Robin Reardon's Blog: Robin Reardon: Speaking of writing..., page 4

Throwing Shade on the Women's Marches?

Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, likes to teach dog owners that preventing their dogs from focusing on trouble (a letter carrier, another dog, a trash truck) is to give her a sudden, physical distraction as soon as that focus seems likely. This might be a gentle push on her backside, or it might be a sharp tug-and-release on her leash.

After reading the January 24 New York Times article by Jenna Wortham, I think what I got was a less-than-gentle push on my backside. For sure, the tone of this article distracted me from the enthusiasm I have felt since leaving the Boston Women’s March.

I can’t quite tell whether throwing shade on the worldwide women’s marches (and those in the U.S. in particular) was the article’s intent. What I choose to believe is that Wortham wanted to capitalize on the attention being given to these marches in order to highlight the need she sees to focus on race issues. But in the process, for me anyway, the article had the effect of slamming the brakes on the momentum of the January 21 events. And I see this as a mistake.

The Shady Bits

The first point that set me back on my heels was a comment about how few people of color Wortham noticed in the various march slide shows, even though she noted how many speakers of color there were, and how many signs indicated solidarity with racial issues. Was the point that black people weren’t welcome? Was it that they didn’t feel invited? Was it that they didn’t feel like showing up? I don’t know what the point was. But stating it set me up for a blow.

Next, Wortham had a problem with “an enormous photograph of Mahatma Gandhi.” She acknowledged that he was “an icon of nonviolence [sic] resistance” but went on to say that he “referred to African leaders…as savages and kaffirs.” Okay, that’s not good, but every one of us is a product of our time and culture, including him. It seems unlikely that those sign-bearers were even aware of this racist attitude and even less likely that they intended to communicate it. So why call it out? More shade.

Several statements in the article questioned the commitment of the marchers to any cause other than the rights of white women:

Reference to a sign carried by actor Amir Talai that read, “I’ll See You Nice White Ladies at the Next #BlackLives Matter March, Right?”The problem with the notion that “women’s rights were suddenly the most important cause in our nation”The problem with the notion that “there haven’t been protests and activist movements worth attending until the election of Donald Trump”

It’s not clear to me whether Wortham was voicing agreement with these points. So… why write about them?

It's About ALL Civil Rights

It’s true that the black civil rights movement is far from over. As Wortham points out, “black women were increasingly marginalized in the fight for the right to vote,” and these was a “lack of policing at the women’s march, a luxury never granted a Black Lives Matters [sic] demonstrations.” Also, “53 percent of all white women [voters]…voted for Trump, while 94 percent of black women voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton,” and “While black women show up for white women to advance causes that benefit entire movements, the reciprocity is rarely shown.”

I agree that there is far too little reciprocity from one issue’s activism to another's. But I can’t help wondering how many rallies, protests, or marches Wortham has attended in support of specific issues such as LGBTQ rights, Latino rights, immigrant rights…there are a lot of worthwhile issues to support. In fact, it seems she showed up at the Manhattan Women’s March for only about an hour—not an accusation, just a fact.

The truth is that I am biased. You are biased. Jenna Wortham is biased. Every one of us is biased, and until we admit that we can’t begin to understand each other and move forward. We can’t let our differences slow us down.

Each of us has only so much bandwidth, only so much time and effort to put into the issues that need attention. Even Gloria Steinem, who is a career activist, told Bill Maher, “I got mad on the basis of what was happening to me [my emphasis].”

Keeping women of all colors subjugated has been a worldwide issue as long as any other issue in humanity, and maybe longer than any other. And too many women have bought into the expectations society places on us:

Sit down.Shut up.Your opinion isn’t important, isn’t valid, isn’t valued.Don’t argue.You can’t lead; you’re not good at it.If you complain, you’ll get hurt.If you get hurt, it’s your fault; you were probably asking for it.Question Your Own Assumptions

Wortham closes her article with a disturbing anecdote about a restaurant scene in D.C. after the march, in which a truly nasty woman (not in a good way) shouted epithets at a table of people who were speaking in Arabic. The witness to this scene denigrates a nearby table of pussy-hatted “white women” who saw, but did nothing about, this treatment. It’s possible that they didn’t feel personally involved enough to intervene, as Wortham suggests, and that their ire and their indignation was only for themselves. But isn’t it also possible that those statements in the bullet list above were echoing around their brains? Isn’t it also possible that their silence had nothing to do with the color of their skin and more to do with the fear imbued in them by a society that tells women they will be hurt if they speak up?

