Transgender Day of Rememberance

On November 28, 1998, Rita Hester was murdered in her home just outside of Boston. She was stabbed multiple times, likely by someone she knew. Her murder was horrible and affected an entire community of people who knew and loved her.

Murders happen all the time and, all the time, they affect friends and family members. The thing that sets Rita's murder apart from some is that she was a transsexual woman, someone whose identity, life, and mental health were all called into question after she was murdered. Rita's life was made invisible so that a tabloid-style news story could take its place.

This happens every day. People whose gender or sex presentation doesn't fall within acceptable social boundaries and those who are perceived as non-normative are regularly in danger. They may experience interpersonal violence, verbal violence, stalking, threats, snide comments, questions of the validity of their identity, and a range of treatment from strangers from confusion to rage.

This doesn't mean that it's a horrible life to be a transgender person - many life happy lives with friends, partners, gainful employment, and families. It does, however, mean that every person whose life dares to cross boundaries may be in danger.

If they are hurt in some way, their legal challenges generally go unanswered, their murders go unsolved, and their voices go unheard.

Today is the 12th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to remember those that were killed as a result of anti-transgender hatred and is held in November to remember Rita Hester.

This year, we remember Brenda of Rome, Italy; Wanchai Tongwijit of Phuket City, Thailand; Mariah Malina Qualls of San Francisco, California; Estrella (Jose Angel) Venegas of Mexicali, Mexico; Wong of Bernama, Malaysia; Myra Chanel Ical and Gypsy of Houston, Texas; Derya Y. of Antalya, Turkey; Fevzi Yener of Şehremin, Istanbul; Dino Curi Huansi of Parma, Italy; Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar of Queens, New York; Toni Alston of Charlotte, North Carolina; Ashley Santiago Ocasio of Corozal, Puerto Rico; Azra of Izmir, Turkey; Chanel (Dana A. Larkin) of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Angie González Oquendo of Caguas, Puerto Rico; Sandy Woulard of Chicago, Illinois; Imperia Gamaniel Parson of San Pedro Sula, Honduras; Victoria Carmen White of Maplewood, New Jersey; Justo Luis González García of Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico; Irem of Bursa, Turkey; Stacey Lee of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Emanuelly Colaço Taborda of Parana, Brazi;, an unidentified trans woman in Jakarta, Indonesia; an unidentified trans woman in Chihuahua, Mexico; an unidentified trans woman in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic; an unidentified victim in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico; two unidentified victims in Sheikhupura, Pakistan; and all the other trans women and men around the world who lost their lives to transphobia this year, whose faces we never saw, names we never knew, and voices we never heard because they were living in societies that did not value them as people.

Fear and hatred of trans people is not limited to violent action - often, in many ways, it is characterized by inaction. Because there are no federal employment protections for trans people and precious few state protections, they are more likely to be under- or un-employed and have a lack of access to health insurance. They have trouble finding doctors that will treat them with respect for their identity and presentation. They are at a higher risk, because of these factors, for later discovery of cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. Robert Eads is one of the transsexual men who payed the price for our social and medical apathy - he died as a result of ovarian cancer after being refused treatment by two dozen doctors who refused out of fear that treating a transsexual man for ovarian cancer would damage their reputations.

Take a minute and think about that. Think about how many people find out they have ovarian cancer in a year. Now imagine any of those who are cisgendered or cissexual (1) women being refused treatment by two dozen doctors. Can't imagine it? It's because it doesn't happen, not to those of us whose gender or sexual identities match those expected by society. It doesn't happen to me because my ovaries are matched with a beardless face, a higher-octave voice, and presentation "appropriate" for females in my society.

And yet, Robert Eads died because he didn't have the privileges afforded to me.

Apathy, inaction, "jokes," hateful statements, and fists all can kill. Today is the day that we remember, but every day should be the day that we act to address and stop the fear and hatred of transgender people.


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Note
(1) Cisgender or cissexual refers to a class of gender or sex identities formed by a match between an individual's gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one's sex. Cisgender is a neologism that means "someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth", according to Calpernia Addams.

It Gets Better ... IF

In the wake of the It Gets Better Project, a project that I participated in, there has been a groundswell of people telling LGBTQ kids that It Gets Better. Politicians such as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Barak Obama have made videos. Public figures such as Cindy McCain and Laura Bush have weighed in. The NoH8 campaign, employees at Facebook and Google, celebrities, and everyday normal people like me have made videos. And over and over again, we tell kids that it gets better - that bullying ends, that many birth families will love you, that you will find a chosen family, that you can be happy.

And I think that matters. But I also think that it matters to acknowledge that those things don't happen automatically.

Conservative estimates suggest that between 20 and 40% of homeless teenagers are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. In my time at the Local Youth Homeless Shelter, I saw a higher percentage than that. Queer kids' families are not always going to accept them. It's a shitty truth, but it's a truth. Queer kids' classmates and teachers will not always protect them. They will not always be able to attend dances with their partner of choice or have their photos in yearbooks wearing their clothing of choice.

