Darkside Rainbow

As many of you know, yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, honoring the memories of transpeople killed because of their gender identity and violence against transpeople in general. I suppose it might seem a little trite when transfolk were conveniently left behind during the vote on ENDA, but it’s still important to show respect for transpeople nonetheless; a little extra recognition on one day can’t erase the prejudice they put up with year-round, but it can help to ease the sting just a little. I have several trans friends, and they held their own little TDR party to share their war stories of transition, their triumphs, and the overall experience with their friends, both gay and straight. (I ended up carrying one of them home drunk last night, poor guy).

I find it interesting, then, that this story cropped up in the news yesterday, right on the day of remembrance:

Losers: Transgender Candidate A Fraud - 365gay.com

(Riverdale, Georgia) Two people who lost to a transgender candidate for a seat on the Riverdale council claim Michelle Bruce committed election fraud by claiming “to be female.”

Bruce, who has never hidden that she is transgender was the incumbent in the Nov. 6 election for the Riverdale, Georgia City Council. She was the top vote-getter and advances to a runoff election next month.

But failed candidates Georgia Fuller and Stanley Harris have asked a judge to disqualify Bruce from the runoff.

[...]In their petition to the court Fuller and Harris refer to Bruce as “Michael Bruce” and ask the court to nullify the Nov. 6 results. [...] The paper reported that Bruce’s voter registration, her notice of candidacy and her driver’s license all identify her as Michelle Bruce, a white female.

She declined to say if she had had sex reassignment surgery.

“That’s private,” she told the paper. “The people don’t care about it.”

Now…correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s only fraud if there’s deliberate deception involved, and deliberate intent to defraud someone by gaining from their loss. The loss vs. gain argument doesn’t even work here because in an election, there’ll always be one winner and one or more losers, so of course the winner will gain from their loss. Michelle Bruce didn’t deceive anyone; not only is she legally recognized as female, but she was even open with voters about the fact that she’s transgendered.

I don’t see fraud here. I see two bitter losers latching on to something they think they can use to turn the tide in their favor. I also see a great deal of disrespect for Michelle and her transition, by referring to her as “Michael”. It rather reminds me of someone at my friend Karl’s job, who insists on referring to him as “Kelly” and who will be as nasty as possible about it. Fuller and Harris lost to the better - or at least the most popular - candidate, and lost fairly. They should just accept that gracefully, rather than launching an attack because they think Michelle Bruce somehow deceived voters.

Granted, the issue of deception can be a tricky one where transgenders are concerned, because much of the general public doesn’t understand the concept of gender identity and its differences from sexual identity. They view crossdressing as a sexual fetish that often has to do with being gay, when that’s hardly the case. I recall that not too long ago a transwoman who’d been living happily with her husband for many years was arrested because her neighbors found out she was trans, and called the police to have her arrested for attempting to deceive and defraud the community. To members of the GBLTQ community who accept transpeople and understand exactly why they need to act on their gender identity to live in a way that’s most comfortable for them, the entire notion of deception and fraud seems utterly ridiculous.

To the general public, who will go on complete mental lockdown if you ask them to try to reconcile a gender identity the total opposite of one’s anatomy, it’s not so ridiculous at all.

They don’t even mean to be malicious. Another friend of mine, Charles, deals with this on a regular basis at work. He’s pre-op, FtM, taking hormones. He looks very masculine, grows a beard, everything. Underneath his clothing, though, he wears a binder to flatten his breasts. He still has female anatomy, but to anyone who knows him, he’s very much a man. When he was first hired, the HR manager was made aware of the situation and she did her best to understand, and even if she didn’t she was at least very nice about making sure that no one else knew anything about it and he was hired on as Charles, not as Cheryl. One day he was outed in the employee bathroom, though…and once everyone knew he had female anatomy, they immediately began referring to him as “she” and “her”.

And they weren’t even trying to be mean. That’s just the way they’re conditioned; female anatomy means female, male anatomy means male, and anything else is just all in your head and should be dismissed. It’s almost a battle of generations, as current and upcoming generations tend to understand gender identity far more than their elders. We understand why it’s a matter of respect to accept transgendered people as their chosen identity rather than by their anatomy, because they couldn’t help the anatomy they were born with and in many cases either can’t afford to change it or, in the case of many FtMs, have less than desirable surgical options available and thus choose to make do with what they have. A lot of people don’t see that. They just say that you can’t possibly call yourself a woman or a man when you have the anatomy of the opposite sex.

Still, sometimes people can be educated into understanding. Many transpeople have had success educating their parents, so all hope isn’t lost. Even people like Fuller and Harris can be educated, if they’ll just listen and try to understand. It just takes time, patience, and a little understanding of your own.

And cases like these remind me of just why it’s so important that those of us who do understand show respect to our trans friends, so they know that there are those who do support them and appreciate them, and will help to hold them up while they deal with those who can’t.

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