Everett Maroon's Blog, page 2

Orlando United Vigil in Walla Walla, June 15, 2016

This is the transcript of my piece said during the vigil.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry that 47 years since the Stonewall Inn riots, 43 years since being gay was no longer listed as a mental disorder, and 13 years since the Supreme Court decriminalized being gay, that this tragedy at The Pulse nightclub in Orlando has occurred. I’m sorry that in the many years since Brandon Teena’s murder and Matthew Shepard’s murder and since Tyra Hunter was refused life-saving medical care, we are here tonight, mourning the loss of so many good people. I’m sorry because I thought that after the AIDS crisis where tens of thousands of gay men passed away while our leaders made inappropriate jokes, that we were moving through the worst of this hatred for us. I thought that the quiet anti-discrimination legislation enacted by more than twenty states, and that seeing marriage equality become the law of the land meant we were entering an era of acceptance. I thought my generation would be the last to face disparate levels of depression, suicide, unemployment, and harassment.

I was wrong. I am sorry.

I stand here tonight shocked—again—at how easy it seems to take away dozens of lives in the manner of a few minutes to a few hours. I stand here, wondering which of the hateful things I’ve heard over the past two decades may have lead to this moment. Was it the refusal by extremists to sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples? Was it the preacher who interprets scripture to mean that killing LGBT people is a holy mission? Was it the lawyer who argues that discriminating against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people is simply an act of religious freedom? Was it the national organization that insists transgender people in bathrooms are a danger to the public and to our children? Was it the candidate who called immigrants rapists and refugees a threat to national security?

I am angry and inconsolable that people who expected they could be themselves in the confine of a nightclub, traditionally a space where LGBT people could find temporary sanctuary, died there. And yet we see triumph even in that hell—the mother who, dancing with her gay son, saved his life with a final gift by blocking bullets with her body. The Indian American former marine who helped 70 people survive by breaking open an exit door. The young Latino man who used a bandana to staunch a neck wound of his friend. Stories will continue to emerge about our strength in the midst of tremendous pain, and this is how I understand our collective journey.

All of us are stronger than hate. All of us are more resilient than a lobbying organization. We reject the false narrative of abomination and perversion and we embrace our pride, our community, and our shared journey.

We are determined. We insist on ending garbage pronouncements about what LGBT lives mean for our society or our morality. We are determined to make this world better for our youth. To our youngest LGBT members: your elders and your allies sincerely care about you. We see you and we know there is a lot of chaos and pain that comes your way. We are here for you, just as we are here to honor the people we have lost. We will find our way together, in solidarity. Peace to you all.

Vote NO on Initiative 1515!

Movement Study: Allies, Backlash, Meaning

In just the last two months we’ve gone from the hurried lawmaking that pushed through North Carolina’s HB2 that halted Charlotte’s city ordinance against discrimination of transgender people, to a moving speech by the Attorney General suing the Governor over the law. But just to recap, here is a quick overview of the moments between those points:

Wednesday, March 23: HB2 is introduced in the chamber, debated for approximately 90 minutes, voted on and passed, and that evening, signed into law by Gov. McCrory. [Eleven Democratic representatives voted for its passage; all of the Democratic senators walked out of the chamber refusing to vote at all, so it passed the senate chamber 32-0.]
Friday, March 25: The NBA releases a statement saying it may move future playoff games from the state if HB2 is not reversed or voided.
Monday, March 28: The ACLU of North Carolina, Lambda Legal, and Equality NC file a lawsuit on behalf of three transgender and queer people who are employed by the state government, against HB2. The Governor goes on local news outlets to support the new law.
Thursday, March 31: The list of businesses and organizations coming out against HB2 grows to more than 300.
Wednesday, May 4: The Department of Justice sends a letter to Gov. McCrory telling him not to enforce HB2 or face further action from the federal government. The letter gives North Carolina until Monday, May 9, to show it will not enforce the law.
Monday, May 9: The Governor’s office sues the DOJ, in North Carolina’s eastern district of Federal Court, insisting that its interpretation of “sex” (e.g., sex assigned at birth) is correct, and not the federal government’s interpretation (gender/sex identity and expression)
Monday, May 9, about six hours later: Attorney General Loretta Lynch and head of the Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta announced that they had filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Governor Pat McCrory, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina.

