Category: Community Issues

Methodologies, mentalities, and madness

Transition Now Tax Deductible, But Who Counts?

Posted on by JAC

The US Tax courts ruled transitional care tax deductible yesterday in response to a case O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner. The ruling reverses the IRS’s position set in a 2005 decision to not count gender identity-related care as a non-taxable medical expense. (Chief Counsel Advice 200603025).

An 8-judge majority held that:

  • “TP’s (I assume stands for trans patient/person) gender identity disorder is a “disease” within the meaning of  § 213(d)(1)(A) & (9)(B).
  • TP’s hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery were for the treatment of disease within the meaning of  § 213(d)(1)(A) & (9)(B), and thus not “cosmetic surgery” excluded from the definition of deductible “medical care” by § 213(d)(9)(A).
  • TP’s breast augmentation surgery was directed at improving her appearance did not meaningfully promote the proper function of her body or treat disease within the meaning of § 213(d)(9)(B), and thus was “cosmetic surgery” excluded from the definition of deductible “medical care” by § 213(d)(9)(A).”

This is indeed good news, but what does it mean? You know if anyone is gonna complain about a good thing its gonna be me. So, here it is.

The statement declares that “male-to-female gender reassignment surgery” may be included as a deductible medical expense. I can’t help but be curious about those who are not transitioning from a male sex. I’m sure it would apply, its just always so noticeable when only one part of our community is listed. Breast augmentation isn’t covered because it is called “cosmetic” but what about chest reconstruction/breast removal? Is transmasculine top surgery somehow more important to fragile trans mentalities than having some boobs you really love? I am curious.

I willingly admit to pretty much never be satisfied with anything society has given us so far. I try not to think of it as me being negative, its just me having high standards, you know, like others may give up on being treated “decently” for what they are, but I want to be treated like a legitimate human regardless of what I am.

My dear friend Helen has alerted me to a conference call regarding this, which takes place tonight. Information can be found here or at her blog en|Gender.

GenderQueer in the Midwest

Posted on by JAC

Mini-documentary about your favorite pink haired femme boy by Hunter Stuart at Stuart Productions

You can also access the video on YouTube. Please help us to SHARE this video by RATING it (the five little red and grey stars), COMMENTING, and SENDING to your friends and coworkers!

The Midwest is crawling with queers. Not because of any strong presence but in the more literal sense. Queers are crawling because we do not have the space to stand up. We do not have the resources that would enable us to live full, healthy lives. We, like so many others, are isolated in our homes, in our towns, controlled and confined by others, longing for life and being unable to live it.

I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. When I came out as trans I didn’t know anyone who was like me and I had no way of finding them. The city‘s “gay“ scene was practically extinct and no trans or queer scene it had never existed in the first place. There was no space for me, so I decided to try and make one.

Continue reading “GenderQueer in the Midwest” →

What we used to be….

Posted on by JAC

Lots of folks are talking about David Letterman’s transphobic behavior on the Late Show in regards to recent government appointee Amanda Simpson. Letterman discusses Simpson’s appointment and how she is transgender. Another character in the show begins screaming “Amanda used to be a man? Oh my god!” and runs out of the room disgusted and horrified.

Also recently Scott Turner Schofield appeared on a reality TV show called “Conveyor Belt of Love.” (In Scott’s defense, he said never thought it would air.)

When word got out that he was trans, the uproar started about how Scott “was really a girl” and therefore a proponent of “trickery.”

I was not surprised, or shocked by any of it. I think I am so adjusted to seeing this behavior that I was barely even offended. What stuck out to me was the common phrase “used to be.”  I feel like we use it all the time to talk about our people, to talk about ourselves… “I used to be a girl, but now…”  But now what? How does one stop being something they have been?

I would like to add a disclaimer that this method of thinking can’t be applied to most trans people. In fact, most trans people I talk to about it don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. But it makes sense to me. I am not a “girl” but I used to be one… no I am not a girl, but I still kinda am one.  If I say “I used to be a girl…” I always stumble over my words, correcting myself with awkward throw ins.  In someways I was never a girl, in others I totally was… and am. Why does it matter what I used to be? Shouldn’t all that matters be what I am now? If you slept with someone who was woman but at one point was male bodied, does that change the face that you slept with a woman? If I was a girl once, am I really a girl now? Does that make me not really a boy? Where does our history stop and the recognition and realness begin? Does there have to be a stop and start in the first place? I can’t escape my history and my life, nor do I feel a need to. I can never completely stop being the me I used to be because somewhere in my brain are my memories of myself, my concept of myself from years past. Who I used to be is a part of who I am now.

