In which I get more serious than I intended

[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.]

Well, hello there! My name is Lawrence, and I'm a transman. Lawrence is not a pseudonym (though it's also not my legal name), but as I hope you can tell, this is a pseudopic. I'm not putting a picture up because I'm trying to keep more control of who I am out to, but if you think you know me in person based on what I write, feel free to approach me and ask. I find it emotionally exhausting to tell people, but it's comforting when people know, and if you're the one bringing it up I'll know that any freak-outs have already happened where I won't have to deal with them.

Also, Ping is pretty much The Best. I watched that movie eight thousand times as a kid trying to figure out why Mulan chose to be Mulan when she could have been Ping. (Realising I was trans meant suddenly understanding like 80% of my childhood obsessions. Alanna! Ozma! Mulan! These stories have something in common!)

However, I actually have a specific topic I want to write about today, and it's pretty serious: the goddamn TSA. If you haven't heard about what they're up to these days, Jeffrey Goldberg has a pretty good introduction.

The short version: if you get randomly selected for additional screening, you have a choice between having the TSA use a machine to look at your naked body and take photos of it-- naked photos which are not secure from being saved and leaked-- and having your junk and/or boobs groped. The TSA has been brushing the backs of their hands over boobs for years, but it is now done with the front of the hand, and they have to feel under the breasts, too. Also, they're going to run their hands up your legs until they meet "resistance."

Imagine you're transgendered for a second. Which way would you prefer to be outed? Detailed photographs of your genitals, or a good old-fashioned grope? Remember, if they don't like your naked photo, they can force you to put up with the grope anyway!

I actually plan to opt out of the backscatter machine, and put up with the groping, but it's a complicated decision for me. I've made this choice because this way nobody will actually see my body, and because I hope it will annoy the hell out of the TSA. But then, I do not believe I will be in danger, because everyone will assume I'm a girl anyway. If people actually saw me as a man, I'd... well, I probably wouldn't fly in or out of the U.S. anymore.

The thought of a stranger handling my breasts brings up all my most violent feelings of body-hatred. To be blunt, it makes me want to cut the damn things off, or at least bind for the next thousand years. But binding would probably be "suspicious", and my parents would definitely notice and freak out. So I'm going to wear a damn bra, and let them touch me, and try not to be sick, because I know that the TSA is only doing these invasive pat-downs to bully people into accepting the backscatter imaging devices, and I refuse to be bullied.

It's definitely easier to just let them take your picture. It doesn't feel any different than going through a metal detector, really. It definitely feels less invasive than having someone touch you. But a stranger is still looking at your naked body, and I don't know about you, but I thought I was supposed to have civil liberties protecting me from that.

There is no reason for these machines to exist. There's no proof they would have prevented the attempt that supposedly necessitated them (which, let's remember, failed.) They endanger transgendered fliers by outing them in potentially-hostile environments (Don't think it's dangerous? Four words: Transgender Day of Remembrance.) They also take explicit pictures of children's genitals, which I thought we'd agreed was a Bad Thing.

Opting out of the machine is the best way to bully them back; if enough people do it, the one selling point of the machines-- convenience-- will be negated. So, if you're flying home for Thanksgiving, and you get selected for additional screening... think about opting out.

If I can do it, you can do it. Seriously.

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.

Mistakes Were Made (part two)

[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.]

Dr. Seuss supposedly said this, and—general consensus being Dr. Seuss is a cool guy, rad art—it’s typically my M.O. regarding openness with strangers, since friendship is definitely a no-go if you can’t deal with it—wholly your cross to bear in that case. I’m not trying to be contentious per se, though it’d be disingenuous to pretend that I don’t get a small thrill from these confessionals. It’s a primary reason I enjoy writing here.

The Seuss aphorism like all aphorisms has exceptions, and I’m unfortunately related to them. So, I introduced my present parental crisis (here) in a fit of frenzy—e.g., taking a 90-degree turn across two lanes into a library parking lot so that I might use their computers to write. (I was so shaken that when the Republican-looking man in the lifted truck that followed me into the parking lot to admonish me for having cut him off, I just kind of whimpered and ran off into the lobby.)

