Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Trans-Arizona
Our society is fixed on the idea of two genders. What is it like for a student in between?
by Nicole Stewart
published on Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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| Sam Nalven / STATE PRESS MAGAZINE |
On these days, Tran is "Steven."
But on other days, Tran can be spotted strutting in sky-high stilettos and a lace-trimmed tank top. A swaying black miniskirt skims the tops of his thighs. The smudged liner is accented by dark eye shadow, and silver hoop earrings swing breezily from his earlobes.
On these days, Tran is "Tranny."
With a pun intended, Tran's self-assigned nickname classifies him as one of the many young adults identifying themselves as transgender. In Tran's case, the term means that he neither identifies himself as male nor female.
"You can look at this both ways. You can say that I'm neither, [or] you can say that I'm both," he says. "I feel like I'm somewhere in between — where I'm not female, and I'm not male."
Yet the term "transgender" can have a variety of definitions for different people, says Madelaine Adelman, co-chair of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in Phoenix.
The most common meaning is a person whose gender identity or expression "does not conform to their birth sex," says Adelman, who is also an associate professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry. "You may be [physically] identified as a male, but you know in between your ears that you're a girl, and you desire and need to live as a girl would live in that society."
The presence of transgender individuals can be found nationwide. Groups such as GLSEN and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Queer Coalition aim to encourage and support diversity in the community, but a growing presence does not always mean an easy life for a transgender.
In many cases, it's the exact opposite.
Growing up guy
It took Tran 17 years to come to terms with his sexual and gender identity.
"Growing up, I tried to be one of the guys," he says. "They'd sit around and talk about 'chicks' and cars and sports and stuff, but it just wasn't me. I just didn't understand how I could connect with a guy, so, in that sense, I didn't really feel like I was male."
Tran says he kept his identity hidden from his conservative parents, who expected him to take a traditional path in life and to become a doctor. "I think they knew something was different, they just didn't want to think it was [that I am] gay," he says.
Though Tran neither identifies himself as a man or a woman, he says he calls himself gay. "It's the easiest way to help people understand how I feel sexual orientation-wise," he says. . . .
The death of Polk Street
Gentrification is destroying the home of a vibrant, if marginalized, queer community
By Joseph Plaster
Click here to read about the Polk's long, queer history
Kelly Michaels was following the San Francisco dream when she escaped her small Alabama hometown at 17 and hitchhiked westward. It was 1989.
"I had stars in my eyes," Michaels told the Guardian, sitting on the floor of her friend's small single-room occupancy Tenderloin apartment, hints of a Southern drawl now paired with Tammy Faye mascara and bleached-blonde hair. "When you're 16 or 17 and have dreams of being famous, you come to California — and you probably end up on Polk Street in drag."
Michaels arrived on Polk with little more than blue jeans, a bra, and rubber falsies to her name, making ends meet as a street sex worker. It wasn't what she was looking for; the Polk was plagued with drugs and violence. But her dad was embarrassed by his transgendered daughter and didn't her want her back. The neighborhood was a home.
She found a community at fierce Polk Gulch trans and boy-hustler bars like Q.T. and Reflections, where clientele included one "big, tall, black Egyptian transsexual hell-raiser" known to draw a gun. Scores of boy hustlers "coming in daily from the Greyhound station" danced naked on the bars. At the end of the night, Michaels's new family members would pool their money and rent a hotel room for $30.
"The bars were the churches, the sanctuaries," Michaels's friend Terri, an African American man in his 50s, told us. "You weren't really going to be hassled there."
Not any more. "Polk Street is dead," Michaels told us. "Dead as fuck now."
THE NEW POLK STREET
The new kids on the block are calling it "revitalization."
After the three-decades-old gay bar Kimo's is transferred to a new owner at the end of September, there will be only two queer bars left on a street that was San Francisco's gay male center in the 1960s and a gritty, affordable home for low-income queers, trans women, and male sex workers in the following decades. Where scores of hustlers lined up against seedy sex shops and gay bars just a few years ago, crowds of twentysomething Marina look-alikes now clog the sidewalks in front of upscale clubs.
Polk's queer residents and patrons are now being priced and policed out of their neighborhood — and their city — as business and tourism interests continue to eat away at the city's center. Lower Polk Gulch, just blocks north of City Hall and one block east of Van Ness, has in the past few years succumbed to multimillion-dollar businesses, upscale lofts, increased rents at SRO hotels and apartments, and a new million-dollar city streetscape beautification plan. The related increase in policing and new efforts to clean up the street is making the area an unwelcoming place for the marginal queers who for so long called it home.
