Yay! My video for the I AM: Trans People Speak project is up! Siblings are cordially invited to assure me that they're not offended by my telling the world how wonderful they are.

Also, you should check out the rest of the website! There's a whole bunch of really amazing written, audio and video stories by trans people up, and they're all worth watching.

Back in 2007, not too long after I moved to Massachusetts and began living full-time as Rachel, I read a blog post in which a trans woman talked about finally bagging up her old boy clothes. It was a beautiful and sad requiem for the man she had tried to be, but in it she mentioned that as she took the shirts off their hangers she was sobbing, and when I read that I sneered a little. I had hated living as a man, and I hated the person I had been for the absurd and often embarrassing things she had done to avoid simply admitting that she was a woman. My boy clothes were at the back of the closet, a symbol of a time I was struggling to be free of, a person I had been who I was not ready to show compassion yet. And they were never coming back. Not ever.

And generally, they haven't. But for all my resolve, I didn't get rid of them either: over three years later, they're still here.

Amanda and I have been working on separating the apartment into "yours" and "mine," saying "That came from my mother so that's mine," and "Do you mind if I hang onto this?" and "I'll let you keep that if you let me keep this." The apartment's a disaster, but all the furniture is moved into its new places and what used to be the library is now completely my bedroom. All my clothes were moved into their new closet except the ones in the dark part of the closet that's difficult to reach. The old clothes that people I used to be and people I tried to be wore, the ones I'll never wear again but couldn't bring myself to get rid of.

Amanda went to go get groceries and a pedicure this afternoon, and as I was pulling my clothing out of her room I decided it was finally time to let go. Out came the Hawaiian shirts (the only bright colors available in the men's section), the tacky thrift store suit jackets, the ancient t-shirts with band names on them, the enormous chamois shirts.

I thought that it would mean nothing at this remove, that it would be like throwing away old drafts of poems to make room for new ones. But as I pulled them out one by one, there actually was a melancholy to it. Not the falling-to-my-knees-weeping that the woman who wrote the blog post described, but the sadness that always comes with letting go of the past, the nostalgia for the skin you shed even though the one underneath is more beautiful and comfortable than the one you left behind.

I actually thought I would keep a fair number of them, but almost nothing made the cut. Everything was absurdly large, and as I tried on the XL and XXL shirts I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered how I had ever fit in them. Partially, I suppose it's that my shoulders are narrower as a result of the muscle-for-fat swap I've done since I started hormones, and partially it's because a lot of the clothing was given to me by my mother, who I don't think quite realized that I didn't need as much growing room at 23 as I had at 11, but also I think that enormous clothing gave me a place to hide. Clothing that dangled on me like a tent gave the illusion of being free-floating, with no body underneath it at all.

In the end, I only kept three things: an huge grey plaid shirt that I had been given by an artist I dated in college while Amanda and I were temporarily broken up, which is very comfortable and kind of cute in a "lazy Sunday at home" sort of way; my Superman t-shirt that I've had since I was 13 (though these days I prefer Melsen Carlsen's inspired trans take on it); and the tackiest of the suit jackets, a brown houndstooth thing with irremovable shoulder pads that make me look like the Talking Heads' bookie (for the inevitable day when I ever decide to give performing in drag another try).

The chamois shirts and the jean shirts went to Amanda, who had always loved them, and the rest went into white plastic bags to be transported to Goodwill. All the half-attempts to let myself show, all the suits of armor, all the things my now-former partner used to borrow and the things my now-estranged mother gave me were released, and it felt like releasing the people who wore them too. I let them go.

Goodbye lonely sixteen-year-old who wanted interesting people to see that she was a fan of Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos, goodbye eighteen-year-old crossdresser buying from the women's section for the first time, goodbye twenty-two-year-old lost in oceans of flannel and twenty-four-year-old picking the cheesiest suit jackets to wear over her bright blue and orange shirts in the last of a hundred attempts to find a type of man that she would like to be.

