Menstuff® has compiled the following information on the issue
of transgender identity..
(Rethinking) Gender
'I Had To Fix My Life'
'None of Us Are Safe' - Actor
Alexis Arquette on the politics of gender in America
Applause to Nip Tuck, Gray's Anatomy and The
L Word for addressing the issue in prime time.
Newsbytes
Related Issues: Gay/Bi/Trans Issues, DVDs, Books, Magazines, Resources, More Resources
May 21, 2007 issue - Growing up in Corinth, Miss., J. T. Hayes had A legacy to attend to. His dad was a well-known race-car driver and Hayes spent much of his childhood tinkering in the family's greasy garage, learning how to design and build cars. By the age of 10, he had started racing in his own right. Eventually Hayes won more than 500 regional and national championships in go-kart, midget and sprint racing, even making it to the NASCAR Winston Cup in the early '90s. But behind the trophies and the swagger of the racing circuit, Hayes was harboring a painful secret: he had always believed he was a woman. He had feminine features and a slight frame—at 5 feet 6 and 118 pounds he was downright dainty—and had always felt, psychologically, like a girl. Only his anatomy got in the way. Since childhood he'd wrestled with what to do about it. He'd slip on "girl clothes" he hid under the mattress and try his hand with makeup. But he knew he'd find little support in his conservative hometown.
In 1991, Hayes had a moment of truth. He was driving a sprint car on a dirt track in Little Rock when the car flipped end over end. "I was trapped upside down, engine throttle stuck, fuel running all over the racetrack and me," Hayes recalls. "The accident didn't scare me, but the thought that I hadn't lived life to its full potential just ran chill bumps up and down my body." That night he vowed to complete the transition to womanhood. Hayes kept racing while he sought therapy and started hormone treatments, hiding his growing breasts under an Ace bandage and baggy T shirts.
Finally, in 1994, at 30, Hayes raced on a Saturday night in Memphis, then drove to Colorado the next day for sex-reassignment surgery, selling his prized race car to pay the tab. Hayes chose the name Terri O'Connell and began a new life as a woman who figured her racing days were over. But she had no idea what else to do. Eventually, O'Connell got a job at the mall selling women's handbags for $8 an hour. O'Connell still hopes to race again, but she knows the odds are long: "Transgendered and professional motor sports just don't go together."
To most of us, gender comes as naturally as breathing. We have no quarrel with the "M" or the "F" on our birth certificates. And, crash diets aside, we've made peace with how we want the world to see us—pants or skirt, boa or blazer, spiky heels or sneakers. But to those who consider themselves transgender, there's a disconnect between the sex they were assigned at birth and the way they see or express themselves. Though their numbers are relatively few—the most generous estimate from the National Center for Transgender Equality is between 750,000 and 3 million Americans (fewer than 1 percent)—many of them are taking their intimate struggles public for the first time. In April, L.A. Times sportswriter Mike Penner announced in his column that when he returned from vacation, he would do so as a woman, Christine Daniels. Nine states plus Washington, D.C., have enacted antidiscrimination laws that protect transgender people—and an additional three states have legislation pending, according to the Human Rights Campaign. And this month the U.S. House of Representatives passed a hate-crimes prevention bill that included "gender identity." Today's transgender Americans go far beyond the old stereotypes (think "Rocky Horror Picture Show"). They are soccer moms, ministers, teachers, politicians, even young children. Their push for tolerance and acceptance is reshaping businesses, What is gender anyway? It is certainly more than the physical details of what's between our legs. History and science suggest that gender is more subtle and more complicated than anatomy. (It's separate from sexual orientation, too, which determines which sex we're attracted to.) Gender helps us organize the world into two boxes, his and hers, and gives us a way of quickly sizing up every person we see on the street. "Gender is a way of making the world secure," says feminist scholar Judith Butler, a rhetoric professor at University of California, Berkeley. Though some scholars like Butler consider gender largely a social construct, others increasingly see it as a complex interplay of biology, genes, hormones and culture.
Genesis set up the initial dichotomy: "Male and female he created them." And historically, the differences between men and women in this country were thought to be distinct. Men, fueled by testosterone, were the providers, the fighters, the strong and silent types who brought home dinner. Women, hopped up on estrogen (not to mention the mothering hormone oxytocin), were the nurturers, the communicators, the soft, emotional ones who got that dinner on the table. But as society changed, the stereotypes faded. Now even discussing gender differences can be fraught. (Just ask former Harvard president Larry Summers, who unleashed a wave of criticism when he suggested, in 2005, that women might have less natural aptitude for math and science.) Still, even the most diehard feminist would likely agree that, even apart from genitalia, we are not exactly alike. In many cases, our habits, our posture, and even cultural identifiers like the way we dress set us apart.
