Transgender Day of Remembrance – Accuracy for the Cause

Transgender Day of Remembrance

First, I am appalled with Hate Crimes of any kind. In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites. The homeless population is one of the most victimized target populations for hate crimes in America; with 75% of all perpetrators are under the age of 25!

This post is from Allyson Robinson, HRC’s associate director of diversity. “Today marks the 11th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.  What started in 1999 as a vigil held by friends for one woman – Rita Hester, a transgender woman whose murder remains unsolved to this day – has become an international observance with events taking place in over a dozen countries.  The Transgender Day of Remembrance has helped make visible the thousands of transgender people and their loved ones that hate has tried so violently to erase.  In the last 12 months alone, over 90 transgender people have lost their lives to prejudice and hate.” – NOTE – This was the text pulled directly from the HRC site on November 20, 2009…

Todays text on the HRC page - November 21, 2009

“Personal message from Allyson Robinson, HRC’s Associate Director of Diversity

We in the transgender community hold Day of Remembrance events each November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 remains unsolved, and the hundreds who have lost their lives since then. According to the Day of Remembrance’s organizers, this year 13 Americans lost their lives because of someone’s hatred for their gender identity.”

Thank you HRC for the change to more creditable text today.

A 2009 visible list of those murdered in the world for transgender reasons.

The following was based on the previous number that I had with HRC’s estimate of 90 people. The estimate of 90 people coupled with the 1 in 12 are murdered is what caused me to write this article.

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There is just cause to mourn our losses and draw attention to our cause. We do not want more, we just want fairness and what everyone else gains simply by being their birth gender.

So what does it really mean? What does 90 people in 1 year mean to us as a population in comparison to the entire population. Well, I am a technical writer and I like accurate information, so I will offer as many real statics as possible, and label the suspect numbers.

To the transgender community – and my friends, it is still significant to note that we are twice as likely to get murdered as the general population.

The Current Numbers:

The number of Transsexual individuals in our population varies by who generates the numbers - but it is estimated to be some 0.25% - 1% of the population. I tend to go with the former, .25%. I have not seem any personal indicators that the numbers are any higher than 1 in 400, even in a ‘hotspot’ area like Seattle (where I am). A ratio of 1 in 100 (1%) would make transsexual individuals twice as common the entire Native American population OR about 1/4 as many people of Asian decent in the United States – I will stand by the comment that 1% seems very optimistic. The current US population is 307,973,000 as of 2009.

Of those 308 million people, at .25%, some three-quarters of a million would be transsexual across the United States.

The 2007 U.S. homicide rate was 5.9 per 100,000 people, up only .4 (8%) in 7 years. The total U.S. population in 2007 was 302.2 million. That calculates out to about 17,830 homicides for the year, or 49 per day.

Predictions for 2009 are about the same ratio, making it about 50/51 people per day who will be murdered.

About 1 in every 200 murders are transsexual individuals. Making transsexual individuals about twice as likely to get murdered over the general population with a population ratio of 1 in 400.

The HRC and others following them have tried to sku the statistics – but the writer of the article skued things in a way that explains few elements of their research and how they mixed them although their notation shows the source. If this all seems confusing, read on…

HRC Published Statistics:

Still maintained by HRC - HRC’s article on Transgender and Hate Crimes

“Hate violence.  Transgender people are often targeted for hate violence based on their non-conformity with gender norms and/or their perceived sexual orientation. Hate crimes against transgender people tend to be particularly violent. For example, one expert estimates that transgender individuals living in America today have a one in 12 chance of being murdered. [1] In contrast, the average person has about a one in 18,000 chance of being murdered. [2]

In 2002, community activists commemorated the lives of 27 murdered transgender people in that year. [3]“

1. Kay Brown, instructor for “20th Century Transgender History and Experience” at the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco, Washington Blade, Dec. 10, 1999.

Kay Brown’s statistic was referring to 1 in 12 transsexuals were likely to be murdered in their life – and that stat was pulled from a mistaken belief in what the population was of the transgender community. 1 in 12 compared as though it were a 1 year number would mean that the entire population of TG’s would be 144 persons. There is question about lifespan and the years as transgendered. Honestly, there is just not enough real data to back this up.

