” Other critics believe it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children. Elise Claeson, a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, has said that young children can become confused by the suggestion that there is a third, “in-between” gender at a time when their brains and bodies are developing. Adults should not interrupt children’s discovery of their gender and sexuality, argues Claeson. She told the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, that “gender ideologues” have managed to change the curriculum to establish that schools should actively counter gender roles.

Claeson might have a point. The Swedish school system has wholeheartedly, and probably too quickly and eagerly, embraced this new agenda. Last fall, 200 teachers attended a major government-sponsored conference discussing how to avoid “traditional gender patterns” in schools. At Egalia, one model Stockholm preschool, everything from the decoration to the books and toys are carefully selected to promote a gender-equal perspective and to avoid traditional presentations of gender and parenting roles. The teachers try to expose the pupils to as few “gendered expressions” as possible. At Christmastime, the Egalia staff rewrote a traditional song as “hen bakes cakes all day long.” When pupils play house, they are encouraged to include “mommy, daddy, child” in their imaginary families, as well as “daddy, daddy, child”; “mommy, mommy, child”; “daddy, daddy, sister, aunty, child”; or any other modern combination.

To those who feel gender equality or gender neutrality ought to be intrinsic to a modern society, it probably makes sense to argue for instilling such values at an early age. The Green Party has even suggested placing “gender pedagogues” in every preschool in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, who can act as watchdogs. But of course toddlers cannot weigh arguments for and against linguistic interventions and they do not conceive of or analyze gender roles in the way that adults do.

Ironically, in the effort to free Swedish children from so-called normative behavior, gender-neutral proponents are also subjecting them to a whole set of new rules and new norms as certain forms of play become taboo, language becomes regulated, and children’s interactions and attitudes are closely observed by teachers. One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys “gender-coded” them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed “free playtime” from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely “stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying.” And so every detail of children’s interactions gets micromanaged by concerned adults, who end up problematizing minute aspects of children’s lives, from how they form friendships to what games they play and what songs they sing.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html

National Geographic: A Question of Identity [tvworthwatching.com]

by Eric Gould / tvworthwatching.com

One of the most hard-won achievements in life is finding out and knowing who we really are. For three young people in an upcoming National Geographic documentary, discovering their true selves was just the beginning…

American Transgender is a new work from writer and director Leslie Schwerin that unfolds in verite format, with the subjects speaking for themselves without narration. They recount becoming aware of their differences as children, and then discuss their courageous decisions as young adults to transition through surgery to the opposite sex. American Transgender premieres Tuesday, May 1 at 8 p.m. ET on the National Geographic Channel.

The documentary uses evocative montages of childhood pictures to introduce us to the show’s subjects. Sarah and Jennifer go on to have hormone treatments and surgeries to become Eli and Jim. Alex, a young man, does the same to transition to Clair.

All three talk extensively about growing up having to “act” the role of girl or boy – all while being mocked and feeling trapped and tortured in the wrong body.

One of the most uplifting parts of American Transgender is seeing the support and acceptance the three received from their families before and after the transition process. Coming out as gay – as Alex did as a teenager – is difficult enough, but revealing a desire to change one’s sex presumably doubles the weight.

It’s reassuring to see parents so committed to their children’s happiness. Jim’s mother, Diane, says, “we adjusted our thoughts from “tomboy” to “gay” and we moved on. We were getting used to that, and all of the sudden, (Jennifer) said my name is going to be Jim’.” She laughs, “I was just getting used to gay.” (Jim at right, after transition.)

Making the personal decision is to transform gender is just the first step. The physical difficulties of the process and the challenge of passing for the opposite sex are openly discussed.

Eli talks openly about his frustration during transition, and how after months of treatments, he still was being called “ma’am” by grocery store clerks. And Clair’s story, beginning as it does with her shopping for a wedding dress, takes a surprising, charming turn on which the entire documentary pivots.

In the case of the documentary’s three subjects transition was a success, and each have gone on to new relationships in their new identities. They all experience happy endings, for the most part, whereas some previous documentaries on transgenderism have profiled transitions that haven’t progressed as well.