It has been the most down-and-out segments of the queer population — male sex workers, trannies, young people, poor people of color, and immigrants — who have often been the queer population's boldest and most innovative actors, pushing the movement forward in new ways. What does queer San Francisco lose when our most marginalized members are pushed, policed, and priced out of the city? . . .
The J. Michael Bailey Controversy Over Transsexuality
by: Autumn Sandeen
Tue Aug 28, 2007 at 02:02:14 AM EDT
. . . read all 18+ comments. . .
There are some fair criticisms
...of the methods used to discredit Bailey.
<>Personally, as a transwoman, I find his theories alarming, judgemental, and to be honest, nonsensical.
Alarming because they play to stereotypes, and the notion that anything not heterosexual (read a little more about his theories on homosexuality, too...there's less to any gay friendliness on his part than you might think) is somehow a deviation, in this case to the point of paraphilia. Deviation in our society is somehow considered a bad thing, even though it is a natural part of evolution!
<>To be honest, transsexualism to me, seems like a normal outcome of a certain confluence of biological factors. Paraphilias, IMHO, are few and far between, and don't make sense as identities.<>
<>Maybe there are some autogynephiles, and homosexual transsexuals out there. Fine, I hope they find solace in their lives. The real concern is that his theories will perpetuate needless pain and cause severe stigmatisation for other transwomen (he doesn't address transmen) who do not fit those categories. Personal I question if Drs. BBL et al know about the null hypothesis, or the possibility that they were measuring something else in their carefully selected for studies? Such as symptons, not causation? Or even patterns that are something completely different, but mislabeled due to precognition? Do they know that not that long ago, calling yourself transsexual was as unacceptable as calling yourself a gay man? To an undiscerning public, a gay man might be a pervert (forgive me) but a transwoman was a freak and a pervert as well! Welcome to the closet! I know, because I felt that based on the transsexual lives I saw, and knowing that I was not sexually attracted to men, self destruction was the only answer. I tried to join the army (getting yourself killed also hides your secret forever) yet asthma kept me out (or my poor overworked guardian angel) then tried to do it for myself. Not because I was a gay man, but because I saw no way to be who I felt I was. Finally, nearly self destroying myself stopped working.
<><> But... even for all of the unneeded pain caused transsexuals by such theories, villifying him, and especially attacking his family, is way out of bounds, and only serves to discredit those activists who use that sort of tactic. I'm not saying that all of the charges against Andrea James, Lynn Conway or Dierdre McCloskey are accurate. They are very troubling, and some of them do have real evidence behind them. <>I don't care why Bailey's children were brought into this discussion...it's a disgusting tactic, and I resent how it has served to obscure the real debate. It was a stupid move, period, which has led to sympathy for bad science in a public that pays attention to fireworks before facts. Now we can be accused of being defensive (yes, I understand personally and well about living ones life defensively) and clever propagandists for this "science" will play on this ad nauseum. Defensive people "must be hiding something."
<><>Learn long term strategy, activists, before you go to war...ad hominen attacks can be answered, and if you are in a vulnerable position, don't use them...
<>I am a day to day activist...I am living amongst people who knew me before and after, I built up goodwill and acceptance by being understanding and answering their concerns with my own inner truth as I see it. I was doing very well, yet now I have to fear whether or not all the caring in my relationships will have a subordinate clause attached. Thanks a heckuva lot, there, some people!
For a Low-Dose Hormone, Take Your Pick
Patches, pumps, pills, low-dose pills and super-low-dose creams and gels: Ever since the landmark Women’s Health Initiative study found that hormone therapy could be harmful, a dizzying array of new low-dose treatment options have been offered to counter the symptoms of menopause.
Some deliver hormones the old-fashion way, by mouth. Others do it through the skin, by patch, cream or gel, or through vaginal rings or suppository tablets. On Aug. 3, the Food and Drug Administration approved yet another treatment, a spray that delivers low-dose estrogen to the skin.
For doctors and patients, the wealth of options can be overwhelming. “There are a trillion products out there,” said Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale. “You can take that low dose many different ways, and ultimately it boils down to personal preferences.”