Much of Ms. Lynch’s remarks spelled out not just the legal foundation of the government’s case, but also the Obama Administration’s stance on ensuring civil rights for all transgender Americans, a series of sentences that had never been so clearly expressed in the history of any country towards the transgender community:

Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself.  Some of you have lived freely for decades.  Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead.  But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that  we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.  Please know that history is on your side.  This country was founded on a promise of equal rights for all, and we have always managed to move closer to that promise, little by little, one day at a time.  It may not be easy – but we’ll get there together.

There is much to unpack in this part of her statement, not the least of which is whether the rule of law is adequate to support an emancipatory or even radical politic for transgender people. I wouldn’t ever expect a federal institution to call for radical change, because that would be like expecting a snake to eat itself. What this statement does do, however, is make direct reference to earlier civil rights struggles, a tumultuous legal and social history that depending on one’s textbook, might not be covered in primary or secondary school. It’s a government looking at itself and its role in supporting all Americans, and in a polarized, political environment like we have right now, in which the Republican Senate leader can somehow decide to not do his constitutional duty to confirm a Supreme Court justice, in which all it takes is one senator to decide Flint residents shouldn’t get the federal emergency funding they need to remedy their catastrophic municipal water problem, and in which more than twenty states have come out with legislation that basically calls transgender women sexual predators despite all evidence to the contrary, such a statement is incredibly important. If we can agree that a law like HB2 puts trans people who are on the edge at risk of suicide and harassment, then what do we make of a statement, bald and assertively pronounced, that the government is standing behind those vulnerable people?

I make of it that it is life-saving. I really do. I have known—I have been—people who needed a sign that they weren’t an incarnation of wrecked evil or humanity. That they, we, have a purpose. That being trans isn’t a horrible disease. That it can in fact, be wonderful, or mundane, or present us with fascinating opportunities, or help us become better people because we are more us.

It is a commonly held belief within the broad LGBT contingent that these anti-trans bills are an intentional backlash and attempt by the far right that is still licking its wounds over losing the same-sex marriage fight. It’s easy to call this fight intentional, as it is clearly financed by the same organizations that fueled the push against marriage equality. And while the reactionary push against trans civil rights is well funded (even if it turns out to ultimately be futile), several LGBT equality groups shut their doors after the SCOTUS ruling. This has left much of the support for trans rights to transgender groups and to non-LGBT allies who work on civil rights. But what work they’re doing—with today’s two events shoring up even more support for the trans community.

This morning, the Obama Administration made two announcements: first, the President sent a letter to every public school district in the country (wrap your mind around THAT mailing) that they must let transgender students use the rest room and locker room that comports with their gender identity, or face a revocation of federal education funding.

BOOM.

There are more than 14,000 school districts in the United States today.

The scale of that statement boggles my mind. But then later this morning, another declaration came out. The Administration directed health insurers across the country that they could no longer reject coverage for people simply because they are transgender.

CRASH.

Conservatives are ranting across hyperspace, in social media and on right-wing media outlets, but they do not have the force of law behind them. This ally work from the highest office in the land means something very important even if it is not revolutionary. It is still affirming, validating, critical, systemic, and a clear kick in the pants to the wave of legalized harassment that we’ve seen in the way of “religious freedom” and “bathroom bills.” It means something huge that the trans civil rights movement has had these broad statements made three times in three days, in a time when the top court in the federal system is missing a deliberator.

I cheer these moves from the President and his staff. And I turn to our allies within the LGBT coalition and say, what will you do now to help the trans community?

 

 

Missing the Point

One of the more atrocious things the Walla Walla City Council did, after the brouhaha with the toy store’s mural faded away, was to pump in classical music at Heritage Square, a little strip of grass between storefronts on the downtown Main Street shopping district. At one point there was a playground structure, some limestone boulders to climb on, and a shelter like you would fine in a regional park; now only the shelter remains. As the city’s heroin epidemic grew, so did the numbers of drug dependent people in Heritage Square, hanging out on the toddler slides, or perched up against the wall of a building grotesquely painted to look like a Wild West-era trading post. We were perhaps not ready for the “two Wallas” to intersect right in the heart of the tourism office’s territory. Legal alcohol consumption as part of local wine industry, everyone can get behind. Illicit heroin use, on the other hand, is not to occur in the open. To drive away injection users, the city began streaming classical music to Heritage Square, as if the melodies of Mozart and Brahms were naturally antagonistic, like slipping on high frequency bracelets to keep mosquitos at bay. In its essence, the move was problematic.