To its credit, American Transgender is about healthy well-adjustment and not a gratuitous look at alternative lifestyles. These are brave journeys of self-acceptance for people who not only went inward to get to know who they are, but were then able to summon the courage to go forward into a process that included surgery and chemical treatments, knowing there was no guarantee of success.

As Eli (right) says, “I wanted my body to look on the outside how I felt on the inside.”

His close friend, Antonio, another female-to-male transgender, adds, “there’s a choice of happiness and misery. And there’s a choice of being true to yourself, or living a lie.”

It’s worth noting that regardless of gender identity, that’s good overall advice. And in that way, there is something for all of us in American Transgender.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/BlogPostDetails.aspx?postId=1797

We’ve All Been Duped Into Thinking that Women Are Making More Money than Men [jezebel.com]

by Doug Barry / jezebel.com

The urge for a jaunty news narrative about how women are overtaking men as family breadwinners has apparently, according to the Daily Beast’s Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers, given rise to a popular misconception about the ascendent working women: she’s outearning the working man.

Why are media outlets peddling this undoubtedly pleasant myth, which is based, argue Barnett and Rivers, on a lot of specious data? It’s because we the gullible American news gobblers prefer to hear that an economic class of women is on the rise (though it really isn’t) instead of that men who lost their jobs at the beginning of the recession are getting them back (which they are). Women, according to the latest glum jobs data, have lost some 300,000 jobs between June 2009 and June 2011, but a perception that they’re outpacing men in our toddler-walking economy has taken hold amongst news purveyors based on the single encouraging fact that 40 percent of women are now the breadwinners of their particular households.

But numbers are just abstract squiggles on a calculator screen — what do they even mean? (Fast irrelevant fact: Troodon, a dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretacious period, walked upright and, according to some hopeful paleontologists, was prety close to developing the sort of intelligence that allows people to cower in fear of the Solar System. It had three “fingers” on each hand and, if it hadn’t been extinguished by Jesus/an asteroid, it would have developed into a race of lizard people who used a number system based on six for the same arbitrary reason our number system is based on ten). Not what Time, which ran a cover back in March called “The Richer Sex,” would have you believe. Female breadwinners, as a social phenomenon, account for a significant percentage of low-income workers. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Center for American Progress, among couples whose earnings are in the lowest 20 percent, 70 percent of women outearn their husbands.

As researchers climb up the gilded rungs on the ladder of American wealth, however, they find that women who outearn their husbands are rare. According to the University of Missouri’s Anne Winkler, the wealthier a couple is, the more likely that the man is the breadwinner. Using the term “rich,” as Time does, to describe the women who are winning all that Sunbeam for their families is misleading, at least according to Barnett and Rivers, because the vast majority of women outearning their husbands are still only bringing in about 60 percent of the average low-income household income of $20,000 a year. Dolla dolla bills indeed.

“Only,” write Barnett and Rivers,

when you define a woman who outearns her working husband by as little as a dollar a day as the “breadwinner”–and you include single mothers who are sole providers-can you get to that 40 percent figure.

The underlying narrative at the beginning of the recession that propelled stories like “The Richer Sex” to the glossy cover of Time was that men on the lower economic rungs were hit harder than any other group, losing their jobs at a rate faster than that of fruit flies multiplying on an old banana peel. Women, meanwhile, are still entering the workforce at an empirically clear disadvantage — female Harvard alumni, for instance, earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts even 10 to 16 years after graduation. Female presence in corporate boardrooms has, likewise, flatlined, and though more women are ponying up loan money to get into the legal racket, only 16 percent of equity partners at law firms are women. The “richer sex” narrative, argue Barnett and Rivers, has the insidious capacity to blind women — and men — to the persistent workplace inequalities extant between the genders, which could further hamper progress among working women.