2. Based on the FBI’s “Uniform Crimes Reports, Crime in the United States 2000,” showing the murder rate of 5.5 people per 100,000.

Likely Accurate – and that also includes the transgender population as well as those murdered who were transgender – you must pull the numbers out to see them. This again appears to be over a lifetime – without an explanation of what figures were used to calculate that number of 1 in 18,000. The 5.5 per 100,000 is accurate. Which should mean that 5.5 per 100,000 Transfolks are also murdered – with my conservative estimate of 3/4 million, that should indicate only 41.25 would be killed in a year.

3. Daily Lobo, University of New Mexico, Nov. 21, 2002.

Likely Accurate – Though taking the 27 murdered in 2002 and comparing them to those murdered in 2008/09 (90) is the most alarming statistic, almost triple the national average of transgender murders.

TWICE AS LIKELY – Three times as many:

What we need is accurate, honest, trusted information to forward our cause. The real numbers are still scary.

HRC, please stop publishing information that can be used against the Transgender community. The reality of the statistics is bad enough. A transgendered individual is twice as likely – that’s 100% more likely – to be murdered than their non-transgender counterpart in the same population.

And there has been a triple increase in the number of transgender people murdered in just 6 years.

And what happens if we just change the one, really unknown variable? What happens if we say that .5% of the population is transgender instead of the conservative .25%? Then we are murdered at the same rate as the body of the population.

One of the best collections of honest transgender information is here

POST NOTE: The correction to 13 people murdered this year from 90 would indicate that if the murder rate remained the same for the transsexual population as it is for the entire population – then there are some .25 million transsexuals in the US. The stunning truth is that those 13 were killed because of HATE CRIME.

Sarah

Gender Transitioning, Character Changes and Children

For those of us in the TG community, there is a duty for support of each other as well as education for both inside and outside the community.

 Warning, stop reading this right now. This article deals with the harshest subject in an honest manner. 

You are not going to like what I am saying part of the time. You are going to think that I am wrong. Stop reading now.

IF you choose to start reading, then read it all, until the end, please. Please. It is a longish article and I will likely add to it upon more reflection and experiences.

Stop in the Name of Love

I started this blog with who I am… a journeyer

Here is the fairytale, the story that you want to live. This is the story you tell yourself that will make you feel complete. So you woke up one day and thought – “I am not going to live the lie anymore. I am going to be who I was always meant to be. I am going to become the person who has been inside and hiding for all these years.”

For years, you just blended in, ‘kind of’. No one really knew what was in your head, the monsters that came to you at night, the dreams you masturbated to. Occasionally you reveled something of yourself and you were thought of as gay, or a dyke or a CD; by a partner or stranger that wanted to pigeon-hole you. You went to work and nobody knew what was inside you, dying to get out. You went to church, got married, had kids… and still they did not know. Then one day, you say a couple sentences to try to sum up all that you have felt, dreamt, wished, thought and all that you hope will happen and BOOM the bomb goes off.

The Big Bomb

Then you go see a doctor, go see a therapist, go to marriage counselling, go see a lawyer – get a divorce, fight for custody, have some surgery – and what do you have left? Who are you now?

If you have already exploded it all, if you have already blown up all your past life in a planned, rush of a sequence of timed detonations, then I am going to tell you the truths you know – the ones that you already know and live with everyday. If you have not blown it all up then take a look at what I am offering to help you transition.

Calm Down

 Take a calming breathe and repeat after me. Know who I am then what I want. FIRST – Know who you are, then SECOND – know what you want. Know who you are first and then what you want will just happen. Get it? Not quite yet, but this will help.

Time and time again when I encounter people who are unhappy and challenged, they are transitioning, or in love with someone transitioning. There is a swamp of feelings surrounding transition but most often I hear from people ”I did not know I was (they were) like that. If your true goal in transitioning is to ostracize your past and try to start with very little in tow, then make grand announcements of a character, behavioral change. If you wish to maintain something of your old life, then read on.