Next came a fight between a group of citizens who wanted to set up a half-circle of tiny homes for homeless people to use, and the city and county governments who thought this plan would interfere with the work they’d been doing to create a comprehensive response to homelessness here. There have been many town hall-style meetings, angry online debates, motions and amendments to motions, and it so far has amounted to neither the construction of tiny homes nor the effective roll out of broad policy (although I keep hearing the latter is just about to happen). When I moved to town with Susanne in August 2008, mental health was handled somewhere between a few charity organizations, the county-run service for people in poverty, and the willingness of Main Street business owners to find their common interest—one gentleman really enjoyed taking cardboard to the Whitman College recycling center, so he would collect it all morning along the downtown strip before walking with his wagon to the campus.

Those verbal agreements and informal relationships have faded, giving way to evidence-based analysis and polarizing approaches to a worsening issue. We are too rural for many large grants or cooperative agreements to take interest in us, yet we are not rural enough to qualify for many federal programs. Whatever our political leanings, it is becoming clear that we only have ourselves to sort through the vulnerabilities of our local economy.

I keep wondering when we will focus on community connectedness and move past antagonizing people who oppose our ideas.

 

The End of a Publishing Project

Dear Friends and Readers—

My publisher, Booktrope, is folding as of May 31, 2016, and my books will be (hopefully temporarily) out of print. I do have two works in progress: a follow up to my memoir with the working title of Bumbling into Baby, and the second in the Time Guardians trilogy, Intermediate Time Travel. The latter is further along than the former. I’ll be speaking with some colleagues in the publishing industry about my options for these two new titles and when I have an approach for them I will let everyone know.

I have no ill will toward Booktrope and I have to say I am honored to have worked with some very fine people, especially the senior team at the hybrid publisher, my editors Jennifer Munro and Danika Dinsmore, who are incredibly talented writers in their own right. (Right? Or rights? See, I need good editors.) Thanks also to Christy Price for helping to publicize Bumbling into Body Hair; I’m sure I’m still a nobody author but I was REALLY a supremely nobody author in 2012.

My plan is to republish the memoir with perhaps an author’s forward and a new cover. Expect that later this summer. Regarding the novel … well, I have to talk to a few people in the industry and see what my options are. I don’t want to leave readers hanging from the first book, although perhaps it could stand alone.

Yes, I have other projects. They’ve been on the back burner for the last six months as I’ve been working on Intermediate. If you could put in a word to the universe for something like a MacArthur Fellowship for me, feel free. (I know, it’s never going to happen. *cough cough GENIUS GRANT cough cough*) But my time is limited; I’ll discuss possibilities and then do my best.

Often, it’s all we can do. Be well, friends, fellow authors, editors, publicists, proofreaders, and cover designers extraordinaire. See you in the pages of the next project.

It was a good idea, Ken and Katherine. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.

Quick Thoughts Regarding Our Political Morass, or Why the HRC Needs to Get into the Anti-Trans Legal Fight

1: It seems anathema to a supposed democracy that the death of one conservative should shift our nation’s highest court toward such a more liberal position. The consequences of the court’s rulings have such far-reaching effects it terrifies me a little that out of 300-plus million people in the US, the seating or not of a single jurist should make that much of a difference. Of course there’s a much larger judicial system underneath this court, and I understand that the rule of law has been designed with a final decision point of a supreme court, but given what it debates—civil rights, reproductive freedom, our basic rights to assemble and speak—Scalia’s presence or absence to tip the balance on these critical points is frightening. And so on this level I can understand the Republican Party’s fear that the court will liberalize away from their priorities. They should be afraid, as Scalia was holding together their agenda for the entire judiciary and it is not as easily rigged as say, their games with voter suppression and gerrymandering.

2: We are so acclimated to fear tactics in general that it is simple to deploy them against transgender children and young people. In what other context could we watch grown men scream about the safety of women as if they are their priority and rant about the dangers posed to public safety from children themselves? The entire game would be exposed were it not for the hatred America holds toward trans women, gender nonconforming people, and queer people. And still I see this as a last gasp from the right to reassert control in a country where more and more areas have affirmatively voted in LGBT protections. They won’t give up without a fight, but trans people will ultimately prevail.

2a: However, the battle over trans bodies is certain to enact violence against gender nonconforming people who are more on the margins, like trans women of color, trans folks who live in poverty, trans elders, and trans youth, especially those dealing with primary and secondary education systems, where there is a judicial precedent for certain infringements into privacy and speech. There is a good reason why the spate of hateful anti-trans legislation targets students, because they are subject to things like locker searches without a warrant, to controls like detention and suspension, and they are under constant surveillance from adults who can easily control things like bathroom access.

