In which it gets complicated

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

It's still Friday night, right? It's not Saturday morning until the sun rises.

I feel like "it's complicated" has been my mantra ever since I started questioning my gender. Today I want to untangle my identity a little, but I want to be clear that all this is only true for me, personally. I make no statements, or even guesses, as to how other transgendered folks relate to these things.

So, I guess I think of myself as having three selves. There's me, which is whoever I am when I'm completely alone, and then there are the slightly-processed versions of myself that I allow to be seen in public. I don't want to make it sound like these are totally different identities-- I think it's pretty normal to have a private-self and a public-self. You know, like, maybe your private-self likes to eat peanut butter out of the jar with your fingers, and thinks your boss is ugly. But your public self doesn't show this side of you to the world. Normal! Right?

Except for me It Gets Complicated, because right now I have me, my girl-public-self (whom I shall call Lavinia), and my boy-public-self (Lawrence). Lawrence is basically me, plus underpants, and minus nose-picking. Lavinia, though-- hoo boy, is Lavinia something else!

Lavinia is the perfect daughter my mother always wanted, plus all the coping mechanisms required to get me to go along with the act. Lavinia is high femme, and totally straight. She has an incredible work ethic. She's unfailingly polite. She's ambitious.

But in order to be that person I could never let myself make any close friends. It required momentum to keep Lavinia going; it broke my heart every time I had to put Lavinia back on after leaving a friend; I couldn't imagine going through the world as anyone other than Lavinia; clearly, the friend had to go.

Lavinia got a little tainted by my misery. She was a snob and a cynic and kind of a bitch. She was very aggressive and not very empathetic. She was so, so self-absorbed. I didn't like Lavinia, which only made her more unlikeable.

In a particularly tough period of my life, I tried to kill Lavinia. They made me stay in the hospital for a week. This was, as you may imagine, a bit of a wake-up call. I decided that I didn't care if I had no idea how to live without the facade, I obviously couldn't live with it, and I gave myself permission to find out what was underneath.

I am afraid I became an even more unbearable person at this point, as I removed all my self-censoring instincts and thus spewed my drama onto any and all unsuspecting passerby. I quit and re-joined all kinds of groups and projects, and changed majors every week. I flirted mercilessly with a cute girl and never called her back. I ate three gigantic ice cream sandwiches in a row one night, and skipped class to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But gradually-- so, so gradually!-- I began to put myself together, and make myself presentable to society again. And I found out that I don't really care about making money, that I don't like to be in charge, that I do care about social justice -- and, oh yeah, I found out that I'm a guy. Surprise!

I am working hard to put Lavinia behind me, and to become a better, happier, truer person. A lot of this doesn't really have to do with transitioning at all -- though I don't think I could have gotten so carried away with the facade if I hadn't been so deep in denial about my gender.

It's not so bad, really, pretending to be Lavinia, now that I know that's what I'm doing. She's less of a bitch now that I'm less miserable. And hey, that work ethic is great!

But the rapid switching I have to do on campus causes its own stress. I have to be on the watch for people who "don't know," and if just one shows up I have to immediately switch to Lavinia. When they leave, I try to work her off again, but it's a slow process, and there are a lot of people on campus who know Lavinia. This is why, if I introduce myself as Lawrence to someone, I refuse to tell them my legal name (which is not Lavinia) -- they can't expect a facade they don't know.

I do have to "put on" Lawrence as well, but mostly this involves consciously rejecting Lavinia. I don't think I'd notice changing my gestures, voice, posture, etc. if I didn't have to change them from something radically different, several times a day, at a moment's notice. And, well, I have to put on pants to go out in public, too. So I don't worry too much right now.

But anyway, that's why I don't really feel a connection to my former, girly self. I am kind of the most effeminate guy in the universe, but Lavinia never got to have fun with her gender expression; all the terribly stereotypical love for fashion, Lady Gaga, and camp-- that's all me, and I'm Lawrence. The more baby steps I am able to take towards transition, the more I feel... congruent. And Lavinia has nothing to do with it.

