Archive for March, 2005
Tuesday, March 29th, 2005
Down in Key West FL for my father and his partner Martin's wedding. Amazing and overwhelming. I'm still processing it all. First impressions: my father is a great man and Martin is a great man; all family that could make it, did, including my three nieces, which means granddaughters got to watch their gay grandfather get married; Key West is a very queer friendly place and unlike other cities in the US.
Biggest impression: a transsexual son got to watch his gay dad get married.
Deep. Very, very deep.
Posted in Etc. | 5 Comments »
Friday, March 25th, 2005
I realize it is easier for me to be transsexual than to be a writer.
Posted in Political Art, Self-Organizing Men | 8 Comments »
Thursday, March 24th, 2005
This guy [1] is right on the mark.
I know it can't be easy having to regularly fill in insurance forms for people. When it comes to insurers' questions, they ask a lot of crap - sometimes they literally ask about crap.
Insurance bureaucracy may be intractable in the lives of people with disabilities and transsexuals.
The answer? Humor. A skill I'm learning about. Mine only run the gamut from run the gamut from rage to beating my head against the wall.
Others of you have coping skills you'd care to share?
[1] http://spicycauldron.blogspot.com/2005/02/grant-me-comedy-as-weapon-or-bring-me.html
Posted in Political Art | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 24th, 2005
Check out this photoblog [1]
Wil's work represents one of the coolest features of the web. The ability to present artistic work 24/7, at no cost to the viewer. Then, best of all, we get to chat about it!
For queer/freaky artists, the internet is a wonderful, exciting tool. With no censorships or middlebabe broker types, we are free to let our imaginations roam.
Please add Wil's blog to your Favs list. If you don't, you may be sorry! ;-)
[1] http://www.wildun.com/
Posted in Political Art | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 24th, 2005
Anne Fausto Sterling [1] writes in her essay "How To Build a Man" [2]:
Medical managers use the following rule of thumb (when deciding an newborn's gender):
Genetic females should always be raised as females, preserving reproductive potential, regardless of how severely the patients are virilized. In the genetic male, however, the gender of assignment is based on the infant's anatomy, predominantly the size of the phallus.
Further she writes:
Medical practitioners do not permit one (a newborn) born with a penis less than 0.6 inches long to remain a male.
Fausto is unparalleled at describing science as social construction. Her work on intersexed [3] children has implications for transsexuals and transgenders and for our understanding of masculinity.
The marketing message is: size does matter. A message marketed from birth.
Violence [4] is marketed as natural. Why are we then surprised that men are so screwed up?
[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465077145/qid=1111672970/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/002-1283261-8943236?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
[2] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0415910536/qid=1111673066/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-1283261-8943236?v=glance&s=books
[3] http://www.isna.org
[4] http://www.millarca.com/intersex.html
Posted in Self-Organizing Men | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
sennett's thought for the day:
Civil rights movements are innovations in ways of being human. Stories in how to build better humans or be better humans.
Therefore, almost everyone is an innovator by definition.
Queers and freaks: Making the human experience more real.
Queers and Freaks: Brought to you by the humans that came before us.
Transsexuals: Technological Innovators
Others anyone?
Posted in A Bespoke Body, Self-Organizing Men | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
From Not Dead Yet [1]'s website:
Research shows that non-disabled people and medical professional devalue the quality of life of disabled people, yet the court took only the word of non-disability experts-those who historically have devalued people like Terri. Those 'experts' the court deemed more reliable are exactly those that research demonstrates devaluing people with disabilities.
Read more [2]
How long will this form of bigotry remain in fashion?
[1] http://www.notdeadyet.org/
[2] http://www.notdeadyet.org/docs/dqiastatement022305.html
Posted in Etc. | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
Jen Burke [1] writes in her blog on Boys Don't Cry [2]:
"Do (should) they [artists] have a burden of being "responsible" for a certain presentation? Which one? The most inclusive or representative somehow? How can that be determined as trans people and their allies tend to be one of the most varied groups of which I've ever identified? Do artists become automatic political pundits? Is there any way that a filmmaker or fiction writer can say, "I am not political in my work?"