2b: This is why I think the Human Rights Campaign needs to step up and take head-on the anti-trans hate wave. It sounds unreasonable at first, but think about it: they’ve already designed themselves to identify issues within the court system across the country, they’ve already amassed a team of lawyers who know how to write amicus briefs in their sleep, and they have just “completed” a decade-plus-long struggle to win marriage equality in the United States. They won. THEY WON. I and many people of my queer generation never thought we’d see legal same sex marriage, and yet, here it is, despite Justice Scalia’s protestations and rhetoric, no less. Further, the HRC owes transgender people a debt after their earlier resistance to including the trans community in the LGBT equal rights bill in Congress, a bill that has still not come back to debate in any meaningful way. HRC has the deep pockets to fund the push against anti-trans legislation, the knowledge of the adversaries, since they’re largely the same groups who funded the anti-equality marriage fight, and the national contacts. They ought to take this on, and they have to get rallied quickly because it won’t be that long before a number of states have bills, referenda, and laws to contend with as part of the general election. And yes, they need to get trans women and gender nonconforming people involved, at all tiers of their leadership.

3: We are losing al-Jazeera America and that is a shame because they took pains not to be an echo chamber for a major political party, and not to be as devoid of substance as say, CNN. Too many of our media outlets are slanted toward one or the other political pole, and this has become a real problem for understanding what is happening in this primary election cycle. We’ve walked away from the journalistic standards that structured how facts were identified apart from opinion for nearly a century, in deference to ratings and the constant stream of sound bites. Paris is bombed and the media vomits speculation as news. Trump says something ridiculous and reporters feed it to us as if it is anything other than garbage—it certainly isn’t presidential. Web sites pretending to be media outlets Photoshop pictures and reports about coin tosses and it takes an entire news cycle to parse the reality out of the fantasy. I’m not telling the kids to get off my lawn, but we need a reckoning here because our current international conglomerate owned news food chain is full of pulp and no substance, and it is hard enough figuring out what the consequences of each Representative seat’s election could mean for their constituents. We need a consumer-driven change to the industry.

 

 

7 Questions of Utter Seriousness with Danika Dinsmore

Everett: Okay, Danika, first let me thank you for serving as the editor on my own novel which shall not be named—you did a great job, despite what reader Debbie said on Goodreads about there not being enough “pauses” in the story, which I suppose I should just be accountable and own as my personal failure, I mean honestly there was only so much you could do with that manuscript. I really appreciate your work!

Danika: It was a pleasure to work creatively with you, Ev. I really do enjoy story editing and wish I had more time for it. And to all possible future story editors of Ev’s out there – you would be lucky to work with someone as eager and amenable as he is. (The mutual admiration society now adjourns.)

E: So as a writer I on occasion have a story idea or a character or a scenario wander into my mind, and then an urge to explore it and write about it grows from there. Can you tell me how you came up with the idea for the faeries, or Narine, or the world they’re in? 

D: Characters definitely wander, pop, float, push, tickle, and cajole their way in. I like to fall in love with characters, especially if I’m going to spend any amount of time with them. To fall in love with them they have to feel real, which to me means complex.

About 13 years ago (previous to the MG/YA fantasy explosion), I was assisting in a lovely shop full of things like incense, divination tools, Renaissance wear, dragon statues, crystal balls… At one point I realized I was surrounded by faeries. I blame it all on them, because I suddenly had the urge to write a quest story featuring faeries. But I didn’t want a Tinkerbell story. I wanted the faeries to be as complex as humans are. I wanted them to be believable.

Steven DePolo under a Creative Commons license

A week later, I was stirring something on the stove and the characters of Brigitta and her sister Himalette spontaneously materialized, together, in my mind. I knew exactly what their relationship was about. It’s interesting, because I get a lot of comments about how readers love Briggy and Himmy’s relationship.

Narine – – she crept in over time, like a ghost growing more and more corporeal, as the backstory unfolded.

E: How much back story do you have on the objects in your world—are there any drawings at your house of scepters and rings or Standing Stones? Or do you describe these things in words? How much do you visualize everything that’s going on in the story?

Definitely not Danika’s office

D: In real life, I literally talk to things: plants, animals, objects. I perceive emotion and personality (or maybe I assign emotion and personality) in them. I try to do this in my world-building as well. And some of the plants and animals in my stories actually do have emotions and personalities.

 

I don’t create any “place” without thinking about its story, and oftentimes whenever any object “wanders in” I immediately start asking myself questions about it: what does it look like, smell like, taste like? How do you use it? What are its properties? Where did it come from? Where else would you find one?