Transitioning need not be so painful. It need not be the rebirth that so many books and speakers seem to endorse. Not every person needs to fall from the sky, burn up to cinder then rise like the Phoenix (and that is the dream of many). If you think that you are prepared here for all the changes, read Astronaut Training first.

Missing the Right Arm

A Farmer looses an arm. Not an uncommon injury in some form or another across the country - much more common than F2M or M2F transitions, every year. The key here is what happens to the person after they lose the arm; the transition that might take place - and you should be able to imagine some tough scenarios here:

• They wallow in self pity, retreating into a world with little social contact.
• They feel like a freak, unable to do what others so easily do, and everyday is work just to keep up.
• They change their character entirely towards the negative and become mean drunk and lose their family.

More often than not, a person with this sort of injury receives intensive therapy and, if they have the will, they return to their old life as they were. The lesson here is that if you were to lose an arm AND you want the people who always loved you to treat you the same, then keep your character. People can deal with the changes that come from you physically changing much more easily - they cannot adapt as well if you mentally change.

If your penis does not work, we have designed a drug so that you can make it work. The reason for that drug is two fold, less so for the operator but primarily so that things operate the same as they always have for the partner.

People have ‘character’ expectations of people they are with. If you change your character too much, people around you have a very hard time coping. Here is a man who retained his character after horrific life altering events. Read his story if you are not familiar with just how physically gifted he was before his accident and the character he maintained after the accident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve

Mastectomy and the body changing impact

Women are subjected to a constant threat of a major body change. The result often changes the person they were. Once again, I will be bold saying that a partner, husband, family and friends will have little trouble with the transition IF your character remains intact. But, move towards Shame or Anger taken out on a family, or the partner – or one of the negative courses like the farmer above who lost his arm and that will send a message that you have changed, mentally. Mental – character changes are the toughest for people around you to comprehend and, in turn, continue with you in a relationship. Mental – Character changes leave those who love the altered person adrift in how they can be with them.

Also Liu Yan – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/arts/dance/19barb.html

You can transition, live a great life and continue with family and especially your children…

Double Mastectomy means freedom and life to some

Who you are – Know who you are – FIRST.

What you want to do with transitioning comes after knowing who you are, first. Too often we become lost on the “who we are becoming” journey and forget that there are many things about who we are and have been that are what others (and often ourselves) enjoy most about us. We spent a childhood, adolescence, adulthood forming who we are; not all of it needs to be left behind during transition.

So, if you really want to “get lost” and be forgotten, transition how you are. Most people transition and leave behind all that they ever knew. But this is not the only way…

Now about Children…

So you have decided to transition and you want to freak your kids out. This is easy, tell them just the way you did your partner, wife/husband, friends. Now if you want to maintain being with your children and you are switching which gender you are attracted to in a partner, this will complicate things – but only a bit – but that is a different article.

NOW, the part about kids and family. This is the secret recipe to give you the best chance at happiness IF you wish to maintain those around you AND be able to transition with them. You are going to need to keep your character consistent here, in spite of all the other changes that you will be doing. It is the little things that shake up the situation. Here are some M2F examples…

• Refuse to mow the lawn because it is not ‘womanly’; or you might break a nail
• Stop working on cars and get to the point where changing your own tire is beyond you
• Go from confident business adviser to shaken, insecure person
• Only do ‘girley’ things in a ‘girley’ way

People who care about you just can’t handle the change – and that is not their fault. You have a responsibility to yourself first, and then to them. Ask yourself if you are being real when (and this is because I am such a car gal) you tell your wife, children that “even though you have been a mechanic for 15 years, you are not able to do anything on a car at all now because you are becoming a woman” – and this is a true story, because I heard the woman who was so proud of her new “F” on her driver’s license say this to me!! How are people who know you supposed to keep up if you change who you are as a result of what you want?

My son

You want to make it easier for your children? It is easy (and I am using 17 years teaching and 10 years as a stay at home father as my basis here). Retain your character with your children. Regardless of what your character is, retain it or make your character better for your children.

