by Dawn | Apr 29, 2016 | About Dawn, Trans, What's here
Just thinking out loud.
Clicks count.
Data is the new form of currency and clicks can make people and groups more ‘popular’ and give them more visibility and power. When you run across an article about a hate group, right-wing politicians, and/or their latest machinations, don’t just share a post that contains a link to their website or FB page. Or even one to someone reporting on them if the report is on Faux, Breitbart, or even mainstream media. Even a mad or angry FB response counts in their favor. The more activity related to the posts/articles on them, the more you will see similar posts/articles, as will everyone else.
Instead, take a few minutes to search for a LGBT source commenting on them/their latest evil deeds and share that. If you cannot find a friendly source, write a synopsis and your thoughts/recommendations and share those. If you don’t feel comfortable, right-clicking on the image/meme in the original piece, make your own. It doesn’t take long and having a bit of personal involvement feels good.
Just don’t give them any clicks.
For more info, check this slide presentation:
by Dawn | Apr 21, 2016 | Trans, Uncategorized, What's Coming
I have a number of younger trans folk on my friends list. And some of them are righteous in their indignation about the increasing number of people, some trans and others not, that are being called out as they attempt to use the bathroom of their choice. I’ve responded and, in some cases, been shouted down by young trans people.
I know many young trans folk, like all young people, know better than their “elders.” But I’m trying to make a point that could be important, if not lifesaving.
Back during the Vietnam war, we initially forgot the lessons of WWII and Korea and officers proudly wore the insignia of their rank. Enemy snipers quickly realized that those flashes of gold and silver on helmets meant a high-value target and we lost far too many officers. When I entered that war, I was advised to remove my rank before venturing into combat. Only much later did the military hierarchy begin issuing “camo” rank indicators, which are now standard.
If you want to challenge the gender binary, then have at it. Just make sure to carry ID that will back up your claim to the bathroom of your choosing. If you don’t have such ID, then make arrangements for a responsible friend to be ready to bail you out quickly if you are accosted and arrested. Unless, of course, you want to make some “points” by spending the night in jail with a possibly unfriendly jail populace.
Further, particularly in the crazy south, be aware that your accuser may just be carrying a gun and could resort to using it if you resist leaving the bathroom he (most probably a he) thinks you do not belong in. Don’t actively resist.
Just saying, that’s all.
by Dawn | Apr 7, 2016 | About Dawn, Trans, What's Coming
I have to admit I am angry.
I am one of those “freaks” who you do not want sharing a bathroom with your daughter.
I have worked a job essentially every day since I turned 16. I did all the things republicans preach you should do so that you are not a “leech” on society. I came from a lower middle-class family that could not afford to send me to college. I studied hard in school, played sports, participated in civic activities, went to church, and eventually won a scholarship to the University of Alabama and a congressional appointment to the United States Air Force Academy. Because we were then (and still are) in war, I chose the latter. I wanted to serve our country.
And I did. But I became frustrated by the politicians running the war and costing my friends lives. I left the Air Force and used the GI Bill to get a master’s degree. I found a job with a good company in Mobile and worked my way up from the drafting board to the board of directors of a large environmental engineering firm. I worked on or led many engineering projects that still are important, functional parts of the infrastructure in many cities in Mobile and Baldwin counties, and, indeed, across many southern states. But my boss found out I was trans and kicked me out of the company, destroying my financial stability and even my ability to get another job in engineering. I was blackballed for being “queer.”
After I graduated from the Air Force Academy, I got married to a wonderful woman, had a daughter who has out-shown me in her accomplishments and who now is a mother to the most perfect child of her own. I am still her father and grandparent to her perfect baby. But the love of my life divorced me, and continues to drive a wedge between my daughter and myself. I have not spent Christmas or birthdays with my daughter for almost 20 years. I know she loves me and is torn between her mother and me. But it hurts so very much.
To republicans and many so-called Christians, I am a freak who should not be allowed to use a public bathroom. I am a freak that can be refused service, a job, a place to live, just because I don’t fit their idea of a ‘normal’ person. Ted Cruz’s Christian supporters even believe it should be legal to murder freaks like me.
Though I was never afraid all the time I was serving in the Air Force, flying F4’s during the Vietnam War, I am now afraid.
And my closest friends, who are republican and will vote for either Trump or Cruz, don’t understand why I am afraid.
Although we freaks have made tremendous gains these past seven years, all could, and, most likely will, be washed away if a republican is elected president.
I have seen the dominos begin to fall, beginning with Kansas where they have placed a bounty on the heads of trans people, to North Carolina and Mississippi where they have passed terrible hate laws in the name of ‘religious’ freedom, to Louisiana, where the republicans have introduced a bill that doubles down on NC and MS and specifically targets overturning the LGBT anti-discrimination laws in NOLA. How can Alabama fail to follow suit?
Soon I will not be able to legally use a public bathroom in my home state. Thanks to my local probate judge, who told me that he would not accept my petition to change the sex marker on my birth certificate unless it was prepared and presented by a lawyer, I have not been able to afford to get my birth certificate to match my social security card and passport.
I have turned 70 this past December. My life is more behind me than in front of me. I wonder why I keep fighting to stay alive.
I went back to school after losing my engineering career, thinking I could get a Ph.D. and a job teaching. But I had not reckoned on the age discrimination that exists in universities. They will always take a young new Ph.D. in preference to a 65-year-old new Ph.D. every time. And, of course, being a trans-freak does not help.
When I was on the board of BCM Engineers, I helped to get the company to give a scholarship to Auburn’s Civil Engineering school. I got my masters there, served on the school’s board of visitors for almost 10 years, but was told that they would not accept me into their doctoral program because of my age. At least, they were honest.
