California Department of Education Lies, Does Not Investigate LGBTQ Bullying

Posted on December 8, 2014 by charissagrace

I cannot even begin to speak of how I feel after reading this. Thank yous to Lori for finding her voice to write about what I felt frozen by.

If you read this, and then go on business as usual, you need to realize: there may be someone in your circle of influence who is either bullying or bullied.

Your involvement could make all the difference.

We feel the tragic nature of these sorts of things because someone unique, utterly precious and beyond priceless has been snuffed out. But the same principle holds the other way: you…you yourself are unique, and have a power and a voice that impacts the universe.

But only if you use it. If you don’t, well we all know the black tide that seeks to erode everything and pull it into itself and its seething mass of hurt and horror.

Raising My Rainbow

Ronin Shimizu

Like my son, Ronin Shimizu was a young boy living in California. He was a cheerleader, like my son hopes to be one day. Ronin is described as positive and happy, like my son is often described. He endured bullying because he liked something that some people is “only for girls.” Sadly, my son knows exactly how that feels.

Last week, 12-year-old Ronin decided to end the bullying by ending his life.

I worry every day that my son will have this too in common with Ronin. Because the group of kids like Ronin and my son have the highest rate of suicide attempts in the world.

The articles about Ronin’s death report that in the years leading up to his suicide, Ronin’s parents made multiple complaints to his school about the homophobic and gender-based bullying their son was experiencing. The school’s response was inadequate and the bullying…

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Worthless…on Transgender Remembrance Day

Posted on November 20, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, here is the sad truth: if I was murdered for being trans, I would be blamed, othered, misgendered in my death, and then forgotten as a sad cautionary tale of someone who went cray-cray…and once again the epidemic of hateful absolutely vile demonic murder would continue unchecked by my death any more than the tsunamis are checked by lil old seawalls along the oceanfront.

It is not a joke. It is not just me being shrill.

It is pure unadulterated evil. Killing someone because they do not conform to societal norms.

The post below is my contribution to Transgender Remembrance Day…the blunt and brutal fact that I am worth about as much to towns, communities and society as the dog crap in the street that needs to be cleaned up and disposed of with laws discussed to control the dogs.

Keep on fiddling, Nero…keep on fiddling. You are sawing your own neck in two.

Excerpted from a larger article:

Remembering Us When We’re Gone, Ignoring Us While We’re Here: Trans Women Deserve More

Posted by Morgan Collado on November 18, 2014 at 7:00am PST

There’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve witnessed over the past few years. The names of trans women of color will be in the mouths of the queer community after they’ve been murdered, but support for us while we are still alive is sporadic at best. Trans women are pushed out of queer spaces by cis people, dfab genderqueers, and trans men, just to name a few. Women’s spaces are frequently hostile to us because we aren’t “real women” but trans men almost always get a free pass. And I’ve seen more than one cis queer say that trans women are “appropriating” the gay rights movement, totally ignorant of the fact that we started the damn thing. I have seen more than one cis queer say that we have nothing in common with them, that our issues are completely unrelated. We have a hard time finding dates, finding support, finding community. And when we dare to call people out for their transmisogyny, we are labeled crazy, hysterical, divisive. I have been called Austin “queer scene’s” number one enemy. All for daring to share my thoughts on the world around me.

image via http://www.gazettenet.com

Trans Day of Remembrance is filled to the brim with the names of murdered Black and brown trans women, but is a single evening of remembering enough? And what does it mean that TDoR doesn’t explicitly talk about race and is often dominated by white people? Here in Austin there’s this tradition of calling the names of the dead and then having an audience member sit in a chair that represents where the dead trans woman would sit. The seats are always filled with white people and non-trans women. What do our deaths mean when our bodies, our lives, the physical space we take up, is appropriated by white folks? How can I mourn for my sisters when the space set up for that mourning is so thoroughly colonized? And how can I even see hope of living a full life when I don’t see myself reflected in what is supposed to be my community?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to honor those women who came before us, those women murdered by colonial patriarchy. But it seems like more often than not, the queer community at large is content with just remembering. We only hear about trans women after their deaths. And even our deaths are not our own. A week doesn’t go by without a white queer citing the deaths of trans women of color as the evidence of how oppressed they are. These stats are often used in service of their own assimilation; meanwhile, they’re happy to leave us out in the cold. We don’t even have dignity in death, nor the ability to decide what it will mean for us.

via http://giveout.razoo.com

Support for trans women dwindles when we are still alive. Nowhere is this clearer than in fundraisers run by and for trans women. There have been some success stories, but they always seem to be few and far between. More often than not, a trans woman’s fundraiser will get a few signal boosts, maybe a couple of dollars and then languish. Meanwhile, trans men’s fundraisers for transition related care often get fully funded. This funding disparity is also clear institutionally, where organizations that focus on the concerns and issues of trans women of color get a miniscule amount of all the money from LGBTQ foundations. This is especially true in the South, where LGBT organizations only get 3-4% of domestic LGBT funding. Again, cis, white, rich institutions are quick to use our murders in their statistics then turn around and spend their money on organizations that look like them: cis, white, and rich. Organizations that push for assimilation.

Via americanprogress.org

Obviously financial support isn’t the be all end all action to support trans women of color, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. And the fact that it’s a struggle for trans women to acquire financial assistance is symptomatic of our society’s priorities. It points to who is valuable and who is disposable. At the bottom of this article is a list of fundraisers and organizations for trans women that I would strongly encourage you to support. If you’re not a trans woman and you’re reading this, think long and hard about the ways that you’re supporting trans women in your community. Do you see trans women in public community spaces? How are your actions pushing them out? Don’t think that just giving money nullifies your collusion in transmisogyny. Financial support is important but it is not the only step. As we honor the memory of those girls who have been murdered, ask how you’re helping the living.

Bleeding Light and Memory: On Transgender Remembrance Day

Posted on November 20, 2014 by charissagrace

Here is my first poem written regarding this thing called Transgender Remembrance Day. I wrote it last year on this day. It is located here:

Bleeding Light and Memory (Without Images for Structure)

I present it to you again today…and it has grown, shrunk, matured and gained its presence a bit.

In other words I edited it.
Please…read it and let the reality of it hit your heart with the tattoo needle and not the jester’s feather. Please be changed…how can we live if you won’t unbend, unfold and become? I am right there with you Constance, wings straining for every weft of breeze, sails hoisted and praying for that puff divine and transformative…

Love, Charissa

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)

When light struck my soul I blazed fierce and exultant!
Into awareness, I bled joy so radiant just like the horizon
bleeds sunlight at dawn. I gazed in the gawky glass of exultation
(and I in my youth seeing darkly thru that glass)
I knew myself and was gaudiloquent and I was so glad and full,
I was so wonder-full.Til it rained, titters fell tinkling down on heart-tin, then rebukes raging,
lashing at my roof and thrumming and drumming til I saw no more thru that
bright young glass darkly, but dull thru a lonely storm dimly and starkly
and everything eerie and glowing in green, and radioactive remarks so redactive
and careless cerulean comment, alas! I came to know what I was
and was not and I melted misshapen and crippled.

Then came the days long and same and repetitive,
passing by people of 2 kinds that easily pass, they belong
but they never see beyond, they never see inside the rose.
So I plucked throbbing buds, thorn blood price cheap and held them out
from my side of that dark glass wet with stormy tears, washy with rivers
of arrogant vain assumed presence attributing value and worth.
Life ground me down as it moved without mercy, a glacier inexorable
grinding in glances so cold and so frozen, that flow moving over
the dark silent boulders of being…I saw bones strewn round me
like gruesome pick-up sticks, cast-offs from careless hands,
players who tired of children’s games, children’s cruel nicknames,
grown weary they tore out their hearts with bare hands mad with grief
but the world grinding by didn’t care. tumblr_mv21x4W9Lk1rk1cbbo1_1280 Until at last long from those dizzy heights brilliant awareness burst over me,
bleeding in fullness and in terror tinklings, thrumming and cold and that
startling certain blue clarity…I finally remembered who I am, and know
finally what I am, that I am, and my long lament “alas” nevermore uttered!
For I am become me…at last, me…a lass.

That’s me in a nutshell, my story and journey transgender…but what about you?
Will you take time to think and remember? Will you find mercy today?
Will you find the care? Will you go gently with us into our long night,
will you rage, rage with us gentle and bless now the living of the light
that’s straining to dawn bright and final in blazing clear beauty?
You too are dual natured, corrupt and dying and incorrupt rising!
We share one grim struggle, together the dead and together alive
in one deadly bold dual to live. You….are US. and we are you…
but you without arms, without eyes, without mouths
we scream loud and cry for release! We cry out
for the midwives of mercy to meet us and make us
so beautiful for situation at last and delivered of our awful charge.

OPEN YOUR EYES AND EARS FOR US. tumblr_mv2wk5jIW71spa6l5o1_500 See us…and hear us…don’t fear us, don’t fear to see yourself,
come stare down your own stormy floods, sit and listen!
Don’t be afraid to hear us, we’re the voice of the echoes you hear
in your own fearful nightmares of being, oh Daughters of Pharaoh!
Reach down and lift us up out of the reeds and mud! Because of you
a whole nation was freed, and we too are Eve’s sons and the daughters of Adam,
but trapped and acutely aware we are helpless! Too often we’ve fallen
to dread hands and dead eyes of no grace and no mercy
and no compassionate symmetry!

