Looking Ahead with Respair
We have reached the end of 2020, and I am sure my feelings about the year easily match anyone who happens upon this column. Good riddance to such a difficult year, and don’t let the [...]
One Joke too Many
In the early 1980s, a friend of mine let me borrow a vinyl record of theirs: the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Monty Python's "Life of Brian." While it featured but two songs, it largely [...]
JK Rowling and the Outdated, Dangerous Trope
Over the last few months, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling has developed from beloved children’s author to the trans equivalent of reviled anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant. Rowling has evolved over the last two years, from [...]
The Wedge Issue
Allow me a moment to bellyache. I’m living in the middle of a heatwave, inundated with smoke, fighting an infection and I am just in general full of reasons to grouse. It is none of [...]
Cracking Eggs
Every so often, I like to step back a bit and discuss some of the bare basics of being trans. It is very easy to go deep into the issues of the day, especially as [...]
Water in the Desert
Netflix has recently released "Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen," a documentary created by Sam Feder, Amy Scholder and Laverne Cox. In it, a cast of transgender and nonbinary people examine the history of trans images [...]
Stereotypes, Biases and Bad Theories
At the heart of many of society's "-isms" is a laundry list of stereotypes that seek to characterize a group in ways that both provide an easy, if inaccurate, method of describing that group, while [...]
Trans care, Trans Rights and COVID-19
I'll admit: as I write this, I am quite out of sorts. Last week, a friend of mine died due to complications from COVID-19. Another friend's mom passed of the virus. Yet a third friend [...]
A Hair-Raising Talk of Race, Sex and Gender
While I typically write about trans issues, this particular column will not start with a story about a transgender or nonbinary person. Rather, it begins with a story about hair. Specifically, DeAndre Arnold's hair. Arnold [...]
The Trans Body
Transphobia, like homophobia, isn't generally using the suffix "-phobia" to mean "fear," but to mean "aversion." It's the same notion as hydrophobic surfaces refer to their ability to repel water. That said, I feel there [...]
One Day After
On Nov. 20, transgender and non-binary people — and our allies — across the world come together to honor those murdered due to anti-trans violence. This year marks the 20th since a group of people [...]
Revealing, But Not What You Think
In 2008, a woman named Jenna Karvunidis sliced open a cake, revealing pink frosting within the layers. With her, the "gender reveal party" entered the popular lexicon. A decade or so later, the gender reveal has gone a long way from those humble beginnings becoming something far different from that cake.
She/Her/Hers
"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" - Walt Whitman "Song of Myself." I find myself grappling with an unusual contradiction, and one I find myself [...]
On Being Trans at Halloween
Halloween is a time of magic and mystery. Traditionally, it once served as the end of the year, where autumn — and the abundance of the harvest — gave way to the dark and dim days of winter. In that liminal space between the seasons, one could get a moment to pierce the veil between other states, even between life and death itself.
The Time for Trans Pitches is Now
Every week, in my email, I receive dozens of story pitches. Some are quite good, connecting me with engaging people and interesting stories that I might otherwise have missed. Most, however, are pretty useless to me in the overall scheme of things. A lot only tangentially veer into any topic I write about, or are blatant product pitches or just an overall bad fit.
Rapid Onset
I have always been intrigued by history. I love to look at how things came together over time, and how advances in knowledge, technology and society — for both good and ill — helped to [...]
A Battle Won, but the War Rages On
Gavin Grimm, at long last, has won his case. When Grimm was a sophomore at Gloucester County High School in Virginia, he came out as a transgender boy. As soon as he opted to use the boys' restroom, the Gloucester County School Board decided to require that all changing rooms and bathrooms, "shall be limited to the corresponding biological genders, and students with gender identity issues shall be provided an alternative appropriate private facility."
Transmissions: Emerging victorious
At long last, North Carolina's House Bill 2 is dead. For those few who are reading who may not know the significance, I'll explain: The Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, otherwise known as HB2, was a bill passed in North Carolina in 2016.
As in a Mirror
So often when people who are not transgender speak of transgender people, there is one important thing that is gotten terribly wrong, and I think it's a core part of understanding exactly what it is to be transgender.
