It’s unnerving. I shift in the chair a little, trying not to attract the attention of the man seated beside me, who seems intent on digging for my personal information. When I first took this seat in the waiting room, the area was relatively empty, but it has slowly populated itself, like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds. There is a conversation somewhere behind me about the lesson someone’s going to teach his buddy with his fists. Directly across, there is someone staring directly at me and breathing heavy, as though he’d just been sprinting - despite the fact that he has been seated for over ten minutes.
The waiting room is usually much less predatory: with people wandering around aimlessly, or reception staff behind a shielded counter being boisterously asked for rides home, or talking with loose acquaintances about which shelter they’re staying in or how they’re going to get their stuff back. Someone might be standing at the courtesy phone, not caring if her conversation in shaky voice about how she is cleaning herself up is overheard, the withdrawal hoarseness and shakes painting an ironically poor picture for the person on the other end of the receiver. But today feels more like a full moon day. Now echoes of someone vomiting in a washroom reverberate down the hall past the elevators.
I can respect the desperation of the poor, and the debilitating nature of having one’s sense of worth stripped away. But it can be intimidating when one is newly observing this from a woman’s perspective.
I’m seated in a mental health clinic that carries caseloads ranging from the bankrupt and destitute referred by Social Services, to outpatients from the local mental hospital, to parolees required by law to check in with and be monitored by their caseworkers. Some people are there because they have no other financial options; others come from criminal backgrounds, sometimes dramatically so. The clinic treats junkies and people suffering from abstract dementia, alcoholics, violent offenders and paedophiles…and transsexuals.
To be fair, the other psychiatrist in Alberta who specializes in Gender Identity Disorder (the medical term) works from a Hospital centre in which transsexuals share a waiting room with hyper-actives, those suffering from ADD, people with learning disorders and children with other problem behaviour - not as troubled, perhaps, as those in this office. But that is the extent of psychiatrists in the Prairies who are GID-certified. We fall in with the heaviest-cases for treatment.
Ironically, we transsexuals may provide these doctors on the front lines with some rare and rewarding moments of relief from the emotionally stressful caseload that they often carry. The other mental disorders that they deal with can be regulated, medicated, go into remission and monitored. Some achieve a level of success keeping their conditions in a place of stability for the remainder of their whole lives, with an admirable amount of determination and discipline, and often with the support of those close to them; but alas, many do not.
In contrast, transsexuality is a “mental disorder” that can be completely cured by a surgical procedure. It must be a refreshing experience to see someone come into the office who was once broken, suicidal, desperate, directionless, confused and tormented since childhood when they felt hamstrung at every level of development - to see them gradually develop into empowered, liberated, positive-thinking people with more self-esteem than they believed possible. There are other challenges that transsexuals face post-surgery, of course: finding a stable career, acceptance within families and communities, establishing loving relationships. Seeing them achieve that moment where they can finally embark on that journey without the baggage must be a powerful experience. At the end of the day, there can be some feeling of accomplishment.
In 1973, homosexuality was stricken from the any classification as a mental disorder. Thirty-five years later, the “transgender phenomenon” still is. Welcome to life in the margins in the 21st Century. Transgender parents are still at risk of losing their children because they are often seen as mentally unfit. Aside from a few rare locales that have ended the practice, the fact that someone has genitalia different from what is expected is still often successfully used to plea bargain sentences for hate crimes down to a few short months. When a Lethbridge community publication announced a recent pension victory as the “last major battle” for the gay community, it was hard not to feel somewhat forgotten.
But to blame the state of the transgender community on the actions of the larger gay and lesbian community fails to take into account many of the ways in which the transgender community hamstrings itself; first and foremost is the rule of stealth. For transsexuals, this means “blending” and avoiding detection, even to the extent of avoiding association with the gay and trans communities. For cross dressers, this means remaining in the closet, afraid of exposure and similarly afraid of association. Don’t get me wrong: it should not be expected for all transgendered people to be visibly out, especially with the stigmas still lingering from the days of Jerry Springer. But the lack of visible spokespeople leaves the trans community largely without a voice.
It also doesn’t help that there is no single umbrella that transfolk are willing to gather under. The transgender community is horribly fragmented among several different lines, using several different terms, each of which has several different definitions. Transsexuals, cross dressers and tangential groups that sometimes fight such association; genderqueer, intersexed, two-spirits, bi-gendered, androgynous form an uneasy alliance at best. Transsexuals alone are divided among male-to-female, female-to-male, pre-op, post-op, semi-op, non-op, full-time, part-time. They are often further divided by sexual orientation - straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, all of which can be defined differently if one is thinking from the identified gender or the birth genitalia. Despite all of the fears, the “transsexual empire” never materialized, because no one could agree on anything.
This was made clear to me again recently. My own personal choice to keep my male part but get rid of the baggage elicited responses of “you’re sabotaging yourself,” or “I was afraid of the surgery too, but now I feel much better,” or “you’ll change your mind.” Some now question whether I’m “transgender” at all, but what else would I be? It’s not a decision that I’ve made lightly, especially when GRS cost is covered by Alberta Health Care but orchiectomy is not; in addition there is the fact that as long as I continue to have the defining anatomy, the law will continue to regard me as “male.” Like transition itself, a person wouldn’t make that choice unless there was a real, pressing need.
The discussions about labels and definitions and “who is real” only serve to divide the community and prevent it from working toward any lasting change. Certainly, the smaller segments of the transgender community need to have their own spaces, their own groups to discuss and explore those things that are unique to them and those needs that are their priorities. But without the all-inclusive spaces and mutual respect, there can be no consensus, and no voice of strength.
There are also some inherent differences that have prevented the transgender community from inheriting the gains made by the GLB. Despite the number of human rights motions since the 1970s to protect rights based on sexual orientation, it wasn’t until 1993 that an anti-discrimination law was passed (in the State of Minnesota) specifically protecting transgendered persons. For the gay community the issue is one of sexual orientation, while for transfolk it’s about gender identity and/or expression. What unites us is that we all experience homophobia, and the live outside of the traditional genetic-male and genetic female pairing. We have strong reasons to keep that alliance, but we also have a very different core issue at heart.
When Susan Stryker screened her film, “Screaming Queens, the Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria” in Edmonton, the question came up in the follow-up discussion as to why Compton’s (which took place 3 years earlier than Stonewall) didn’t provide the spark for the Gay Liberation Movement. In addition to the fact that political unrest was commonplace and unremarkable/unreported in San Francisco in the 1960s, she also pointed out several cultural revolutions that took place or developed more fully in those three years. Her speculation was that perhaps in 1966, Western culture was not yet ready for the debate about sexual orientation. In a follow-up discussion she elaborated that in 1969, society was certainly ready for the debate about sexual orientation - not necessarily ready to accept it, only that it was ready for the fight that took shape. Perhaps it was still not culturally ready for the fight about gender identity and expression. I (and she) don’t know if this is definitively true or not, but certainly by 1973, this was the perception held by the GLB community.
And it may have been true that in 1969, North America was not ready for this dialogue - perhaps even in 1979. By 1989, it becomes much harder to argue this case. But by 1989, there was still very little transgender-specific community to take up the torch, while the GLB community was already set on its course. Not much changed until the past decade. By 2007, even though the trans community is fractured and the TSes and CDs are still arguing about how the other’s causes don’t properly represent them, the media is carrying some of the torch for us. Some recent examples being the trans-positive Barbara Walters 20/20 special on transgendered children, or the rush to put transfolk into soap operas.
Society is past ready. We, however, are not. We need to change that.