Today…here…
Light strikes in blacksmith blows,
soul sparks chip off and away on this day…
I intention…remember
my own radiant flood
bleeding light and day’s promise,
remember the resonant thunder,
remember the frowning floods
the gushing gouts
and the othering stares
and the brutal don’t cares
of long years I walked
in the country of lost men
and longing despair…

I remember the pangs and the waves and the lurching
of labor as I, pregnant with my own measureless mystery
and full of such knowing began to emerge and break forth
deep-touched forever warded by Grace, and kept safe
from that pit which has tripped far too many and eaten them,
chewed them like Goya’s devourer,
Zeus eating every last child in his madness and horror…
incarnate in this patriarchy that rounds us up
into its abattoir death camps like cattle
and herds us into chutes and charnal house horrors
of slaughter and blood-spattered baptism.(let their fate haunt you
and give you holy hush
and give you sacred silence).

Dare. Look. Feel.
I will too, and somewhere
we will fight off those demons
compelling and fell
that haunt us and cause us
to rave and destroy…
Then we shall be set free to fly again
all together in one flock of birds
of all feathers and all calls
become One Glad Song!
We will dare to fly off
to the sun and beyond
where our song will bleed joy
and rain down on the earth
to bring healing and hope
home in Love…

forever…
together…
we’ll
Bleed
Radiant
Light.

To The PTA Moms at My Son’s School

Posted on November 16, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, you have heard me speak of Lori Duron before, seen my reblogs of a few of her posts…well, I am back reblogging (again)! I just had to!

Why? Because she basically wrote the model post for how to refute your haters/detractors/opponents/ignorant people very free with feedback/etc. Written with intensity and self control, scintillating and uncompromising without resulting to the tactics of fear or manipulation or ad hominem attack, she shows us all how to defend without defaming. I was honored as I read it.

Let’s all learn from Lori, and then take our courage in hand and refuse to let haters and ignorance-imbibers rule the day.

Charissa

Raising My Rainbow

Last week I published a blog post about things said during a PTA meeting I attended at my youngest son’s school. I wanted to shine a light on the homophobic, transphobic, insensitive, hateful and hurtful things that some moms said during the meeting and show that as far as we have come in LGBTQ acceptance and equality, there is still much work to be done. And sometimes that work needs to be done in heavy doses at places much closer to home than we’d like.

Almost immediately, PTA moms from our school started commenting, messaging and reacting viscerally on social media.

As they did, I stared at the PTA tagline: Every child, One voice. I’m not convinced that our PTA as a whole cares about every child and some of the voices I heard that night are not voices I want speaking on behalf of my child. That being said…

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The Courageous Debi Jackson

Posted on November 8, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I am posting here a speech given by Debi Jackson…it speaks for itself very well. Debi is a woman who loves God, loves people, and has a transgender daughter whom she is championing in a way that I am totally certain makes Mama proud.

Please check it out and let your heart be encouraged that hate can never ever conquer.

Debi…from me my deepest thank you’s and admirations for making a way for your child.

If only…if only…

Love, Charissa

Debi Jackson PFLAG Speech

10 questions to never ask a transgender person by Laura Jane Grace

Posted on November 2, 2014 by charissagrace

I found this online, Constance. It is not mine:

Going Beyond the Western Gender Binary

Posted on October 30, 2014 by charissagrace

Hi Constance: This came across the transom today, and I found it fascinating! Clearly, the phenomenon of gender variations has been extant as long as gender. I am quite interested in reading of how this has been lived out socially in other times and places, cultures and spaced.

I hope you find it enlightening as well.

Charissa

thepeoplesrecord:

Going beyond the Western gender binary – unlearning our backward cultural conditioning

In Western colonial society (which dominates many aspects of the globalized, capitalist world today) we operate under the presumption that there are only two genders, male and female. But gender is a social construction. One’s options for what gender they identify with are shaped by the culture they are born into. Biological factors are most-often the primary driving forces that choose among the available socially-constructed gender categories.

Cultures around the world have different ways of talking about, thinking about, and identifying gender. It’s often a challenge for (particularly cis-sexual) Westerns to think about other ways gender can be socially constructed. Westerns have the false equivalency of gender and sex drilled into their eternal psyche from the time they are very young, and re-enforced through examples in popular culture. There is no biological reality to gender. Many Westerners have the bizarre belief that one’s XY-sex-determination should also inform one’s gender identity, a socially constructed role in society.

In some cultures, there is no distinction made between gender and sexual orientation and the same can be said for sexual orientation – our culture socially-constructs the options and our biology helps us identify which socially-constructed option feels most ‘right’ and best resonates with us.

I’ve attached some photos to offer some examples of non-colonial, non-Western construction of gender. They’ve all been uploaded onto our Facebook page photostream in case you’d like to ‘like’ or ‘share’ them there. There are literally hundreds of ‘third-gender’ identifying peoples around the world. The eight I’ve chosen are mostly examples I remember from some of my anthropology courses but if you google ‘third genders’ you can find many lists and examples.

Who cares? Why it matters.

The most obvious reason to care about the way our culture has constructed gender and sexual orientation is to deepen one’s capacity for solidarity with people who identify as transgender, transsexual, and others whose gender or sexual identity exists outside of binary Western culture.

But there are other reasons as well. Western culture’s binary nature often creates non-sensical, problematic binary identity constructions that are inherently problematic. For example, I believe that Western masculinity (dominance, aggression, lack of communication, lack of emotional expression, etc) is inherently problematic. I believe that to be the reason why most acts of large-scale-violence and terror are committed by men (see: 100% of the mass school shootings in the United States), and I believe it fosters a degree of internal misery within people who heavily adopt these particular ‘masculine’ traits.

In the age of information, and the age of global connectivity, there is no longer any reason (particularly for young people) to feel isolated or restricted to Western definitions of gender, sexual orientation and identity in general. I think the social ramifications of a generation where more and more people begin to identify outside of the gender binary would be tremendous, and I think we should all consider how we can unlearn our cultural conditioning to embrace other, perhaps less exploitative and dominating identities.

Background information on the identities depicted in the above images:

Hijras
Hijras are male-body-born, feminine-gender-identifying people who live in South Asia (mostly in India & Nepal). Many Hijras live in well-defined, organized, all-Hijra communities, led by a guru.

Although many Hijras identify as Muslim, many practice a form of syncretism that draws on multiple religions; seeing themselves to be neither men nor women, Hijras practice rituals for both men and women.

Hijras belong to a special caste. They are usually devotees of the mother goddess Bahuchara Mata, Lord Shiva, or both.

Nandi female husbands
Among the Nandi in Western Kenya, one social identity option for women is to become a female husband, and thus a man in society’s eyes. Female husbands are expected to become men and take on all of the social and cultural responsibilities of a man, including finding a wife to marry and passing on property to the next generation through marriage. Female husbands may have lived their lives as women and may even be married to a man, but once she becomes a female-husband, she is expected to be a man. Women married to female-husbands may have sex with single men uninterested in commitment in order to become pregnant, but the female-husband (who is often an older woman, often a widow) will father the child of said pregnancy and treat the child like her own.

Two-spirited people
Two-Spirit is an umbrella term sometimes used for what was once commonly known as ‘berdaches’, Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native Americans and Canadian First Nations communities. The term usually indicates a person whose body simultaneously manifests both a masculine and a feminine spirit. Male and female two-spirits have been “documented in over 130 tribes, in every region of North America.”

Travesti
In South America (with a large presence in Brazil), a travesti is a person who was assigned male at birth who has a feminine gender identity and is primarily sexually attracted to masculine men. Therefore, sometimes the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation is not made. Travestis have been described as a third gender, but not all see themselves this way. Travestis often will begin taking female hormones and injecting silicone to enlargen their backsides as boys and continue the process into womanhood.

The work of cultural Anthropologist Don Kulick (a gay male by Western definitions) in Brazil demonstrated that gender construction in Brazil is binary (like Western gender construction), but unlike Western gender construction, instead of having a male-female binary, there is a male-notmale binary.

In this particular construction of gender:

** Males include: men who have sex with women, men who have sex with Travestis but are never on the receiving end of anal sex, men who have sex with men but are never on the receiving end of anal sex.

** Not-males include: women, men who receive anal sex from ‘male’ gay men or from Travestis.

Fa’afafine
Fa’afafine are the gender liminal, or third-gendered people of Samoa. A recognized and integral part of traditional Samoan culture, fa’afafine, born biologically male, embody both male and female gender traits. Their gendered behavior typically ranges from extravagantly feminine to mundanely masculine

Waria
Waria is a traditional third general role found in modern Indonesia. Additionally, the Bugis culture of Sulawesi (one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia) has been described as having three sexes (male, female and intersex) as well as five genders with distinct social roles.

