Never Enough No-Bullshit Posts Department

You might have heard about the Facebook group, "Killing your hooker so you don't have to pay her."
The good news is, that group has been shut down.

The bad news is, searching Facebook for "kill hooker" or "kill prostitute" digs up plenty more groups where that one came from.

Some people think it's just a GTA reference. Some think it's funny, no matter what. And some apparently think that it's OK, because they were advocating death only for prostitutes.

So let me make this painfully clear:

I have friends who have been prostitutes.

I have lovers who have been prostitutes.

I know many women--trans women, lesbians, feminists, moms--who have been prostitutes.

As far as I know, I might have friends, lovers, or other acquaintances who are currently prostitutes--if so, I don't know because it's not my damn business, or because they're too ashamed of it to admit it. Nor does it matter.

The bottom line for me is, if you hate prostitutes, or act like they are beneath you, or think that prostitutes deserve whatever fate they get, or if you just happen to think killing prostitutes is funny--then in my mind, you hate me. Because there's certainly been enough desperate times when I've considered sex work. Which means, whether you intended it or not, you've made me a potential target.

If you're one of these people, do me a favor and disassociate yourself from me, completely, on every social network you know me on. I would rather be friendless and surrounded by enemies than be led to think I am surrounded by friends.

I'm dead serious. You better think about it.

Never Enough Heteronormative Religionists Department

Lately I've been reading Amin Maalouf's In The Name Of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, a thin but thought-provoking text from a decade ago that I've been reading as research into one of my long-term projects. It did occur to me, in light of Blog Against Normativity Day, to write about identity and violence in terms of heterosexual and non-heterosexual identities, and religion's role in it all. Identity being tied to one's affiliations, it's instructional to start with example what makes up affiliations:

"What determines a person's affiliation to a given group is essentially the influence of others: the influence of those about him — relatives, fellow countrymen, co-religionists — who try to make him one of them; together with the influence of those on the other side, who do their best to exclude him." (p. 25)

While sexuality may be pre-determined, affiliation is learned through friend and foe alike. Think about so-called "ex-gays" that deny their native sexuality because they came to the realization that said sexuality is evil. While one may wonder if some ex-gays might have a single bad encounter that drove them from a queer identity, don't think that they only recently came to that conclusion. In a heteronormative society, where people are assumed and expected to be heterosexual, homosexuality is automatically banned to the realms of the Other, and it's easy to accept this judgement, especially if a religious leader describes homosexuality in loathesome and fearful terms, climaxing with the threat of God's rejection and eternal punishment. Only the creation of the Gay Pride movement, in the wake of Stonewall, formed an effective counter to this heteronormative judgement. Before then, few defied heteronormativity without guilt and shame. Those who knew they were gay were often left to masquerade, sometimes as married heterosexuals with furtive affairs, sometimes as committed bachelors and spinsters who had companions or roommates — with whom they had furtive affairs.

Likewise, heterosexuality becomes a part of one's identity, albeit usually not in the fore unless challenged either directly with taunts, or else indirectly through contrast. To further quote Maalouf:

"The apprenticeship starts very soon, in early childhood. Deliberatey or otherwise, those around him mould him, shape him, instil into him family beliefs, rituals, attitudes and conventions ... and also certain fears, aspirations, prejudices and grudges, not forgetting various feelings of affiliation and non-affiliation, belonging and not belonging.

"And soon, at home, at school and in the next street, he will suffer the first knocks. By their words and by their looks, other people will make him feel he is poor, or lame, short or lanky, swarthy or too fair, circumcised or uncircumcised, or an orphan ...." (p. 25)

...And don't forget fag/dyke or straight.

So if it is the nature of heteronormative society to challenge its own commitment to heterosexuality as a means of reinforcing it, especially for males brought up to be more openly prone to violence, then it becomes clear that heterosexual attitudes must be modified until they are less and less of a threat to anyone — including, and especially heterosexuals. I believe that advances in knowledge, global communications and free travel have done much to lessen the need to maintain heterosexuality as the status quo and, in contrast, treat homosexuality, transgenderism, and other excluded forms of sex/gender expression as "deviances" to be shunned as weird, insane, depraved, fatal and damnable. Even so, there are no guarantees of constant progress or safety and every reason to believe that the tides of history do occasionally shift aganst those of us putting our queer toes into the waters, and threatens to pull us under.

