Sehr
No Variant from R*E*S*P*E*C*T
Submitted by Barbara on Sat, 09/12/2009 - 10:43am
Yesterday, September 11, was a day that will live not only in infamy. For me, it is a day of celebration — not only for my life — but for the work of Ingersoll Founder Marsha Botzer and other pioneers in our upheaval of the gender binary. As the very funny Travis Simmons serenaded me with his best Louis Armstrong voice marking the 20th birthday of my SRS surgery, (You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Louis What a Wonderful World Armstrong sing “Happy Birthday to Your Stuff”) at a local comedy club, I tried to bring my thinking out of the box.
We who defy the determinations of medical professionals at our birth still sit uncomfortably in the waiting room of life glancing over long-expired publications that carry words like “gender dysphoria,” or “gender variant,” or the more preferred “illegal mutant from outer space.” Even here in the upper echelons of the 100-story, gender neutral Marsha Botzer Tower where the Ingersoll Gender Center board chews on issues surrounding identity documents, DSM-V, and whether we should pass out chocolates or Broccoli florets at national conferences, we suffer our own identity crisis.
Apparently, there is some apprehension about the term “gender variant” being used as one of the first descriptors of the Ingersoll community on this Web site. An asterisk on the page notes a definition as”a person who identifies with non-polar (male/female) gender identity, a mixed or fluid identity.” The fear is that a Sarah Palin-like observer of our community will either take this to mean someone who can’t commit their own minds and therefore should be committed, or, in the Palin-tradition take up arms against this strange species — polar or non.
Arresting Change
Submitted by Barbara on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 8:39amThe brief winter of our community’s discontent with the state Department of Licensing is finally over. We can all party like it’s 1999. For me, I can party that like that first day in 1987.
It was a rare sunny January morning in Seattle in 1987 and I felt pretty — at least on the inside of my 300-pound frame. It had been a few weeks since I confessed to a magistrate of the King County Municipal Court and to my therapist that despite my still-foreboding five-o’clock shadow, my baritone voice, and my penchant for playing with computers — I was a creature of the opposite sex. A couple of years of Ingersoll support groups, several “beauty consultants,” and a class in the mystique of the feminine walk, had convinced me that I could correct a mistake of nature. Finally, the state of Washington had graded me with an “F” on my driver’s license — a definite upgrade from the “M” that had followed me from the day that doctors in a German hospital had wrongfully diagnosed me with what was once a terminal disease for infants and a gender designation that proved more threatening in my adult life.
The ink on that “F” on my driver’s license was not yet dry on this January morning when I treated myself to a Saturday morning brunch at a tasty restaurant. The license change was like a photo of your grandkids that you insist on sharing with the world at a certain age. It is Pride, Mardi Gras, and “Survival of the Fittest” all at once. I was feeling great — I was dining alone — but I was on top of the world. A few glasses of orange juice and several cups of coffee later, I was on top of something else. The sign on the door said “ladies,” and armed with my official designation, I had nothing to fear but public wetness.
Can We Wipe the Mustard from this Sausage?
Submitted by Barbara on Sat, 07/18/2009 - 9:19amI have been to a sausage factory in Milwaukee and watched them make my favorite German knockwurst. I have also been to Washington, DC, several times and watched Congress make laws. I’ve found that it’s best to watch Congress just before you are about to have a colonoscopy — when your digestive system is clear.
That thought and others entered my mind last week as I watched deliberations on the Matthew Shepherd Act this week on my favorite porn channel, C-SPAN. Deliberations that included a consternating bid to ride the expansion of the national hate crimes bill out on a pork barrel fighter aircraft bill threatened with a presidential veto. Yes, the good news is that the attachment vote to the aircraft appropriations passed in the US Senate by a startling 63-28 vote. Hate Crimes legislation has already cleared the House. But because of the threatened presidential veto against the aircraft, the passage might be in question. The White House, meanwhile, says it expects to sign the Matthew Shepherd Act into law sometime this year.
To understand how this works, you have to understand Congress as few people outside the DC beltway do. It’s getting hot and humid in the nation’s capitol. They don’t call them Dog Day afternoons for nothing. The August recess approaches and our Congress has a lot on its supper dish. More than 50 million Americans await an opportunity to get health care, Trans folks — along with gays and lesbians — pray for an end to the reign of terror against them, and about 20 conservative Republican seek to stop the national scourge of man-animal hybrids.