I want you all to know, old selves that flaked from me, that I'm not angry at you, not anymore. I know why you did what you thought you had to do, and why you were who you thought you were supposed to be, and I forgive you. Thank you for suffering through those awful years, thank you for continuing to write and perform even when there seemed not to be any point, thank you for not committing suicide no matter how much it hurt and how badly you wanted to. Thank you so much for growing up to be me.

A recent online discussion about the role sexy silliness plays in Pride festivals and the alleged danger said silliness presents to the LGBT rights movement(s) put me in mind of this:

"At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

"I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it."

-Emma Goldman

Dear me, it's been a million years since I posted a public entry to Livejournal, hasn't it? I suppose I've been doing most of my public stuff over on Facebook and keeping Livejournal for the intimate (read: self-absorbed) stuff.

Anyway, as you've probably heard, the long-rumored removal of the surgery requirement to change the gender marker on a US passport finally happened recently. (You do still have to pick male or female, unfortunately. I think it's a bit silly that ID documents have gender markers at all, frankly, but that's a different discussion...)

I had a doctor's appointment the other day, and I figured I'd ask for the required letter to get my gender marker changed while I was there. She was happy to do it, of course -- my doc's pretty awesome -- but it turned out I was the very first patient to ask, and I ended up having to walk her through the process.

So, since I'm sure I'm not the only one who'll be the first one to ask their doctor for a letter, I thought it might be useful to A) point you in the direction of NCTE's detailed instructions on how to change your passport gender marker, and B) give you the official sample letter from the formal regulations, which you can take into your doctor and ask them to just fill in the blanks:

[Attending Physician’s Letterhead]
[Physician’s Address and Telephone Number]

I, [physician’s full name], [physician’s medical license or certificate number], [issuing State of medical license/certificate], [DEA Registration number], am the attending physician of [name of patient], with whom I have a doctor/patient relationship. [The letter must indicate that the physician is either an internist, endocrinologist, gynecologist, urologist or psychiatrist.]

[Name of patient] has had appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition to the new gender [specify new gender male or female].

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States that the forgoing is true and correct.

[Signature of Physician]
[Typed Name of Physician]
[Date]

If you or your doctor feel you aren't far enough in your transition to say you've "had appropriate clinical treatment" yet, you can get a limited, two-year passport by swapping in this line:

[Name of patient] is in the process of gender transition to the new gender [specify new gender male or female].

But the actual definition of "appropriate clinical treatment" is intentionally left vague out of respect for the fact that everyone's transition is different (which is dead spiffy, if you ask me!), and generally speaking, I would say if you're living full-time in your gender and intend to continue doing so indefinitely, go with the letter as written, and don't give your doctor any bad ideas by offering the second line substitution unless they ask for it.

For those of you who don't keep track of trans rights or electoral politics in Massachusetts, this is what's been happening:

• Massachusetts GOP's Gubernatorial Pick Is Pro-Gay. And Anti-Trans


• No, it’s not a ‘bathroom bill’


• Activists Accuse GOP Nominee Baker Of 'Flip-Flop' On Transgender Rights


• Patrick reiterates support for transgender bill

Basically, despite having previously been CEO of a company with gender identity in its non-discrimination policy and having a co-sponsor of "An Act Relative To Gender-Based Discrimination And Hate Crimes" (AKA the trans rights bill) as his running mate, GOP Gubernatorial nominee Charlie Baker is trying to woo conservatives by giving out fliers spreading the nonsensical and deceptive accusation that trans rights are all about bathrooms and promising to veto the bill. Independent candidate Tim Cahill, ever running behind the big kids waving his hand and shouting "Ooh! Ooh! I wanna play too!" has also announced his opposition to trans rights, and tried to position himself as a purer opponent of equality by pointing to Baker and Tisei's previous support of trans rights. Governor Patrick, meanwhile, has jumped into the fray by publicly declaring his strong support for the bill and taking Baker to task for trying to score cheap points by picking on a relatively powerless minority group. And throughout, the Boston Globe has been really fantastic.