It is the societal hate of changing ourselves that makes us feel that we have to exchange who we used to be for who we are now. They try to train us to reprogram our minds and bodies and re-write our histories. It is out of fear of disgusting others, of being hated, of being killed, that we feel the need to hide who we used to be and as a result we hide ourselves.

To sign a petition to promote the Late Show posting an apology, go here.

You Scream, I Scream

Posted on by JAC

He stood in the doorway. I could see him shaking from my desk. He sat across from my desk, avoiding eye contact. I tried to get him to speak, but before he got two words out he broke down. I didn’t need to ask. I knew who he was.

About a week before a student had come to my office looking for advice. While working at a center on campus, she met a community member who had come in looking for resources.  She gave me a brief description that could be summed up to: this person had been through a lot of shit.  It sadly wasn’t an unfamiliar story of a Midwestern  queer, but even I have to admit that it isn’t often you run into a case this bad. Abandonment, abuse, discrimination, rape, homelessness, unemployment, isolation, infection… he had been through it all.

I listened to myself as I spoke words of encouragement I had at one point told someone else… or myself: “You’ve been strong enough to get this far, no reason you can’t keep going. There is nothing wrong with you. You have a right to live and be happy.”

I did my best lend a listening ear and set him up with some resources. The sad truth was that there was no real queer community service system for him around here… or anywhere in the state. I wish I could have done something more to help him. I should of at least shaken his hand… His eyes reminded me of another set I have never forgotten. A young genderqueer I met about a year ago in Indiana. They came up to me after a presentation with tears in their eyes and said, “This is the first time I’ve ever met anyone like me. ” I looked at them and I could swear I was looking at myself.  All I could do was hug them. “I know its hard to imagine now,” I said, “but it does get better. If I made it this far, you can too.” As the words left my mouth I wondered how much farther I had come than this kid. Did I really have it all together like they thought I did?

I never heard from them. I wonder where they are now, what they are doing, if they’ve made it out ok. I don’t remember their name, only their face… the sight of my own painful past played out in someone else. I don’t think its a specific thing for the Midwest, but I do think it is part of a bigger picture. The fact that there are so many of us out there suffering when we shouldn’t have to. I wish there was some better, faster way to for all of us to know that no queer is alone in all this. Every time someone feels a pain because of their identity, someone else is having the exact same pain some 200 miles away. In that bond we can all be stronger.  That bond, that connection is the reason why we have to keep working, keep fighting to make things better. It isn’t over til we are all in the clear, and no one is left behind.

Midwest Reality

Posted on by JAC

The open house was packed. I fought my anxious impulse to disappear, reminding myself that now it wasn’t just my responsibility to be a visible, social-activist butterfly… it was my job. I wandered my way to the middle of the mass and into a conversation with two first-years: One from D.C. and one from Northern Kentucky, near my hometown of Cincinnati. The Kentucky student and I chatted briefly about the conservative environment and the contrast Oberlin had to offer.

“Really?” the D.C. student asked. “Cincinnati is conservative?”
I stopped, amazed at the concept of someone reading the ‘Nati as a liberal space.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t think it is…” said Kentucky, “Its a city, but its a more conservative city.”
I was even surprised at this implication that all cities were automatically full of the enlightened. “Its a red city.” I said, hoping to impart the severity I was feeling. “Blood red.”
D.C.’s eyes widened brightly. “Whoa, so you’ve actually met a real republican?”