Move Together As One

We need to capitalize on the energy flowing from the events of January 21, not pick it apart by blaming it for not emphasizing other issues enough. Because those marches weren’t just for women. They weren’t just for white people. They weren’t just for Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, or immigrants, or LGBTQ, or Latinos, or people of color. They weren’t even just anti-Trump.

They were for human rights. For everyone.

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This is war.

Recently I received a request from GLAAD: "Tell us your story." 

The impetus was this disaster of a presidency it looks like we're in for. They wanted stories for their Trump Accountability Project.

At first I thought, "As a straight, cisgender person, I'm not their target audience." But then I remembered that the more advocates who speak out for LGBTQ, the more there are going to be. Also, I've been in that army for years, so I actually do have a story. And I do have a motive: fighting Trump/Pence and everything they represent.

Here's what I told GLAAD.

For over a decade, I've written novels about gay teens. I'm a cisgender, straight advocate, and I write these stories because I hate injustice, I hate fear-driven paranoia, and I'm distressed at the vulnerability of LGBTQ teens.

When I began writing, I was certain that I would not see marriage equality in my lifetime. I knew very little of the hell that trans individuals go through. I knew nothing at all about what intersex means.

And since I began writing, I have celebrated win after win after win for LGBTQ people.

I have blogged and written books and essays and letters and made phone calls and donated money to help move LGBTQ civil rights forward even faster than I had ever thought they could.

I blogged and yelled and wrote some more and then rejoiced at the ultimate fate of Mike Pence's horrendous, homophobic, hateful Indiana RFRA.

I cheered at the demise of Exodus International and wept with joy at the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

I got to work on my next novel, which includes not only a gay main character, but also his intersex love interest.

Then came Trump.

No, I thought; no way can this clown be taken seriously by anyone for anything, let alone the U.S. presidency.

I was as wrong about Trump as I had been about marriage equality. And now I see there is an all-too-real chance that the rights and acceptance gained in the past decade could be eroded or worse.

I thought I was fighting for LGBTQ civil rights before. Wrong again.

Because this is war.

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Electoral College Needs an Appendectomy

Hillary Clinton: Most Votes

Donald Trump: LOSER

Every day since the November 8, 2016 election, we’ve seen the number of citizens who cast their presidential vote for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump increase.

According to the Huffington Post:

Clinton’s popular lead, 1.7% greater than Trump’s, is greater than Nixon’s 1968 lead over Humphrey and greater than Kennedy’s 1960 lead over Nixon (per New York Times columnist David Leonhardt as of Friday).Clinton’s popular lead also exceeds Gore’s over GW Bush in 2000 (another Republican win in which the voice of the people was out-shouted by the electoral college).

As of Saturday, Clinton’s lead over Trump was nearly 2 million citizens’ votes strong, and still counting.

This is the fourth time in history that our citizens lost and the electoral college—well, didn’t win, exactly. The winner was the candidate most citizens did NOT vote for.

So what the [expletive deleted] is going on?

Once upon a time—that is, in the 1700s—the founders of the U.S. Constitution were afraid of democracy. In “The Federalist Papers,” which attempts to clarify the thinking behind the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “…the office of the President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” [If we adhered to this intent, last Tuesday’s results would be nullified on this point alone.]

The founders were not convinced that the citizenry would be able to ensure that an unqualified “man” would be prevented from becoming president. Hence, the electoral college, which was expected to take the will of the citizenry into account but not necessarily agree with it. [See factcheck.org.]

At first blush, the current fiasco appears to be the fault of the electoral college. In fact, it’s the fault not of the college itself but of the way individual states have decided the college should work. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska), whichever candidate wins the most votes by even the tiniest fraction gets all the electoral votes of the entire state, rather than casting electoral votes in a way that’s representative of the citizen voters. This is not democracy.

The electoral college is an echo of the days when individual states could ban women from voting. It originates from the same thought process in which black individuals counted as only three-fifths of a person.