Now, as transgender people become more visible and challenge the old boundaries, they've given voice to another debate—whether gender comes in just two flavors. "The old categories that everybody's either biologically male or female, that there are two distinct categories and there's no overlap, that's beginning to break down," says Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at SUNY-Stony Brook. "All of those old categories seem to be more fluid." Just the terminology can get confusing. "Transsexual" is an older term that usually refers to someone who wants to use hormones or surgery to change their sex. "Transvestites," now more politely called "cross-dressers," occasionally wear clothes of the opposite sex. "Transgender" is an umbrella term that includes anyone whose gender identity or expression differs from the sex of their birth—whether they have surgery or not.
Gender identity first becomes an issue in early childhood, as any parent who's watched a toddler lunge for a truck or a doll can tell you. That's also when some kids may become aware that their bodies and brains don't quite match up. Jona Rose, a 6-year-old kindergartner in northern California, seems like a girl in nearly every way—she wears dresses, loves pink and purple, and bestowed female names on all her stuffed animals. But Jona, who was born Jonah, also has a penis. When she was 4, her mom, Pam, offered to buy Jona a dress, and she was so excited she nearly hyperventilated. She began wearing dresses every day to preschool and no one seemed to mind. It wasn't easy at first. "We wrung our hands about this every night," says her dad, Joel. But finally he and Pam decided to let their son live as a girl. They chose a private kindergarten where Jona wouldn't have to hide the fact that he was born a boy, but could comfortably dress like a girl and even use the girls' bathroom. "She has been pretty adamant from the get-go: 'I am a girl'," says Joel.
Male or female, we all start life looking pretty much the same. Genes determine whether a particular human embryo will develop as male or female. But each individual embryo is equipped to be either one—each possesses the Mullerian ducts that become the female reproductive system as well as the Wolffian ducts that become the male one. Around eight weeks of development, through a complex genetic relay race, the X and the male's Y chromosomes kick into gear, directing the structures to become testes or ovaries. (In most cases, the unneeded extra structures simply break down.) The ovaries and the testes are soon pumping out estrogen and testosterone, bathing the developing fetus in hormones. Meanwhile, the brain begins to form, complete with receptors—wired differently in men and women—that will later determine how both estrogen and testosterone are used in the body.
After birth, the changes keep coming. In many species, male newborns experience a hormone surge that may "organize" sexual and behavioral traits, says Nirao Shah, a neuroscientist at UCSF. In rats, testosterone given in the first week of life can cause female babies to behave more like males once they reach adulthood. "These changes are thought to be irreversible," says Shah. Between 1 and 5 months, male human babies also experience a hormone surge. It's still unclear exactly what effect that surge has on the human brain, but it happens just when parents are oohing and aahing over their new arrivals.
Here's where culture comes in. Studies have shown that parents treat boys and girls very differently—breast-feeding boys longer but talking more to girls. That's going on while the baby's brain is engaged in a massive growth spurt. "The brain doubles in size in the first five years after birth, and the connectivity between the cells goes up hundreds of orders of magnitude," says Anne Fausto-Sterling, a biologist and feminist at Brown University who is currently investigating whether subtle differences in parental behavior could influence gender identity in very young children. "The brain is interacting with culture from day one."
So what's different in transgender people? Scientists don't know for certain. Though their hormone levels seem to be the same as non-trans levels, some scientists speculate that their brains react differently to the hormones, just as men's differ from women's. But that could take decades of further research to prove. One 1997 study tantalizingly suggested structural differences between male, female and transsexual brains, but it has yet to be successfully replicated. Some transgender people blame the environment, citing studies that show pollutants have disrupted reproduction in frogs and other animals. But those links are so far not proved in humans. For now, transgender issues are classified as "Gender Identity Disorder" in the psychiatric manual DSM-IV. That's controversial, too—gay-rights activists spent years campaigning to have homosexuality removed from the manual.
Gender fluidity hasn't always seemed shocking. Cross-dressing was common in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as among Native Americans and many other indigenous societies, according to Deborah Rudacille, author of "The Riddle of Gender." Court records from the Jamestown settlement in 1629 describe the case of Thomas Hall, who claimed to be both a man and a woman. Of course, what's considered masculine or feminine has long been a moving target. Our Founding Fathers wouldn't be surprised to see men today with long hair or earrings, but they might be puzzled by women in pants.
Transgender opponents have often turned to the Bible for support. Deut. 22:5 says: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God." When word leaked in February that Steve Stanton, the Largo, Fla., city manager for 14 years, was planning to transition to life as a woman, the community erupted. At a public meeting over whether Stanton should be fired, one of many critics, Ron Sanders, pastor of the Lighthouse Baptist Church, insisted that Jesus would "want him terminated." (Stanton did lose his job and this week will appear as Susan Stanton on Capitol Hill to lobby for antidiscrimination laws.) Equating gender change with homosexuality, Sanders says that "it's an abomination, which means that it's utterly disgusting."