"Take the case of an Italian homosexual in the days of fascism. I imagine that for the man himself that particular aspect of his personality had up till then been important, but not more so than his professional activity, his political choices or his religious beliefs. But suddenly state repression swoops down on him and he feels threatened with humiliation, deportation or death. It's the recollection of certain books I've read and films I've seen that leads me to choose this example. [emphasis added] This man, who a few years earlier was a patriot, perhaps even a nationalist, was no longer able to exult at the sight of the Italian army marching by; he may even have come to wish for its defeat. Because of the persecution to which he was subjected, his sexual preferences came to outweigh his other affiliations, among them even the nationalism which at the time was at its height. Only after the war, in a more tolerant Italy, would our man have felt entirely Italian once more." (p. 14)

I find it curious that Maalouf feels the urge to explain why he chose this example. Is he asserting his own heterosexuality in the face of talking about identity in the case of homosexuality? Does this reinforce heteronormativity? What of the phrase "sexual preferences" — does Maalouf now, a decade after writing the above paragraph, think differently of homosexuality than he does now?

And yet, his point here is well made. Each of us is an amalgam of allegiances, and each allegiance forms a portion of the individual's identity; but attack one allegiance and it comes to the fore, seeming to be the most important part of that identity as long as the individual feels under attack. The religious right complains that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered insist on being, to use the common expression, in their face when it comes to their sexuality and gender expression — and yet, would it even be an issue if these same right-wing religionists weren't constantly attacking the very ones over which they complain? Would there be gay pride rallies if there wasn't an emphasis on shame in our culture over one's sexuality? And for that matter, what if the religious right didn't feel as if their way of life was under attack? Would they bother to attack in defense of their identity?

I little doubt that heteronormativity can be relieved by more visible, sympathetic, dare-I-say mainstream presentations of queers. But were I to choose to go this path — and I likely would not — would the challenge to heterosexual norms result in more violence and hatred? I tend to doubt it, but I cannot rule out the possibility of another Shepherd, another Araujo — or perhaps worse still.

"We have only to review the events of the last few years to see that any human community that feels humilated or fears for its existence will tend to produce killers. And these killers will commit the most dreadful atrocities in the belief that they are right to do so and deserve the admiration of their fellows in this world and bliss in the next. (p. 28)

So why is religion so important in this equation? In the case of heteronormativity, Abrahamic religion would appear to be a reinforcement, its rules on sex and sexuality borne out of a need to form an identity distinct from the other monotheistic Semites in post-Exile Asia Minor, who often used sex of all kinds, with all sorts of gender transformations and transgressions, as a path to their divinity. Hence, three major world religions can claim laws against homosexuality, crossdressing and pretty much any non-procreative sex between husband and wife, and thus form an identity based on sexual taboos. The more modern theological invention that procreation is the only divine aspect of sex, and all else is sin and obscenity, only justifies an identity that is challenged not just by the behavior of the LGBT community, but by science, birth control, sex education and increased cultural significance on pleasure. In the West the religious view on sex is gradually giving away but is moving faster by globalization and its resulting cultural cross-semination, and this along with other modern pressures whips extremist reactionary thought into a bloodlust.

"The ever-increasing speed of globalization undoubtedly reinforces, by way of reactionk, people's need for identity. And because of the existential anguish that accompanies such sudden changes it also strengthens their need for spirituality. But only religious allegiance meets, or seeks to meet, both these needs." (p. 93)

"It is not enough now to separate Church and State: what has to do with religion must be kept apart from what has to do with identity. And if we want that amalgam to stop feeding fanaticism, terror, and ... wars, we must find other ways of satisfying the need for identity." (p. 96)

It seems that the only real way to strip identity from religion, however, would be to strip away all those things that make it religion. Let's face facts: The word "religion" may well derive from the Latin "religare", to bind again; and does that not describe a spiritual community somehow? Without common rituals, dogma, theological points of view, etc., what is left but an anarchism of spirituality? Despite Maalouf's insistence a page before that he is not arguing for the abolition of religion, it's hard to see how religion would survive the destruction of its ability to create identifications. Still, one might wonder if it's possible to create a sense of identity that is spiritual in nature but still stripped of the negative effects of religious overidentification. Religious humanism, maybe? Ah, but that's under attack by the religionists too, and for the same reason homosexuality and its fellow travellers are under attack — because they think they were attacked first.