They won't all graduate college and fall in love.

We can't promise them any of that. We want it for them. I got all of that and I am incredibly grateful and lucky and I KNOW that.

But I think that it's disingenuous for us to be promising a better world to queer youth without doing something to help make that world better. Whether that means that we participate in mentoring programs, become foster parents, volunteer at queer youth centers (or any youth centers - queer kids are everywhere), donate food or money, give time or money to suicide prevention hotlines like The Trevor Project, or give time to the agencies that serve homeless youth - we should all be doing something. I should be doing more and I damn well know it.

We don't have to stop telling queer kids that it gets better - I sincerely hope that it does for every one of them. But I do think that we need to do whatever we can to make it more likely that "better" actually happens for any of them.

SUNDAY SAVORIES: Chickpea mushroom curry and samosas

Yeah, remember when I thought I would post one of these every week? HAH! However, this was a good night's cooking.

So, some friends have an annual party called "Around the World." They supply the place, the drinks, and punchcards - going "around the world" is drinking drinks with different alcohol bases. Sounds kinda like a grownup frat party - but then there's the FOOD. For entry to Around the World, you have to bring a non-American dish to share. Every year (for me), the food is the most memorable part.

This year, I went with Indian. I LOVE vegetable samosa, but hate how expensive they are in Spokane (in Manchester on Curry Mile, I could get them for next to nothing). Now I know why they're expensive: they take FOREVER.

I adjusted about 4 different samosa recipes and just gave it a shot. And! They turned out. When I realized that the dough I had made would only make 12 samosa (and there are a LOT of people at Around the World), I also threw together this curry.

Vegetable Samosa

Ingredients
Filling
2 large baking potatoes
1 package of frozen peas and carrots
1.5 tsp coriander
1 tsp garam masala powder
1.5 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
salt to taste

Dough
1 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat - next time, I might try chickpea flour)
1 container of plain yogurt (about 6 Tbs - I used Greek yogurt)
1/2 tsp salt
a little water

Finishing
1 egg, beaten

Directions
Peel the potatoes and either bake or boil until tender enough to mash.

While the potatos are boiling, mix the pastry dough. Mix the flour and salt and then integrate the yogurt - this is messy and inexact, but you want an elastic dough that is neither sticky nor too dry. Don't worry if it's not working at first, because this dough doesn't need to rise, you're going to knead for 5 to 10 minutes, which is about how long it took me to get it to the right texture.

When the potatoes are done, mash them, leaving some chunks of potato. After they're mashed, integrate in the spices and the peas and carrots (defrosted by now, hopefully). This is best done with your hands, so just let the potatoes cool a bit.

Combining!
Pull a piece of dough a little larger than a golf ball from the lump. Roll it in your hands to get an even ball shape. Flatten it with your palm and lay it on a floured surface. Roll it out until it is roughly square or circular, then put a little less than a teaspoon's worth of the stuffing in the center. Take your eggwash and put it around the edges of the dough. You're going to seal these to one another by making a kind of tri-fold hat shape. Or whatever! The shape doesn't really matter.

Baking
Put a piece of parchment or tinfoil in the bottom of your baking pan. Put the samosas in, leaving room between each one. Put into a pre-heated 350 degree F oven for 20-25 minutes.

I'll post the curry recipe later!

It Gets Better

In the last month, five youth's suicides because of bullying have been heavily publicized by the media: 15 year old Justin Aaberg, 15 year old Billy Lucas, 19 year old Raymond Chase, 13 year old Asher Brown, and 19 year old Tyler Clementi.

Four young people whose deaths are likely directly related to bullying due to their real or perceived sexual orientation. And how many more are there? We know that LGBT youth are at a disproportionate risk for suicide, homelessness, and risky behavior. We know, but what does the LGBT community do?

One thing we do is support organizations like Odyssey Youth Center in my hometown and support the Odyssey Masquerade, a fundraiser to ensure that LGBT youth have a safe, supportive place to go and food to eat.

Another thing we can do is let them know that things get better. When I saw that Dan Savage was spearheading a campaign for LGBT teens called "It Gets Better," I thought that maybe I could put aside my antipathy for his fat-shaming, woman-hating bullshit that comes out every once in a while. And I did.

You're not outraged by this?

On the internet and in-person, I been talking around Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC yesterday. It seems like everyone is talking about it. And, although I consider myself a person with a diverse social group, I do have to admit that I do not have a social group wherein I'm finding many people who support the theory of the rally or the rhetoric that surrounds it.

In my extended family, I absolutely do have people who probably support this rally. I know that my partner's uncle believes that Glenn Was Right (except for the fact that the rally wasn't Christian enough). So it's not like I don't have the opportunity.