I was tempted to ask what planet these people were from. I had no idea there were people who didn’t know any conservative people personally, let alone never officially met one. I think its best put in the words of my dad. “In this city, every person you see is likely to be one of them. Every face I see I can’t help thinking “You support everything I’m against… “”

I smiled at the optimistic first year. “Met a republican?” I laughed, “Honey, down there you can’t escape ’em.”
She laughed and I smiled. On the inside, part of me brightened at the idea that there are places out there that are, theoretically, so “liberal” conservatives won’t even show face. The rest of me sunk, once again reminded that the rest of the country has forgotten about us.

x-posted on Amplify

Oct. 11th in DC: Equality or Egoism?

Posted on by JAC

[First off, sorry for the lag in posts. I am now officially settled in my new job at Oberlin College which means the blog is coming back to life!]

There has been a lot of exciting talk about the equality march in Washington D.C. this October. I’m always up for starting a required ruckus. My question is, is this required or redundant?

In anticipation of this magic march I started to ask what this “equality” event is about. Cleve Jones says he wants “full and equal protection” in “all matters” which is awesome, but from what I can find marriage is the only issue specifically mentioned anywhere. Last time I checked, marriage rights and equality are not the same thing. Well, not unless you’re the HRC.

How much of this event is for “equality” and how much is about egos? Everyone knows there is a certain amount of hip-ness to being the underdog. And while I’m glad people are getting involved, people aren’t much help when they’re all glory and no guts.

Cleve Jones is hoping the march will launch a “new chapter” in the queer rights movement. I agree with him in saying a grassroots method is better for stirring change than a fancy dinner could ever be, but I can’t help but be question this particular effort. I would love to see a population, stirred by a mass rally, returning home to work hard on local issues, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Queers, particularly younger ones, are drawn to the concept of gaining some sort of status by saying “I was there.” More than likely, people will attend the march, feel special (which is worth something, I’ll admit), yell a lot, and then return home to business as usual leaving us worker bees in the same spot we’ve been in for years.

The reality is while Cleve Jones and David Mixner are calling coast to coast for “equality” in regards to the finer things, us queers in the Midwest are scraping by on their scraps of corporate gay media and rainbow stickers. We’re struggling to survive coming out, scavenging resources from the “liberal” spaces we only get to visit, and formulate something like a community out of a suffocating bar scene. It’s all well and good for people to funnel time and money into going to Washington to talk about marriage because they don’t have to worry about the bread and water of queer identity: safety and space. They steal the closest thing we have to a motivatable workforce and use up what little juice they have on a rally that won’t end up doing shit for us. To quote Bil Browning: “the coastal queers are willing to sacrifice us…” for the sake of a happy, government sanctioned, home-life.

One could argue that the march is about the bigger picture, for recognition of queers as citizens of this country, which I guess is how I would think about it if I wasn’t so jaded. For this march, I am hoping for visibility, I am hoping for media coverage, I am hoping for change in my own community. I am expecting nothing.

x-posted on Amplify

Ohio “Gay” Pride

Posted on by JAC

Pride season has come, and gone. All queers going busily berserk for 30 days altogether: Always interesting.

I gave a speech for Cincinnati’s pride, skillfully skipping the middle chunk of it by losing my place on my homemade flashcards. Awesome. I am not real big on pride as an event, I’m actually bitter about it. I wish people would come out more than just one weekend a year. A handful of us are in the streets working our asses off to create space, always overworked and alone. Then, one day a year, the queers and allies come out to do what? Party and pretend nothing needs to change.  I said as much in my speech, but in a much nicer way. I tried to highlight Pride’s beginning as a activist movement. The twelve sober people listening seemed really into it.

4775_1093239737267_1414740383_30298168_5677312_n

Blurrily speaking at Cincinnati Pride rally

Cincy pride always looks so tiny in comparison to Columbus. Our dinky little get together isn’t anything to wow about, but people try. Columbus pride is massive and intense with thousands of people. Makes me wonder why, if there are so many of us, we have so little going for us .

9321_153387402011_512702011_2832975_6779953_n

Performing at Wall Street for Columbus Pride Royal Renegades show

Ageism Fucks Over Activism

Posted on by JAC

This week I went to lobby in Columbus, Ohio’s capital, for the LGBT Equal Housing and Employment Protections Act. Equality Ohio collected almost 500 people for the event, most of whom were age 35 and up. Going in, I expected a degree of trans identity ignorance from some fellow lobbyists. What I didn’t expect was what I got…

I was one of the only experienced lobbyists in our group, but before I even reached the capital building I had been called both a kid and a child. I received a seemingly well intentioned yet authoritative lecture from an older activist on my generation’s apathetic nature, which was followed directly by being asked what grade I was in. I was never spoken to directly by the group leader or informed on the day’s agenda, nor where the other two younger people in the group. I was ushered from office to office like a kid on a grade school field trip. I had no opportunity to represent my district or my community. I might as well have not even been there.