"[E]veryone nowadays [feels] himself to be living to a certain extent in a minority, in exile. This is because all communities and cultures have a sense that they are up against others stronger than they, a feeling that they can no longer keep their heritage safe. Looked at from the South and the East, it is the West that dominates. Looked at from Paris, it is America that holds sway. But if you go to the United States, then what do you see? You see minorities reflecting all the diversity in the world, all needing to assert their original allegiances. And when you have met all these minorities and have been told a hundred times that power is in the hands of white males, or of Anglo-Saxon Protestants, you suddenly hear the sound of a huge explosion in Oklahoma City. And who are the people responsible? Some white male Anglo-Saxon Protestants who regard themselves as members of the most neglected and despised of minorities, and who believe that globalisation is sounding the knell of 'their' America." (p. 124)

Hence, a heterosexual's insecurity does not simply come from the internal challenges to his/her own heterosexuality; it is also because he/she feels his/her world changing into something he/she doesn't recognize — no longer is sure of his/her own place in it. From that point of view, a Gay Pride rally is a palpable sign of that change, and therefore a threat. But contrarywise, the Gay Pride rally arose because, as a persecuted minority, LGBT folk felt a need to carve out a place in that world. While it may be worrisome that heteronormative extremists feel a need to reproduce in excess in order to maintain their numbers, generally speaking their time is short. Eventually their children will be exposed to a greater slice of the world, and may in time discover the contradiction between the wonders of modernity and the values they were taught. They may yet conclude that there are greater values than those they were taught, and increasingly come to regard the LGBT community in the light of shared humanity. Meanwhile modern heteronormativity gives way to a world where hatred and fear of homosexuality no longer remain viable options.

"So who does the world really belong to? Not to any particular race or any particular country. [Nor any particular sexuality. — Lil] More than at any other time in history it belongs to all those who want to make a place for themselves in it. It belongs to all those who endeavour to understand the new rules of the game, however bewildering they may be, and try to use them to their own advantage." (p. 124-5)

Never Enough Sleep Department

Well, that's not entirely true--I stayed up all night two nights ago and slept like a baby the next night, so I felt great today. But it certainly SEEMS like I haven't been able to get enough sleep for the past month. I guess I was getting caught up on all the sleep I didn't get while I was working. Having so many holidays packed into one month didn't help either. (A belated Happy ChaYulKwaMas to you all, by the way.)

Of course, just writing this has got me yawning, so I think I'll go to bed soon.

Oh, an update about the name change. I now have my Social Security card and have begun to contact my former employers and my university to get them to update their records. Next, I will send out resumes with my new name, followed by contacting all my creditors, the IRS, and whoever else is still using the old, accursed name in their files. Eventually I'll get them all. Eventually. For now, sleep is good.

Never Enough Legal Pronouncements Department

It's official; as of about 2 PM Pacific time on December 20, 2001, my legal name has been changed to Lilith Dawn Mitchell. Tomorrow I will go about getting a new Social Security card and a new photo ID. And then the process of informing all my creditors, previous employers, etc. may begin apace.

A right pain in the ass it is, and there will be more challenges to handle to come. And yet, I smile warmly every time I think about this landmark.

YAY ME.

Never Enough News Updates Department

I've been quiet to much of the world as of late, and it's mainly because I've been very busy with many new changes in my life. 2001 is definitely proving to be a year of transition, and I'm not just talking about gender.

First off, I was laid off in early November. While I miss the money, I'm fortunate that my unemployment benefits match up to about 75% of my income. If I am frugal, I can survive. I have a year's supply of Delestrogen stock-piled so that is not a concern of mine. My other prescriptions are more worrisome, but I will manage as always.

The layoff allowed me to visit my family in Texas for the first time in seven years, in time for Thanksgiving. The only real rough spots were that my father kept calling me by the male name. But he and I talked more in the few sentences we shared before I left than all we had effectively said to each other in years. I think he understands that I am a much happier person for this, and so he's at least trying to come to terms with my transsexuality.

Grandma Burr said I was pretty.

My mother, my brother Scott, and his wife Joy were great, too. Joy was a bit awkward just because I don't think she had known a transsexual up close before. She called me a transvestite at one point, but that was pure innocence on her part, so I gently corrected her and explained what was entailed in being transsexual. She was curious, of course. But all in all, she lived up to her name.