I am more of a wordsmith than a visual artist, but some things bid me to draw them. In particular, I really like to draw maps and reference them. I have also drawn dozens of faerie wing symbols (each faerie in the White Forest receives a destiny mark on his/her wing). I’ve drawn Gola the Drutan’s tree home, the stone fortress from Books 1 and 4, a few scepters, the River That Runs Backwards from its source in Noe Valley. Some things are for reference and some just for fun.

I am by nature a visual thinker. If I get stuck describing a scene, I close my eyes and visualize it happening. I don’t know if this is a result of years of screenwriting or if I was drawn to screenwriting because of the way I think in images.

E: I find myself identifying with Thorze, but I think you’ve given Narine and Mabbe a lot of nuance and they’re well crafted, impetuous, impatient, bright, earnest younguns. I appreciate that you’re writing post-Potterverse and that you’ve found a way to deliver a unique story. How well do you keep up with other well known stories and series in YA speculative fiction? Do people ever respond to your work with things like “make Thorze more like Dumbledore” or “I wish Narine was more like Katniss”?

D: Thanks! I find it interesting you related to Thorze. His relationship to his daughter, Narine, was very clear to me from the initial draft of Book Four.

When I first entered the children’s fiction arena, 90% of what I read was Middle Grade and YA fiction. I thought of it like studying. I posted a weekly middle grade book review with Middle Grade Mondays. After a while, a lot of the YA stories started sounding too familiar (though there were plenty of inspiring ones). I made a clear decision to go back to reading a wider range of material and to always be reading non-fiction, literary, and genre. I want to be a diverse writer and thinker.

I’ve never been asked by anyone to make any of my characters more like any other character … although I did have an agent once ask if I could make Himalette a little brother instead of a little sister. I said no, I couldn’t. lol.

E: You create a beautiful world for these darling faeries and then threaten it so obliquely at first, and later, so absolutely. What was your message in having such a complicated antagonist to this universe and this family?

D: Creation comes from chaos, birth from death, life is cyclical, and the Ancient Faeries’ time was up. The apocalyptic nature of Book Four was inevitable, as it had already been established in the first three books, however, when I first started writing the series it was just ancient history (backstory). It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized I needed to tell the origin story as well.

Humans may yet destroy ourselves, but the world will survive. It will continue with or without us. What I wanted to do was to destroy everything, but still leave hope, and from that hope create the next generation of caretakers for the planet.

E: What was it like to write the prequel? Did you feel a lot more pressure in terms of maintaining the world you’d already built? How much of this universe story had you already sorted out and where there any surprises when you wrote NARINE OF NOE?

D: For many months the prequel was the “suckiest piece of suck that ever sucked” because I didn’t know the story as well as I thought! And yes, writing a prequel after the first three books in the series have been published is not anything I highly recommend (there are a total of six books, btw). I was insanely worried about continuity. I read the first three books taking copious notes to make sure I didn’t miss anything. And I caught some pretty substantial errors and omissions along the way.

I’ll confess, there are a few continuity issues I finally just left in because I didn’t want to force anything else. I used the excuse that, hey, the rest of the story takes place 1,000 years later and how much of OUR history tells the exact truth?

E: So what’s your next project? What new character has started playing in your writer’s mind?

D: I am into the second rewrite of a new YA literary novel called Winterspring and Summerfall. Not autobiographical, but definitely echoes of personal experiences and components of actual people I’ve known. It’s about an extremely sensitive, socially awkward girl growing up in the 80’s whose first intimate experience is with another girl who later turns to bullying her. I’ve considered pitching it as The Perks of Being a Wallflower for queer girls.

E: What books are on your nightstand? Please tell me you own a nightstand or this question won’t work.

D: More like what’s piled around my nightstand. This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin, and a few books of poetry by Linda King.

Anyone interested in writing a review for any of the White Forest books may contact Danika at danika.dinsmore@gmail.com for free ebook copies. Mention you saw this posted on Ev’s site. :-)

You can connect to Danika in the following realms:

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/authordanikadinsmore

Facebook White Forest Series Page: https://www.facebook.com/whiteforestrealm

Website: danikadinsmore.com

Twitter: @danika_dinsmore

The Anti-Trans Bathroom Bills Are the Real Abominations

I admit it, I don’t really care for testosterone. Oh, I like the secondary sex characteristics and all, though my beard twelve years into this whole exploration of identity is still sparse and a bit laughable. But I don’t care for the skittishness that comes with taking T on a regular basis, even if it is preferable to the monthly bouts of increasingly despondent depression that I had on estrogen. I can get okay with a stable mood, especially if I’m no longer paying for a Lexapro prescription, but in all honesty I’d prefer to need neither of the sex hormone alternatives. At 45 my ovaries are still cranking out a little bit of estrogren and progesterone, and I can tell when I’ve missed a T shot the same way I can tell between shades of blue on a topology map…because that’s how gradients work to show a shift from one degree to another.

