Trans Across America
By John Cloud
Contributed by Brianne and others
St. Louis, MO
July 14, 1998
When James Madison was urging his young nation to
refrain "from oppressing the minority," he was talking
about "other sects," not other sexes. Shannon Ware, an
engineer from St. Louis, Mo., who began life as Craig Ware but
now lives as a woman, would grant that much. But since a high
school civics teacher inspired her, she has clung to the belief that
social change is possible, that America is elastic enough to
accommodate all minority groups--even when the minority is as
caricatured and misunderstood as hers.
Ware is "transgendered," which means her mental gender--her
deepest awareness of her identity--doesn't correspond to the
parts she was born with. Though she has become an activist in
the past year or so, Ware struggled with these feelings for years.
Now, at 45, she is happy with her inner and outward selves, the
latter feminized with hormones and women's clothes. Ware isn't
yet "transsexual," but she does plan to undergo what doctors call
"sex-reassignment surgery" when she and her beau David can
afford it; it will cost about as much as their new Nissan.
Since transsexuals burst on the scene in the 1950s, when a G.I.
went from George to Christine Jorgensen, journalists have
periodically revisited the subject in tones varying from the dryly
medical to the hotly sensational. But today many forms of
gender nonconformity have actually become mainstream. In the
past five years, several movies, plays, tabloid shows and famous
cross-dressers like RuPaul have moved drag from the fringes of
gay culture to prime time. Even Teletubbies, a show for
toddlers, features Tinky Winky, a boy who carries a red
patent-leather purse.
Less noticed, however, is that gender nonconformists have been
working together, with some remarkable successes, to build a
political movement. Their first step was to reclaim the power to
name themselves: transgender is now the term most widely
used, and it encompasses everyone from cross-dressers (those
who dress in clothes of the opposite sex) to transsexuals (those
who surgically "correct" their genitals to match their "real"
gender).
No one knows how many transgendered people exist, but at
least 25,000 Americans have undergone sex-reassignment
surgery, and the dozen or so North American doctors who
perform it have long waiting lists. Psychologists say
"gender-identity disorder" occurs in at least 2% of children; they
experience discomfort with their assigned gender and may
experiment with gender roles. Some of these people turn out to
be gay; most don't. The overlapping permutations of gender and
sexuality can get baffling, which is why transgender activist Riki
Anne Wilchins simply declared "the end of gender" in her recent
book, Read My Lips. Wilchins believes that male-female
divisions force constructed social roles on all of us and create a
class of the "gender oppressed"--not only transgenders but also
feminine men, butch women, lesbians and gays, "intersexed"
people (hermaphrodites) and even people with "alternative
sexual practices." (Marv Albert, meet your leader.)
In the early '90s, transgenders started forming political groups,
mostly street-level organizations, which picketed the American
Psychiatric Association, for instance, for using the
gender-identity-disorder diagnosis. Previously, transgenders
appeared as figures in the early gay-liberation movement: it was
cross-dressing men--their "hair in curls," as they chanted--who
threw the first rocks in the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York
City's Greenwich Village. But as the gay movement went
mainstream, it jettisoned transgenders as too off-putting.
Transgenders faced practical obstacles to organizing themselves
separately. Most couldn't simply dress as a member of the
opposite sex without getting beaten or fired. Many felt pressured
to undergo expensive genital and cosmetic operations, which
doctors wouldn't perform unless the patients also underwent
years of psychiatric treatment. After the surgery, some had to
move to find a new job and start a new life. Political organizing
was a luxury.
Today medical rules are getting more relaxed. Some
transgenders still elect to have full operations, but others
(especially the young) express gender their own way, perhaps
just with clothing or hormone treatments or with partial surgery.
Increasingly, they simply refuse to discuss their private parts.
"What's important is hate crimes and job discrimination," says
Shannon Minter, a female-to-male transgender and civil rights
lawyer. "Why does everyone want to talk about my genitals?"
Governments and employers are starting to listen. Although just
one state, Minnesota, has a law protecting transgenders from job
and housing discrimination, cities all over the country (including
San Francisco, of course, but also Seattle and, as of last year,
Evanston, Ill.) have passed similar legislation. Recently the
California assembly approved a bill to increase penalties for
those who commit crimes against transgenders; the bill awaits
senate approval.
Lawyers with the Transgender Law Conference have helped
pass statutes in at least 17 states allowing transsexuals to change
the sex designation on their birth certificate, which means their
driver's license and passport can reflect reality. (One unintended
consequence: legal marriages between people who have become
the same sex.) In Missouri, the house judiciary committee met
in March to discuss the state's first civil rights bill to include
"sexual orientation"--defined to include gender "self-image or
identity." Illinois and Pennsylvania considered similar bills. None
passed, but "we were happy to get the issue out there," says
activist Ware.
Many transgenders are furious that the biggest gay lobbying
group in the U.S., the Human Rights Campaign, opposes adding
transgenders to the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a gay
job-protection bill that has been pending in Congress since 1994.
But the Campaign is coming around. Last year it helped arrange
a meeting between transgender activists and Justice Department
officials to discuss anti-trans violence (a 1997 survey of
transgenders found that 60% had been assaulted). The
Campaign is also lobbying for a bill that would give U.S. district
attorneys the authority to handle state crimes involving bias
against "real or perceived ... gender." Transgenders have their
own D.C. presence, Gender pac. It sponsored its third Lobby
Day on Capitol Hill in April, when more than 100 transgenders
met members of Congress. A state-focused group called It's
Time America! has chapters in half the states. And of course,
transgenders are talking about staging a march on
Washington--de rigueur for any minority going mainstream.
Businesses are paying attention. Computer firm Lucent
Technologies has added "gender-identity characteristics or
expression" to its equal-opportunity policy. The University of
Iowa has similar language, and in February, Rutgers adopted
more limited protections for "people who have changed or are in
the process of changing" their sex. Last year Harvard allowed an
incoming female-to-male freshman to live on a male dorm floor.
Campus groups have asked the college to formally protect
transgenders, but Harvard being Harvard, the university is
studying the issue. Transgenders are pushing ahead in the courts
as well. In a little-noticed but groundbreaking case last year, a
Minnesota male-to-female transsexual won Social Security
"widow's benefits" following her husband's death in 1995. The
Social Security Administration declined to grant them at first but
reversed itself after the woman appealed, with the A.C.L.U.'s
help.
The most important victories are often won outside the public
arena. A little over a year ago, Shannon Ware was the host of a
constituent meet-and-greet for her state representative. Over
coffee and snacks, Ware introduced Representative Patrick
Dougherty, a moderate Democrat and devout Roman Catholic,
to several transgenders. He was set to consider legislation that
would make it difficult for transsexuals to gain even partial
custody of their children after a divorce. For Ware, it wasn't an
academic issue. She was once married and has a daughter,
Elizabeth. Though the 13-year-old and her mom have been
"totally cool" about her transition from Craig to Shannon, Ware
knew others weren't as lucky as she was. Another Missourian,
Sharon (ne Daniel), has fought her ex-wife for six years for the
right simply to visit her two boys.
The low-key meeting at Ware's house worked. Dougherty
listened as she and several others told their stories. Some had
lost jobs, some had been rejected by family, all felt battered by
a society that insists that biology is destiny. Dougherty left
seeing no reason to attack these folks with a new law. A few
days later, he quietly let the legislation die in his committee.
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