The electoral college is the appendix of the United States: something we don’t need, and something that flares up from time to time and can jeopardize life itself.

Either we remove the diseased electoral college, or we reform the way states apply its principles and restore it to its original intention: ensuring that no one anything like Donald Trump moves into the White House.

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Paradise Lost

The Paradise this title refers to is not biblical. And it was not lost through anyone's sin.

That said, consider what the biblical Paradise meant to Adam and Eve. They wanted for nothing; they struggled not at all; they had all that they could want or need; they were not persecuted by anyone. To them, Paradise was just same old, same old. They didn't know anything else existed. They didn’t know there was a hell just outside their bubble.

On earth, in this imperfect world, the closest we come to paradise is the reduction of things we don't want and a struggle for what will make us feel safe and happy.

For far too long, life for heterosexual, cisgender, white men has been much closer to earthly paradise than for anyone not in this privileged group.

Already I can hear protests from many of these men. They insist they are not privileged. They insist they work hard to get where they are. They refuse to see that they treat anyone not in their group differently from how they treat each other.

There are others living in a world of privilege; it's not just men. In the United States of America, some of the privilege extends to heterosexual, cisgender, white women. I know because I am one of them.

In the past 20 years or so, those of us in the Privilege bubble have seen more and more threats to the integrity of our bubble, first in one place and then another, first a tiny pierce and then a puncture. These threats came from entitled women, from the blacks and the Latinos and the Native Americans and the lesbians and gays and (horror) the people who insist they are trans.

As these invading groups began to get traction, they began to insist that we not use disrespectful terms to refer to them. With voices dripping sarcasm, we called that "political correctness.”

The invaders began to push their way into some of our previously exclusive areas. Then came the scariest thing of all: They began to demand equality.

Those of us who had been living in the Privilege bubble didn't know—or wouldn't admit—that it was a bubble. After all, to us it had always just same old, same old. To us, it was "our America."

But, as Joni Mitchell sang, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." So it wasn't until we began to see serious punctures in our bubble that we started to scream, "PERSECUTION!"

The invaders insisted it was a demand for equality. So why did it seem like persecution to us?

It was persecution because once people who were "other" began appearing in areas where we’d never had to deal with them before, we realized that "our America" was changing. It was changing to something that included people we didn't understand, people with other viewpoints, other lifestyles, other assumptions about life. It was changing into a world where we had to consider that we are not the center of the universe.

To the privileged, equality for others feels like persecution.

And in our fear and panic, we elected as our leader a sociopath who is more like us than "they" are. Hail, The Donald.

If we think it was the “other” who threatened paradise on earth, we’re in for a very nasty surprise.

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Dear Governor McCrory...

Dear Governor McCrory:

I know you're suffering. And I have some information that I hope will help you and your family out of your current troubles.

As an advocate for personal truth, and in particular an advocate for the rights of LGBTQ citizens, I have read with interest a number of articles about you. In them, you describe the difficulties you and your wife have had to face as a result of North Carolina's HB2, the law you signed that requires people to use public facilities according to the gender on their birth certificates and limits the civil rights of LGBTQ people in general.

In these articles, you express a good deal of distress. Two of your comments in particular, from the October 11 Charlotte Observer, caught my eye:

You said the reaction has become personal.You said, “I’ve had at least five [good friends] this week tell me… ‘Pat, I love ya. I love ya man, we’ll be friends for life. We just can’t support you.’”

I can’t help wondering whether it has struck you that your complaints are exactly what we hear from LBGTQ individuals when they try to live life according to their deep, innermost understanding of themselves, and then must come to a full stop because people like you are standing in their way.

Let’s examine these statements one at a time.

This has gotten personal.

Indeed. It’s very personal. For LGBTQ people, it’s as personal as knowing in your heart of hearts that there’s something about you that confuses other people to the point that they persecute you. Personally.

In the case of a gay man, for example, when he says he knows he’s gay, he’s not making it up. The National Academy of Science backs him on this; he is physiologically incapable of having a natural, biological, sexual attraction to a woman. He can act without this natural urge, just as you could have sex with a man. But in both cases, it would be completely unnatural.

Just as you wouldn’t believe someone who tells you that you’re really female, a transwoman doesn’t believe you when you tell her she’s a man. Why would she say that to you, you ask? You might as well ask why you would say that to her.