In which I do not discuss the many awesome parts of my vacation, in favor of whining

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

And now we discover the danger of assigning me to Saturday mornings: I like to sleep in late. Especially when I'm feeling a little unhappy.

Luckily, though, I bring a revelatory insight: the closet sucks, y'all.

At Duke I generally don't tend to feel closeted, because at Duke I don't actually pretend I'm a girl. I just don't always correct people when they make the wrong guess. It's not exactly comfortable, but who really expects to be their most genuine, authentic self in Chemistry class? And if the wrong guesses start to get to me, I can just talk to a friend (or my girlfriend) to get called the right name, or bind for the day, and I feel better. It's not my fault people don't see the obvious, so it's not really the closet.

No, the closet is when I encourage people to misgender me. Which is... this weekend. My mom likes me to bring laundry when I come home (seriously, if I don't she'll complain that I don't need her any more and spend the vacation trying to bury me under cups of tea) but I could only bring my girly laundry. So, today my mom asked why I brought thirty pairs of underwear, ten shirts, and some pajamas-- "You do... wear pants, don't you?"-- and I told her yet another half-truth: "The laundry was all over my room, so I only grabbed some of it." Sure, I heavily implied that the selection was random, when in reality I obsessed over every article of clothing to make sure it conformed appropriately to her standards (that is, I checked everything for rainbows before putting it in the suitcase) but it wasn't technically a lie.

The rest of it is lies, though. Lies, lies, lies. I think this is the heaviest irony of trans life: you know how people generally imply that trans folks are lying about their gender? Like, the "trans panic" defense, used (successfully, alas) in so many murder trials: "when I found out it was really a man, I just had to kill it!" Or, the murder mystery I watched with my mom last night-- "it turns out he was really a she!" There's the transphobic idea that the gender you were assigned at birth is your real gender, but there's also this idea that if you say you're anything else, you're lying and deserve what's coming to you. Well, I do feel like a liar, all the time-- when I tell people I'm not a man.

I'm not a religious person even a little, but I have a strong sense of honor. I hate lying.

Part of it is that I'm not a very good liar, so to maintain the facade I have to forget the truth a little. I grew so accustomed to the facade that I showed the rest of the world that I actually had no idea what was underneath until this semester when I decided to drop it. (Turns out: there was a man under there! Other than that, pretty much the same.) But I've always had a special facade for my parents. I wasn't just their daughter, I was the daughter they always wanted-- which means, I was straight, I was femme, I didn't curse, I didn't drink, I definitely didn't have sex, I wasn't a feminist, I wasn't an activist, I wasn't an atheist... I got to be a geek, but that was pretty much it, in terms of resemblance to my actual self.

And today, right now-- that's who I am! Sure, I've holed myself up in my room to write this, but I'm wearing pearls. It's only been a few days but I already feel like my sense of identity has been eroded away. (Not just my gender identity-- my whole identity.) I called my girlfriend last night-- from inside a literal closet, with three closed doors between my and my family-- just to hear her say my name. My real name. Which is Lawrence.

So, to remind myself who I am for the rest of the weekend, I open the comments up to all your Trans 101 questions. Just call me by my name, my real name, and I'll answer anything you want to know. Don't worry about dumb questions, personal questions, or even unintentionally offensive questions-- I did a lot of 101 in my lesbian days and I know what I'm signing up for. If you're nervous, that's what anonymous comments are for.

So ask away! I think it'll help both of us.

"Wonderfully and Beautifully Human": Remembering Mike Penner, Transsexual Sportswriter

Every other Thursday I will be writing about LGBT Issues in Sport. Between each regularly scheduled post I may chime in with more posts if something comes up and/or I have the time. I have a serious academic interest in sport and in this column I’ll be highlighting current events, sharing resources, reflecting on complex issues and sharing athlete’s stories among other things. For more about me, you can read my first post, here. Please feel free to email me with thoughts or if you come across something you’d like me to include on the blog.