Not all people of faith would agree. Baptist minister John Nemecek, 56, was surfing the Web one weekend in 2003, when his wife was at a baby shower. Desperate for clues to his long-suppressed feelings of femininity, he stumbled across an article about gender-identity disorder on WebMD. The suggested remedy was sex-reassignment surgery—something Nemecek soon thought he had to do. Many families can be ripped apart by such drastic changes, but Nemecek's wife of 33 years stuck by him. His employer of 15 years, Spring Arbor University, a faith-based liberal-arts college in Michigan, did not. Nemecek says the school claimed that transgenderism violated its Christian principles, and when it renewed Nemecek's contract—by then she was taking hormones and using the name Julie—it barred her from dressing as a woman on campus or even wearing earrings. Her workload and pay were cut, too, she says. She filed a discrimination claim, which was later settled through mediation. (The university declined to comment on the case.) Nemecek says she has no trouble squaring her gender change and her faith. "Actively expressing the feminine in me has helped me grow closer to God," she says.
Others have had better luck transitioning. Karen Kopriva, now 49, kept her job teaching high school in Lake Forest, Ill., when she shaved her beard and made the switch from Ken. When Mark Stumpp, a vice president at Prudential Financial, returned to work as Margaret in 2002, she sent a memo to her colleagues (subject: Me) explaining the change. "We all joked about wearing panty hose and whether 'my condition' was contagious," she says. But "when the dust settled, everyone got back to work." Companies like IBM and Kodak now cover trans-related medical care. And 125 Fortune 500 companies now protect transgender employees from job discrimination, up from three in 2000. Discrimination may not be the worst worry for transgender people: they are also at high risk of violence and hate crimes.
Perhaps no field has wrestled more with the issue of gender than sports. There have long been accusations about male athletes' trying to pass as women, or women's taking testosterone to gain a competitive edge. In the 1960s, would-be female Olympians were required to undergo gender-screening tests. Essentially, that meant baring all before a panel of doctors who could verify that an athlete had girl parts. That method was soon scrapped in favor of a genetic test. But that quickly led to confusion over a handful of genetic disorders that give typical-looking women chromosomes other than the usual XX. Finally, the International Olympic Committee ditched mandatory lab-based screening, too. "We found there is no scientifically sound lab-based technique that can differentiate between man and woman," says Arne Ljungqvist, chair of the IOC's medical commission.
The IOC recently waded into controversy again: in 2004 it issued regulations allowing transsexual athletes to compete in the Olympics if they've had sex-reassignment surgery and have taken hormones for two years. After convening a panel of experts, the IOC decided that the surgery and hormones would compensate for any hormonal or muscular advantage a male-to-female transsexual would have. (Female-to-male athletes would be allowed to take testosterone, but only at levels that wouldn't give them a boost.) So far, Ljungqvist doesn't know of any transsexual athletes who've competed. Ironically, Renee Richards, who won a lawsuit in 1977 for the right to play tennis as a woman after her own sex-reassignment surgery, questions the fairness of the IOC rule. She thinks decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis.
Richards and other pioneers reflect the huge cultural shift over a generation of gender change. Now 70, Richards rejects the term transgender along with all the fluidity it conveys. "God didn't put us on this earth to have gender diversity," she says. "I don't like the kids that are experimenting. I didn't want to be something in between. I didn't want to be trans anything. I wanted to be a man or a woman."
But more young people are embracing something we would traditionally consider in between. Because of the expense, invasiveness and mixed results (especially for women becoming men), only 1,000 to 2,000 Americans each year get sex-reassignment surgery—a number that's on the rise, says Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Mykell Miller, a Northwestern University student born female who now considers himself male, hides his breasts under a special compression vest. Though he one day wants to take hormones and get a mastectomy, he can't yet afford it. But that doesn't affect his self-image. "I challenge the idea that all men were born with male bodies," he says. "I don't go out of my way to be the biggest, strongest guy."