The real secret here is that you have to be who you are before your transition.

As an afterthought (I stumbled upon this video late October), this is a good message to Transgender individuals who are ‘over doing it’ or who are trying to figure out how to ‘act’.

Transgender people step out, risk ridicule, worse

Jobs, friends, families at risk, but transgender people take chance to understand themselves and be understood.

By Valryn Warren – Staff Writer – Dayton Daily News

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Little is widely or completely understood about why transgender people have gender identity conflicts.

What is unknown evokes fear, and fear provokes a negative reaction. It becomes a vicious circle as transgender people often hide their need to dress or live as a gender opposite the one they were identified as at birth.

“People are deeply closeted because of the extreme amount of ridicule,” said Jenny Caden, who was born male but began living as a woman full time six months ago.

And there is much to fear.

Jobs, friends, marriages and families sometimes are lost.

James Burgess understands how powerful the fear is because he’s experienced it from both sides.

Burgess, a local retired electrical engineer, is married and a heterosexual cross-dresser. He is analytical, intellectual and willing to talk about being a cross-dresser because he’s dedicated to better education about transgender issues.

And he’s honest. While seeking a high security clearance for work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he was asked what would happen if somebody outed him as a cross-dresser. He said, “Go ahead and let them try.”

He got his clearance.

But Burgess also remembers his first transgender conference in 1965.

“I was fearful,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if I was going to meet Hell’s Angels looking for a guy in a dress or what. I was worried about people not respecting my boundaries.”

Burgess said fear is the main reason transgender people avoid being “outed” and why others sometimes react negatively. But secrecy breeds further misunderstanding.

“The secrecy prevents us from understanding ourselves or getting understanding from others,” he said. “We need to connect, to share ideas. But classically, everybody learns to hide things about themselves they realize won’t be accepted. And then we can’t get the answers we need.”

Dr. Frederick Peterson, a Dayton-area sex therapist, Wright State University professor and author, said gender identity conflicts are classified in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV,” as “gender dysphoria,” but counseling focuses on helping the patient deal with the stress of their difference.

“This is not a mental illness,” Peterson said. “It’s in the book — but if you smoke, that’s nictoine dependence, and you’re in the book, too. There are a lot of things in the DSM-IV that aren’t really mental illnesses.”

Estimates of the transgender population are just estimates. Lynn Conway, a computer scientist, electrical engineer and professor, as well as a transsexual woman, has done extensive research and believes it is at about 6 percent of all males and three percent of females.

Conway’s data indicates two categories make up about 95 percent of transgender people — cross-dressers and transsexuals.

Cross-dressing

Cross-dressers, who dress and present as a gender other than the one they were born with, constitute the majority of all transgender persons.

Cross-dressers can be of either sex and any sexual orientation, but Conway estimates that more than 90 percent are heterosexual males, often married with families, who dress as women.

The frequency and type of cross-dressing behavior varies enormously — from very occasional to daily, from wearing a single item of clothing to being fully decked out with hair and makeup.

A cross-dresser’s need to sometimes dress as the opposite sex seems to be innate and powerful, but they are also comfortable with the gender identity associated with their biological sex.

At 79, Burgess has had plenty of time to think about what his cross-dressing means — and he has.

“You never get perfect answers, but as you get older, you do get better ones,” he said.

Twice married, the father of three believes cross-dressing is an example of Carl Jung’s theories of the unconscious shadow self seeking expression. He says that plays out in traditional romantic relationships too, as people project denied parts of themselves onto others and fall in love.

“For whatever reason, transgender people become consciously aware of that unconscious self,” he said.

Burgess said dealing with being transgender is not only difficult and confusing for the individual, but for friends and family, especially spouses.

“The spouse is involved, they have their own fears and feelings and it can be really bad for them,” he said. “Many do divorce, although it often seems they somehow end up being best friends.”

Burgess said cross-dressing was an issue in his first marriage, but something he and his current wife have been able to work through.