She knows who she is better than anyone else—even you. In fact, whatever her body looks like to you, her brain structure more closely resembles that of a woman than a man.

You seem surprised that the push-back to your support of HB2 has become “personal.” How do you think it feels for people who are told they must use the facilities that make you comfortable and not the ones their very nature tells them to use? Things can't get much more personal than having someone else control your bathroom use.

In the October 12 article from LGBTQ Nation, you said, “I don’t agree with the concept of redefining gender.” Trans individuals are not redefining gender. They’re coming to grips with their own gender. They’re summoning a kind of courage you and I could not even conceive of needing, and they’re presenting themselves to the world as they know they truly are.

Oh, yes, this is personal. Very personal. It was personal for them long before it was personal for you.

We love you; we just can’t support you.

For what must feel like an eternity, LGBTQ people have been told, “I love you. I just hate your orientation.” In religious terms: "Love the sinner; hate the sin." You might have said something like this yourself, because you have said, “I want to hug [people who are transgender] and say I love ’em.”

Perhaps you love them, but you won’t believe them when they tell you the deepest truth about themselves. You love them, but rather than support them, you sign laws into effect that beat them back through that dangerous, dark, terrifying tunnel they fought their way through in the process of being honest with you about themselves.

You love them, but you want them to suffer.

Maybe now you know how they feel.

I have no doubt that you’re a very bright man. And now that you understand more than you did before about sexual orientation and gender identity, maybe you’re also ready to see that a man who wants to attack women is not going to go to all the trouble to dress and act female; he’ll just attack women wherever it’s convenient for him. So if he goes into a women’s bathroom, he hasn’t made himself appear feminine, and there will be no mistaking him for a woman.

In that October 12 LGBTQ Nation article, you said, “I’m the farthest thing from a bigot.” But what is a bigot?

Bigotry is the reserving of a special right or privilege for a particular group of people, at the whim of that group, to the exclusion of anyone not in that group. In signing HB2 into law, you reserved the use of public facilities for people who don’t make you uncomfortable, for people you understand, for people like you. You excluded everyone else, along gender lines that you think you understand. If you’ve read this far, then you should know that you have not understood gender lines at all.

You claim to be a good governor, and evidently a lot people agree with you. This tells me you are probably a good man. But you are a good man who has done a bad thing. And now you’re surprised at how personal it’s become. You’re surprised when people who love you say they can’t support you.

I’m sorry that you and your wife have received death threats, and yet that’s just one more thing you have in common with the people you have ruled against.

If you’re a good man, please. Prove it.

A short video featuring some of the brightest and most inspiring advocates, activists and faces from the trans community.

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Black and White

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It’s the end of a week full of horrible events.

The shooting death of African American Alton Sterling by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana… The shooting death of African American Philando Castile by police officers in Falcon Heights, Minnesota… The shooting deaths of five white police officers by a single African American in Dallas, Texas, apparently as retribution for the week’s two previous events and for so many other shootings of African American men by police….

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Sometimes it feels as though the history of the U.S. reads like an advertisement for different ways to separate ourselves from people who are different from us. I’m not talking about people who are wicked, or dangerous, or evil, or truly frightening. Just different.

It seems evident that there really are people in the world whose actions play out as evil in the eyes of those affected by those actions. And yet, I think it’s reasonable to say that on the whole, the intent of the perpetrator is seldom along the lines of, “I think I’ll do this thing because it’s evil.” 

I also think it’s likely that many acts perceived as evil are, in fact, mistakes made without the intent of hurting anyone.

The challenge before us is to identify which “evil” acts are genuinely evil and which are either mistakes or are acts with unintended consequences. And our responses should be in keeping with reality rather than perception.

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“An it harm none, do as ye will.” This short sentence summarizes the Pagan/Wiccan rede, or credo. I see it as an order of magnitude more profound than the Christian “golden rule,” which says “Do unto others as you would have them to unto you.” The golden rule puts the speaker at the center, and it makes the speaker’s perception the priority. The Pagan rede reverses this priority.

“An it harm none…” This phrase precedes action. It asks the question, “Is there any harm likely to befall someone if I do what I’m thinking of doing?” And how would we know the answer? Only by seeing things, as thoroughly and as thoughtfully as possible, from a perspective different from our own.