Still, the urge to spin a narrative about the ascendent corporate woman, the ascendant lady lawyer, or the ascendant female machinist betrays a general hunger for and interest in the rise of women in the workplace. Though the truth behind Time‘s data may be more blah than whoa, the very fact that Time would run a story about women outearning either their husbands or male coworkers demonstrates a public eagerness to hear good news about women gaining ground in the workforce. Maybe in a few years, life will begin imitating art.

Don’t Call Women the Richer Sex! [The Daily Beast]

http://jezebel.com/5906086/weve-all-been-duped-into-thinking-that-women-are-making-more-money-than-men

 

How Gender Identity May Determine the Right to Vote in 2012 [thenation.com]

by Brentin Mock / thenation.com

American companies are born as private commercial entities, but thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, suddenly they can transition to human status for the purpose of influencing an election with millions of dollars. Meanwhile, thousands of actual human citizens, who’ve only transitioned gender identity, may have less influence over elections—or no influence at all—because they’ll now face heavy burdens under strict photo voter ID laws. It’s an obscene paradox.

Over 25,000 transgender American citizens may face stiff barriers to voting in the November 2012 election, according to the report “The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters,” released last week by the Williams Institute at UCLA’s law school. This is, by any measure, the portion of the electorate that is among the most marginalized and stigmatized, and hence probably most in need of the right to have a say in who governs their lives. But discussions on both sides of voter ID laws tend to leave out transgender citizens in discussions about who would be most adversely impacted.

I’m including myself in that critique. I briefly mentioned that transgender citizens would be impacted in myfirst Voting Rights Watch blog, but have failed to consistently talk about their burdens in subsequent blogs. We often talk about black and Latino voters, elderly and student voters, women and those with low incomes as having trouble satisfying new photo voter ID mandates, but many transgender voters will have an incredibly tough set of challenges before them if they are to have their vote counted in November. The cost of getting the appropriate ID to vote in some jurisdictions will be as high as getting surgery.

The photo voter ID laws are already unnecessary intrusions into the lives of many people of color. Those intrusions become an epic accumulation of burdens, though, for transgender people of color. According to the report, two particular races—American Indian/Alaskan Native and African-Americans—are most likely to lack identification documents (46 percent and 37 percent, respectively) that reflect their accurate gender identity.

Jody L. Herman, author of the report, used data from the Brennan Center for Justice report on voter ID laws and the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (she also co-authored) to paint a picture of what voting access will look like for transgender citizens in the nine states with strict voting laws. She found that about 88,000 transgender Americans are eligible to vote in those states in November, but roughly a third of those face possibly getting ostracized due to lacking proper ID and the crazy complicated process of obtaining ID if the government questions your gender status.

This goes beyond just trying to get ID for voting purposes. Transgender citizens have problems obtaining and updating their identification cards for any reason, especially when dealing with the government. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey—the largest survey on transgender issues in the nation—shows that 22 percent of respondents said they had been denied equal treatment by a government agency or official, with another 22 percent saying they had been harassed or disrespected in the same setting. Respondents without ID reflecting their correct gender: 41 percent. That’s also about the same percentage who said that when they presented their non-gender-matching ID when asked to show it (at a bar, airport, etc.) were harassed afterward—3 percent said they were attacked or assaulted.

When government agencies that are supposed to serve the public aren’t safe spaces for transgender people, then routine citizen activities—like getting a license—become an albatross rather than an accomplishment. Registering to drive and vote are supposed to be proud moments, but for too many transgender people, it’s something to suffer through. And then consider that some government agencies require “proof” that you actually are the gender that you say you are—in some places that means getting gender reassignment surgery, whether it’s desired or not.

“There are a myriad of state and federal laws that govern whether or how transgender citizens can update their IDs, and some of these requirements are very difficult to meet and incredibly costly,” Herman told me in a phone interview. “Not only is there the emotional and psychological aspects, but also onerous requirements, such as the requirement to have had a certain kind of surgery, and some transgender citizens can’t afford it because it’s not covered by health insurance, while some simply don’t want it.”