Nowhere is the issue more pressing at the moment than a place that helped give rise to feminist movement a generation ago: Smith College in Northampton, Mass. Though Smith was one of the original Seven Sisters women's colleges, its students have now taken to calling it a "mostly women's college," in part because of a growing number of "transmen" who decide to become male after they've enrolled. In 2004, students voted to remove pronouns from the student government constitution as a gesture to transgender students who no longer identified with "she" or "her." (Smith is also one of 70 schools that have antidiscrimination policies protecting transgender students.) For now, anyone who is enrolled at Smith may graduate, but in order to be admitted in the first place, you must have been born a female. Tobias Davis, class of '03, entered Smith as a woman, but graduated as a "transman." When he first told friends over dinner, "I think I might be a boy," they were instantly behind him, saying "Great! Have you picked a name yet?" Davis passed as male for his junior year abroad in Italy even without taking hormones; he had a mastectomy last fall. Now 25, Davis works at Smith and writes plays about the transgender experience. (His work "The Naked I: Monologues From Beyond the Binary" is a trans take on "The Vagina Monologues.")
As kids at ever-younger ages grapple with issues of gender variance, doctors, psychologists and parents are weighing how to balance immediate desires and long-term ones. Like Jona Rose, many kids begin questioning gender as toddlers, identifying with the other gender's toys and clothes. Five times as many boys as girls say their gender doesn't match their biological sex, says Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a psychiatrist who heads a gender-variance outreach program at Children's National Medical Center. (Perhaps that's because it's easier for girls to blend in as tomboys.) Many of these children eventually move on and accept their biological sex, says Menvielle, often when they're exposed to a disapproving larger world or when they're influenced by the hormone surges of puberty. Only about 15 percent continue to show signs of gender-identity problems into adulthood, says Ken Zucker, who heads the Gender Identity Service at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
In the past, doctors often advised parents to direct their kids into more gender-appropriate clothing and behavior. Zucker still tells parents of unhappy boys to try more-neutral activities—say chess club instead of football. But now the thinking is that kids should lead the way. If a child persists in wanting to be the other gender, doctors may prescribe hormone "blockers" to keep puberty at bay. (Blockers have no permanent effects.) But they're also increasingly willing to take more lasting steps: Isaak Brown (who started life as Liza) began taking male hormones at 16; at 17 he had a mastectomy.
For parents like Colleen Vincente, 44, following a child's lead seems only natural. Her second child, M. (Vincente asked to use an initial to protect the child's privacy), was born female. But as soon as she could talk, she insisted on wearing boy's clothes. Though M. had plenty of dolls, she gravitated toward "the boy things" and soon wanted to shave off all her hair. "We went along with that," says Vincente. "We figured it was a phase." One day, when she was 2½, M. overheard her parents talking about her using female pronouns. "He said, 'No—I'm a him. You need to call me him'," Vincente recalls. "We were shocked." In his California preschool, M. continued to insist he was a boy and decided to change his name. Vincente and her husband, John, consulted a therapist, who confirmed their instincts to let M. guide them. Now 9, M. lives as a boy and most people have no idea he was born otherwise. "The most important thing is to realize this is who your child is," Vincente says. That's a big step for a family, but could be an even bigger one for the rest of the world.
This story was written by Debra Rosenberg, with Reporting from
Lorraine Ali, Mary Carmichael, Samantha Henig, Raina Kelley, Matthew
Philips, Julie Scelfo, Kurt Soller, Karen Springen And Lynn
Waddell.
Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18618970/site/newsweek/?GT1=9951
J.T. Hayes won over 500 regional and national championships in go-kart, midget and sprint racing and competed in NASCAR Winston Cup before undergoing sex-reassignment surgery in 1994 at age 30. During the two years she transitioned from man to woman, the Corinth, Miss., native raced throughout the South and California, wrapping an Ace bandage over her breasts to flatten them out ("Boys Don't Cry"-style), wearing baggy T shirts and tucking her long hair under a baseball cap. Now as Terri O'Connell, she's had very little luck breaking back into the racing world. O'Connell still lives in Corinth with her elderly mother and is working on a clothing line for female NASCAR fans. The petite redhead is also writing a memoir, "Dangerous Curves," (due this fall). She'd like to get back on the track and is currently looking for a sponsor.
The terms transgendered and professional motor sports just don't go together, especially when you say I'm 5 foot 6 inches and weigh 118 pounds. I have girl's body—small, fragile and tiny.
I grew up in a little community in Mississippi. There were 10 or 15 boys in the neighborhood, we played sports in the front yard, and my daddy always had men over to work on race cars in the garage. He was a race-car driver, so I had this cache of toughness. I didn't get bullied too much. But by junior high, my mom stuck me in these sports programs to make me tougher and I started getting picked on. I was looked at like a girl, so bullies in gym class used to sit on top of me and put me in headlocks. I was lugging around this whole transgender thing and I was already depressed—suicidal really. I will never forget when we registered for school in the fall of eighth grade, this girl said to me, “You know, you got prettier legs than any girl in this school.” It scared the hell out of me because I knew it, but I didn't want anybody else knowing it.