There’s that word again: Different. If we apply it in ways that keep us apart, this word means Other. Not me. Not like us. Foreign. Alien. Scary. Frightening. Terrifying.

How often do we strike out from a place of fear and tell ourselves the reason is something else?

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... from a poem about killing a harmless spider: "I don't think I'm allowed to kill something because I am frightened."

What we have, in the shootings of this week and so many others like them, are in essence reactions of fear. Good versus evil. Us against them. Familiar versus foreign. Understanding versus ignorance.

The lack of understanding that engenders fear is not all on one side or the other. While it seems that Philandro Castile was a law-abiding, peace-loving individual, the naked fear in the voice of the officer who shot him is palpable. Maybe he was afraid because Castile was black and for no other reason. But that seems too simple.

One perspective. Just one. A powerful one.

Maybe the officer had just nearly died from an attack by a black man who was nothing like Castile. Maybe most of the officer’s encounters with black men were nothing like the encounter with Castile would have been if the officer had not already been terrified. I am not exonerating the officer; however, most of us will never know what it would be like to go to work every day in the knowledge that today, doing our job could get us killed. I am not exonerating the officer (yes, that’s a repeat); but as civilians, we expect police officers to put themselves in harm's way on our behalf every day.

Life is not black and white. It is not good and evil. It is never all one-sided. It is shades of gray... and shades of blue and yellow and green and purple and orange. It is nuance and compromise, not absolutism and rock-hard stubbornness. Or, it should be. "An it harm none, do as ye will." Here in this country, we have become profoundly bad at that. This is what must change.

Disciple: How are we to treat others?

Ramana Maharshi: There are no others.

Orlando: Phoenix Rising

From the ashes of destruction, so the legend goes, rises the Phoenix, renewed and reborn.

The horrible, burning agony—physical and emotional—of the tragedy in Orlando will give rise to a glorious spirit. We can see it appearing already.

Since the Stonewall riots of 1969, the spirit within LGBTQ people has been glowing brighter and stronger every year. The last few years have been the most remarkable yet, because the spirit has been spreading to people who are becoming advocates.

More Advocates Every Day

[Long lines of people donating blood (no gay men if they've had sex w/in 12 months)]

These advocates are not LGBTQ themselves, but are people who will pass and support laws protecting the rights of all citizens; people who will stand on a stage and speak or sing in praise of the LGBTQ spirit and the people possessing it; people who write stories about the lives of LGBTQ individuals; and people who will stand in line for hours, in the rain, to give blood that’s badly needed after the massacre, blood that gay men are not allowed to contribute.

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[Think "Stonewall." Think "gay=illegal." Now, think "police." See the change?]

 

Advocates Are Everywhere

All over the world—from New York to Los Angeles to London to Tel Aviv to Paris to Sydney to Brisbane to Wellington and back to Nashville and Boston, we see massive crowds—we hear song and encouragement, we see structures lit in the glory of rainbow colors.

World leaders from Belgium to Norway to Mexico and even Afghanistan have expressed encouragement,  support—and solidarity. The Council on American-Muslim Relations has condemned the shooting and repudiate violence against the LGBTQ community.

Ten years ago I would have said there would not be marriage equality in the U.S. during my lifetime. Last month I would not have expected the kind of response we see to the tragedy in Orlando, either in the U.S. or from around the globe. Last week I would not have believed that Disney, that bastion of “family values,” would take a stand for the LGBTQ community—but they have.

And then there's the wall of love made up of people who placed themselves physically between the funerals and memorial ceremonies of the Orlando victims so that the miserable Westboro Baptist Church couldn't get near them with their messages of hatred.

There is still a lot of work to do in the area of rights and acceptance, as evident when we see public "leaders" offering prayers and nothing else while lining their pockets with money from the National Rifle Association and preventing any research into gun usage and death. And we've heard from way, way too many nutjobs saying "the gays deserved what they got."

The more progress we make, the bigger the pushback from homophobic bigots will get. But we also see that as of Friday, June 17, a GoFundMe project to collect money that will go directly to the victims’ families and survivors of the Orlando massacre has broken all records on the website and as of this writing has received over $5 million, and it's climbing.