But if they want to vote in certain places, they may have to do it. Such surgery typically costs between$40,000 and $50,000—that’s probably the largest poll tax ever. And when the percentage of transgender citizens most likely to lack proper identity documents are those who make below $10,000 a year, for many it’s plain impossible.

These are, no doubt, discussions that went missing among policymakers as they dreamed up and passed these laws. It probably never occurred to the almost-all-white-male voter ID chorus (plus black former Alabama Representative Artur Davis) that people who lack their race, gender and sexual privilege might have troubles with these rule changes. Or maybe it did occur to them, since there is a belief among conservatives that those who aren’t heterosexual aren’t citizens worthy of basic institutions like marriage and voting. Transgender people are the “irresponsible,” who won’t get in line and fly straight, and hence don’t deserve the franchise. I mean, such people might vote for a president that bans LGBTQ housing discrimination or something.

One of the first persons I thought of when I read this report was Janet Mock. We’re not aware of any relation despite sharing last names, but I hope we are related. She’s been great at spreading awareness as a transgender advocate and writer, and I was curious of her thoughts on the report both as a transgender advocate and an African-American. She grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she tells me she had no problems in terms of changing her gender marker on ID documents and birth certificates (ironically, our nation’s first black president also grew up in Hawaii and is constantly challenged on his birth certificate). However, she says she’s had plenty of other friends in other states who’ve had problems having their gender changed on ID documents.

Says Mock:

It’s this patchwork of state laws concerning documentation that hurts trans people everywhere and limits our opportunities to not only vote but to avoid discrimination when looking for a home or a job. What I find interesting about this type of voter suppression is that it’s obviously against everything we stand for as Americans and a society because it oppresses groups of marginalized Americans, telling us through these added barriers to vote, that our voices do not matter and that we do not have a say. It’s sad that the fundamental democratic right to vote and be heard is something trans people have to add to our laundry list of civic duties taken away from us simply because we choose to live our lives most authentically.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167402/how-gender-identity-may-determine-right-vote-2012

Gender identity and children who struggle with it [washingtonpost.com]

By Janice D’Arcy / washingtonpost.com

Gender nonconformity is a new term for many of us, but for some families it’s an issue that has gone unrecognized for too long.

Increasingly, more families with children who struggle with gender are speaking out and asking for more rights and more inclusion.

One high-profile story last year involved a mother and her transgender 7-year-old petitioning to join the Girl Scouts. Other families joined Anderson Cooper a few months ago to talk about their experiences onhis talk show.
Sarah Feliciano, who has lived in a transitional housing space for homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth, is a transgender female who became homeless after her mother rejected her decision to live as a woman. (Whitney Shefte – The Washington Post)

Experts are also beginning to pay attention to these children. In March, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a collection of studies on children and adolescents with gender identity disorders.

“Gender non-conformity refers to any individual, adult or child, who does not abide by our culture’s socially defined binary gender boxes,” Diane Ehrensaft told me.

Ehrensaft is a developmental and clinical psychologist and author of “Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-nonconforming Children,” (The Experiment, 2011). She is the featured speaker for tonight’s inaugural event in the Human Rights Campaign new speaker series, Equality Talks. (Details on that D.C. event are below.)

I asked her to define some of the terminology used when we talk about gender and children, and describe how parents can better support these kids, whether at home or in the community. Here’s our Q &A:

Can you explain how a parent might recognize gender non-conformity in a child?

It may involve a person saying he or she does not feel in synch with the gender listed on the birth certificate; it may involve the girl who says she will never, ever wear a dress, even when she’s supposed to be a bridesmaid or flower girl dressed in frills.

A parent will recognize it just by paying attention — it is the child who in one way or another says a transgressive “no, I don’t want to” or “no, I won’t” or “no, I can’t” to social expectations about gender, and it is the child who in one way or another says, “But here’s the way I’m going to put gender together creatively for myself, based on my own needs and desires.” If a parent can’t see it, it may be because the child has already figured out that it’s not going to be okay in the family, and therefore hides it, and that is never good for a child’s sense of well-being and confidence in who they are. Another reason a parent may not recognize it is that it hasn’t yet surfaced in the child, and may just show up at a later date.