This post is the second in a miniseries about trans-identified folk in sports. Two weeks ago I wrote about Kye Allums, the first ever D1 collegiate athlete to openly identify as trans. He plays basketball on George Washington University’s women’s basketball team.*     *     *     *     *
I want to start this post by saying that I’m an ally for trans-identified individuals. That said, I’m still learning how to be a better and better ally (thanks, Lawrence, for already educating me in your first post!). I might make a mistake and I hope that if I do, you readers will correct me. I identify as cis-gendered. I don’t write that because I’m afraid that by talking about these issues someone might think I was trans…I write that because as a cis-gendered person, I have to acknowledge that while I can sympathize with transfolk’s struggles in our society, advocate on their behalf, and support the people in my life who identify as trans or genderqueer or something that isn’t 100% cis, I can’t positively know what it’s like. As human beings who share some characteristics, we have many shared experiences, but we also have different experiences and I am cognizant of that.

Before I even worked at my first women’s basketball practice my first year (and despite having spent the previous summer in the PR office for the Mercury), I pretty much thought that the only people intimately involved with the team were the coaches and players. Like some of the other naïve things one thinks as a first year, I was WRONG. There are other administrative staff members, athletic trainers and doctors, sports information and marketing folk and the media themselves (I’m probably still leaving out some people). It became pretty clear to me that a team isn’t just the 12 players and 4 coaches on the bench during the game. Just like those 16 people on the bench, though, media personnel themselves lead pretty public lives.

November 27th will mark the 1 year anniversary of Mike Penner’s suicide. A Los Angeles Times sportswriter for 25 total years, during his career he covered high profile events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, in addition to being the LA Angels’ beat writer and writing about tennis, the NFL and sports media, among other things. Despite some high profile assignments, Penner’s most famous column ran on April 26, 2007. Titled “Old Mike, New Christine,” he wrote that “Today I leave for a few weeks’ vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation. As Christine [Daniels]. I’m a transsexual sportswriter.”

Wait. Don't Forget About Me Too!

There's been a lot of conversation about several issues on the blog lately, and I love it. I love it when people engage in thoughtful discussions about topics. I believe that's how you honestly get to know people better than talking about what likes and dislikes you have in common. The funny thing is that I tend to not be a very vocal participant in such stimulating conversation. I like to sit back and let the discussion develop while I formulate my own opinion and sometimes change it depending on certain key points people make. For that reason, I have not been an active participant in many of the discussions that have taken place on the blog. But, I think I am finally able to articulate my opinion. So here we go...

The topic I want to focus on is the sexism that occurs within the gay community. Well, not so much focus on the sexism but a comment someone made about how one gender of the community has a tougher time than the other gender. I, at one point, actually used to believe this was true, but, after becoming friends with women in the community, I was made aware of my fallacy. I think where this difference in thinking stems from is the focus of attention on one's own life and how people can tend to think that their situation is the absolute worst. I think that's a completely understandable mistake to make. I know that I oftentimes only focus on my own life and the problems I go through and how miserable it makes me feel. I sometimes forget that other people have problems that they must work through, too. Just because their problems might not be the same as mine or seem as extreme as I believe mine to be, it doesn't mean that they don't have it just as hard. Because it is just as hard, just in different ways that may not be apparent. So there's that which leads me to the actual gist of this post:

Sometimes, I get worried that we are focusing too much on one subset of the community and letting the others fall by the wayside.

Let me be clear about what I mean. There have been several recent efforts made to shed light on or help the issues that the queer female-identified community faces. I'm all for this. It's great that we are recognizing the women within the community and doing more to make sure that they are better represented. I'm so happy for the women of this community because they are on their way to getting the recognition that they deserve. BUT (here's the kicker), what about everyone else in the community?