When puberty kicks in, that's when it becomes complicated. You're in a panic over it. “Oh, my God, what am I gonna do!” As a kid, I had girl clothes I hid under the mattress: I'd slip 'em on, put some makeup on. … You're depressed over it, but you're still not mature enough to know this is gonna get out of hand at some point. No matter if you’re from New York or Corinth, it's difficult to endure, but when you throw on the social atmosphere of the right-wing, bigoted, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal South—and motor sports—you build a wall around your life and don't let anybody in.
I never did feel I was in the wrong body though, because when I woke up and looked at myself, I was looking at a girl. I saw this little cute face looking back at me. I knew my body compared to my friend's bodies was different. I had a small waist and bigger hips than they had. I was just tiny and feminine. But I had this male urology. Not only was I psychologically and emotionally feeling what girls feel, I also have this girl's body with things attached to it that don't fit. That's how I knew I was transgender; not only was I feeling it, I was looking at it everyday.
Eventually, I started racing more and more, and started racing on a national level and became a national champion, so I had that cache too. But I told my story to three of my best buddies in my hometown back in the early '80s—“Oh, I'm hurting, I have to go do this thing [transition]”—and they went and told everybody in town. So really, from then on I was a scandal in my hometown. They were just looking for something. You had to watch your P’s and Q’s.
Once that rumor was out on the racing circuit, throughout my career, I was always trying to outrun it. Moving from one team to the next until the rumor caught up with me. Then once I had my surgery I walked away from the sport entirely. It was like, “OK, I'm done with this.”
What pushed me to that point was a sprint-car accident in Little Rock, Ark., in 1991. I went end over end, side over side, destroyed the race car. I was trapped upside down, engine throttle stuck wide open, fuel running all over the race track and me. Once all the smoke had cleared and they got me out of the car, I thought, “You know, this could have been it.” I've had a ton of accidents, broke half the bones in my body, had wrecks where I should have died. This one, I only busted a rib, but I was trapped like that. I suppose the accident didn't scare me as much as the thought that I hadn't lived my life to it's full potential. That just gave me chills.
I'd been toying around with this gender issue for 10 years, driving my parents crazy, driving myself crazy, outrunning the rumors. I had all these high-powered people lined up to get my career going down the road, and I wasn't happy. I knew what I wanted to do, I'd just been putting it off. That night, I made a decision. I knew it was going to take two years. It was the first time I had a plan, and I didn't care this time if anyone rejected me, if I lost my career—I had to fix my life.
I went home, told my parents [I wanted surgery], my daddy went crazy: “Oh, my God, you can't do that!” So I went and lived with some friends in California and I was living full time as a woman. I got a job working at a print shop, but ultimately, I couldn't make a living. So I got my old black book out and started dialing up some race people I knew on the West Coast. They said, “If you show up you can drive.” Here I am going through transition, so I thought, what am I gonna do? I just put my hair up under a cap, put my only pair of boy jeans on and went to the racetrack. I looked pitiful. They noticed, but they didn't say much. We were making money.
Father's Day weekend I called my daddy, told him I won a race the night before in hopes he'd say, “Oh, that's great!” But when I called him, he hung up on me. I broke down, slid down this telephone booth, onto the sidewalk and started to weep uncontrollably. People rushed outside to see what was wrong with me. Daddy took me back in because I said I was going to be J.T. again. I was racing again too. We started putting the NASCAR program together. So I went from living full time as a woman to driving as a man for a sprint-car team in Mississippi to running a NASCAR Nextel Cup race in March. That was a hell of a year.
All through my transition, my dad tolerated it. We went racing together, I lived at the house. We had even made a deal we would sell my race car to pay for the surgery. But when I finally asked for it, he reneged on me. I was suicidal after that. Then my mother told him she'd kill him if he didn't do it. He did it. I raced a Midget race in Memphis on Saturday night and was in surgery on Wednesday in Colorado. What a damn deal. It's almost difficult to believe at times. … If I had not lived this life, I would not believe it. My parents took three or four days to call me in the hospital. You know, they were small-town Mississippi people, plus I was their only child. When I got back, my dad totally shut down. It's like he went into mourning, so I moved to Charlotte, N.C., in April of 1994. It took him five months to talk to me. Ultimately, by Christmas, my dad came around. There we were, watching TV, hanging out under the Afghan on the couch. I later brought my boyfriend around, and he and my dad hung out, rummaging around in junk yards for parts.
After my surgery, I knew I had to leave Corinth and racing. My background, my education, was motor sports and mechanical engineering. I grew up working at my dad's tool-and-die business and I always hated it. I wanted to get as far away from the mechanical engineering field as soon as I could. When I moved to North Carolina, I had $25 to my name and no job. I drove to the mall in Charlotte, filled out at an application at Dillard’s and they hired me on the spot. I went from driving race cars, making a six-figure salary and signing autographs to selling purses for $8 an hour in the mall. One of the biggest things my psychiatrist and I dealt with was the ego blow after I left racing.