Many children, especially toddlers, seem to arbitrarily and temporarily reject certain clothes or rules. How might a parent know when a child is going through a temporary phase or if he or she is expressing a more deeply ingrained view of him or herself?

Almost all children, at one time or another, do something that is outside the conforming gender box. A sister may think it’s fun one day to put on her brother’s football uniform. A little boy may ask to have his toenails painted red like his mommy’s.

This is to be differentiated from the child who consistently, persistently or even insistently crosses gender lines in either presentation, activities or declaration of what their gender is. Those latter children will fit the category of gender-nonconforming children. Some parents will still ask, in these situations, “But couldn’t it just be a phase?” The answer is yes, but as more time goes on and the child continues to express in gender-nonconforming ways, it is far more likely that the child is not going to outgrow the gender nonconformity, at least for the foreseeable future.  The real challenge for both parents and professionals is knowing that we may have to live in a state of not-knowing for awhile, and in the meantime leaving all gender doors open.

Also, one cautionary note about “phases.” Often, in referring to our children, “phase” actually has a negative connotation — ”Don’t worry.  It’s just a phase, he (she) will get over it.” With gender, holding on to the notion of phase might unwittingly transmit to your child that who your child is is not okay with you. Perhaps a better way to think about it is with “cross-section:” ”I don’t know who my child will become, but this is who my child is now at this cross-section of his or her life.”

How early might a child experience gender nonconformity?

We are seeing babies as early as the last quarter of the first year of life showing signs of gender nonconformity. Typically, it tends to show up first in the toddler and preschool years as children learn what gender is and develop language and activities to express themselves.

What are some of the most important ways a parent can guide a child through this experience?

The most important way a parent can guide a child through this experience is by always remembering that parents have little control over their children’s gender identity, but tremendous influence over their child’s gender health.

To ensure that health, a parent can listen to what their child is saying or showing about his or her gender expressions (how we act and present ourselves) or gender identity (how we identify as male, female or other) and open a space for that child to feel free to create his or her own unique authentic gender self, what I call the true gender self.

Just as the flight attendant instructs parents to administer oxygen to themselves before helping their child, the challenging task of raising a healthy gender-nonconforming child can often best be done by first reaching out for the social “oxygen” of parent support groups, listservs, educational services and informed gender specialists so that the parents are not going it alone in affirming their child’s true gender self.

You plan to talk tonight about gender creativity and gender expansiveness. Can you briefly explain what those terms mean?

Gender creativity is the thread each of us uses to create a true gender self that is a combination of nature, nurture and culture, a construction that I call the gender web. Like fingerprints, each of our gender webs will be unique to us, but unlike fingerprints, the gender web does not stay permanently the same, but can evolve and change over the course of a person’s lifetime. Gender creativity is the force within us, if allowed to express itself, that will both build and replenish the gender web as we grow.

Gender expansiveness is the opening up in both the culture and within ourselves all the permutations and combinations gender might take, without privileging one type over another. We often refer to gender expansiveness in terms of gender acceptance or gender diversity.

Ehrensaft’s talk tonight will be at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington at 6 p.m. It will also be broadcast live on the Equality Talks Web site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/gender-identity-and-children-who-struggle-with-it/2012/04/22/gIQABBJlaT_blog.html

Landmark EEOC Decision Declares ‘I am human!’ [seattlepi.com]

by Barbara Sehr / seattlepi.com

Unlike the vast majority of observers of last summers “Dancing with the Stars,” I had not tuned in to see this “curiosity,” of a man, who came into life as the “daughter” of one of my favorite musical teams. Chas Bono has done much in the past year to bring our community in the public eye, and he is a splendid role model. Yet, after experiencing so much employment discrimination  in my own post-transition era, I could only think of a recent song called “Are we dancer, or are we human?”