Since July 14 I’ve thought about how I might chronicle this particular drama best; it’s self-therapy more than anything else, and Ken Rogerson, PhD/BFF, once told me that words might have control of me rather than vice versa, and that maybe this could be beautiful and cathartic. I hope so: just trying to conquer rhetorical demons here, and shape my reality around that success.

But so the aftermath of July 14: yes I was kicked out of the house, via “We need some time to consider how we feel about you.” Probably a wise move, the distance, and all-in-all my eight total days in exile were amazingly well-spent, staying with friend after friend—even needlessly moving, to exploit the diversity—speaking frankly with parents-of-friends, and generally being moved by kindness and my good fortune in a way that makes me well up nasolacrimally if I really think about it.

I went first to the home of my former girlfriend and current best friend—interesting only in that we broke up the prior summer due to my falling in love her male friend who was into both of us. My handling and subsequent discussion of the situation was totally callous and uncool, inconsiderate of the discretion it deserved. Yeah so I fucked that one up majorly and she still retains the ability to offer me more genuine kindness in a single phone call than I’ve probably mustered up in my entire life. As I said before, I’m not The Nicest (;)), not characteristically. She also had a distinct understandability advantage, being one of my few friends who has debated my mother on things religious and ideological without exiting in tears.

She dropped me off at home after day eight to either A) see if the coast was clear and leave a note and get more exile supplies, search for my computer, raid the liquor cabinet, etc or B) send me into the most frightening conversation of my life, if they happened to be home, and potentially offer me a getaway vehicle.

Scenario B did not transform into a story of love's transcendent power to render everything else subordinate, and my religious conservative parents were not bowled over with empathy by my emotive story-telling abilities and demonstration of prodigious friendship. In fact, it was painfully pragmatic. Like:

“The worst of all is that you don’t seem to care what God thinks.”

"…"

You’re right I don’t. FUCK! Did not see this topic surfacing. I never came out to my parents, I was outed. Thus, I did not know what it was to exit the metaphysical closet until that moment when, sitting in front of untouched smoked salmon, I had to confess my unbelief. Throughout high school, I acquiesced to church. I still do. I go, and I enjoy the iced tea they serve in the foyer afterward, and I like the SOP of going out to lunch with friends-of-parents after services and being peppered with questions about college and traveling the world and showing how like, smart and personable I am, in a way that just maybe tempers the version of me they hear about in prayer groups, where my name is brought up in narratives concerning getting caught having sex (with girls, formerly) or smoking pot or something. Yeah so, nope. No bitterness present whatsoever. My feelings toward religion, and fundamental Christianity—an unusual situation that I accidentally walked into myself, rather than being raised in—are for another time.

“But I just can't believe how totally immoral—”

“—I don’t care about morals!"

"…"

"…well I mean, I only care about ethics."

This is something I do believe, something important to me. Morals are the stuff of convention and inevitably have a social element that is too relative and fickle and ungrounded on any solid principle so just no, no thank you, I am proudly amoral. Ethics, better. I try to be ethical, to not cheat/steal/lie. It’s not complicated, or philosophical even. I’m really just trying to be a good person. Not sure where drinking or smoking or sex fits into that equation, but I'm almost positive it doesn't.

And then cue some argument about my trying to intellectualize my way out of answering real questions, and deigning to condescension in the meantime and this is the part where I tend to get a bit weepy inside and try to telekinetically crush my internal organs because I know that it’s true and I know I internally resent that my parents are uninterested in literature and art and philosophy and music, and I know that the way this manifests is that I am sometimes just downright mean to them. Doesn’t fit so well in my plan of being a good person.

My father at one point during the Talk remarked that revoking DADT was unethical, and that gay couples should not be able to adopt. I lamely refuted both charges—apparently proof that I’m "buying into their agenda" and that secular college was just maybe not so good an idea after all, should've taken the full-ride to TCU—but by this point all the fight in me was gone and I was just enduring. Sort of the pitiful awkward and strangely physical feeling one gets sitting in a small discussion class stoned while the teacher persistently continues to fail at inciting discussion. Anyhow, the political issues seemed immaterial in my current state, and I was less interested in gay agendizing (?) than whether or not I'd be allowed to sleep at home that night—ultimately, it would be one of the few I did spend at home all summer.

—tbc

Eric Fürst