The thing that has struck me about many of these conversations is that people expect me to be outraged. They expect that I will have a litany of condemnation for this rally, for the rhetoric espoused, and the impacts these kinds of events could have.

And, certainly, I have a certain amount of sadness. I would be remiss in my position as a human being, let alone an educator, to not comment on the horribly racist and classist displays of rage that were applauded in DC this weekend. I would be giving in if I didn't note that rallies such as these were thinly-veiled excuses for lancing of hateful boils that will poison our society.

And then people ask if I'm outraged and all I can think of is this (problematic) response by The West Wing's CJ Cregg.

Am I outraged? I'm barely surprised.

This is coming from a man who is a stand up comedian who has explicitly stated in interviews in the NY Times that he's "not a journalist" and is "just a radio clown." This is coming from a man who has tried to translate his fake punditry to being a legitimate leader of the American Right. This is a man who has condemned families of victims of 9/11, insists on saying that President Obama has a "deepseeded hatred for white people," and who regularly wallows in conspiracy theories. This is a man who the far-right politicians and pundits condemn as racist and dangerous.

This is a man who makes money off of our attention, who preaches hatred as a standard to bear. This is a man who draws scarily-large popular following of people who don't appear to know that schools can no longer require children to say the Pledge of Allegiance because of the late insertion of the term "Under God" to catch Communists in the 1950s, who insist on believing that President Obama was foreign-born (which he tangibly is not) and that he is a Muslim (a faith he has never claimed). Because Glenn Beck does most effectively what we, as a culture, respond to - he trades on fear and ignorance.

On October 28, 2010, Glenn Beck brought together a rally where white, middle-class, conservative people were given a platform to vent their rage at a world that largely benefits them. He attempted to coopt the American Civil Rights movement and claim a "return" to a kind of values that never existed while riling up xenophobic and racist anger against others.

Am I outraged? No, bloggers. That is Glenn Beck, and we give him the power to do exactly what he does.

We watch his television shows, we listen to his radio, we buy his fear-mongering. We respond to what Glenn Beck does in a way that makes it effective. And it keeps happening.

Until that changes, I don't have the energy to be outraged. Just sad.

Black Happy at the Knitting Factory

There's something about a local or regional band, one that was at least as good, if not better than, the stuff that was on the radio at the time. For a lot of people around my age who grew up in the Northwest, one of those bands was Black Happy.

Black Happy is a band that is frequently mis-categorized, which is very likely a part of the reason they never hit outside of this region. They're a kind of rock/metal band backed with horns. So ... are they ska? Nope. Punk? Not really. Skunk (again, a term that only existed for a very specific time period)? Nope.

They're just Black Happy, this goofy little band from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho who most people couldn't help put love once they actually heard them.

Because of a Facebook fanpage titled "Black Happy should reunite," the 8 original members came together this month for a five-show reunion tour through Seattle, Portland, and Spokane. Yes, apparently, change can come from the internet. And, thus, the mini-reunion tour begins.

I had the opportunity to catch the last show of their tour last night at The Knitting Factory in Spokane, WA (a venue that I do NOT love). I haven't attended a show since I broke my leg last summer and I wasn't certain I could handle the front of the show - I'm still pretty brittle and re-breaking my leg was not the way I wanted to enjoy the show. I did, however, and I'm really glad I did.

I didn't get into Black Happy while they were still together - 1992-1995, I was still in Kalispell, MT. I had heard of them and, I think, I'd listened to Friendly Dog Salad at one point, probably in my friends Nate and Cody's apartment (do you remember your first friends to get their own place? That was Nate and Cody). My musical taste was all over the map in the mid-90s - Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, TONS of ska, Nine Inch Nails, Leonard Cohen, Bad Religion, The Ramones - and I'm actually not sure that I would have appreciated Black Happy as much then as I did later.

I really got into Black Happy a few years after their breakup - 1997 or so - after I'd moved to this area. One of the things that I found most intriguing was the way people talked about this band, like they were their friends, their family, THEIR band. And, in a lot of ways, that's what you're allowed to be when you're a small-town band that is dearly loved in your region but unheard of outside of it.

For a short period of time, Black Happy was our band. And, for a few days this month, they were again. The show was fast, it was high-energy, and it was exactly what I'd always imagined seeing them live would be like.

Sure, we were all a little older. Sure, the punks in the crowd were, like me, mostly normal-hair colored and had dug our old chucks out of the pile of work shoes and running shoes for the gym. But there was no shame in being an aged punk - we were all in it together.

And it was fun as hell.

If you've ever wondered if you should go to see your old favorites, worried that it might be ruined? Take a chance. It was worth it this time.

How to Be Alone (a poem)

How to be alone, a poem

This is truly one of the most beautiful poems I've heard and the video is gorgeous, as well.

you'll find that its fine to be alone
once you're accepting it