Six Genders of old Israel
In the old Kingdom of Israel (1020–931 BCE) there were six officially recognized genders:

Zachar: male
Nekeveh: female
Androgynos: both male and female
Tumtum: gender neutral/without definite gender
Aylonit: female-to-male transgender people
Saris: male-to-female transgender people (often inaccurately translated as “eunuch”)

Kathoey
Australian scholar of sexual politics in Thailand Peter Jackson’s work indicates that the term “kathoey” was used in pre-modern times to refer to intersexual people, and that the usage changed in the middle of the twentieth century to cover cross-dressing males, to create what is now a gender identity unique to Thailand. Thailand also has three identities related to female-bodied people: Tom, Dee, and heterosexual woman.

-Robert

EDIT: So let me clearly say that in no way am I intentionally encouraging white people (or anyone else) to appropriate these identities. Rather, I hope that this post and conversations like this will lead to an understanding of cultural diversity and other gender constructions/identities and an understanding that there is no biological reality to gender, and that gender manifests itself in many beautiful ways across many cultures.

I AM encouraging people in colonial society to have a less-binary, more nuanced approach to gender that doesn’t lead to so much domination and exploitation.

I also understand that in order to talk about these things, words like ‘male-bodied’ or male are inherently western concepts. Each of these societies and cultures have other ways of talking about these identities. Although I wasn’t born in the U.S. I have spent most of my life and the entirety of my adult life in the United States. I speak no languages other than English. There are concepts that I can’t understand, that my language limits me from even talking about, and in order to communicate these ideas, I am restricted by the only language I have available to talk about these concepts with. My perspective is etic. I do not belong to the above cultures, so when I talk about these things and use the English language to describe them, I am limited in my options for describing a concept as abstract as gender. The very categories of gender and sexuality belong to the cultural lens through which I view the world and I could not possibly provide a comprehensive emic analysis of the way the things we call ‘gender and sexuality’ actually are understood (if at all) within these cultures. In that way, mine is a very limited perspective. But it is geared toward other people living in Western society and it is aimed at changing this culture, not to appropriate these others but to not be so terrible toward gender and sexual variant people in this culture and to begin to question the implications of how we define gender and sexuality both personally, and as a whole culture.

Also, there’s some problematic stuff in the way I framed this and some of these only have one source.

-Robert

8 Things Parents of Trans Kids Want You to Know | Brynn Tannehill

Posted on October 30, 2014 by charissagrace

8 Things Parents of Trans Kids Want You to Know | Brynn Tannehill.

Posted without comment, on advice from my bff and my baby.

Constance, please read this…please hear hearts

Charissa

Terminology and the problem of unintended offense (Part One)

Posted on October 27, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I think I will be okay to post about this, as it is unrelated to the other issues I am dealing with in my life.

I want to talk about terminology…and the way that an issue is presented, discussed, talked about and written about has such a profound effect on the overall zeitgeist of what the issue actually is.

Let me build on the article I posted yesterday (right here is the link again: Gender Confirmation Surgery: What’s In a Name? ), and tell you a bit about what it is like to be someone like me…or really, someone from any minority group that is little understood…but I only know about mine, right?

Imagine if you will that suddenly, for no reason that you could tell, everyone you met began calling you by the gender other than the one you identify as…if you are a woman, they called you a man, and if you are a man, they called you a woman. What would you do?

First, you would correct them…but wait, then you see the looks of confusion, or puzzlement, or irritation, cus no one likes being corrected for anything.

So then you will think, well, I just wasn’t careful enough…what is obvi to me is hidden to them, for whatever reason. So you decide to explain a bit…and the eyes glaze over, or they roll cus you sound so condescending and pedantic in your convoluted attempt to explain you are the gender you are.

Next, you will check yourself…your dress, your pants, your shoes, all the visual cues you can control, your voice and your walk and gestures…but nothing works. No matter what, you are still called the opposite gender.

No…really try to take a moment…don’t just read the next line. Please stop: imagine…there. Now you are getting a scintilla of the experience, minus the wonders of the gut-grind of dysphoria.

That is the first thing.

The next thing is say that it was permanent for you…and you needed to do something or die. You began transition, and you found others who are like you for support…and then lo and behold the culture begins changing a bit. You discover allies! Even friends!! YAAAAYYY!!!!

But you also find that there is a lot of simply uninformed thinking operative in those allies and friends. You feel like you already are getting so much forbearance from them that it seems nit-pickish to point out their well intentioned but inaccurate vocabulay…or the truly supportive but incredibly wounding comment…what do you do?

Correct them, to save them future embarrassment and feeling bad because the support they intended ended up wounding just like the bullies who misgender on purpose? Or overlook it, and continue to try to educate as a context for the relationships so they can soak it up and find themselves in the right spot organically.

I will be vulnerable and tell you all something: whether I am misgendered by a bully who does it on purpose to hurt me, or whether I am misgendered by a friend who literally has no idea, it hurts just as bad.

And it is a defeating hurt, a deflating one…punctures, drains, and then, nothing but empty and worthless…the shell seen and nothing inside.

I don’t know what is right, so I will just tell you what I am choosing here: I am going to try to gently, gracefully and lovingly correct. As I do that, I will ramble and say waaaayyy more than I likely need to…cus I would rather err on that side than the terse too brief and too open to question posting of “just the facts” Joe Friday style.

Part 2 will continue below. I hope the things I write here have some impact…honestly I often feel like it is shouting into a canyon and what I hear coming back is just the echo of my own voice in the lonely stillness. But that is nothing I can control…I write, so that is what I will do, regardless

‘Gender Confirmation Surgery’: What’s in a Name? | Loren S. Schechter, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Posted on October 26, 2014 by charissagrace

‘Gender Confirmation Surgery’: What’s in a Name? | Loren S. Schechter, M.D., F.A.C.S..

Hi Constance… I just referred to this in a comment over at Dani’s blog, which hopefully I handled in a graceful and kind way.

I thought you all might enjoy reading it as well.

Blessings,

Charissa

The T Word: Transgender

Posted on October 26, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance…I have no words to express what this means to me…what is being said to me…both in the post and in the comments. I simply will repost this, and let you know something: each of you is a potential ally in someone’s life. I an so very blessed to have the one that I do, and she knows how I feel, who I am, and our welcoming, beckoning road…and thus for me to say anything more is inappropriate, in that the only legit words for to say are uh-MAZED and broken thank yous…55 years of loneliness is a long time.

Dani De Luca

You don’t get to decide the truth. Other people have their own experiences, just as valid. This is easy to forget. Your slice of life seems so large and unmistakable, like a mirage of wholeness from where you stand. But it is your job to know better and not confuse your small piece for the whole, even if you sometimes forget. Life is big—much bigger than just yours. This is the only note to self: other people are real. That’s all there is to learn.
— Frank Chimero – The Only Note To Self

At an event earlier this month, I sat reading over the only flyer available: an advertisement for The New Three Tenors. As I glanced over the neon page, I saw two sandled feet standing inches from where I sat. I found the feet peculiar, noting that the toes weren’t bare but layered with seamed stockings, and…

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11 Myths, Misconceptions, and Lies About Gender Non-conforming Children

Posted on October 9, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, this article is really good. Pass it along, please.

Sorry for my terse prose…I am feeling a bit down.

Running to Mama…Charissa Grace

11 Myths, Misconceptions, and Lies About Gender Non-conforming Children

October 6, 2014 by Brynn Tannehill

Source: Lindsay Morris

Originally published on The Huffington Post and cross-posted here with the author’s permission.

Recently, a video about a transgender child in California named Ryland Whittington went viral. It is beautiful and moving and shows the power of unconditional parental love.

Sadly, like every other conversation about transgender children, the comments section was often unkind. Scanning the comments, I saw the same poorly thought-out ideas keep popping up. Many of them were similar to things said about transgender adults, but others were particular to transgender children.

I think it’s time to put these misconceptions to bed.

1. Children are too young to know these things or make these decisions.

The overwhelming consensus of the psychological community is that gender identity is formed by the age of two or three. The consensus of the medical community is that sexual dimorphism of the brain occurs in utero as a result of exposure, or lack thereof, to androgens.

In other words, gender identity and expression are determined before a child is even born. It is only at two or three that they can express it.

Even those psychologists who push for “reparative therapy” to “normalize” gender non-conforming children acknowledge that if a child is still asserting a particular gender identity at the age of six, the odds of it changing are exceedingly small.

2. You are whatever your bits say you are.

In utero, the reproductive organs develop and differentiate earlier than the brain does. When the brain later develops in ways that typically differentiate between male and female, it is based on whether or not the androgens are present and received.

Usually, because the gonads are already in place and producing minute amounts of hormones, this differentiation allows the brain development to match the typical pattern. When something (such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals) interferes with this process, you can get a mismatch between phenotypes.

A person’s sense of self and their gender identity and expression are based on what’s between their ears. Who you are as a person is defined by gray matter, not by genitalia.

3. Gender non-conforming behavior and identities are a result of something the parents did.

Usually this line of attack is meant to imply that the children grew up in a broken home, or that somehow the parents were gender non-conforming or ultra-liberal or somehow encouraged it.