From the ashes of the Orlando shooting, we can see the first signs of the glorious Phoenix. It will not be the first time that bird has risen from the ashes of LGBTQ persecution, but it will be the first time the rebirth encompasses millions of advocates who see—finally—that we are all one people. It’s the first time the LGBTQ community will not be so very alone in its struggle for acceptance. It’s the first time that beautiful, multi-colored emblem—the rainbow—has been displayed so widely, so proudly, and so openly.

So as we grieve for the loss of life and support the survivors and families, through our tears let’s be sure we don’t miss the Phoenix rising.

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The chemistry of hatred

Click image to animate; used with permission (Dunken K Bliths)

It’s a simple chemical reaction: Apply fear to ignorance and you get hatred. We’re seeing far, far too much of it lately.

Here in Massachusetts, the state legislature has been debating whether to pass a bill granting citizens the right to enter public bathrooms according to their true gender. I recently heard one misguided legislator insist that if the bill passed, women and girls would no longer be protected against assault.

I understand what this guy and many other people who’ve said similar things are afraid of. What I think we need to get at is why they’re afraid.

First things first: People tend to fear what they don’t understand. And most people don’t understand even the most basic things about what transgender means. Like idiot Mike Huckabee, they think that some horny male teen might say, “Gee, I feel like a girl today,” and he’d be granted access to the girls’ locker room. They think trans individuals are just deciding to say they’re not who they appear to others to be, and they think this can be done on a whim. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trans individuals go through several corners of hell before—IF—they manage to get their lives going along on a relatively even keel. They don’t wake up one day and say, “Wow. Think I’ll make an arbitrary decision today that will alienate family, friends, current and prospective employers, and my dear friend NC Lt. Governor Dan Forest.

Lt. Governor Forest says North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is based on facts. But he doesn’t say what those facts are. So how about if we provide him with some?

The suicide rate among the trans population is over 40%. There’s nothing whimsical about that.According to Planet Transgender, world-wide a trans person—almost always a trans woman–is murdered every day. Again, no whimsy.Trans individuals are not assaulting anyone in restrooms; they're the ones being assaulted.Men who want to attack women will not go to the trouble of pretending anything; they’ll just attack.Joshua Kennon sums up perhaps the most salient fact this way: “It is possible that your body, your brain, and your reproductive system could all be different biological sexes, or in some cases, biologically one sex but physiologically wired as another sex.” In other words, if I look like a man but know I’m a woman, my brain structure is female—AND SO AM I. (See below for a partial list of websites with documentation/studies supporting this fact.)

Mike Huckabee, NC Lt. Governor Dan Forest, NC Governor Pat McRory, Ted Cruz, and countless other individuals might insist that they are not filled with hatred for trans individuals. But this position merely places them on the wrong side of another pestiferous fact: People tend to fear what they don’t understand. And when you add the heat of fear to ignorance, hatred is the result.

FEAR

The ignorant have admitted that they’re afraid. The cisgender women on the wrong side of this issue say they’re afraid to go into public bathrooms. The cisgender men transfer their own fear of "the other" onto their wives and daughters and say “their females" are in danger. Moreover, all these people are doing their best to engender fear in everyone else, with stunts like the ill-named American Family Association’s recent project in which they send men into women’s restrooms with the deliberate goal of terrifying women and girls. And they’re proud of it. But other than the AFA, what is there to fear? It's this: ignorance.

IGNORANCE

We know these fearful people are ignorant, because otherwise they wouldn’t be afraid. If they spent a fraction of the time trying to understand transgender issues as they do “protecting” themselves from trans individuals, they would have learned—just as easily as I have—this FACT: A TRANS WOMAN IS A WOMAN. She is not a man who pretends to be a woman, and she is not a man who thinks he’s a woman. And she’s just a person. No need to fear her.

To quote Dickens' Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come about the two desperate, frightened children under the hem of his robe: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it. Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end."

HATRED

Hatred is the hallmark of one organization in particular that has accepted the baton of persecuting trans individuals: the KKK. And they’re exploiting fear and ignorance to recruit others into their ranks. Fearful, ignorant people are desperate to isolate, ostracize, condemn, and otherwise persecute trans individuals. They’re fighting to codify this isolation by passing laws such as North Carolina’s HB2. Whether or not they feel the hatred they’re generating, there is no doubt that the objects of their hatred feel it.