This is going to be a really interesting election cycle...

( 28 exciting things I have learned from discussions about trans people on the internet this weekend )

Dear random teenage boy:

I understand how terrifying it can be to accidentally look at a woman's face up close after gawking at her cleavage from a distance and realize that she's trans. And yes, you are quite right in assuming that transsexual women are stealth carriers of the dreaded "gay cooties," or, as the biologists say, "Cootius Buttsexus."

Furthermore, your strategy of disinfecting yourself by screaming "AHH WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?! FUCK YOU! YOU FUCKING FRUITCAKE!" is, on the surface of it, quite sound. After all, it's a well-known fact among young, heterosexual men -- by far the group most susceptible to gay cooties -- that screaming the word "fuck" multiple times will usually cleanse one of the infection (which cannot, of course, be combatted with a standard cootie shot, in the way that cis girl cooties can be).

However, it is my sad duty to inform you that your strategy will be ineffective in this case. You see, I've been out as trans for almost three years now. And in much the same way that overuse of antibiotics can open the door for stronger, drug-resistant bacteria to breed freely, so has the overuse of the standard gay cootie treatment in my presence caused fuck-resistant gay cooties to breed in me... a homosexual MRSA, if you will. As of this time, there is no known cure.

Sadly, I can only recommend that you accept this unfortunate condition as best you can, and register a personal ad on Manhunt.net now, before the desperate, overwhelming need for cock becomes too strong to resist and you find yourself tapping toes with an undercover police officer in an airport bathroom.

Logan Airport security appreciates your proactivity.

Regretfully,
Dr. Rachel Katharine Zall

Dear Internets,

Can we have a moratorium on using the Holocaust to win completely unrelated arguments? Millions of people did not die for your rhetorical convenience.

It seems like every political discussion goes:

Person A: Numbers, statistics, logical arguments, precedent, more statistics.
Person B: Oh yeah? HITLER!!1!

Seriously, there's not actually a secret rule of debate where the first person to say "Hitler" wins. I promise.

Love,
Rachel K.

PS: Replying with "RACIST!! BIGOT!!" when someone asks you to stop exploiting the Holocaust for your own personal gain is not a step in the right direction. Also, as the internets say, I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

I just want to give a public shout-out to Stonewall Communities for their fantastic "Sex And Gender In The City: From Lesbian Feminists in the 70's to LGBTQIs Today" conference, because I was really surprised by what a good time I had there.

The speakers were great, the trailer for Left On Pearl had me wanting more, I felt tremendously challenged at points in a productive way, and even though I was unusually nervous, my performance went over great. (Mind you, I wasn't clever enough to bring my poet business cards, so hopefully people noticed that my web address was in the program. I really just need an agent, because I am utterly crap at the business-y end of being a performing artist.)

I mean, it wasn't a perfect conference. There was a slightly... odd glossary handout*. And there was a bit of "you transsexual women just don't understand how great Mary Daly was even if she did hate you, and besides, the only transphobic thing she ever did was hang out with Janice Raymond who nobody ever read anyway, and therefore you are celebrating her death!"

(For the record, I don't celebrate anyone's death -- even if I don't mourn their passing either. Without exception, I would much rather see transphobic people get over themselves than die.)

But minor flaws aside, it was a really pleasant surprise to leave feeling positive and empowered, because as a transsexual woman, when I enter a lesbian and/or feminist space, feeling empowered in either of those identities is generally not what I plan for.

So: well done, organization whose members almost certainly do not read my Livejournal, well done!

___
* Did you know all transsexual people have had genital surgery? And only butches reclaim the word "dyke"? And of course, there was the ever popular "biologically male/female" nonsense that always gets my dander up.

1. My friends Andra Hibbert and Meg Stone are doing a reading to benefit IMPACT self-defense programs for LGBT communities on Tuesday March 23rd -- that's next Tuesday! -- at 7:00 pm at Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts (527 Tremont Street; within walking distance of Back Bay Station on the Orange Line). I won't be able to make it on account of an MTPC Policy Committee meeting, and I'm completely broken-hearted about that 'cause Meg and Andra are amazing, and I'm really excited about the programs that this reading will help sponsor. Suggested Donation: $5-25; all are welcome regardless of ability to pay.