I have spoken with many parents of transgender kids who live in conservative, religious, two-parent military families with both parents filling stereotypical gender roles.

Wayne Maines became an advocate for his transgender daughter and transgender children nationwide despite previously having a very conservative philosophy and values that suggested that transgender children did not exist. Watching his child grow, he could not deny the fact that she was indeed a girl, not a boy.

But these stories are all anecdotal. Let’s see what research has to say about the matter:

“There is no proof that postnatal social environment has any crucial effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.”

Next.

4. If you just made them behave like a proper boy/girl, it would fix the ‘problem.’

Let’s look at two of the most famous case studies of trying to “fix” gender non-conforming children. There was George Reker’s case study of “Kirk,” and then there was the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision.

In both cases, trying to cram these children into a box they didn’t fit in ended up killing them.

Nearly every parent of a transgender child I have met has told me that they reached a point of acceptance when they realized that they had a choice: either accept their child or lose them altogether.

5. My kid said he is an elephant. Does that mean I should put him on an all-peanut diet? No! These parents are just being indulgent of a child’s fantasy.

We’ve already discussed that this isn’t a fantasy; there are biological origins, and simply identifying as male or female is not abnormal. However, this reminds me of nothing so much as the same sort of ill-considered opinions that people have about raising other special-needs children.

It also bears repeating that the majority of parents who have children who have socially transitioned reached a point where they feared for their child’s life. Suicidal ideation is common even in very young in transgender children.

I cannot say this more plainly: You do not have a right to question or judge a parent’s decisions when they fear for their child’s life.

6. When I was young, I was a tomboy, and I didn’t turn out to be transgender.

Individuals saying this sort of thing may have demonstrated some cross-gender behaviors but not a persistent cross-gender identity.

This is a key difference between the two, and such comparisons represent a false analogy.

7. If you let them socially transition, you’re just setting them up to be bullied.

This is another form of blaming the victim. Shouldn’t we focus on preventing bullying rather than making the victim conform? We do not accept that forcing kids to act “less gay” is right. We don’t like the idea that avoiding being raped is the victim’s responsibility.

The parents of transgender and gender non-conforming children aren’t to blame if their children are bullied. More often than not, they are already doing everything they can to keep their child alive and happy.

If blame is to fall anywhere, it more rightly belongs on those doing the bullying and on school administrators who allow it to happen.

8. They’re giving ten-year-old children hormones!

No. Doctors are prescribing Lupron, which blocks the onset of puberty. This drug is already being used on children who aren’t transgender to prevent precocious puberty.

The reason that doctors block puberty in transgender children is that forcing a transgender child to go through the wrong puberty is more or less irreversible, does permanent harm in terms of ongoing dysphoria, and results in greater difficulty living in their target gender.

9. What if these kids change their minds?

For children who haven’t undergone any sort of medical treatment, they transition back socially. However, after age six to eight, this becomes very uncommon. If they are on Lupron, they stop taking it, and puberty proceeds as normal, just as it would for a child who had been given it to stop precocious puberty.

According to Dr. Norman Spack, who specializes in this field:

“[A]t the time that puberty begins — that means between about age 10 to 12 in girls, 12 to 14 in boys, with breast budding or two- to three-times increase in the gonads in the case of genetic males — by that particular point, the child who says they are in the absolute wrong body is almost certain to be transgender and is extremely unlikely to change those feelings, no matter how anybody tries reparative therapy or any other noxious things.”

At the age of 15 or 16, if the child is still asserting a cross-gender identity, there is almost zero chance that this will change. Then, and only then, are cross-gender hormones administered.

In short, the medical and mental-health protocols are designed to only take permanent medical steps after everything possible has been done to ensure that this is the correct course of treatment. Until that point, everything is reversible.

Along the way, however, steps are being taken to minimize potential harm to the patient whether or not they are transgender.

10. These kids should have to wait until they’re 18 before doing anything medically (including puberty-blocking drugs).

By that time it is too late. Puberty has already given them a body that can’t be easily fixed.

Medical science can attempt to mitigate the harm, but at that point it is expensive and painful, and the results only partially compensate for the effects of going through the wrong puberty.

In short, forcing them to wait can (and often does) cause massive, irreparable harm.

11. You transgender activists want to force all these children down a medical track.

No. No. And a thousand times no. I have met the parents of gender non-conforming kids. These kids may express themselves differently but do not have a cross-gender identification (e.g.: they are a boy who identifies as a boy but likes things that are gender-stereotyped as more feminine).

I absolutely do not want children who are simply gender non-conforming going down a medical track.

What parents of transgender and gender non-conforming children want is the same thing that every other parent wants: for their children to be happy, safe, loved, and protected.

If medical care will help their children go out into the world with every chance of achieving their potential and having a fulfilling life, then they will fight tooth and nail for it.

It’s what any good parent would do.

Brynn Tannehill is originally from Phoenix, Ariz. She graduated from the Naval Academy with a B.S. in computer science in 1997. She earned her Naval Aviator wings in 1999 and flew SH-60B helicopters and P-3C maritime patrol aircraft during three deployments between 2000 and 2004. She served as a campaign analyst while deployed overseas to 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain from 2005 to 2006. In 2008 Brynn earned a M.S. in Operations Research from the Air Force Institute of Technology and transferred from active duty to the Naval Reserves. In 2008 Brynn began working as a senior defense research scientist in private industry. She left the drilling reserves and began transition in 2010. Since then she has written for OutServe magazine, The New Civil Rights Movement, and Queer Mental Health as a blogger and featured columnist. Brynn and her wife Janis currently live in Xenia, Ohio, with their three children. Follow her on Twitter @BrynnTannehill.

Though none go with me, still I will follow

Posted on October 8, 2014 by charissagrace

Dear Constance…I have a heavy heart today, and my eyes are red and throbbing from weeping.

The second wave of “loving wounds from friends” is occurring. I got a letter in the mail from a man I spoke with several weeks ago, one whom I have known for years and had thought was open and interested in my fate.

Well, the letter showed that while he thinks of himself as a friend (and make no mistake, he truly thinks he is “doing the right thing”), he does not believe that I am of my right mind and walking properly with the Lord. He makes this clear.

And I am so conflicted! Because on the one hand I know that it is not man who grants righteousness or will be able to ultimately label me, but God who has given me righteousness as a free gift and my beloved Advocate the Holy Spirit (whom I adore and love to call Mama…a poetic, intimate and informal expression of heart connection that is underlaid by foundational theological teaching and underpinnings)…and yet on the other hand to be told by someone that I have known for over 35 years, lived with for a few of those, and then worked with for our entire working career, someone who has not been intimately involved in my life for the last 25, has rarely come to the house, did not check in when Dad died, failed to notice my rampant and extreme despair, to be told that I am under a spirit of deception and not rightly choosing for life…

…well it is shattering in a lot of ways.

I am going to post the letter here with my reply…and my comments to you all here, not anywhere else (My comments are indented and in blue). I am deeply convicted that Mama does not want me to argue about this with people. If they are open to learning what being transgender is and is not, then I will spend whatever time it takes…but if they want to “a priori” judge me as wrong and in sin simply for choosing transition, then it is pointless to argue, for the evidences that I have biblically and scientifically and philosophically are moot to them! They have already made up their minds based on feelings, cultural traditions, and a few verses wrenched from context to bolster their weak arguments.

I think what breaks me most…shakes me most…is the awareness that this same process is going to keep happening. And it is painful.

I could take the easy road…simply post “No Trespassing” and let them talk…but then again, how does that potentially educate? How does that maintain openness to relationship on my part? How does that lend any legitimacy to gender transition as a Christian?

I think that I am called to a higher purpose than just transition, and “fixing myself”…I think that I am called to speak for those who cannot speak, to run for those who cannot walk, and to stand for those who would shatter in the wind. So many individuals who are trans are so very broken, outcast, alienated…and I…true child of blessing and privilege even though I suffered as trans…I am relatively whole, and gifted with writing skills and speaking abilities.

No…I do think Mama has a different road for me, a road that will end up on the mountain top, but only via the lowly and lonesome valleys of the shadow of death. I hear Her singing to me “You gotta walk that lonesome valley…”

As you read below, I am going to add in comments of things I would have said, could have said but chose not to. Perhaps this intimate look into the life of a transgender Christian woman who is in the trench warfare that only Christians seem to be able to wage with such exquisitely kind cruelty will illuminate to you ways in which you may have failed to truly love your neighbor…or barring that will inspire you to simply “not go there”…to the correcting stool…at least not until you have walked side by side with someone for at least a hundred hours for every minute you plan to correct.

Interesting how Jesus spent very little time correcting anyone…oh wait! Except for the religious leaders and power mongers who corrected everyone else and were the final arbiters of who was holy and who was not!

I am still Charissa Grace. I am still seeking to do justice, and now in particular I am with all my being hungry to love mercy…but I am so sorrowful, how do I know if I am walking humbly? Well…Mama knows, She knows…so Ima stay close to Her always.

*****Handwritten letter to me dated October 4^th, 2014*****

I want to write this to you in order to respond to our conversation that we had on your front porch on Sunday afternoon three weeks ago. My thoughts have taken awhile to distill within me but I believe that they have settled into an understandable form.