Please. Don’t let this evil chemistry spread any further. Take a lesson from Charles Dickens and call out the ignorance; it will calm the fear. And there will be less hatred, making the world a better place for all.

 

 

Additional sources of actual facts about transgender and brain structure

The Transgender Brain
Is There Something Unique About the Transgender Brain?
Transsexual Differences Caught on Brain Scan
Caught Between Male and Female

… And if that’s not enough facts for you, see the graphic at the top of this post.

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Robin Reardon: Reading Aloud

When I have a chance to do a reading or a book signing event, I love connecting with readers. And after the events, they often ask me whether I’ve made recordings of the excerpts I read to them.

Well, now I have. There’s a new page on my website dedicated to excerpts I’ve recorded from my books. So far there are recordings from four books. If this feature is popular, I’d love to do more. This page is accessible from the Items of Interest, which you’ll see if you scroll down on my home page.

So… give it a try? And do let me know what you think, good or bad. Thanks!

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FEAR NOT: Trans people are... just people

 

 

Among the firestorm of articles about "bathroom bills" and "protecting our children," there are some sobering statistics that have come to light. According to the recently-formed Trans United Fund:

One in four trans individuals have been physically assaultedSo far this year (May 2016), nine trans individuals in the U.S. have been murdered41% of trans individuals have attempted suicideMore than 50 pieces of panicked legislation targeting trans individuals have been introduced across 20 states

Some of the panic is coming from bigots who will do whatever they can to demonize anyone they perceive as different from them. One especially noteworthy case is seen in a recent project of the AFA (American Family Association) in which they send men into women's restrooms with the goal of instigating terror and castigating individuals who have a brain structure opposite from what they look like (that is, trans individuals)—as if trans lives weren't already complicated enough.

Some of the panic is coming from people who think that cisgender men will dress up as women—that is, pretending to be transwomen—to gain access to women in vulnerable places such as restrooms and gyms. The problem is that these fearful people haven't thought deeply enough about what it would mean for a man who hates women to make himself appear to be one of them, let alone to do everything it would take just to get to one of these locations without being discovered as a fraud.

There are a number of things both of these fearful groups need to consider:

Trans individuals have been using the bathrooms of their choice for many years, and there has not been even one incident of them attacking anyoneThe men who have attacked women in restrooms have not done anything to conceal their sexualityThe people attacked most often in restrooms are trans individuals

There is a distressing incompetence shared by far too many people: the inability to feel compassion for someone who is different from them unless that difference has direct personal meaning. This plays out in ways such as politicians who become more lenient about drug policies when their child becomes addicted. We see lawmakers become more understanding about LGBT issues after a relative comes out of the closet. We need to consider how we treat even people we don't know personally—an especially important task for those of us who claim to belong to a compassionate, loving, and forgiving religion (that means you, AFA).

One problem trans people have is that they have been among the cisgender population without revealing themselves to any remarkable degree until very recently. As noted above, transwomen have been using women's bathrooms FOR YEARS. And they've been invisible.

They are invisible no longer.

In fact, a new practice in India should put to shame any U.S. lawmaker who proposes or supports the hateful legislation we're seeing. In places like Mumbai, the transwomen have become visible to a deliberate and extreme degree: They are wearing dayglow jackets.

Rather than hiding in the shadows and hoping no one will notice them, some transwomen have been joining the Indian police forces, assisting with traffic management and even chasing down criminals. Not only does this help them find jobs, but also it puts them into a position of authority. According to a BBC News article, "They are suddenly viewed in a position of authority by members of the public who had previously looked down upon them and mocked them. "

If you're someone who's afraid you won't know when a trans individual is in the same bathroom as you, then you shouldn't watch these two videos. But if you'd like to understand transgender better than you do, if you're willing to consider treating others with compassion, then please. Watch the videos. You'll see that trans people are just... people.

Moms are calling on all who dare to use the transgender community for dishonest and divisive politics: Meet my child. Politicians in 20 states have attempted to advance over 50 pieces of legislation attacking transgender people. These policies are a real danger to transgender people and hurt the most vulnerable, including America's transgender children.
A short motivational video featuring some of the brightest and most inspiring advocates, activists and faces from the trans community.

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