Joy's sister and her husband were friendly and interested in finding out more about transsexuals. That, and several pints of beer, led to some interesting conversations; the exclamation "NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?"* sticks in my head still. Apparently they were talking about trying to get me to convert to their form of Baptist. Scott quickly filled in that I have already gone through my Fundie trip and got burned on hypocrisy and so isn't particularly interested in church. He sagely didn't mention my being a minister in the Church of the SubGenius.

* Brassard's going rate for SRS, last I checked. A bargain, I told them.

I'm ecstatic about the way my family is adjusting to my gender changes. It feels as if I have a family again. Of course, I was the one who moved away from them, but it felt necessary in order to move forward with my life. But it seems like all will be well in the end, and for that I am so grateful.

I then left Dallas for Columbus to visit with my OTHER family. Yes, and sorry girls, but I'm taken. SMITTEN DUMB, I am, and it's great. For I have found the perfect woman for me. Her name is Cynthia and she's cuddly and she's pervy and she's a SubGenius. And somehow we seem to be staggeringly compatible domestically, emotionally, sexually, and in every other way, and YET have enough healthy differences to help propel us forward. Did I mention she's pervy?

She and I have actually known each other for years, but it wasn't until earlier this year that I sent her to my foolspress.com site. She found my rant on Tummy Liberation and that's when her lesbian side first showed up in my life. I told her a while later that I was transsexual and found out she had a special place in her heart for all trannies, I showed her a personal ad I had written exploring my more dominant, fetishist side, only to find out that the ideal submissive I described matched her nearly perfectly. Then I started introducing her to the metal bands I enjoy, and when I found out used to be a hesher and really loved to listen to metal LOUD, I knew she was the one. Nothing since has changed that impression.

We are currently bound under a one-year Short Duration Marriage (TM) and she permanently wears a collar of some sort, usually a black bead choker to symbolize the recycled rubber collar I presented to her. She gave me a beautiful black and silver leash to go with the collar. We got matching silver rings with black triangles and will probably get something flashier for a permanent wedding ring. And we'll be married legally as soon as I can get work, with a SubGenius wedding at Brushwood and another one in Seattle later on.

This all means:

1) I now have a stepson, a beautiful 10 year old redheaded whiz kid with a mild case of Tourette's, but despite dealing with my own familial insecurities I think he's cool and I hope to be a bigger part of his life in the future.

2) As soon as I find work, we will work towards the Small Move, when she comes to live with me and help find a place where we can make the Big Move and somehow raise a small family of diverse interests without feeling like the Aadams Family or the psychos from the Dan Akroyd/John Belushi sleeper *Neighbors*.

3) I may never be lonely again. We're almost telepathic.

4) The long-distance aspect truly bites. A distance of 2,437 miles and three time zones is pretty formidable. But we shall persevere.

Oh, there's one more thing I should mention. Today I'm going to the court house to finally submit the petition to change my legal name. I will never live part-time again, it is just too painful. The only real problem is I still need electrolysis, but I am planning to use some of my tax refund to get my mouth area cleared, and maybe work on the area where I get the most ingrown hairs and razor burn. Fortunately, the Delestrogen has severely lightened my beard, although there are still stubborn patches. It all goes, but some areas must go sooner. Other than that, I haven't had to act like a man for over a month now, and I am so happy for it.

Never Enough Transgender Awareness Department

Temenos, one of my favorite GLBT resources on the planet, ran an article by Kai Williams to try to illustrate what it is like to be poor and transgendered, and interviewed transgender activist Jessica Xavier:

"We continue to be one of the most stigmatized populations on the planet," says Xavier, the former director of a national coalition of transgender political groups called It's Time! -America. Xavier recently cajoled the local health department into financing a survey of around 250 transgender people in D.C. Forty percent of respondents had not finished high school, and another 40 percent were unemployed. Almost half had no health insurance and reported not seeing a physician regularly. A quarter reported being HIV-positive, and another 35 percent reported having seriously considered suicide.

Xavier's was the latest in a series of such studies done in cities where relatively emboldened trans activists have pushed local officials to begin considering public policy solutions to their health care concerns. Across the board, they have found largely the same thing: higher rates of just about every indicator of social and economic distress. "And all because of the stigma," Xavier concludes.

Never Enough Trannie Goth Department

From the song "Anima I" by Sopor Aeternus

The Woman I am no mirror can see,
My breast are still small and my voice is so deep.
The Woman I am, she cannot feel love,
I wish to cut my genitals and feed them to the dogs.
The woman I am prepared to receive the pain.
The needles shall burn only the ugly remains.
Suppression is impossible, I must live it out,
My true self is female how could I ever doubt...