My heart is heavy as I write this and just as it has been since I was made aware of your public display of being transgender on a Monday morning as I was (Charissa comments: insert work activity here). From that shock I have been praying and have arrived at these few points that I hope you will be able to receive not as arrows of judgement or religious diatribe but as my response and call to Truth.

Interesting to see here that the very first things he communicates to me put the onus on me to “receive”…rather than the onus on him to speak edifying and encouragingly. He has done no study since we talked, asked no questions, or really even interacted with me at all.

An arrow of judgment is when we infer a heart condition based on an outward manifestation of behavior. You have judged someone when you think you know who they are based on what you have seen them do, or fail to do, with no other evidence. Jesus called it taking a speck out of someone’s eye when the speck remover’s eyes were full of logs.

A religious diatribe is when a deeply held belief is held over or against someone who is seen as violating that belief or invalidating that belief, and the said diatribe will not have any authoritative teaching accompanying it…it will simply be an emotionally laden coercion moment. Sometimes religious diatribes will be accompanied by some form of authority, but nearly every time they will be things taken out of context or twisted to serve the purpose of the one making it.

The goal of both of these forms of interaction is to control another person.

For me personally, you have crossed over a river which I will not be crossing.

This comment was confusing to me…is he telling me that he will not be transitioning beside me? Um, duh? Who would want to transition if they were fully themself? Or, is he telling me that we will no longer be friends, associates? And also, why will he not cross? Because he is happy as the gender he is? (again, duh)…or because I am in sin and he does not want to be sullied? Which is antithetical to the example that we have in Jesus by the way, who came in the flesh when we were yet dead in our sins and active enemies of God.

And now I am aware that you made that decision some time ago and I was not aware of it. And I have not ever been aware of your struggle with gender. My shock and surprise indicates a weakness of relationship and lack of transparency and openness that I assumed had existed in the past and present between us. Neither of us am I blaming for the weakness but I am sharing a feeling of loss because of the way I ended up finding out about your life change.

I simply must explain here…this man has not been a true part of my life on any consistent basis that would earn him any authority to speak like this to me. He was not there when my dad suffered…he was not there when my children went thru various trials…he was not there when I wanted to kill myself…he didn’t hear me when at work I tried to talk to him about the despair that overwhelmed me…

…and of course, he was not there when I at last admitted what I am. Because how could I dare talking to anyone about it? Seriously…look at the response he is having. Tell me how that makes him a safe place to pour out my heart and make my very core vulnerable at the most defenseless time of my life?

Weakness of relationship…lack of transparency and openness…assumed existed in the past and currently present.

Hmmm…first off, notice the assumption there, that everyone be all up in everyone else’s business. Somehow either he or I owed the other one this “transparency” simply because we had history and were both Christians. There is a devious and poison doctrine that got loose in the church in the 70s, and it assumes a heavy authoritarian leader to whom all others are “submitted to” and demands an accountability to that leader, or group of leaders. This was most clearly seen in the Shepherding Movement and in the teachings of a man named Bob Mumford among other men. As time passed, it was repudiated but managed to metastasize and mutate and the authority figure became something seemingly more benign called various things like “accountability partner” or other similar names.

While there is definite wisdom and benefit in having someone close that you trust who is there for you and who knows all about you, this practice usually devolves into various forms of bondage and control in its best forms and flat out spiritual abuse in its worst. Deep study of New Testament behavioral codes place about 99.9999% of the emphasis on removing specks from ones’ own eyes, and looking for ways to defer to others with them being more important than one’s self.

If you had shared your struggle and the reality of what you were dealing with in your heart with me or someone, perhaps things would be different. I am hoping that I would have cared enough to pray and help carry that burden to the Lord.

As I made clear when we talked, during the time he knew me most, I had no conscious idea that the source of my despair was gender dysphoria…and yes, as a victim of that Christian culture during those years, I had “accountability partners” who knew that I wrestled fiercely with depression and despair, and they had affirmed the nobility of this struggle.

I also had one friend in particular that I was open about gender feelings with, though we did not know at the time what the dealio was.

He ignores the presence of my amazing spouse and her complete sharing of my horror, her encouragement…and then he says he is currently hoping he would have cared enough to pray and help carry that burden to the Lord…WHAAAAAaaaa???????????

Did I read that right? Let me see if I am tracking: so far I have been warned that there are arrows coming and words that may be resembling religious diatribe…I have been told that I am across a river that he will not be crossing…he has implied that I have been secretive and dissembling over the years and has flat out stated that I had not shared my struggle…

…and then turns around to say that he is currently hoping that he would have cared enough…

Here is an idea: how about caring enough now, enough to be around me and see for himself that I am still the very same person I always was but more whole and healthy? How about getting over the fear that I am perishing, and getting over himself that he is somehow the knight riding in on the charger to save the day, and simply coming along side me as a friend with no agenda but to love me?

I have a few things to ask you to consider and to see my understanding of things.

OOoohh…his understanding…okay, I thought, here is where I will see some information, indication that he studied a bit on this…alas I was sadly disappointed. His understanding is just that: what he thinks in himself, and for reasons either explained poorly, weakly, or not at all.

First I am concerned that you have made these life changing decisions without any submitted relationship and dialogue with the people in the Body of Christ closest to you and who have known you. Any one of us becomes vulnerable without being in submitted relationships that are mutually held in open and honest accountable communication. Is there anyone you trust that could say “(Charissa comments: he used my deathname here) don’t go this way your (sic) making a mistake” and you would wait and not keep going? Left to ourselves we are alone.

Where do I start on that? See, the term “submitted relationship”…that is code, and means that anytime you want to do something you have to run it by other people, especially if it is something unusual. It is not enough to be submitted to God, and daily seeking Them, daily being in the word looking for guidance…it is not enough to be submitted to one’s spouse, and together daily seeking God in prayer together. No…there is a different dynamic, one in which someone else…a human being(s)…serves as an intermediary between you and God.

Hear me…there is nothing inherently wrong with doing just that…but neither is there anything inherently wrong in not doing that. A Christian who considers God’s word authoritative would search scripture for any broad stroke parameters that would include or preclude the considered direction, and if it was not prohibited would then pray and ask for guidance and insight regarding a looming decision. They would also consult with the people any such decision would directly affect, so as to defer to them humbly and understand the impact a chosen course may have on them. Then they would consider any science, technology, teachings etc that would further illuminate the possible outcomes of a choice…special attention would be given to any testimony of people who had experienced similar things.

Ideally, if one wanted to, they would share this with the people who are rooted and woven into their hearts and souls, just out of friendship. There is wisdom in counsel, and counsel from those who truly know you is priceless.

If the considered action was clearly prohibited by scripture, the counselours would be sure to point that out…but if it wasn’t…if it was a matter of choice…free will…then the preferred course of action might or might not be received, and it might or might not end up profitable…but it would not a priori be a matter of sin or rebellion or deception!!

It would simply be a choice, one if made foolishly would result in a bad end, but a bad end not due to inherent sinful action simply because it was different than the “submitted relationship” people want.

In my own case, by the time I actually confronted my being transgender, I had also pretty much divested myself of all controlling relationships and was seeking to draw close to God everyday. In fact, as depression tore at me, and dysphoria grew worse, there was not really anyone I trusted who would not immediately say I was under demonic attack or try to “buck me up”. It was insulting and hurtful that they would think that I had not already recited every encouraging verse in the bible…I know them all, literally…it was painful that they would think me vulnerable to demonic influence given that I was daily interacting with God and crying out desperately for help.

Besides, I do think there are quite a few theological issues involved with another modern doctrine that I find specious (the notion that a believer can be demonized after they have been united with the Spirit of God) a doctrine built on a few instances from the days of Jesus in the flesh. New Testament teaching regarding who controls one’s body, and who lives in that body when relationship with God is sought is full and pretty directive so as to infer that wrongs and sins would be the responsibility of an individual free will choice to deviate from clearly stated scriptural exhortations which are properly understood contextually and culturally.

I was deeply saddened when I read his rhetoric, that were I to confide my journey in someone trusted their immediate response would be to warn me of error and then I would be bound to cease and desist. It revealed that he considers transition to be wrong and a mistake and sinful in and of itself…but without any biblical edict whatsoever, no scriptural authority at all, and absolutely zero examination of the science side of things to see if my decision is sound medically and practically.

Tragically, such an attitude does indeed preclude him as a potential consultant for life matters, for in taking the next steps after examining God’s word, I discovered that there are a plethora of wise reasons to embrace transition…and in light of no forbidding authoritative bible teaching, and nothing checking me in daily prayer, and nothing checking my spouse, and the presence of positive affirmation of this course via wholeness and health and a more robust and joyful life experience, transition seems to me to very much be an answer to prayer.

There are three things that are alarm bells to me that I have been considering since our conversation that day.

One is the feminizing of the Holy Spirit. As we talked you referenced the Holy Spirit as “She” and “Her”. And you mentioned that you were now most often talking with Her (the Holy Spirit) and not the Father or the Lord Jesus. I do not see this sexual gender in the persons of the Godhead. Feminine attributes yes but not the exclusivity of specific sexual gender. I believe even our personal dialogue with God should be in accord with God’s word about Himself in scripture.