It’s been an intense few months—the final gear up for Susanne’s tenure file to be delivered to the provost was drama-filled with the kind of pettiness people often ascribe to academics. Emile and Lucas adjusted to a half-day schedule at a local preschool after only knowing life with a part-time nanny in their own home (or hers). I waded full Monty into the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Expansion at work, trying to tie down new revenue streams for my nonprofit, even as I made slow headway on two book projects for which I supposedly dedicate ten hours a week. We made the hugely intelligent decision to stay home for the holidays so that gave us something of a breather, since holiday air travel is excruciating and expensive. Then this winter an old friend, a genuine, snarky, brilliant, generous, curmudgeon with emotional walls thicker than whatever Trump wants to put between us and Mexico, killed herself. I thought I would be better at handling her death, but I’ve been more on an emotional edge than I’d like to be. And whether I stay on top of my T shots or not, I keep thinking about her and all of the emotions that an unexpected, intentional death bring up. Thanks a lot, sex hormones, for not giving me any relief.

In the meantime the requests to mentor newly transitioning or younger trans people keep coming.  I always accept. First of all, it’s easy to say yes. Second, I love an excuse to get a coffee and meet a new person. Third, I found early transition full of self-doubt almost to the point of suicide, so I need to reach back to others and tell them they’re okay, they’re not alone, they’re full of beautiful things. Plus it keeps me tied to the stresses of that phase of transition when I could easily work on forgetting them. But if I want to be an effective mentor, helper, writer, activist, boss, I need to stay close to other perspectives. I try to keep myself honest and accountable, but give myself an acknowledgment that I will fail and need to improve.

I am trying not to take the three bathroom bills in process in the Washington State legislature personally. HB2589, HB2782, and SB6443 are not about me, obviously. And I have a lot of relative privilege compared to trans people in my state who are much more vulnerable, who don’t have solid partners, a nuclear-looking family, a white face, a 5-foot-9 stature, a good reputation in a small community, and on and on. But no matter my standing or the standing of some pre-teen trans kid or POC sex worker who was bullied out of high school, we all need access to public restrooms, to housing, to health care. These bills take all of that away, and worse, they take away rights already established for a decade that extend beyond just us loathsome trans people to the rest of the LGB coalition/community/whatever the hell we are. It is feasibly possible that two rich gay men could get married in Washington but be fired from their jobs the Monday after the wedding if these bills pass.

Which they won’t. The Governor will not sign any of them. They’re not even supposed to get real traction in either chamber, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be opportunity for out-of-state extremists to fund a campaign of lies and fear that alienates the most marginalized and vulnerable among us. And that’s where the real damage will be done—people living with depression may see their moods darken further, may think more about ending it all, may attempt suicide because it’s clear the world hates them that much and nobody will miss them. I have tried before and always failed to convey the totality of overwhelming emotion and the barrage of thoughts that one takes on when one finally agrees that some kind of gender transition is the only way to survive in the world. It is beyond huge. I’ve attempted metaphor, short narrative, rich prose, simple prose, I even wrote a fecking poem about it and I Do. Not. Write. Poetry.

Primary election cycles bring out the worst, most extreme ideas before the regression to the mean sets in, even if that mean is marching rightward. I’ve been waiting with sharp inhales on the news that some unacceptable talking point has cost someone, anyone, their electability. It hasn’t happened, though the current events of the day beg the populace to demand that candidates for office have a robust understanding of gun violence, the limits of religious freedom (as well as freedom from religion), ISIS, the millions of people fleeing war and pestilence, responses to climate change, banking regulation and oversight, police violence, and most recently, government accountability in the face of Flint’s systemwide water poisoning. And yet, we are served with too-short talking points that offer no insight, with a flippant refusal to describe expertise on any topic—as if the anti-intellectual approach to governing is the best approach—and with diversionary tactics that never answer the questions asked.

I’d hoped that the information age would provide information, not just noise. It seems more and more painful to sort through a hyperspace of static to find but a few salient points, and then there is a juggernaut of hype and misinformation that rushes in to shift the framework and the interpretation of those points. I am not sure how to proceed through the world, to help make sense of what looks like intentional discombobulation, to myself, to my kids, to my community. I have to even battle to wash my hands at a sink, it seems. I am only sure of the madness around me, and so I will try to make due with that.