Dr. Minkin said she was not surprised that patients were confused, adding, “So am I.”
The variety reflects the industry’s efforts to win back women with symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness who are reluctant to use traditional products because of the Women’s Health Initiative findings, released five years ago.
The large clinical trials found that hormones increased the risk of strokes and potentially life-threatening blood clots, and that combined estrogen and progestin also increased the risk of breast cancer and heart attacks. (Women who have not had hysterectomies must use the combined hormones.)
The current recommendation for troubling menopausal symptoms is to take the lowest hormone dose needed for relief for the shortest possible time. But doctors acknowledge the lack of proof that lower doses are safer. “We assume the lower doses are going to be safer, but we don’t really have any data that has examined that,” said Dr. Michelle P. Warren, founder and medical director of the Center for Menopause, Hormonal Disorders and Women’s Health at Columbia University Medical Center and a consultant for Bradley Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Elestrin.
Many women seeking natural remedies have turned to compounding pharmacies, druggists who promise so-called bioidentical hormones that are chemically synthesized but have the same molecular structure as hormones produced by a woman’s body. . . .
Letters regarding a controversy
Debating a Hypothesis:
To the Editor:
Re “Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege” (Aug. 21): Benedict Carey casts this story as a matter of politically correct thugs trying to undermine Dr. J. Michael Bailey’s legitimate scientific research. But even Dr. Bailey’s defenders admit the research in question turned out to rest on shoddy anecdotal evidence.
In light of that fact, the story can’t possibly concern “the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom,” as someone quoted in the article claims. The question was whether his book had any legitimate scientific basis. And it didn’t. But perhaps that doesn’t make for a very interesting story.
John Casey
Chicago
•
To the Editor:
It’s unscientific to require an explanation for gay or transgender identities but not heterosexual, nontransgender identities.
The Bailey hypothesis claims that biological males who identify as women are either trying to attract men or to fulfill their own fantasies. The “alternate” hypothesis is not always the “woman trapped in a man’s body” cliché; the alternative is to let people describe their lives in their own terms.
Karen Hogan
Olympia, Wash.
•
To the Editor:
Dr. Ben Barres should choke on his observation that Dr. J. Michael Bailey “seems to make a living by claiming that the things people hold most deeply true are not true” — unless he condemns Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Leakey et al.
James W. Voelz
St. Louis
UK: Boys who like girls to be boys . . .
In Neil Bartlett’s Twelfth Night, the male comic roles are played by women. Our correspondent asks who’s really wearing the trousers
Look at what you’re wearing,” Neil Bartlett, writer, director, profligate translator and provocative performer demands. “Jeans, a T-shirt, trainers. What does it say?” Not, thankfully, that I really ought to have made more of a sartorial effort for our interview in the RSC’s Clapham rehearsal rooms. Breeches-deep in preparations for his bewilderingly cross-gartered Twelfth Night, Bartlett is busy unpacking the mercurial concept of staging gender.
“You and I are essentially wearing the same thing. But you are not dressing as a man. I am not dressing as a woman. We are not attempting to disguise our sex.” His slug of a moustache would surely prove something of a handicap. “Not really,” he says, smiling. “There are infinite ways to play gender.” He explains: “It can be ravishingly sexy, it can be very precisely unsexed. Some of my casting is completely true to type. Lady Olivia [Justine Mitchell] is an extraordinary, thoroughbred woman. Count Orsino [Jason Mer-rells] is a gorgeous man, but they’re playing opposite a Viola [Chris New] who is very obviously an attractive young man with false tits. It releases proceedings from the grip of naturalism immediately.”
Shakespeare’s slippery, androgynous twin, shipwrecked on Illyria’s shores, who disguises herself as a boy and falls desperately, inappropriately in love, is often played by a man. This year, Ed Hall and Declan Donnellan both staged their all-male Twelfth Nights at the Old Vic and The Swan theatres.
In Bartlett’s production, however, the male comic characters are also played by women. “They are the creators of mayhem in the play,” he says. “And to see Malvolio chased about by three expert comediennes in padded Y-fronts is a delicious sight. I cannot conceive of a more perfect Toby Belch than Marjorie Yates. Twelfth Night is this incredible dressing-up box of a play and everyone has to find their costume.
“To me it just isn’t strange,” Bartlett adds, “because I’ve never done anything else. One of the first pieces of theatre I ever did was called Dressing Up.” . . .