Okay…stop right there. First off, I did make it clear to him that I use those words for the Holy Spirit as part of my own personal relationship with the Holy Spirit…but I want to make a stronger point:

There is an assumed perverting of who God is by “feminizing” the Holy Spirit! Do you see that? As if calling the Holy Spirit the feminine expression of the Godhead to us somehow dirties God, and that only masculine descriptions are legitimate descriptions of God! What if over the years we have lost touch with the overall richness of the expression of God, and that restoring feminine pronouns to talking about God is needed and in order? I won’t bore you with the specifics, but just for example, one of God’s best names in the Old Testament is “El Shaddai” which means among other things “many breasted God”.

Really?? So we are to imagine a masculine god with many breasts? Or are we directed to instead consider a nursing mother dog, who has multiple food sources for multiple puppies, and the message is that God will nurture you and care for you like a mama dog her puppies! What is so bad about God having feminine attributes? And talking to God using feminine names? Is God that small and small hearted that God would shut His ears to avoid being besmirched?

I see arguments regularly which assure us that God is beyond and/or above gender…and thus saying “She” is inappropriate…

but the fact remains that “He” is still considered “appropriate” and correct!!! What a freaking contradiction!! If God is “beyond gender”, then logic tells us that either ANY pronoun is inappropriate, OR that God is big enough to not be offended by ANY pronoun one uses.

Frankly, I find anyone getting offended at the use of She for God is simply manifesting the internalized misogyny bequeathed them by the evils of the patriarchal paradigm that has imprisoned us all.

Also, notice how he characterizes gender as “sexual gender”…and that is one of the huge issues is that people reflexively associate sexuality and gender. It was telling to me that he did not have the wherewithal to simply say “gender”.

Here is the kicker: God made humans in Their Image: male and female, which means that God is possessing qualities that we see revealed in male and female humans (and countless other ones I am certain)…but we are only permitted to use the male ones to talk about or to God, or God will get offended and smite us? Or somehow if I talk with the Holy Spirit and use “Mama” and “Her” as I do, then I will be ignored and even worse turned over to evil spirits and deceived? That simply doesn’t make any sense at all, either logically or theologically…and it certainly assumes a very mean view of the Nature of God.

“God’s word about Himself in Scripture…”

I dare you to make a study of divine gender terms in the old testament…

Secondly I cannot agree with what you are doing with the body God gave you. I know you know 1 Corinthians 6 well but it does make clear that our bodies are not our own to do with as we please. They are made for God and belong to Him. Making such severe changes as you feel compelled to do and are doing certainly muddies the waters if not plain challenging the Lordship of Christ and His ownership of you.

*Charissa face-palms here* Constance, you can explore that chapter for your ownself. Volumes are written that explain proper exegesis of it…in a nutshell, it is addressing visiting harlots for sexual contact, and even more specifically as a carry over from the kind of religious practice of that day which involved sympathetic magic, and sex in temples with priests and priestesses as acts of worship of the gods of the various cultures who required such activity.

The apostle is teaching that you belong to a collective spiritual entity called the Body of Christ if you are a Christian, and as such you are not to unite yourself with anyone or anything that would lay claim to that allegiance.

It also easily generalizes over to sexual conduct and the use of the body…but to say that these verses prohibit anything specifically other than sexual acts deemed to be illicit and out of bounds is ludicrous!

Can you see how one could use this verse by itself as an arrow to seek to enforce control of anyone for doing or being anything? It could apply to those who seek to keep others from piercing, or getting tattoos, it could apply to those who seek to enforce eating rules, or activities deemed harmful to the body such as professional football, it could be used to prohibit someone from getting surgery on a cleft palate, or on a leaky heart valve, or the removal of cancer-ridden breasts, and it goes on and on and on…(as an aside, I do indeed view my unwanted and wrong genitalia as a sort of “cancer to my soul, to my heart”).

No, Constance…we can be guided by what is specifically addressed, whether to do or to not do…and then we are in the wonderful arena of maturing in relationship, sharpening our ears, and growing in wisdom as we walk, doing our best to be kind, listen to Mama (Holy Spirit…just listen!), and apply the wisdom we have gleaned. At the end of the day, the one and only measure of the success of that is how much our heart looks like Jesus at the end of the quest.

The third alarm for me is your decision to change your own name. This is very troubling to me and I am feeling strongly that this will be a point of departure from which any return will be most difficult. The authority to name belongs to God and our parents not to ourselves. To rename yourself seems to me to be a very serious thing to consider doing.

*Double face palm* First of all, I do believe that I was directed by the Holy Spirit to take this step, both in the name I settled on and the process of doing it.

Having said that, I would again encourage you to read every instance of a name change, and you will see that my friend has revealed his own belief and preference, but has not given any evidence to back that up. I would give my evidence, but I am sure I would bore you more than I have already!

The last thing I have to share is one I know personally very well. It is that it is definitely possible to be displaying the “fruits of the Spirit” and yet at the same time be deceived and strongly influenced by a spirit of the enemy. This was me and my life for quite a few years.

Classic double bind here. My only defense is that the fruits of the Spirit are in my life and growingly so…and Jesus said that we would know them by their fruits…I deny that I am deceived. The fruits of deception are not there. There is no teaching that I would be distorting or seeking a way around regarding transition! This is just an agenda driven double bind, and leaves me no way to “prove” I am not deceived.

I lead (sic) worship, was kind gentle, loving, patient, and joyful in varying degrees. Yet I was being deceived and influenced by a spirit that held me addicted and subject to pornography and the selfishness of sexual sin. It was not until the day I repented and confessed with as complete a transparency as I knew that Jesus delivered me through His Spirit. That spirit left and never returned. But in retrospect, I was deceived even while displaying some good spiritual fruit.

Ok, Constance…I was privy to this time. I can tell you that there is a very different take on these events, but in the interest of confidentiality, I am remaining silent on that.

I do want to point out an obvious issue, though: Sexual sin, sexual immorality, and pornography by extension are all things that are directly addressed with biblical teaching. As such, it would not be up to any one individual to decide for themselves what was right and what was not if they wanted to remain true to the core of what being a Christian is…

This is a huge difference between what and how the bible speaks in these areas, and what and how the bible is silent in transgender areas in general and transition issues in specific.

I can also assure you, that if one is capable of reading the bible, practicing the things being practiced, and having a “clear conscience”, that this is far more a signal of a so called spirit of deception.

I tend to view it far more practically…anything we feel bad about that we keep doing will eventually de-sensitize us to its harmful impact. It is not so much a spirit, as it is a habit of our heart and thus a tremendous bondage that we soon are in thrall to. In this case, there was never a pretense that such activity was okay or sanctioned. There was no open display of this unashamedly, such as when I dress as myself freely and without sin, but rather it was hidden behavior, with great planning and scheming and sneaking around at work to keep it hidden and thus available for indulgence. There was no knowledge by other people who had a stake in the relational implications…

In short, there was nothing whatsoever in common with his situation and my situation. I find no scriptural prohibition or direction, on either gender change or transition. I have been open completely with my spouse, from the first day of our marriage til now, and she has been fully in the know and walking united with me in love. We have studied out every bit of information we can find for over 18 months. I have a fabulous therapist, to pursue all avenues. I have not “consulted” people from my past…frankly what happened this time was exactly what I thought would happen if I tried to.

At every turn, doors opened…this was after we started asking for doors to either open or shut as a partial way to receive guidance…

Classic double bind again, right?

Now I am praying for you.

(Now? NOW??? How does one take this?)

I would love to see you take time to get a second opinion.

What he is referring to is the counseling approach called reparative therapy. Basically this is a belief that all issues we have are due to experiential wounds we have endured. The assumption here is that I am transgender due to things that happened to me after I was born, and if I got healed of those wounds, my issues would resolve and disappear.

As a former counselour, uncertified but very active and informed and pretty good one, I can assure you that all the techniques there are to be healed of past wounds I have embraced…inner healing, deliverance, inviting the presence of the Holy Spirit to heal…what ever you have, I have tried it…and while there has been wonderful healing from wounds, and true growth and health, my dysphoria was never addressed, and since I had no idea there was such a thing as dysphoria, I was left feeling abandoned and condemned, not good enough.

The general literature regarding the reparative therapy approach is mixed at best and fruitless at worse. It has no great success rate, any more so than any therapeutic approach.

What does have a solid track record is transition. The results of transition are measurable improvements in mental health, quality of life, and general well being. If you wish, do a google search and discover on your won.

I am sure your counselor is caring and inciteful (sic) but without the presence of the Holy Spirit in prayer even she is unable to bring the depth of healing that is needed. Relief possibly but probably not wholeness.

Again…notice the assumption? That healing is what is needed (does a cleft palate need “healing”, or surgery?), that I am broken and not whole, and if I was whole I would not be transgender.

I don’t accept this. I say that as I get the hormones my brain and mind need I am growing into wholeness like any other woman. Any one of you, Constance, if you began to have your body flooded with hormones that contradicted your own internal sense of gender and self, why you would find yourself dysphoric. It is that simple!