But I did not want to race right after surgery. I fully knew I had to heal for at least a year before I could risk having a racing accident. My head was in a good place at that time, but I did miss the action and the atmosphere. I fully felt like my professional driving career was over.
I knew I had this gift for art though, specifically motor-sports art, and my creativity was in full throttle. When I was selling handbags, I put my brain to work figuring out how to do something with my art … that's when I came up with the idea of a Disney-type store with a motor-sports theme.
I was still going to the racetrack, and dealing with a lot of people on the racing circuit because I had all these ideas for different businesses—the Disney-store thing, women's NASCAR-themed clothing … But they knew me as Terri. I just remembered my loss of anonymity back in my home town, and all that implied over the years, and it sent chills down my spine. I felt if any one in Charlotte was to find out my past, all hell would break loose.
After my story broke in the Charlotte press, NASCAR officials went nuts. In fact more than nuts. They were putting their TV contracts in place with Fox, NBC and TNT at the time and they were hell bent on killing the story. I was the last thing they wanted in their midst. But I had been living with those bubbas for four years, socializing, doing business, drinking coffee and eating donuts, and dating a few of them. I really pissed them off at the highest level. They just want me to go away. Not doing it! Some people said if you can get a sponsor you can come back and race, but they know how difficult that is. You need more than $100,000 just to get out on track. Maybe someone will sponsor us at some point. Maybe I just need to get more aggressive and do it.
I don't think the public opinion is one way or another. It's the big boys at the top, the corporations, who don't know what to do with me. For all the negativity I've had to deal with, I've also had a lot of positive reaction—from women. I was with my mom at the Daytona Beach Mall two summers ago, the day after the Fourth of July race, thinking no one would know who I was. There was a group of women who spotted me, and here they come. I said, “We need to get out of here.” But a crowd gathered, and I ended up signing autographs for 45 minutes. The love I was gettin'! The women crowded in, the men just stood back. The women see me as a woman, but the redneck bubbas wanna make an issue out of it.
I'm not gonna put a sign on my forehead, OH BY THE WAY, I USED TO BE A MAN. In a situation where you may have a date, I have to suss the person out. If they have common sense, I may tell them, if not, I'm never going to see them again so I don't say anything. I'm not sleeping with anyone at that point anyway. I kind of play it by ear. My boyfriend Ray, I told him on the second date, and he didn't care. I went out with this NASCAR team owner, he knew from the beginning, and we ended up sleeping together. He did not even blink an eye—I was just somebody he found sexually attractive. I was constantly hit on by high-ranking executives in the NASCAR world.
I would like to race again. I've been doing testing and training,
a little bit of racing locally, and I'm gonna try and do a NASCAR
truck event this June. We need about $150,000 to do it. It'll be big
if it happens.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18619862/site/newsweek
Seventeen-year-old Alexis Arquette landed her first acting role in 1986 playing a transgender in "Last Exit To Brooklyn." Eighteen years later, she went through a real transition from man to woman. Arquette, an actress, musician and cabaret drag performer, comes from a family of actors that includes siblings Patricia, David, Richmond and Rosanna Arquette, father Lewis Arquette and grandfather Cliff Arquette. She's done almost 70 films—mostly indie, some adult—but one of her most memorable roles was as the Boy George character in 1998's "The Wedding Singer." "I did play transgender characters that were comedy roles and I feel bad about that now," says Arquette, 37. "That Boy George character, it's offensive to me now." She's now starring in a forthcoming A&E documentary about her transition, "Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother," which just debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.
We Are Family: Rosanna, Alexis and Patricia
Arquette (left to right)
at the GLAAD Media Awards in Hollywood, April
2006
NEWSWEEK: Why do a documentary on something so personal?
Alexis Arquette: I decided to document my transition partly because I wanted clarification for myself, but primarily because I wanted to challenge some of things that transgender people have to go through if they want to transition with a doctor in America. A lot of it came out of my conflicts with the standards of care and the idea that we need counseling before an elective surgery. It's questioning that the sanity of people like myself, that we can't make these decisions for ourselves, and doctors or specialists can say no if they don't feel confident with who we are.
It's almost a political issue then, too?
There's no sound-bite compact enough to cover this subject. I wish it could be boxed up and passed out in pretty packages, but it can't be. It's not just that it's a multilayered subject, but it's also different for every person like me. It's hard because I'm using my fame, and exploiting it, but in a positive way to do something beneficial as opposed to catastrophic—which is what we're constantly doing to ourselves as a group. I'll say it a million times—my documentary is a vain pursuit, and I can see why a lot of people could say gays are narcissistic, but it is just as important. Until all of us can feel we can walk down the street without ridicule, none of us really will ever be safe from Hitler's Gestapo.