“I think for me it was always about the need to connect with the feminine,” he said. “I seem to have found the connection I sought with my current wife. I would argue that our marriage has been about growth for both of us.”

Transsexuals

Like cross-dressers, transsexuals assume an opposite sex gender identity because that’s who they feel they truly are. 

Like cross-dressers, they can be of any sexual orientation or biological sex, but most often are male.

For transsexuals, sometimes dressing in opposite gender clothing is usually not enough. They are not comfortable as their birth sex and feel “trapped in the wrong body.”

They usually desire and often seek some kind of permanent physical modification, including hormonal treatment, cosmetic and/or genital reassignment surgery, or some combination.

Caden, a software engineer, legally changed her name and made the leap to life as a woman six months ago.

Born and raised in the Dayton area, she’s been married, has two adult children, and once worked as a volunteer paramedic.

Her journey from being known as a man to being accepted as a woman has been a mixture of joy and panic, and she still doesn’t know how it all ends.

“You get so scared,” she said. “So much has been unexpected. I thought my sister would do better with it and my parents worse, and it’s been the opposite. My kids have been supportive. We decided they still call me Dad. That’s who I am to them, and no amount of surgery changes that.”

There have been bright spots — Caden was a contract worker at NCR, a company she says is very supportive of diversity and the best possible work environment she could have had as she began transition.

Caden continues with psychological and hormonal therapy. Medical protocol requires a full year of living as a woman before genital reassignment surgery can be done.

And life goes on as usual in other ways. Her contract with NCR recently expired, and she worries about finding another job.

“If you do this on a whim or think it’s going to solve all of life’s problems, you’re going to be very disappointed,” she said. “But am I happier as Jenny? Absolutely. I can now do something I wasn’t able to in my entire previous 55 years of life — like myself.”

Out

While transgender people may not be prevalent, they are becoming more visible and connected, particularly in the Internet age. In 2007, a number of high-profile cases came to public attention.

Locally, Steven Cole, who allegedly sometimes cross-dressed, was arrested in a Mason park in a bikini and blonde wig. There were also charges of intoxication, with the public indecency charges later dropped in a plea agreement. But Cole, married with children, lost his full-time job as a Waynesville volunteer firefighter.

Steve Stanton, city manager of Largo, Fla., began to become Susan, thinking he had a plan mapped out that would satisfy his employers. But Stanton lost his job, and as Susan, according to a recent story in the St. Petersburg Times, is still unemployed.

Mike Penner, sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, publicly disclosed to readers his intention of becoming Christine Daniels. As Christine, Penner is still a sportswriter and also blogs about her experiences as a transsexual woman.

The state of Ohio and the city of Dayton both recently passed legislation barring employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, but that only covers state or city employees. In Ohio’s private sector, there is no protection against firings for sexual orientation or gender identity, whether the behavior is discovered on or off the job.

A federal law prohibiting employment discrimination by sexual orientation originally included gender identity, but it was dropped from protection in the latest version passed by the House in November.

“We did a poll, and Ohioans seem to be comfortable with passing laws that protect employment for both,” said Bo Shuff, director of education and public policy at Equality Ohio. “As people become more familiar with what it means, they seem to become more comfortable with eliminating discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Why?“

Everybody always wants to know why,” Caden said. “They’ll say, can’t you cure this, give him a pill, make it go away? Sorry — doesn’t work that way.”

Theories abound, even among the transgender community. What does seem likely is that there is some kind of biological or neurological influence, but no one knows for sure.

Peterson said the professional view of transgender has shifted from “perversity to diversity.” He said it’s become clear that biological sex, gender identity and sexual orientation are variables, and not always fixed in a particular sequence.

“We’re moving from an old school full of sexual folklore and myths to more of a new school of sexual science,” he said. “That’s really moved us towards conceiving there are many different valid expressions once considered outside the range of normal.”

Caden said family and friends can often adjust, once they realize that the person living or dressing as another gender doesn’t change everything else about them.

“In most ways, we are still the same people they knew before,” Caden said. “People are afraid of what they don’t understand, but the way to fix that is education.”