Let's take, for example, the awesomeness that is the WOMYN magazine and Women Loving Women meetings. Both of these are such wonderful achievements for the women community. But what do the men of the community have? What about those who don't conform to a certain gender? What do those who are trans get? Nothing, at least not anything that is solely for each specific group. Of course, there is Fab Friday and the blog and the Center itself. But none of that is ever a space solely just for people of one group.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would like to see more initiatives geared towards every subset of the community. For example, even though the community here is heavily male-dominated, I would still love to have a space where I can sit down with other gay males of color who are in a non-historically black fraternity and have a discussion about some of the challenges we go through. Well, not all of that because that would probably just be a group of me, myself, and I, but you get what I'm saying right? There are times when I honestly get jealous of the women in the LGBTQ community because they have their venue to voice their concerns and frustrations about life. But where am I supposed to go? Fab Friday isn't exactly the space to do that. Yes, I'm using the blog to voice my concerns but it's just not the same as talking face to face with people and hearing what other humans (not a computer screen) has to say. Why can't we have a Men Loving Men or a Queers Loving Queers for those who don't identify with one gender or Trans Loving Trans? After all, we all have issues that we want to talk about, don't we?

I'm just worried that we risk alienating others in the community if we focus on only one group, which I'm guessing is maybe part of the motivation for Women Loving Women, to make the women feel more included. There's been so much talk about making the community more inclusive and representative of everyone but it doesn't seem to me that much has been done to make it happen. Let's start by showing that we are looking for ways to make those who feel separated from the community more included. I know it's impossible to please everyone, but I feel like we can at least show that we're trying.

And you thought being gay was hard?

In 1998 a woman named Rita Hester was murdered because she was transgender. Her murder kicked off a memorial project that would eventually become the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which occurs November 20th of each year.

Part of the TDOR project was the creation of a website dedicated to memorializing individuals who were murdered because they identified as (or were perceived as) transgender or intersex. I recently looked through some of the profiles of the deceased, and I was horrified. From an infant forced to eat glass because it had ambiguous genitalia to an FTM individual who was found in a barrel of hydrochloric acid with electrical cords around his neck, this is the stuff of nightmares.

I'll admit it- I used to feel uncomfortable about the idea of transgendered individuals. It wasn't until recently that I understood and came to sympathize with their struggle. Not only do they enjoy fewer rights than the rest of the LGBTIQ conglomerate, but they also suffer greater prejudice. Even the LGBTIQ community occasionally plays down the "TI." Transfolk have it rough.

LGBTIQ individuals often tell heterosexuals not to take their sexuality for granted. But how often do we take our gender for granted? What if your body was a prison you felt trapped within?

18 years old and I've only ever met one (openly) transgender individual. If you're reading this post and identify as transgender, contact me. I want to become a better ally. Help me out.

Athlete Comes Out as a Man; Plays Collegiate Women's Basketball

Every other Thursday I will be writing about LGBT Issues in Sport. Between each regularly scheduled post I may chime in with more posts if something comes up and/or I have the time. I have a serious academic interest in sport and in this column I’ll be highlighting current events, sharing resources, reflecting on complex issues and sharing athlete’s stories among other things. For more about me, you can read my first post, here. Please feel free to email me with thoughts or if you come across something you’d like me to include on the blog.

Informally called “The Center” by frequenters, the official name for the space below The Loop is The Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life. That said, our trans community, while several students have submitted anonymous posts, doesn’t get a lot of attention here on the blog. Some events of the last week and other upcoming events make now as good a time as any to talk about what it means to identify as trans within the realm of sports. Consider these next few posts to be a mini-series.

The sports world operates largely operates along gendered lines, which can make it an unwelcoming place for people who don’t fit snugly into the boxes of male, female, man, woman, male=man and female=woman (you follow that?). [In this way, the issue of binaries in the sports world doesn’t just affect trans people—it also applies to intersexed individuals.]