And the clear inference that I am seeking relief…oh Constance, while I am so blessedly becoming right, there is no sense of relief when people that have known me for over 35 years begin to speak this way to me. And the prospect of more looms…

Lastly, the assumption that my counselor isn’t a christian and that the Holy Spirit is not big enough to use any means and/or tool to accomplish the will of God… tumblr_nau64oDG9d1t3jjjyo1_500

Your childhood stories are hurtful and I know the wounds are real. I just can’t see the path you are choosing as leading to real true restoration for these woundings. There is a dissonance that is unavoidable and hard to make peace with in this gender switch.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to restate that “real true restoration” is good, necessary to every human being, and unless accompanied by the proper sex hormones needed for that person is powerless to address gender dysphoria.

Evidence? Buehler? Buehler? Dissonance with what? Unavoidable where?

Get this: I AM NOT MAKING A GENDER SWITCH!!!!!!!

I am embracing the miracle of modern technology that allows my body to grow into my already innate sense of who I am, what I am…Charissa, a woman, and lover of God and people.

You have in so many ways been a faithful and generous friend. There is a scripture stating “faithful are the wounds of a friend”.

I could enumerate them, the ways that I have been a faithful and generous friend…I won’t. Rather, I want to take a look at how in the midst of all the verses about friendship he chose to talk about that one which discusses wounding. I agree with the verse…the wounds of a friend are faithful…but now we must establish what a friend is, does, looks like, acts like, etc. Sadly, it is my far more common experience to be a good friend to others than have them be a good friend to me…that is changing, thanks DDH!!!

If my writing has caused any more “wounding” please forgive me and know I am speaking from a heart that loves you and truth too much to remain silent.

You will take note of his assertion that he loves me and loves truth too much to remain silent…so let’s look at a few things there…first of all truth. What truth has he shown that he loves that I am not also loving? What truth has he laid out there as true truth that is authoritative and I am bound as a professing Christian to embrace? I contend he has not done this.

Thus, the truth he loves is his own truth. And wowsa do we all love our own truth, yes?

Next, I want to mention that he says that he cannot remain silent because of loving truth too much to do so. Quite simply this is an inversion of New Testament behavior in situations where there is no authoritative guide from scripture to give specific help…in those causes we are exhorted to put our sister, our brother and their own needs and wants over our own. Philippians 2 speaks well about this, and many other places do too…it is the habit of “Preferring others over ourselves”

Lastly, he claims he loves me too much to be silent. I am not rhetorical here. Where is the love again? Where has it been? What does it look like? Since we spoke last, where is the evidence of such deep love? And what will be the path going forward?

In faith.

Always your friend,

XXXX

Wow…just wow. So now comes my response. I kept it short and sweet. You will notice that I did not include a word of what I have written to you, as I truly think it would be fighting a tar baby. His mind is made up, and his heart is closed up…

…but I have written to you, Constance, because you just might read this, and get it in a new way, and be kind to someone and save their life…you just might be that cup of cold water to that one person who needs it or dies. And you just might find that I am speaking truth regarding the absolute certainty that God loves transgender people and is far more interested in their heart and character than They are their gender!

Dear XXXX…

Thank you for taking the time to write your letter. I appreciated how you characterized my “public display of being transgender”…that statement is accurate in each respect: display, and being.

Please know I receive your intention and desire for my best. Your arguments are very familiar to me, things I have asked myself and worked through until I was at peace in a biblical sense. I spent sleepless nights in thought and prayer. I counted the cost of gender transition, such as I understood it to be. I am capable of engaging on these matters with eloquence in depth, detail and evidence.

However, I disagree with your conclusions, and I think the most fruitful option is to refrain from defending myself in a debate that is not likely to touch the heart. I do not think there is anything I can say that would cause you to feel better or rest easy in knowing that I am still okay with God and God okay with me.

I choose to be silent because I believe this best sets the stage for the possibility of continued whole relationship. I have found the courage and the grace to simply stand in the face of charges and accusations. Those things say more about the ones who make them than they do about me…as time passes, God will be shown true.

I know my hope lies in a life exonerated in choosing eternal transition from works to Grace and death to Life…my gender transition is very much a subset of that. I walk unashamed and covered in the precious blood of Jesus which is my birthright as God’s offspring…for I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until That Day.

I want to state for the record that I am submitted to God, to Jane, and to trusted friends. To the very best of my knowledge I am not in rebellion and I utterly reject the assertion from both you and George that I am under a spirit of deception. I stand with a clean heart and conscience before God and man, and daily welcome the Holy Spirit in all of the Holy Spirit’s Divine Wisdom, counsel, conviction, and comfort.

I do want to say I am sorry to you for being so informal, poetic and intimate regarding what you called the feminizing of the Holy Spirit. This verbiage is to me in my heart and soul a prayer and relational “shortcut”. I was open with you that way in the spirit of our history together. I assumed you would recall my being a student of the word, committed to fidelity, one who has sought to be a workman approved…in these areas of my life, along with the bedrock areas of Christian Faith and Dogma, nothing has changed!

Our conversation was about the issues of being, gender and me, not about the nature of God, the use of gender referencing God and what we should or should not call Them. It was sloppy of me to add the burden to your heart of unnecessarily using feminine pronouns for the Holy Spirit and unwittingly placing a stumbling block before you. Please forgive me that unwise conflating of 2 things, either of which would be “an issue” by itself.

I will close by saying thank you for your letter, and that I will always do my best to be myself with you, open hearted and grateful to know you. It is my prayer that the Holy Spirit will manifest the will of the Father for us and bear the fruit in us and through us commensurate with that Life.

Remaining silent in Hope, refraining from speech on most of these things in Faith, and deferring to the Holy Spirit in all of them in Love…especially Love…

Charissa Grace White

*********************

If you are still here after all this, you are diehard indeed!! Thank you for reading.

Charissa Grace, who is heavy hearted, mourning, and still not ashamed of myself, of the Gospel, or of God in whom I put my Hope.

UPDATE: 2 years later…this individual has not had any contact with me whatsoever…has not spoken one word to me.

This man who claimed to be a friend, and a follower of Jesus, whose professed life mission is to seek and save “the lost” has not even seen me since then or in any way, shape, or form even sought me out.

This says less about him as a person and MORE about the horrible lies and bondages he lives under inside his evangelical ghetto.

It has been painful escaping…I rejoice for the pain…and the gain.

UPDATE: 3 years later…still not one word from the dude. What a Christlike witness…HAH!!

A Transgender Activist on the Authenticity of ‘Transparent | Indiewire

Posted on October 5, 2014 by charissagrace

A Transgender Activist on the Authenticity of ‘Transparent | Indiewire.

Constance…this will give you a very good insight into the daily life of a transitioning transgender person…especially one going from male to female (I can only assume about the female to male, but suspect that it is largely a commonly held experience).

Salient quote:

“…It’s not a man coming out as a woman. It is a transgender woman who is coming out. There’s a line in the beginning of the second episode where Jeffrey Tambor’s character, Maura, is talking to her eldest daughter. The daughter asks, “Does this mean you’re going to be dressing up like a woman?” And Maura replies, “My whole life I’ve been dressing up like a man.” That isthe distinguishing reality for trans people…”

(photo from the new Amazon series “Transparent”)

Today is the first day of the rest of my life!

Posted on October 2, 2014 by charissagrace

Dear Constance…it is official! At 1:15:15 PM yesterday, the judge said the words…and I legally became me.

Charissa Grace White

I guess I am out there now…still have yet to do the entire company sit down and talk, which will be about 15 minutes…but things are moving along.

And yes…I did wake up this morning and feel totally different. Not some massive quantitative change, but rather a deep and profound qualitative change. I have often jokingly sang to myself “I Got a Name” by Jim Croce…well, now for real I do.

I went out to my car to leave work around noontime, to go home and get ready. I see a yellow legal pad with writing on the seat…and there is a vase with 6 beautiful lavender coloured roses!. They were from my darling darling DARLING!!

I dressed nice, in a style that gets me lotsa compliments (Scorpio-Patrol I think you have seen the outfits??), and arrived walking straight and tall and in the right sort of way proud. I looked everyone straight in the eye and smiled. I was treated with deference by this old man there…I honestly do not think he realized I was transgender! He was kind and interactive.

The clerk office opened, and within 5 minutes I had my papers and was on my way to a teeny courtroom. It had 5 rows of benches, and felt like a mortuary funeral service chapel.

In the back, there was an advocate for battered women talking to a woman about a very very scary sounding man that she had been involved with. I thought about how I had been treated by the old man. I prayed that I would not have to sit through that case.

When the judge arrived, she walked forward…slim, serious, no nonsense, and appeared highly competent. I was equal parts afraid and excited.

She called for me, and I stood, and then…

…she did this thing with her eyes and face that told me non-verbally “you are so brave for being here!” I just know that is what she was saying. I turned in my papers, and she read them over, the ghost of a smile playing at her eyes and hovering at the corners of her mouth…and then she took her pen, and brandished it!! And then she signed…announced that I was now Charissa Grace White, and openly congratulated me.