I’m trying to be kind, Bryn, I promise. But you knew that was a tough challenge to leave us with, and that’s why it’s the last public thing you wrote.

Getting Real on the Nonsense

Let’s say it occurs to you that you can’t make it in this world living as the sex you were born with. It could be a big revelation, or a series of small ones, or something else entirely, like a haunting doubt, for a few examples. And let’s presume that you need some degree of connection to other people (YMMV, I know), so at some point, if you decide to transition to somewhere else on the gender spectrum, you’ll probably come into contact with another human being who notices you look/sound/etc different than you were before, even though (and this is not always a given for people observing someone’s transition) you’re still the same you in like 97% of other aspects of your identity and corporealness.

Now you have to tell some stranger–either through the health care system, mental health system, or gray market drug retail system–that you want hormones.

And you have to consider how to deal with the following:

• changing your name(s)–which means getting a judge in a court to authorize this change, and running your name change in a newspaper so you can ensure people you’re not trying to get out of a debt

• changing your gender marker and name on your birth certificate–which means petitioning the vital statistics group in the state where you were born, which all have their own rules around when/how/if they’ll make such a change, and if you’ll get a “clean” new birth certificate or one that says “amended” (or if you’re from Ohio, for example, not getting a new BC at all for ANY reason, forever and ever amen)

• from those two changes, cascading your new name and gender marker across all of your identity documents, which does not happen automagically and which you have to personally contact by yourself:

•• your driver’s license or non-driving photo ID

•• your passport

•• your social security card

•• your student ID card or employee ID card

•• your earned diplomas

•• your marriage license (just as a kicker, if you are a cis female and you change your last name as you get married, you may simply write the new last name on your marriage license application and voila, it’s good everywhere you go after that, easy peasy)

•• all of your accounts, federal and private, like your banking account, your telephone account(s), your utility accounts, your car insurance account, your IRS file, your credit card accounts, your voter registration, your retirement accounts, your library account, any store accounts, and on and on, and you will be shocked at how many years go by in which there is some straggler thing out there that pops back up with your old name or gender on it

Then you may want to have a series of encounters with medial or mental health professionals as you transition, some of whom will be just dandy and many of whom will be mediocre or worse, who will give you horrible advice, counterproductive or contraindicated instructions, will try to crack jokes which you do not appreciate, or who will use your old name in some weird power play just as you were getting good with the idea of trusting professional people to have your best interest at heart. This part of the process, just for fun, will last the rest of your life because shockingly we all need health care and mental health support, especially in our stressful world.

After that you may or may not (varying mileage again) have coworkers or colleagues who do or don’t know about your trans status, whether or not you have chosen to directly inform them or have decided to be “stealth” (not reveal your status because actually it’s none of their business), and so people around you may at any given moment be acting in the knowledge that you are trans but may never have communicated they know this to your face. So just keep a little bit of your guard up, just you know, in case.

You may or may not lose a partner, keep a partner, find a partner after or during transition, or opt not to partner, or opt to be or continue to be nonmonogamous, but rest assured some sort of Trans Conversation will happen at some point. And your friends from before, during, and after transition (who overlap but aren’t necessarily the same people, since some friends will leave you because you’re trans now) will probably talk to you about it at some point, too.

So here’s the thing: after all that, if somebody tells you that your life is a great metaphor for this or that other Life Challenge in the world, you have the right to laugh in their face. If somebody in a meeting declares that including sex reassignment surgery will be too expensive for the employer to handle, you have the right to get angry and explain to them that there isn’t going to be some kind of rush on the SRS market if they go ahead and behave like decent fucking people. If somebody tells you they’re mad at you because they weren’t the very first person in line that you told you were going to transition to, then you feel free to call them out as a selfish brat. If someone makes a play on some legal status of yours that you fought for before, during, or after transition, then you should swear like a sailor at them that the rules are far, far easier for them than they even realize. And if someone tells you that they just are so excited that Caitlyn Jenner has made transgenderism so much more visible and isn’t it great, then I give you permission to throw up your lunch all over them.

2015 in Quotes

Germanwings crash site in France, photo by The Independent

January

“These towns are just gone, burned down,” said Nigerian Ahmed Zanna, a senator for Borno state where a Boku Haram attack killed more than 2,000 people “The whole area is covered in bodies.”

I wonder why Facebook didn’t make a feel-good support tint for people’s profile pictures around this torched Nigerian village.