Even before you came out as gay or transgender, you were playing a transsexual in "Last Exit To Brooklyn,"
I was 17, in art school and in the closet. I came out after that film as a gay male. I went from people seeing the performance and saying, “Wow, this is a young Al Pacino!” to having a lot of roles dry up because I came out as gay. But luckily because I was really fervent about showing up at auditions and working, I've been in, like 70 movies. I defied them. I kept working—some gay roles, some not. I got to play a commanding officer in a movie about Navy Seals. I was the character who slept with all the women and got them pregnant.
Were you worried that your transition would kill your career?
I had no concerns. I knew immediately it would not be a burial of my career, but opportunities would be few and far between. But I'm also at a different point in my career. As a young actor, you go out, audition, struggle, that's what you do. But I've worked enough, if they want to work with me they can make an offer and call. If they want to get me in the room, jerk my chain, I'm not into that. People would say that's snooty as an actor, I don't care. Is it because I'm gay or transgendered I have to come in and do sideshow freak thing for you? Well I won't.
How did your family react to you coming out as transgender?
This is the kind of thing that was kept under the rug, even in my progressive family. It's the kind of thing you don't want to acknowledge, that people might think is ugly or it may bring ridicule. But they weren't ashamed of me, it was more like they were trying to protect me from myself, and that becomes a weird thing. They were fiercely defensive of me.
You've presented yourself in so many ways—gay man, drag queen, woman, Navy Seal— so it's literally impossible for people to label you.
I grew up at a time with androgyny in the 1980s, it was easy to pass under the radar as a gay man. Yes, I am transgendered but I also am a cross-dresser—I dress as a woman. It's not that I just want to be seen as a female in our society, I'm also a drag queen and a performer—there are many levels there. I started grappling with all the boxes one has to fit into and all the flags I was willing to wave, and I started to realize it's hard to fit into one realm and be a productive member of society. I realized I'm not the kind of person who wants to go with the flow and fit in. I'm an agitator, I'm opinionated, I'm a libertine and leader. I wasn't willing to fall in line.
Do you still identify with drag?
Yes. All cultures have drag. The forefathers of our national wore wigs and makeup while their wives sat at home in drab colors with cropped hair. Look at animals—birds. The females are brown and sitting in the nest, while the males are colorful and flouncing around. Women do not have a monopoly on femininity and men do not have a monopoly on masculinity. It's a dance some people take seriously and some don't, and it's OK both ways. I take it pretty seriously but I also see the humor in it.
How do you think Hollywood views gays and transgenders in their ranks? You think it would be more open-minded than most professions.
When I came out as gay, people would immediately say, “Oh, so you weren't really acting when you did that role?” They seemed more comfortable with heterosexuals playing transgendered and gay. They don't really want to see the real thing. I know there was a time in the '40s and '50s when white actors played blacks and Asians, but we've got to a point with the civil-rights movement when that became a minstrel show that people were offended by. It never became that way for heteros playing gays.
Why is it so important to challenge traditional gender roles?
I feel annoyed that I'm affected by the trappings of male and female in this world. I feel I'm limited. It's heavy stuff. I don't want to think my happiness depends on something that covers our flesh. The vagina and a penis are very different, but humans at our core are all very similar. Pull all the facial hair out and we're not that different.
What about self-identity?
If all of your life is riding on wearing that cowboy hat and no one ever sees your pink frillies, than how strong is your self-identity? Are you really a man just because you dress like one? What are real men and real women? How about real people. Do men have to kill and women have to heal? I think everyone knows we’re all capable of the same.
Your life is, and always has been, very public. What was it like struggling with your gender in the limelight?
Do I wish I lived in a world where I could just take a deep breath and exist like others and pass under the radar? Yes, but I was as a gay male doing that. People on the street just saw me as male, and it was a safe place to be, the closet. But I came to a point where I'd rather be harangued daily, all day long, and allowed to be myself. Or feel free to be this one day and that the other, and not worry about it. This is a fight, it's a struggle. But it's somebody else's fight. The people who have a problem with it—it's their fight.
When your documentary is released in theaters, that's yet another big public moment, and it deals very directly with you sexuality.
I'm a transgendered female who started as a male, I'm now female, you know all those things, so why do we need to go further than that? They don't need to know about my genitalia because it becomes sexual then—it's not about gender. Unless I'm getting ready to sleep with someone—we're falling in love, we're dating—we can talk. But you see me as female if I still have one part that's male, or I've gone through the complete surgery. Sure I may be limiting the kind of heterosexual men that I'm dating, but it's a personal, private thing. There are a lot of people who are attracted to people like myself because they like boobs and a penis, and let's just be honest about that. They like she-males.