....Do I have these answers? Nope, but asking the questions is part of getting there.
I don't deny the power that creative people have to shape the perceptions of others, particularly the mainstream public who may or may not know a thing about gender-variant people. I don't deny that power, but I question which political and ultimately "moral imperatives" we should apply to them and their work."
She raises excellent questions, ones I have been struggling with for years. I conclude that any representations of trans/TG/TS cultures are political. We are not value neutral people in the way Paris Hilton is.
Why are we so afraid to have our art called political? If politics is about storytelling then how can describing the conditions of our life be bad?
[1] http://www.jenburke.com/
[2] http://www.jenburke.com/2005/03/another-take-on-boys-dont-cry.html
Posted in Political Art | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
These days it is fashionable for transgender activists to declaim against the medical system and declare that all transsexuals should receive medical access on demand.
Yes. Anyone who wants hormones or surgeries should have access to them. End of discussion.
But if I want my insurance company to pay for these needs, I need a diagnosis.
In the world of insurance companies:
diagnosis = icd9 code=covered benefit=patient gets what they need
Transgender activists screaming they don't need a medical diagnosis are correct. They don't need a diagnosis since they are not seeking medical services.
Transsexuals are. For transsexuals a diagnosis is absolutely necessary for insurance reimbursment. With a diagnosis many, many more transsexuals could access hormones and surgeries via insurance coverage.
Without a diagnosis, transsexuals need to work five jobs to be able to pay for services they need. Sometimes their wages are so low they never receive these services at all.
Is the system flawed? Check.
Is changing genders wrong? No.
Are insurance companies gatekeepers? Yes.
Are are all businesses abot making money? Last time I checked.
Is this cool? No. It isn't cool to make money off people's health.
But that is the REALITY in America. And I am ONLY interested in REALITY.
And the REALITY is, transsexualism is very, very, very, very expensive.
For me here are some costs had I paid out of pocket:
Therapy to receive diagnosis: $1,000
Doctor visits to obtain hormones: $250/visit
Bloodwork: $200-$750
Hormones (I use androgel) for six months: $1300
Top Surgery: $9700
Revisions: $1500
Bottom surgery (includes visits to doctor, tests, and surgeries): $25,000
(Any transgender activists out there with $40,000 for some transsexual in need? Didn't think so.)
But with healthcare coverage and a diagnosis, my total out of pocket expenses were:
doctor visits, blood work: free
hormones (androgel) six months: $28
top surgery: $7700
revisions and other visits: free
bottom surgery: $100
Yes, the therapy I endured was gross. The therapist who rendered the second opinion disgusted me.
But the diagnosis and healthcare coverage saved me about $30,000 (and that doesn't include ongoing doctor visits, blood work and hormones). I was able to have surgeries in my town, not fly off to some destination surgery spot for the priviledge of recovering in a hotel room nowhere near my primary care physician.
The whole process is a game, I know. One I want all transsexuals to win. So:
Remove all transsexual exclusions from all healthcare plans across the country.
Reduce the therapeutic requirements for a diagnosis of transsexualism to the barest minimum needed by insurance companies to assuage their fears of lawsuits.
Thoughts?
Posted in A Bespoke Body, Self-Organizing Men | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005
Yesterday a co-worker's husband passed away unexpectedly. He had been sick and getting better. But a blood clot got him. Now he is dead.
I'm reminded of the importance of treating every day as my last; to live each dayas though a fire were raging in my hair.
Death comes for us all. Yet we say it is unexpected or surprising. I don't want my death to be a surprise nor unexpected. So I've attempted to teach myself to live my life as though I had only one year to live.
Last year I got off track from that place. I had two surgeries and broke my arm and jaw in a bicycle accident. Pain, even invited pain, has a way of getting me to rethink my priorities. Vicodan does, too.
This guy's death jarred me, if only because of my proximity to his wife. I called my wife and told her how much I love her. This morning I thought about all my friends and family who have supported me through hormones, surgeries and frustrations with bureaucracies and people who don't get it.
My life is richer for them. I bow to all of you.
How would you spend your remaining days if you knew you had only one year to live? One month? An hour?
