Name and pronoun update

I am now going by Andy and ze.

Class Issues and the Transgender Community

I've been at the task of making generalizations about the trans people I've met over the last 6 months of researching and being fairly active in trans communities in the area, and the one set of issues that comes to the surface most blantantly is class issues.

If the standard of living of normative society could be measured on a 1-10 scale, I think the whole spectrum of transfolk could fit within 1-6 and probably would cluster around 2-4. What does it mean that I was part of an organizing body whose six core members were mostly underemployed or unemployed despite having marketable skills (the group included a lawyer, a marketing executive, a web developer)? These are the leaders. They and others like them are the people in our community who have the most education and stability who are most willing and able to start families. These are our success stories. And among the people I admire most in our community, none of them have health insurance. Many of them are married to bio-women who make more money than they do (we all know that bio-women make 75% of what bio-men do). Many are part-time employees. Few own the houses they live in. Most do a little bit of a lot of things to barely make ends meet.

It's not just that the trans community are poor, but that we are one of the only downwardly mobile communities I can think of (if you ave others then please leave a comment). This means that on average trans people have less wealth than their parents. Whereas most people maintain the same level of wealth as their parents or even gain wealth (because they have access to cultural capital that helps them accrue wealth) to pass onto future generations. What does it mean that our children are less likely to go to college than we were, less likely to own a house, less likely to have access to any number of opportunities purely by virtue of their parent's gender identity/expression?

Most frustrating of all is that I don't know where I'm going to end up even within this community. I know that my life (materially and in other respects) will probably look a lot more like the trans activists I interview than like my mother's life. However, I don't know if I'll end up transitioning. I don't know if I'll ever get that male privilege. I doubt that I'll ever get straight privilege or even gender-normative-woman privilege. I guess the more I think about the future, then more I feel oppressed.

Freewrite: How did your family produce gender?

I grew up with a mother who was a jet engine mechanic. When I think of her, I think of greasy fingernails and engine oil. She wore a dress to church because her theology demanded it. She got a nose ring when she retired because she could. I think of intelligibility.

I learned how to hate shopping during adolescence, against the backdrop of a perennial argument over which section to buy my clothes in. She couldn’t bear to buy her only daughter (the only child) clothes in the men’s department. “They didn’t fit well” she reasoned, and when logic would fail her, she knew shame could always do the trick, “why don’t we just forgo the pants and save up for the operation.”

I never knew what the operation was. I knew it only as a cue. I was supposed to roll my eyes and laugh…to protest that, of course that wasn’t what I wanted. It was a mysterious character evoked to loom over my decisions. The operation was a threat placed precariously on the brink of desperation—hers and mine—when we entered into split-in-down-the-middle mall stores.

I remember the day I told her I was jealous. She was admonishing me on how I’d need to grow up someday and wear woman’s clothes like an adult. “But Mom…you don’t,” I pointed out. She wore combat boots and dungarees to work. She got to shop in stores that didn’t even have a woman’s section. I felt more like her failure than my victory when we walked out of the store, cargo pants in hand, towards a silent ride home.

Coming Out Headaches

I'm thinking about being "out" and what the hell I should be out as. I realize that on campus, people from last fall know I am asexual because I lead a discussion on it (which was only attended by 2 people, btu which provoked consistent individual inquiries). Now that I am back, many people notice that I display a lot of interest in transgender topics and I am open about being involved in several related projects. However, newbies (especially freshmen who met me at pride) have incessantly felt the need to refer to me as a dyke, carpet-muncher, and bulldagger (in a jestful, accepting way but in a none the less something-I-don't think-of-myself-as-kind-of-way ).

I'm thinking about coming out to my mother and father, though its been months since I talked to either of them, and I have no idea what to come out as. I feel gender is more important to who I am than any kind of identity based on romantic relationships. I think about gender in every interaction I have, whereas I've has three crushes in the last three years. The catch is that I do have a girlfriend now, and I feel like I have to choose between acknowledging how much I care about her and anyone thinking of me in any of the ways I think of myself. I feel like her existence makes dyke trump trans in the public eye. I feel like our relationship undermines my claim to asexuality. It's as if she is everyone's confirmation that everything they assume about me has always been right. Now, how much are people really thinking about my sexual identity and gender identity? It's not that I think they are, it's more that there are a lot of unspoken assumptions that are coming into play more directly as I'm being more open. I feel like I'm on the defensive with this whole coming out process, doing damage control, dispelling myths, and disarming rumors. As I sit down to script out another conversation with a friend about it all, I can't escape the nagging condemnation that I make things this complicated on purpose...

Book Review: Butch is a Noun

Butch Is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
As pride season is coming to a close, I’ve began reading Butch is a Noun and it’s been one of those books that I instantly connected with because was given to me at exactly the right moment. It’s jubilant, celebrative, and playful-everything pride should be, but it’s managed to save itself from tilting over into triviality, subsuming honesty for rhetoric, or recycling inspirational platitudes. A collection of personal essays by Bear Bergman, Butch is a Noun addresses topics that range from sex to community to his admiration of all the multi-faceted genders in his life. He is a story-teller, a gender theorist, and a synthesizer. Above all else, he is unwaveringly genuine. If you’re butch, or might be, or care about people who could be construed as, then I’d recommend giving it a read.


View all my reviews.

Andrea Gibson (updated)

I've been spending a lot of time with a girl who's into slam poetry and Judaism over the last couple of weeks. She's not going to be around much anymore, which explains why I actually have time do some posting, but I thought I'd kick off my (hopefully) more frequent batch of postings with a couple clip of someone she turned me on to. Oddly enough, the very next person I met was also a fan and gave me one of her CDs, so I guess I was meant to fall in love with Andrea's work and I did. enjoy.

Andrew by Andrea Gibson
(A gender poem)


Blue Blanket by Andrea Gibson
(A sexual assault poem)


For Eli by Andrea Gibson
(A war poem)


Swingset by Andrea Gibson
(A gender poem)


Dive by Andrea Gibson
(a life poem)


Wasabi by Andrea Gibson
(A love poem)


Emergency Room by Andrea Gibson
(A suicide poem)


Walmart by Andrea Gibson
(A coming out poem)


Say Yes by Andrea Gibson
(A love poem)