When someone says the word transgender, most people think: man trapped in a woman's body, or vice versa. Do you agree?
I'm not correcting a mistake. I don't feel I was born female. I
was born transgender for a reason, so I can transition. You can talk
about butterflies, human evolution, any species trying to spread it's
wings and find new ways to survive. Who knows, are transgender people
an indication that we as a race are starting to realize that there's
something wrong on the earth and they we need to find other options?
Men have to realize they have nipples because they started out as the
prototype—female. I'm just returning to the fold.
Source: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18615747/site/newsweek/
Job Seeker Who Changed Her Gender Goes to
Court
A transsexual
is 'Woman of the Year' in Argentina
Argentina´s Congress annual prize to the 'Distinguished Woman of 2009' unleashed a wave of controversy this year as the recipient of this national award was a transsexual, who recently prevailed in a 10-year-long court battle to receive a new identity document recognizing her as a woman.
Marcela Romero is 45 years old, and had gender reassignment surgery years ago. She is one among hundreds of cases in Argentina striving to have their new gender identity legally recognized, according to the queer.org organization in Argentina.
A decade in waiting
"I am what I am. The right of one person is the right of all," said Marcela Romero during an event last Tuesday in the Argentine Congress. Her award suggests that "no other person would have to wait 10 years or more in order to receive a national identity document with their name and gender identity".
Ms. Romero is a known activist, fighting for the abolition of various civil codes across many provinces of Argentina, where being a transvestite is considered a criminal activity. Romero, who is vice president of Argentina's Association of Transvestites, Transsexuals and Transgender People, was chosen from among a dozen nominees for the award, including women active in combating poverty, drugs and environmental degradation. After the announcement, news services reported that some in the audience walked out.
"I don't know democracy ... I would have liked, for example, to go on studying, but I was rejected by the educational system when I assumed the identity of a woman", she told Todo Noticias, a local news channel.
A decade in waiting
It wasn't until August 2009 that Romero could finally stop responding to her male name every time she would visit a public office. Her new identity card shows her with long blond hair and red lips.
She told the BBC that the approval of a new law would open doors to start working together with the government to decrease the violence in her country. "We know that women are victims of a very patriarchal violence, and transsexuals are included in this group".
The process to find her new identity started 11 years ago, she told the BBC. She met with psychologists, psychiatrists and experts that told her "terrible things". "One had the idea that I could never become a woman because I could never have children, and I think it's horrifying that somebody representing the State could have that idea of what it means to be a woman".
Raising a child
Before requesting her identity change, Romero had adopted an 18 months-old infant, who she has successfully raised to age 21 today. During those years of trying to raise a child as she went though the gender reassignment and fighting for her identity documents, she had to "assume many roles in which I also experienced many forms of violence".
Marcela rejects the stereotype that transvestites are all prostitutes, saying that if the laws didn't allow transsexuals to advance in society and didn't allow for options for gainful employment or advanced education, their only option would be to do that for a living. "Society needs to understand that in order to turn that back, we need to be able to enjoy all the rights the State provides."
Gay marriage
In a separate issue of gender politics in early December a judge blocked implementation of legal same-sex union in Argentina, and Latin America, sending the case to the Supreme Court. If repealed and instituted by the Supreme Court, Argentina's law would be the first of its kind in Latin America.
Alex Freyre and José María Di Bello planned their wedding after Judge Gabriela Seijas ruled November, 16 in a case the couple filed, that under Argentina's that it is unconstitutional not to treat everyone equally under the law.
But after much media publicity a National judge and outcry from opponents, a national judge, Marta Gomez Alsina ordered the wedding blocked until the issue can be considered by the Supreme Court.
In 2002, Buenos Aires became the first city in Latin America to allow same-sex civil unions.
Argentina's national legislature opened debate on a bill that would change a civil code provision defining a new marriage law that would mean that gay couples could enjoy all the rights of a married couple including the right to adopt children, inherit wealth or share a health care plan.
"Our families need to have these rights, especially people like us who live with HIV and need a shared health care plan," Freyre said.
Same sex unions in Latin America
According to the site Pinkpaper.com same sex unions are permitted already not only in Buenos Aires but also Argentinian cities and the province of Rio Negro. In Latin America, similar laws are in force in Uruguay, Mexico City, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, and the Mexican state of Coahuila, which borders Texas.
In the United States, same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium,
Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the
U.S. states of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont and,
starting in January, New Hampshire.
Source: noticias.aol.com/articulos/latino-news/_a/transsexual-argentina/20091208100609990001
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