2. And speaking of Queer Soup*, We All Will Be Received -- the show the Writer's Speakeasy that I participated in last month was helping fund -- is playing now! And tonight (the 18th) all proceeds go to MTPC! And if you can make it tonight, you can even sit with me. Details including dates, times, pay-what-you-can nights, etc. available at queersouptheater.org


3. You almost certainly haven't heard yet, but I've been organizing a reading for next month by Sassafrass Lowery of hir new anthology Kicked Out. It's jointly sponsored by MTPC and the Northeastern University Feminist Student Organization, and it's happening April 21st at 6 PM, 305 Shillman Hall at Northeastern University (Ruggles on the Orange Line, Northeastern on the E line). And it's free! You should come so I feel all validated as an event planner and such.


4. And lastly, transgender erotica author (and blogger and other things) Tobi Hill-Meyer politely asked me to put the word out that she sells zines of her stories. I have a few; they're quite sexy. I recommend 'em.

___
* EDIT: (Which I apparently hadn't been in this version of the entry)

On the one hand, if you'd told me that our cats were going to do something that would end with the police pulling up with flashy lights and banging on our door at 3 AM, I'd have said it was going to be K.

On the other hand, repeatedly dialing 911 is pretty impressive for a kitten.

1. March 20th (that's next Saturday!) I'll be doing a reading with Taan Shapiro to kick off the afternoon section of Stonewall Communities' Sex & Gender in the City: From Lesbian Feminists in the 70's to LGBTQs Today conference! The conference looks like it's going to be fantastic, and I'm really excited to be a part of it.
   
   The fee (which includes lunch, refreshments and a full day of conference) is $45, or $15 for students and unemployed people, and they seem pretty willing to talk to folks who can't afford that. Details are in the link above!
   
   Oh! And the reading's going to be ASL interpreted. I can't even tell you how spiffy I think it is that I've gotten to do so many interpreted readings!
   
   *EDIT* D'oh! It looks like there's a waiting list to get in. Well, go sign up for the waiting list! :P



2. Sometime in April! I am going to be reading at -- I kid you not -- Harvard University!! Yes, that Harvard University (not the other one). Details to come as they're worked out.
   
   And my teachers said I'd never get into Harvard! Ha! Take that, people from 15 years ago whose names I've forgotten!
   
   I may also be doing a trans feminism workshop there with the fantastic Gina de Vries, but that's still embryonic so shh! I didn't say anything about that yet.
   
   (Also, Gina's going to be reading at Harvard in April too, and you should go see her show!)

So, we maybe picked better than we knew when we named Cass "Casanova." Despite the fact that she's rarely too keen on any mammal (much less another cat!), K. has finally warmed up to Cass and they have an adorable little love affair going. She still holds him down on the bed by the neck with her jaws sometimes, but there's a certain harmless fondness to it now. If you push Cass while he's standing next to her, he'll topple right onto her and cuddle up where he lands -- and instead of running off scandalized like she usually would, K. closes her eyes and appreciates the cuddle time. It is crazy!

Mind you, she's literally ten times his age, but I suppose those taboos only apply to humans. Here we thought she might be a silver tabby or Egyptian mao, and it turns out she's a cougar!



K. and Gwen do not have a comparably warm relationship, though K. seems to have a great time watching Gwen try (and ultimately, always fail) to work up the courage to jump her.

Anyway, as anyone who's ever set foot in our apartment may have noticed, we're slobs. Despite having, as one guest once put it, "more storage space than G-d," most of our stuff is in little piles in the corners. And Gwen's new thing is climbing into the pile of fabric shopping bags for a nap and pulling one over herself like a blanket. This photo was not staged in any way; that was what she was like when I found her.