Being Seen
I grew up in a Southern California suburb in the 1970s, a short distance from the smog-filled skies of Los Angeles. Right around the time of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album, mood rings and bell bottoms, there was a veneer of patriotism brought forth thanks to the bicentennial.
Ducking Transgender Athletes
Centuries ago, during the witch trials of the medieval era, a unique way of determining who was or wasn't a witch was created. A woman suspected of being a witch would have her right thumb bound to the big toe on her left foot. She would then have a rope tied around her waist, and be thrown into a nearby pond or river.
Heroic in its Normalcy
"Supergirl," the television show based on the comic book character of the same name, is currently in its fourth season on The CW Television Network. It is part of the so-called "Arrowverse" of DC-comics based [...]
Transmissions: We Are One for the Ages
It amazes me how so many seem to view the notion of "transgender people" as if it was something that magically winked into existence just five years ago. It feels as if so many think the moment they first heard of transgender people is the moment transgender people came to existence, rather than it merely being the moment they stopped living in ignorance about the existence of transgender identity.
A Holiday Wish
So, once again, we reach the closing of the year. For many of us, this is a time of trees festooned with tinsel and glass baubles, or nights filled with candlelight or a myriad of holiday traditions. It's a time of gingerbread and gelt, kinara or hanukkiyah, and all sorts of things we hold dear.
A Beacon of Hope
Recent reports say that 0.7 percent of teens identify as transgender. At the same time, a recent study from the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that 50.8 percent of trans masculine people attempt suicide, with [...]
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Our Story?
To me, it becomes an issue of accuracy versus truth. It may indeed be accurate, for example, to include the name I was born under, answered to and used on legal documents until I was in my early 20s — but this isn't exactly my truth. That surely isn't me, and isn't my identity now. It's not the person who pens these words, or has been under this name and gender for the more than half of this life.
Their Past, Our Present
I look at that photo from 1921, at those proud, resolute transgender people from nearly 100 years ago. How many of them were able to escape what was happening around them, or were they forced into hiding? We're any of them amongst those beaten when the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was destroyed? Dare I even ponder if these folks enjoying a nice day in the sun would, just a few years later, be forced to wear the pink triangle and live out their remaining days in a concentration camp?
Pride is More Than Performance
It's pride month, and this means a whole lot of people will take or have taken to the streets across the world, festooned in their best rainbow gear. We'll march, party and do all those things we'll do at pride. It will be crazy and chaotic, and we will be the big messy community we are, in all our glory.
Being and Becoming
There is a certain popular culture view of transgender people that cannot be easily shaken: transgender people are born as men or women, and choose to become women or men.
Transmissions: Secrets and Truths
Trans people - and I am using the term in its broadest sense, inclusive of gender fluidity and nonbinary identities - tend to have a pretty short list of wants. Really, I can boil it down to one simple statement: we just want to live our lives.
Here’s Your Sign
Being transgender in the late 2010s means you talk about restrooms. Indeed, it's a topic you end up having to revisit over and over again, with what has been years now of attacks on public [...]
Striking gold
To be transgender in 2018 is to deal with challenging, difficult times. We face attacks from all sides, and the specter of death itself lays heavy upon our community. As a result, I find I often have to spend a lot of time ringing the alarm bells, and warning of dire times.
Rollback
The Trump Administration has once again attempted to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. This time out, the ban was secretly drafted by Vice President Mike Pence, with assistance from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) and Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation.
The Curious Case of Joseph Roman
Criminals make up excuses for their crimes. We've heard so many bad excuses for crime, that many such stories have become the things of legend, like the infamous "Twinkie defense" of Dan White for the [...]
2018: Stand Up
By the time this column reaches you, the confetti will be swept out of Times Square and the Rose Bowl parade floats will exist as only a memory. Nevertheless, we shall still be feeling the [...]
Transmission: The Return
The 21st of December is the Winter Solstice: that's the longest night of the year when light is at its scarcest. It is at this time of maximum axial tilt that those of us living [...]
Transmissions: What We Want
A week or two ago, a headline passed my eyes: "The transgender zealots are destroying truth itself," it seemed to scream, on an article by Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail. Hitchens' point seems to [...]