February

“I apologize to all those people who gave of their faith, time, energy and resources to elect me to a fourth term last year and who have supported me over the past three decades.” —Disgraced Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber as he resigned from office, which led to the appointment of the USA’s first openly bisexual governor, Kate Brown

Well look at that little LGBT development! I feel like I’ve seen this scenario on television before. If not, I expect to see it in the third season of House of Cards.

March

“The body of the plane is in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage,” said Bruce Robin, a prosecutor from Marseille about the crash site after a German co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, purposefully crashed a Germanwings aircraft to avoid dealing with decreasing eyesight and the loss of his career. The crash killed 150 people.

But don’t call him a terrorist.

April

“None of the officers describe any use of force,” Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said regarding the death of Freddie Carlos Gray, who died a week after an arrest by Baltimore police who had given him a “rough ride” in a police van in which Gray’s spine was severed.

My takeaway from this quote is that one need not describe violence in order to enact violence.

May

“With today’s vote we have disclosed who we are: a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people.” —Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, regarding the popular vote that amended her country’s constitution to allow same sex marriage

As opposed to the people of the United States.

June

“Over the course of centuries, black churches served as “hush harbors” where slaves could worship in safety; praise houses where their free descendants could gather and shout hallelujah —  rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad; bunkers for the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement.  They have been, and continue to be, community centers where we organize for jobs and justice; places of scholarship and network; places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harm’s way, and told that they are beautiful and smart and taught that they matter.  That’s what happens in church.  That’s what the black church means.” —President Obama, eulogizing Pastor Clem Pinckney and eight congregants who were gunned down by a delusional, racist, young white man who had come into the church, ostensibly to pray with them.

Watch the President’s full eulogy here. Really. Watch it.

Words cannot express how much this country needed its leader to describe the Black history in their midst of which so many remain ignorant.

July

“Iran will get a jackpot, a cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars, which will enable it to continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region and in the world.” —Israeli Prime Minister Betanyahu on the signing of the 6-nation nuclear agreement with Iran

That’s okay, Benny, you’ll get more aid from the USA as a result. You’ll have plenty of funding to bomb Palestinian children.

August

“So long as there are large numbers of pretty desperate migrants marauding around the area, there always will be a threat to the tunnel security. We’ve got to resolve this problem ultimately by being able to return those who are not entitled to claim asylum back to their countries of origin.” —UK Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond, on the increasing numbers of migrants coming to Europe and the UK from Africa.

By the way, he said this while in Singapore on a work trip, during an interview with the BBC.

Good thing Singapore didn’t accuse you of “marauding” around the Sentosa.

September

“Would that we could all be prophets!” —Pope Francis, during his visit to the United States

He said this before he had a sit-down meeting with Kim Davis and her attorneys. Heh heh.

This Pope hasn’t said junk against LGBT people.

October

“If you don’t have any friends who don’t say unkind things privately, I congratulate you.” —Hillary Clinton to Rep. Gowdy, who held a hearing all day on the Benghazi attack in Libya.

Seriously, there are so many great moments from this sh*t show, just watch them here.

Looks like Ms. Clinton has run out of f*cks to give to Congress. As have most of us, in all honesty.

November

“We will get through this, and we will come together. Because in Colorado Springs, we are a resilient and compassionate city. Our mountain setting is beautiful and our people are kind and generous. I ask people around the country and around the world not to judge Colorado Springs by the actions of one individual whose motives, whatever they were, cannot possibly justify murder.” — State Rep. Pete Lee

Maybe your next statement about an attack against Planned Parenthood need not include a nod to your tourism bureau, Pete. But thanks.

December

“If I could be remembered for one thing, it’s that I was not afraid to not compromise myself.” —Kim Davis

Yes, Ms. Davis. You will not be remembered for your kindness, your open mindedness, nor your fearlessness of the double negative. You will be remembered, if at all, for your obstinacy in the face of your sworn oath and your duty to all Americans, not just the ones who share your understanding of your faith.

On Paris and Refugee Refusal

We must protect our security, we rail as we launch wars on foreign soil, radicalizing people into creating whole new terrorist regimes bent on attacking us.

We must protect our families, we scream as we deport hundreds of thousands of parents, orphaning their kids by legal means or sending people to so-called home countries where they’ve never lived.

Our religious freedom is sacrosanct, we yell as we declare 1.5 billion human beings barbarians and terrorists simply for having a faith tradition we do not share.

We must build walls to shut them out, we shout with raised fists, all the while not noticing that it is us who have locked ourselves into our own awful contradictions and fear.