Today, that changes, at least in this administration. In a landmark decision, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,  the agency that regulates the provisions of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, says that “intentional discrimination against a transgender individual because that person is transgender is, by definition, discrimination ‘based on … sex’ and such discrimination … violates Title VII.”

In short, we are human.

Readers of this space may remember that I traveled to Washington, DC, in 2010 to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  For one week, I got to sit down with Congressional and White House leaders, and explain how my employment struggle has battered my life for nearly two decades. Even here in the State of Washington, supposedly one of the more progressive states, it is hard to deal with the elephant in the room during a job interview.  Yes, the state now has its own anti-discrimination law that was put in place just six years ago.  It took black people more than a century from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to establish certain inalienable rights.  Even in this so-called “post-racial” society, some white people “stand their ground,” for non-threatening segregation forever.

In my prepared remarks for an address in Washington in the ENDA battle, I noted, “My resume often brings smiles to a hiring manager’s face like a $20 bill found in your coat pocket. Then comes the interview, and ecstasy becomes agony. My practiced 30-second elevator speech seems to rise no further than a quick body scan at the airport.”

Yesterday’s decision means that employers — especially those in the 34 states where folks like I could be fired for simply being who we are – will have to think harder about how to ignore us. Proving discrimination is very difficult; cases like the one that brought this decision come rarely. The decision also does not have the full force of law that passage of ENDA would bring.  The EEOC is an agency of the executive branch, and its enforcement priorities could change from administration to administration. Passage of ENDA would put the full force of law up against those that feel gender identity is some sort of choice and not something to be protected.

Still, this monumental decision is a move toward hope. A new generation of young people has grown up with less need to label and trash those whose inner being is different from their own. Who knows, being as unique as I am, might one day not be unique.  Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality said as much in her remarks following a recent mainstream television program highlighting some issues specific to our community: “I’m looking forward to the day when trans people are invited to Anderson Cooper 360, Up with Chris Hayes, and The Rachel Maddow Show to talk about Wall Street reform, getting our troops out of Afghanistan, and overturning Citizens United. Right now, trans people talking about trans issues is crucial. But I believe that our exceptional progress will ultimately be marked by the moment when who we are becomes unexceptional. Getting there is going to take more people like Melissa Harris-Perry helping us raise all our voices and tell America our stories.”

http://blog.seattlepi.com/barbarasehr/2012/04/24/landmark-eeoc-decision-declares-i-am-human/

A Transgender Candidate Is Hoping to Make History [nytimes.com]

by Kate Taylor / nytimes.com

Zoning. School overcrowding. The design of New York’s transportation system.

These are just a few of the subjects that Mel Wymore, a candidate for City Council on the Upper West Side, brought up in an interview before addressing the elephant in the room: that, if elected, he would be the first transgender member of the Council.

“I’m not running because I’m transgender,” said Mr. Wymore, 50, who was born female but now, after testosterone therapy and top surgery, identifies as transgender. But, he said, that “doesn’t mean that being transgender doesn’t bring a certain perspective.”

Although gay men and lesbians have broken many electoral barriers — serving as mayors, state legislators and members of Congress — the same is not true of the transgender community. Only a few, including a Democratic district leader in Westchester County and a former member of the Hawaii Board of Education, have been elected to office around the country.

“I think there is a feeling that there is too much difference there,” Mr. Wymore said. But he said he believed: “This is the seat. This is the community that’s ready to go forward.”

The race, for the Sixth District seat occupied by Gale A. Brewer, who is term-limited, is competitive and has drawn a number of candidates, including Marc Landis, a district leader; Helen Rosenthal, a former chairwoman of Community Board 7; and Ken Biberaj, a vice president of the Russian Tea Room.

Melissa Sklarz, a transgender woman, said that the race was full of worthy candidates, and that as president of the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, she could not make an endorsement. But she described Mr. Wymore’s candidacy as “an opportunity for transgender people everywhere.”

“He’s a great representative,” Ms. Sklarz said. “Many people only know of transgender, I guess, from watching Chaz Bono on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Mel Wymore brings a much different, broader experience.”

Click to read the rest of the story…