And speaking of Gwen, here's videographic proof that she really is fascinated by water. She was a little more reluctant to stay under the faucet than she usually is -- it took three tries before she finally decided to really get under the water. (After the camera and water were turned off, though, she stayed and napped in the wet sink for an hour or so.)

(Special guest appearance by my downstairs neighbors' yappy dog!)

[Amanda Jean is on the couch playing Wii Boxing for the first time while Cass and Gwen chase one another back and forth across the back of the couch behind her head. Amanda is gleefully pummeling her virtual opponent.]

Amanda: Wait... can you hit him in the crotch??

[Amanda Jean viciously jabs her opponent in the groin. Her eyes light up.]

Amanda: [gasps] Ohmigod that is the best thing ever! [Punches him in the crotch twice more] I'll never need antidepressants again!!

So, curiosity:

I heard someone today insist that some crossdressers who had been discriminated against were not deserving of protection because they were "not really transgender", and it kind of got me thinking about something that's been bobbing around in my head forever.

As you might have noticed, "transgender" is actually a tremendously -- and often deliberately -- vague term*. For instance, the person referenced above seemed to feel (if I understood them correctly) that "transgender" is most accurately a synonym for "transsexual". But then there's folks out there on the internets who will swear up and down that if you identify as transgender you can't possibly be a true transsexual, because true transsexuals don't identify as transgender**. And, of course, there's the most common use of the term, as a big tent including multiple discrete identities (though which identities are and which aren't included often depends on who you ask).

So, my question for those of you who identify as trans or might be identified as trans by someone else is:

How do you identify? Transgender? Transsexual? Crossdresser? Genderqueer? Any or all of the above? Or something completely different?

And more importantly: why? What does the word mean to you personally?

( My answer: )
___
* As an aside, I've heard opponents of equal rights for trans people say on lots of occasions that "transgender" is too vague a term to form a basis for protection, and as with most of the strawmen used against trans rights laws, it's a deceptively-used half-truth. The actual laws they're trying to stop almost never rely on the word "transgender". They say something along the lines of "gender identity and expression". Though this specifically protects the trans community, who are generally discriminated against on account of our gender identities and expressions, in fact, most everyone has a gender identity and expression (often more than one!).

** "The first rule of tautology club is..."

Hello, fellow night owls!

This is just a silly quiz meme, but I am fascinated by religion, and I'd be terribly curious to hear what other folks get on this.

It pretty much nailed it for me: best fit was Reform Judaism (100%), worst fit was nontheism (28%). Apparently I'd also get along well as a Quaker or a Unitarian.

( My full list )

(& On Flickr)

K. and Cass have sort of come round to a lukewarm truce, now that he's almost as big as she is. It goes something like this:

1. Cass curls up with K. and begins cuddling, whether she likes it or not


2. If she doesn't storm off, indignant, she leans over and begins grooming him


3. Then, after she's groomed him enough to lull him into a false sense of security, she flips him over and chomps down on his throat


4. And pins him that way for 30 seconds to a minute as he looks around the room in slightly terrified confusion


5. Before she finally releases him, flips him back over, and begins grooming him again

We have weird kitties, I tell you.



Oh, and speaking of weird kitties, Gwen's still small enough that she can recline in your hand. And be waved around while you make airplane noises. And love it.

Seriously, she's gonna be so heartbroken when she's finally too big for one hand.

So! It's come to my attention that anonymous comments have accidentally been turned off in my journal for, oh... about two years now.

So, um... for those of you who don't have journals, it's fixed and you can talk to me again.

(Anonymous comments are still screened before they show up here, of course, and if you don't give me some indication of who you are I'll get all confused and not approve your comment!)

"Everything she did was such a surprise while she was here. No tired concepts, no worked over phrases just fresh hot madness. Sometimes it scared people and she was one of the few people who could like that. She doesn't write and perform so people will like her. Or forgive her for things she’s done.

"She writes because she’s one of those insane nuts that thinks we can right the world with our words if we pay enough attention. One day she’ll win me over on that."

-- Port Veritas blog, 02/01/10