Post to Rainbow Health Network Email List

This is something I posted to the Rainbow Health Network this morning.

I would like to take up Linda’s “couple of questions” though first a few disclaimers.

Please bear with me because I’ve learned through bitter experience, even on this list, that formal credentials and qualifications, of which I have none—other than my entire life’s experience and struggle as a transsexual woman, through transition, human rights complaint, surgery and on into the rest/beginning of my life—have in my own community made me something of a pariah.

Not universally, but enough to render despair, even in the face of success, a lifelong companion who is reluctant to leave.

I do not pretend to understand all the lengthy tracts posted in response to current events or even the strength to read all of them, though I did read Drescher’s response and was, at first, mystified as Linda.

But then I realized, in many quarters of the various “communities”–in quotes because I’m unconvinced there are such things between and among GLBTTQ peoples—what happens to transgender and transsexual people really is an adjunct to the “larger” question. And with respect to surgery, we are, by definition, speaking of transsexual people.

I have written about some of these issues—and the way they impact organizations that purport to be allied with us here:

https://jessicalive.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/inconvenient-divisive-and-ultimately-unnecessary/

and here:

https://jessicalive.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/marginal-among-the-marginal/

It is really quite simple, Drescher is not speaking to trans “communities” at all; he is speaking to the “community” he believes matters—the gay and lesbian community.

It certainly does. But in all of our “communities” gay and lesbian people make up the overwhelming majority and in the majority/minority dynamic—which is inescapable—take on, and their organizations take on, even when they purport to be LGB(T), the very thing gay and lesbian people have struggled with—privilege.

When I discovered this at Egale Canada some years ago—when it was of some relevance to all of our “communities”–I was quite shocked. No longer.

The ‘complicated’ theory, journal reports and statistical support Zucker has amassed regarding the future development of gender-variant male-bodied children, leading to his assertion that most of us end up as gay, certainly leads me to believe his apparent fear—certainly the goal of his “therapy”–has little to do with us—i.e. transsexual people. Rather in his homophobia he has, as it seems Blanchard also has, completely erased our existence.

As I have pointed out elsewhere (link above) our lives, issues and struggles are just “inconvenient, divisive and ultimately unnecessary.”

All struggles for human rights and medical access are inconvenient, divisive and ultimately absolutely necessary—as long as one’s commitment to equality and dignity for all is profound and steadfast.

I exist.

We exist.

Deal.

And if these two “respected” clinicians, their supporters on the Clarke-Western axis–“axis of evil”(?)–cannot see us, well, this remains the problem it always has.

But, of course, they do not deal as so many others do not deal.

Totally excluded from the organizing taking place in Toronto on behalf of trans communities—as with ALL Toronto based “province-wide organizations”—I only know by report, rumour and word of mouth of the work the THLG/THRC, Susan Gapka et al, and the Trans PULSE Project have done. I’m grateful for their work but continue to wonder at how inconvenient the participation of someone who lives north of Steeles Avenue remains.

My point remains that despite good work being done by such organizations and individuals in Toronto and elsewhere, these things happen, when you get down to it, without our input–and not for trying.

In Ottawa, I’ve watched in some amazement as the Ottawa Citizen has called “transgendered people”–I truly HATE that umbrella term–“more marginal than drug addicts” as a passing swipe at Poilievre:

The Courage of Poilievre
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.html?id=f68e086c-6a0e-48b2-b67b-d20d70ab04a7

My own comments on Poilievre:
https://jessicalive.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/who-is-pierre-poilievre/

And despite my own efforts over recent years, it is simply inconvenient to establish even a “table”–which I believe is the term now current in social service circles for bodies to discuss matters of concern to various marginal populations. In Ottawa we have, for example, the Gay Men’s Wellness Initiative. A ‘trans services initiative’ is simply not yet in the cards.

On Tuesday, I emailed the office of my MP, Paul Dewar, Ottawa Centre NDP, to ask that he speak out against the absurd idiocy of Poilievre, not only as one of his many trans constituents but because the NDP, as a party, remains one I have worked with—I have worked with Bill Siksay for a number of years, whose response Gapka recently posted to this list—and, like many, assume it is the one most resonant with our issues, needs and struggles.

It is Friday morning and it is still silent.

As of this morning, the Egale Canada website remains silent, nor have we heard a word out of Helen Kennedy, Executive Director, who recently, gratuitously and in error indicated transgender and transsexual people in Canada have formal human rights. Only in North West Territories is this the case..

“We may have human rights for LGBTQ people in Canada, but you’d never know it based on these results,” said Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale.

Two-Thirds Of Canadian LGBT Students Feel Unsafe At Schoolhttp://www.365gay.com/Newscon08/05/051208bul.htm

(Previously in the St. John’s Telegram)

Helen, you know better. Shame on you.

The Mikki Gilbert op-ed in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen, at:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=e7e297f9-9f2b-40fd-ad9d-4c64277f984c

is quite curious.

The picture at the center of the piece in the printed edition is the mirror reflection of a Thai katooey putting on her lipstick. Those of you who have read Namaste certainly know the classic error/diversion of such a display. And while I’m more than happy to accept the positive support of anyone, I can only wonder at the choice of someone whose situation in the transgender-transsexual spectrum is as a self-declared crossdresser, and as such a transgender not transsexual person, to speak for us.

Or above us. Or without us.

His life and struggle, certainly a part of any transgender/transsexual coalition—trans coalition—are not mine and I can no more understand his than he can mine. Make no mistake, I have always worked towards the human rights of all transgender and transsexual people though when it comes to questions of surgery—the goal of those whose lives from birth are dissonant in the extreme—the question raised by Smitherman’s recent announcement, where is the commentary from a transsexual person in anything other than a subsidiary manner? Letters to the editor, interviews, etc.

Too many do not see our lives and struggles when they consider the question of surgery, rather they see impacts on what gay and lesbian people have achieved—which certainly show us what can be achieved—but in their cissexual privilege do not see us.

This also raises issues of professionalization—discussed on this list—privilege, oppression, exclusion and alienation. All the daily fare of transgender and transsexual people.

I write today in great anger at my exclusion from these debates that have governed my life from the moment I was born—if not long before. I also write in great relief that now, post-op, there is little that bigotry, privilege, ignorance, prejudice, hate and even inconvenience can do to me with regard to the question of surgery, at least.

I am not certain about the future and wait for the time our voices are heard on matters that concern us, not others–except in their commitment to equality and dignity for all–and are positively responded to.