Never Enough Trans-Anything Department

Note: It's been a rough week for me, so I hope my absence hasn't been too keenly felt.

"I regard my body as a canvas on which I intend to draw---" --Andrew Martin

Many of you, I am sure, heard of the Robin Williams vehicle Bicentennial Man that came out a couple of years ago. The story, in short, is that of a robot's attempts over two centuries to become an ordinary human. I haven't seen the movie and so will not dwell on it.

However, I recently found--literally--a copy of the novel that inspired that movie. Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg's The Positronic Man is an engrossing read, to the extent that I have read it twice straight through and plan on a third reading before I put it down.

Now, I have always liked old-school science fiction. Sure, most of it shows modernist trains of thought that seem quaint in the age of post-modern, transhumanist science fiction. And that shows in the exaggerated representation of human conservatism present throughout. All the same, The Positronic Man rang true for me in one important aspect: his transformation from robot to human has many parallels with my own transsexuality.

As the robot Andrew Martin grew into his humanity, so I too find myself growing into my femininity. Andrew once settled for being creative and artistic--an amazing thing for a robot--then began wearing clothes, then began changing his outer form to reflect his ever-growing yearning to be seen as a man, battling prejudice the whole way. I once settled for simply expressing my female self in a male context, then began to crossdress, then began taking hormones, all the while struggling to overcome prejudice against the transgendered. Andrew used to settle for remarking on how humanlike he was for a robot and ended with the world declaring him fully human. I used to think of myself as a male with female traits but now realize that, more than anything else, I want to be recognized as a woman. Andrew's desire to be human was so great that he designed prosthetic organs; my desire to be female is so great that I am eagerly waiting for the day when biotechnology will be able to engineer a complete female reproductive tract.

And so I eagerly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand what it is like to have started out as one kind of person and, through repeated efforts and despite social resistance, bravely recreates themselves as another kind of person entirely. Plus, it's a quick read, so you now have no excuse.

Never Enough Queer Geeks Department

There's a thread on Geek Culture regarding gay/lesbian/bi/trans geeks. Well, OK, it's mainly about me, damn it, as one of the few who came out and the one who started the thread in the first place. But hopefully it will grow from there.

Never Enough Gender Education Department

I spent the end of my evening arguing with a less than intelligent young man who couldn't understand, as he put it, how pills could turn a man into a woman.

I had spent the evening chatting with my Cynthia and so I was in a rather good mood. I didn't feel like explaining endocrinology, needless to say. He showed no signs of being able to understand anything I did tell him. I felt like saying, "Ignore my dick--I do!" But he wouldn't have been able to understand what I meant by that.

At one point he asked if I was a hooker. Really sophisitcated, huh?

Another suggested that, since I chose to go down this path, I should just take my licks and leave it at that. Right. And if someone decides to beat me up, I should turn the other cheek too, I guess. Except for one thing: I haven't been Christian, or even christian, in ages. So to Hel with that idea; I will defend myself. For, even if certain men view me as a male, I am accepted as female by and large. And I would never allow any female to be attacked by a man for long. Including myself.

And no, I don't see a distinction here between physical and mental attacks. The situation described above was purely mental, but it was an attack--his questions were not intended to get more information, but were all rhetorical; he knew what he thought and wasn't going to be dissuaded by any amount of earnest, rational discussion. (Believe me, I tried!)

So if you're one of those in the take-your-licks school, just remember that the licks can be two-way.

On a much less angry note, if you have a sincere interest in reading a professional's discussion of transgenderism in lay terms, you may be happy to read the following two articles by Dr. Carl Bushong of the Tampa Gender Identity Program:

• What is Gender and Who is Transgendered?"
  
• Gender Expressions

And finally, if you still don't understand my rage, you may want to look at Remembering Our Dead, a memorial for transgendered and transsexual men and women who died due to ignorance and hatred and then largely forgotten by the rest of the world.

Never Enough Dental Hygiene Department

On the plus side, my appointment for a tooth cleaning was pretty cool. I found a dentistry that is really nice towards their transgendered clients and aware of the differences in health care. (For instance, elevated estrogens and progesterones are linked to increased cases of gingivitis and other peridontal diseases.) With all the other problems I have to deal with vis-a-vis being transsexual, it's nice to know that at least my dental care is sensitive to my needs.

There is an article on oral health for women available here.

Now to start flossing more....