So here I am at 70. A freak. Working multiple jobs as an adjunct for a pittance but enough to keep me off welfare.
And I am so very tired.
Sometimes I think the hate I see coming is just too much to endure.
But I will stand up and fight. I will not go quietly.
by Dawn | Mar 28, 2016 | About Dawn, Trans
Demigods
I am taking time away from my teaching duties – no I will never be able to retire – to voice some troubling thoughts I have been having.
I am distressed at the extreme polarization that I see because of the upcoming election. While I can understand and support people becoming enthusiastic for a particular candidate, I hate the obvious hatred that each side has for the other. We just cannot seem to debate these issues in an adult fashion. Everyone seems to have their heels dug in and refuse to open their minds to anything the other side has to say.
Still, I regret that politics has begun to drive a wedge between some of my dear friends and myself. I do not want to lose their friendship and have tried to purge my mind of the issues, but increasingly I feel the need to separate myself from them.
Perhaps my closest and dearest friend is a Republican. I have known her for almost ten years and we have survived many hardships by leaning on each other.
But her decision to support Republican ideology, specifically Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, has placed such a strain that I just cannot find the energy to raise my shields and spend time with her. She just does not understand why I feel threatened by the current Republican intent to drag us back to a time when non-white and non-traditional people were excluded and killed because they violated a distorted Christian view.
Republican dominated legislatures across the country are racing to see who can pass the most restrictive and regressive legislation against the LGBT community. All in the name of “religious freedom” to discriminate. Thankfully, some large companies have put pressure on a few governors to veto the onerous legislation, but even so the Republican diehards say they will try to override the vetoes. In my home state of Alabama, the extreme conservatives control the legislature and have fought tooth and nail against the rights of same-sex couples to get married. I expect them to shortly take up the example of North Carolina and Kansas who have unbelievably regressive anti-LGBT laws and bills. Alabama may be broke, but they can find time to spend on these hateful ideas.
My sweet friend intends to vote for either Trump or Cruz. Trump scares me because he is doing the things Hitler did to incite the base to hate people who are not-white or non-traditional Christian. Cruz is even worse because he has aligned himself with extreme evangelicals, some who advocate the legal murder of LGBT people.
I have this recurring nightmare where the right-wing police come for me and she stands silent. It hurts too much and I cannot understand why she cannot see this.
by Dawn | Dec 18, 2015 | Trans, Uncategorized
quotesgram.com
In 2006, my world seemed to be approaching normality. I was back in my doctoral program, had found a wonderful supportive Catholic nun, and was awarded the honor of Vagina Warrior by the Feminists for Progress. And just prior to my 61st birthday in December of 2006, I flew to Thailand and finally had gender confirmation surgery. Then the darkness of being swallowed by my doctoral research overwhelmed me. I dropped out of my activism for GLBT rights to make time for the long hours completing the dissertation. Finally, in December 2009, I was hooded and left school with a new Ph.D. in search of a job with which to pay back my student loans with enough left over, I hoped, to allow me to pay off the remaining credit cards I had used to pay for my transition.
But something, a lot of things really, happened in the real world while I was gone. Bay Area Inclusion, a GLBT support organization I helped found in Mobile, folded its tent and went away. A new breed of trans-activists arrived on the scene and began to change my simple gender binary world. I first realized this when I saw that a “Q” had been added to the end of GLBT, the Q standing for Queer. Although the label queer had been in vogue way back in the ‘50s as a derogatory term for gay males, I learned it now stood for anyone who felt they did not fit into the neat boxes of male/female or straight/gay-lesbian. Then an “I” was added for intersex individuals as they too wanted to differentiate themselves from the run-of-the-mill gays/lesbians/trans/queer people. And I was OK with that. I could understand their point because their physiology just was different from that of most people.
But then the alphabet soup of letters was added making the LGBT tag almost meaningless, at least to me.
5 Ways to Support a Trans Person Experiencing Body Dysphoria (here)
This article popped up on my Facebook feed this morning, so I clicked and read. I had two thoughts when I finished my forced reading – not far into it I had the distinct feeling that some aspiring trans activist was clawing for something “trans” to write to come up with this fluff. All the things “they” suggested were common sense things an empathetic person would do for any friend struggling with an issue. The only difference was that the writer forced the overlay of trans onto the piece probably thinking the #trans keyword would help “their” marketing.
You may have noticed my use of air quotes around the non-gendered ‘they’ and ‘their.’ I did that because the writer, who is evidently a trans man, chose to make the article about gender-neutral body dysphoria instead of gender dysphoria. This even though ‘he’ chooses traditional masculine pronouns.
As you probably know by now, gender dysphoria is the extreme discomfort many trans people experience with the sex/gender they were assigned at birth, such assignment usually based upon the appearance of their external genitalia. This discomfort I know very well, having suffered with it for most of my life. I have always had a strong feeling that my body was not in alignment with my gender identity. I may have been assigned male at birth, but I finally found a way to correct that miss-alignment. With the help of hormone therapy and gender confirmation surgery, I crossed over from blue to pink.
But today many young (primarily) people in the trans collage are intent on doing away with the classical gender binary. Instead of being a trans man or trans woman, they choose to self-identify as gender queer, gender neutral (neutrois), non-binary, agender, polygender, androgyne, gender questioning, genderfluid, demigender, genderf#ck, and on and on and on. I can’t begin to keep up with the ever-growing list of nonbinary identities but you can read more about them here.
11 Times Gender Norms Got The Middle Finger in 2015 (here)
I am confused, very confused. And I think a lot of other people are too. And confused people always say No, such as they did to HERO in Houston.