Posted in The Good Life | 5 Comments »
Monday, March 21st, 2005
I've decided I hate the word transgender. Why?
The number one reason is that it does not include transsexual in an understanding way. By this I mean transgender does not include within itself a recognition of the impact of science, technology and medicine on transsexual lives; it refuses to acknowledge the piercing of injectable hormones, the psychic changes incurred through hormones, the cutting and sewing of flesh; it cannot understand the noose that is bureaucracy.
Transgender is now comfortable. Transsexual remains uncomfortable, a word that creates ambivalence and anxiety in the listener.
Transgender is driven by a political agenda; Transsexual is driven by revelation.
I have watched lesbian and gay communities ask me, "what do you need?" I respond, "better access to health care. Remove transsexual exclusions." Then I watch the same lesbians, bois, butches, gay men, fairies run out and seek to enact anti-discrimination legislation. Then stop there.
Back in the 1990s when I said transgender and transsexual people have things in common, I never said that I was the same as a transgender person. But somehow, the 1990s, when the only people fighting for our rights were other transsexuals, transformed into the 21st century, where now I am Not Really An Activist because I Refuse To Come Out; where I am Not Queer Enough because I Support the Binary Gender System through my choices.....
What an utter lack of imagination! To paraphrase Max Wolf Valerio [1], I'm not queer, I am a Freak. Proudly. With Needlepricks and Warrior Marks and Tears cried from joy and frustration.
Valerio continues in his essay Joker's Wild [2]:
I like to call it [transsexuality] a crime of passion, a moving target for bores and narrow-minded fuss-buckets, a necessary and inevitable subversion of the quotidian law of averages. After all, changing sex is a nearly savage act of body modification occupying a charged realm far beyond our culture's current obsession with "safety."
Like Valerio, I believe my life is one of the most extravagent experiments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
I am a consequence of science, a living, breathing cyborg, made through my own designs and initiatives, connecting points in our infinite existence.
[1] http://content.gay.com/channels/home/trans_stories/valerio_max.html
[2] http://www.anythingthatmoves.com/ish17/jokers-wild.html
Posted in Self-Organizing Men | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 21st, 2005
March 20, 2005 -- It's time for the press to talk to the real experts on the Schiavo case, the disability rights movement. Not Dead Yet has led the disability community's opposition to non-voluntary euthanasia for a decade. Diane Coleman, the group's founder and president, and Stephen Drake, its research analyst, are available in Chicago to discuss the disability angle on the recent legislative and legal developments in the case.
Read more at Not Dead Yet. [1]
What is missing from most discussions are the experts. The issue is not about left versus right but about the systematic exclusion of people with disabilities from any discussions about how to best manage and treat disabilties, even disabilities as severe as Terry Schiavo's.
I can say that the left is about as ill-informed as the right. Neither argument interests me at all. What does interest me?
Putting disability rights activists right square center in the discussion.
[1] http://www.notdeadyet.org/docs/schiavostatement032005.html
Posted in Features | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 18th, 2005
Niels Bohr said:
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
Perhaps then activism is not about proving the other side wrong but about holding more and more profound truths within our worldviews.
What is life like beyond our beloved prejudices?
Posted in Etc. | 4 Comments »
Friday, March 18th, 2005
If you want to be a man or are becoming one or flirt with masculinity or whatever, here is a partial list of things I've learned after about 12 dedicated years of travelling from F to M.
Being comfortable in your body matters.
Having a penis does not matter.
Treating women badly won't make up for your past or the body you may not like. Discretion is the better part of valor. Especially if you sleep with women.
Transsexuals and former transsexuals cannot pass.
Passing assumes a static body, which exists only in advertising.
People will not understand you.
You've gone to the edge and over.
You must understand yourself now that you're flying over that edge.
Gender is all about the body you want to be perceived in so you can have sex with people as the gender you are.
Sexual orientation may change with gender. Mine did. I went from being lesbian to being a straight man.
No is hot. In our world of voicemail, email, blackberry, mulberry, instant messaging, no is very, very hot. Make it a habit.
Your lover's sexual orientation has nothing to do with your gender.
Men are not the enemy.
More later....
Posted in Self-Organizing Men | 11 Comments »