Response: First of all, I am not a child. I’m 25 years old and the director a non-profit that I founded (without the help of anyone over 35, thank you very much). Second, if I had been the team leader I would not dominate the group so that my voice was the only one heard. I would not have missed appointments with representatives for no good reason. I would not have ignored members of my team because they looked young. And I would not have let lobbyers hand representatives blank “Thank You” cards (Wtf?). Lastly, my generation’s “apathetic nature?” Yes, I’ll admit my generation needs work, but what about the generations before mine? Maybe youth wouldn’t be so apathetic if YOUR generation hadn’t f**ked everything up. Maybe youth would be more involved if you treated us like people, not prospects. I keep hearing how youth are the future, but no one lets us make the future happen.

cross-posted on AmplifyYourVoice.org

Death Fetish

Posted on by JAC

How much does fear and sadness motivate? Does it motivate at all?

I mentor my old high-school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, and the last big project was Day of Silence. I listened as the students listed the hardships of being queer, what we aren’t allowed to do, how many of us have died… I didn’t feel inspired, I felt depressed. Is this what our youth have to look forward to?

“It’s good to educate about oppression.” I said to the students, “Maybe we can take it a step further and not only promote the voices of those who have been oppressed, but also the voices of those who have overcome. Show people what they are missing by not hearing us.”

The idea seemed to pump them up, but in the end it didn’t sell. I guess it’s more dramatic and “moving” to talk about dead people. And that is a big face of queer activism: death. Transgender Day of Remembrance (the only “trans day” there is) is about remembering dead people. Day of Silence is about loss of power and lack of recognition. Every queer storyline in mainstream media ends with us losing our loved ones or being raped and murdered. Organizations fund vigils and memorials but not drag shows and parties. There is no showing the joy of queer life, or offering information and knowledge, only the sadness and penalty is given.

The message being sent is: “Come out and join the movement! Your life is going to suck and then someone’s going to kill you.” Sounds like a great plan, and look how well its worked so far.

cross-posted on AmplifyYourVoice.org

Gift-wrapped Activism

Posted on by JAC

A couple of my fellow sex education teamsters and I went to an activist conference this weekend. It was for getting activists together from around the state and doing a skills share. Sounds pretty cool, right?

Getting there, us four radicals couldn’t help feeling a bit out of place. There was no gender neutral bathroom, which was a real pain in the ass for me. There was un-inclusive language and out of date, un-PC vocabulary all over the place. AND the place was crawling with paid government officials and wannabes promoting themselves. WTF?

My pal and I did a Queer Inclusive Organizing workshop to try to queer it up a bit and two people showed up. And they were fucking queer organizers! There was a score of talk about the November election, which is apparently still interesting to some people. The “discussion” consisted of people patting themselves on the back because they are “sustainable,” “progressive,” and work “on the ground.” Who the hell talks like that? And I love how everyone has attached themselves to the word “progressive” now days. Its less controversial than saying liberal, coating it with pink pepto so it’s easy to swallow. We wouldn’t want to upset anyone now would we?

The plenary speaker talked about getting more with less, and giving more to those who have less, but it didn’t seem to translate to the audience. I spent a collective 25 minutes trying to answer this dude’s questions about inclusive organizing. He avoided every answer that didn’t sound like a quick solution. When referring to people of color and the trans/genderqueer population he asked “But, how do we get those people to support us?” He continued on to say, “You think we can just get one of each?”

I’m still amazed I didn’t have an aneurism.

Now, I realize I’m being a little harsh. I’m not against all establishmentary activism. I’m down with collaboration to reach a goal. I’m not down with tooling around like a sell-out showman, claiming to make a change in the world when I won’t even make change in myself.

cross-posted on AmplifyYourVoice.org