Last week, outsports, a site which focuses on LGBTQ issues in sport, broke Kye Allums’s story. Since then, it's been picked up by a lot of other news outlets. Kye is a junior starter on the George Washington Women’s Basketball Team and he is a (trans)man.* As such, he is the first publicly out Division 1 transgender athlete.

He explained that he “always felt more comfortable dressing like a boy,” and even went through great lengths to do this. [His mom forced him to wear “girl clothes” to school, so he would change into sweats and basketball shorts when he arrived and then back into his other clothes before he left to go back home.] Despite this feeling, Kye didn’t identify as a man or as transgendered. In fact, he said he “used to feel like trans anything was really weird and those people were crazy, and [he] wondered, ‘How can you feel like that?’” Finding that the lesbians at his high school acted and dressed similarly, he identified as a lesbian for several years. During his first year at GW, however, his mother sent him a text message that asked him “Who do you think you are, young lady?” Reading this text message, he realized it was "simple:" he wasn’t woman.

After coming out to teammates a year ago and eventually talking with his coach (this summer), Kye publically came out as a man last week. Coming out to teammates, his coaches, or the rest of the world wasn’t his original plan, but when “it got too tough to not be [him],” he decided to move forward with the process. From all accounts that I’ve read, the university has done a tremendous job in supporting Kye. When he first told his coach, his coach responded by saying “Why would you think I wouldn’t have your back? I’ve had your back through everything. Our relationship has grown from nothing to this, and now you think I’d just turn my back on you because you told me this? No. I love you and I’ll always be here for you.” His coach has since released a statement saying that “The George Washington University women’s basketball program, including myself, support Kye’s right to make this decision.” The team’s co-captain has also issued supportive statements, praising Kye’s “courage and fortitude.”

Kye’s experiences illustrate the “small things” that a school can do to be supportive and create an affirming environment for a trans-identified student athlete without breaking any NCAA rules (ie: testosterone is a banned substance, so they can’t ‘legally’ permit Kye to begin hormone treatments**). For one thing, the team website lists him as, and he will be announced as, Kye —not Kay-Kay, the name he used to go by. His teammates and coaches use male pronouns while all future press releases (ie: post game notes, etc) will also use male pronouns. Those issues may seem small compared to the physical components of transitioning, but for someone who is putting off taking hormones until he’s finished playing and may not undergo surgery until then, either—they make all the difference. “A name is just a bunch of letters, but the letters make up a work and the words that make up my name have so many more emotions behind them. My old name, that’s just not me. When I hear Kye, everything feels okay, everything is right.”

GW officially opens their season on Sunday against Wisconsin Green Bay, just 30 minutes from Kye's hometown.

*In one account, Kye explicitly identified as a “transgender male,” though other reports explain that he sees himself simply as a man and not “female-to-male.”

**In general, student-athletes may receive approval to take typically “banned substances” by having their doctors fill out certain forms. However, it remains unclear if the testosterone levels taken by a transgender individual would be permitted, even with proper documentation.

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Gov. Paterson signs order protecting state employees against gender identity discrimination:

From the Office of Governor Patterson:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 16, 2009

GOVERNOR PATERSON SIGNS GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION EXECUTIVE ORDER

Executive Order Will Protect State Workers from Discrimination Based on Gender Identity

Governor David A. Paterson today signed Executive Order No. 33 that will prohibit New York State agencies from discriminating against any individual on the basis of gender identity and expression in any matter pertaining to employment by the State. Executive Order No. 33 directs the Office of Employee Relations, in consultation with the Executive Director of the Division of Human Rights, to develop and implement clear and consistent guidelines prohibiting gender identity and expression discrimination by all State agencies.

...

Currently, 13 states and over 90 municipalities and counties - including the City of New York - prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression by statute, and numerous others have imposed such a ban through executive action or policy.