I walked out and down the stairs, and then in a rush I began to weep, overcome in the moment with the monumental implications of one loooonnngggg journey at last drawn to a close, and a new one well and truly begun.

The clerk was moved by my tears and much nicer…mayhap she figured out that this was a big deal?

I was alone.

Oh, I know you were there, but Mama had distanced everything, everyone…it was just me…and Her. I went home and stood in our house, raised my hands in the air and upturned my face, and I prayed out loud to Her, thankful, grateful, supplicating…

…aware that I had started the first life ignorant of Her…and was beginning the second in relationship with Her, the most amazing indescribable being ever.

Later in the day, I was able to have a short conversation with my bff, and her words of life just laid down right beside the prayers I prayed, and then later in the evening, my darling and I opened a bottle of pink champagne and toasted many things.

I am out.

I am free.

I am Charissa Grace, my Mama’s daughter of grace and sister to the Great Precious One.

I am at last glad to be alive.

What happened to me in 1965…

Posted on September 29, 2014 by charissagrace

When I had just turned 6, I was pulled in two…for the next 45 years…

45 years. Sounds like a prison sentence, doesn’t it?

“Charissa, we the jury sentence you to 45 years hard labor

in the male body penitentiary, no parole, no time off for good behaviour.

And you can never know what exactly is wrong with you

just that something is…wrong with you.

You are required to only know about part of yourself,

the other half belongs to us, in the name of gender, amen.”

*Gavel slams down and logs go bang in the fire*

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Never Again

Posted on September 27, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I want to write here my commitment to myself and to you, and also state ahead of time that I recognize the result of this commitment will be quite a bit of ostracization from many people who call themselves Christians, but want to use that name to police me and my life decisions.

First of all, let me state that I am not removing myself from the scope and majesty of the wonderful word of God. When read and understood properly, it is a document of collected writings that show a God of love and advocate a relational ethic, not a legal ethic or a behavioral ethic. Right standing with God is found in right relationship! Not right deeds or right thinking (though each will likely result when you focus on maintaining a whole relationship first).

Given the pre-eminence of my commitment to this relational ethic, I am fair game for being called into account for anything that violates this ethic…things like committing adultery, committing murder, stealing, cheating, assaulting another physically or verbally, harboring hatred in my heart, and other things such as that. See the thing in common? All of them involve a relational breech with either myself, my neighbor, or God.

But:

BUT:

I am no longer going to subject myself to the inquisitions that I previously felt I owed anyone who wanted to “correct me” or “express their concerns” to me about who and what I am. For the record: there is nothing in the Bible that is prescriptive on the subject of being transgender, and there is less than that on the subject of whether or not a transgender person should pursue transition.

Therefore, anything beyond genuine questions seeking to ascertain what I face in order to stand with me and help my life to glorify God is off limits. I am not going there again.

Here is why:

In my recent encounter with a man that I have known for about 25 years, I spent 4 hours of my life in the attempt to reach this individual’s heart. Truth is? I never had a chance. He listened to me about an hour and a half, with a few questions, and then began to interject with a list of “concerns” which he had written before he even heard my story! He began by saying that he might (might!) modify what he had written if he had heard my story first…but since he was soo upset, he felt justified in going ahead.

He then proceeded to list for me several concerns that ranged from things that simply were not true factually about what being transgender is, all the way to accusations that I was under the influence of a demonic spirit!

He thinks that transgender people are victims of the fall (we all are victims of the fall…whether or not being transgender is a direct result of the fall or not is moot, as the Bible simply is silent on the topic). He also thinks that transgender people are bound by the words of Jesus that we “take up our cross and follow Him”…meaning that verse prohibits us from pursuing technological help and remedy which is readily available and so swiftly brings about such immediate change emotionally and spiritually, and is documented in so many places and in so many ways.

(Constance, I am very capable of nuking this proof-texting rape of these words, if you are interested, please let’s pursue that in the comments or via email, but trust me, it is not about transition specifically!).

Clearly, this man had seized upon this verse and wrenched it to fit his preconceived judgement that transition should not be undertaken…an opinion of his, not a biblically given command. He did not think it was wrong for someone born with a hole in their heart to seek surgical repair, or someone born with a cleft palate to seek surgical repair, or any other number of examples…just transition! he was intractable in this opinion, and I was considered by him to be indulging the flesh.

Next, he told me that I was under the influence of a spirit of deception that he called “the impostor”, and that this spirit opposed my becoming who God wanted me to be (which was code for him saying I was not becoming who he wants me to be). When I asked him if he thought I was bearing more fruit in my life in the last year than he had seen before, he affirmed that this was noticeably so, and so I then pointed out that it seemed to me the impostor was doing a pretty counter-productive job, as I was becoming more, and not less like Jesus…reminded me of the Pharisees who accused Jesus of casting out demons by demonic power!!

Then he told me that I was going to lose out on the blessing of being a patriarch of my family (nope, didn’t touch this…it would have been like telling a fish that it is in the water).

Next I was informed that he had never been so devastated since he was divorced from his first wife and that marriage totally fell apart…that he was just barely more devastated by that than he was by my decision to transition! When I asked him how many times we have had dinner together in 25 years, he answered none. When I asked him if we had ever done anything…anything socially together, he said no, never. When I asked him if he had ever come to my house, reached out to me when my father died, or when my children experienced growing pains, when I was injured and couldn’t do chores, he said no. When I asked if he agreed that we had not truly been a part of each others’ lives with the exception of the occasional church activity and our seeing each other at work where we casually interacted, he said yes, he agreed…

…so when I pointed out that this seemed to indicate a judgement of me made from the outside with no real knowledge of me what so ever, and thus would point to his devastation being far more his own issue rather than my “violation”, he denied it! He said that the Holy Spirit was laying it on his heart! That my claims that Mama had been gently leading me, confirmed by my wife, by my therapist whom I have opened my entire life to, by my naturopath who knew I was transgender at least a year before I did, and by a few close friends who lived everyday with me…that all of that was purely subjective and his own subjective “feeling of conviction” had just as much weight and legitimacy!

I kid you not.

When I asked him to show the biblical passages upon which he rested his “concerns”, he confessed this: “the bible is silent on this subject so I can’t actually say this is sin“. Shocked by his terminology, I asked him “Do you want to be able to say this is sin?” He got offended with me, and said that I was being harsh to him (!!! Yes, he went there). I said “no, not at all. I am so struck by your word choices. They reveal so much to me, for I would have phrased it something like this ‘Since the bible is silent, I would never say that someone was sinning in their pursuit of transition, absent knowledge of the relational parameters between the person and God, and friends and family.'”

He sought many times to other me and police me, and I gently and firmly rebuffed every attempt.

And then at the conclusion, he said that I had shocked him, because he thought I would blow up at him (“blow a gasket” is what he said)…Constance, when I was dissociated from myself experiences like this were very threatening to me, and I did tend to react very strongly and vehemently when accused unfairly. But I was calm, peaceful, and sorrowful far more for him than for myself…this bothered him, because it didn’t jibe with the picture of a demonized deceived person who was in rebellion to God.

But it wasn’t enough…he told me that he (and this is a quote) “had to obey his conscience above all else, and that when people asked him about me it was his duty to tell them his opinion and concerns regarding me”.

Yes, Constance…he has elevated his own conscience even above God, for when I inquired what he would do if God told him to remain silent, he said that God would never ask him to deny his conscience! I think you can see the problem with this…essentially there is a conflation of his conscience with what God wants! If he feels something strong enough, and labels it his conscience, then it is the same as God talking!

I did not have the heart to point out to him that even a cursory examination of biblical teaching regarding the conscience commands us to put the conscience and behaviour of our brothers/sisters as preeminent to our own…besides, it would not do any good. He considered it his right to out me, to anyone, in the name of conscience.

(Charissa before she decided to refuse to let others savage her)

(Now here is a little secret, Constance…part of the reason I agreed to meet with this person is that I suspected this might be the endpoint of things…and the truth is that I am ready to come out…I want to move on, get it over with and get on with an effective and fruitful life lived free and without a mask. So I sort of planned to use him as a stalking horse. If I wasn’t ready, I would have not met with him. Nevertheless, it was staggering to me…the arrogance that he so blindly bathed in, wallowed in…oh, and by the way, he has no “official ecclesiastical authority” in any denomination, or for that matter in my own life! He is simply a fellow follower of Jesus…and make no mistake, he does indeed love God and love people…just within the boundaries he has chosen to call legitimate.)

He specifically said his conscience demanded it of him. I didn’t even bother to ask him what he thought would be the consequence if he decided to not speak, to be silent and urge people to come to me if they had questions…I already knew his reply would be this: if I am not true to my conscience, then your blood is on my head…a phrase that indicates he considers me blood guilty of something or other, and also believes he is both qualified and called to be the bringer of correction to me, never mind by what credential or authority…there is an old testament comment in Proverbs that uses this phraseology…people who have adopted this as a moral code use it to justify all kinds of things including bombing abortion clinics and other heinous acts like that. The people at that crazy church who are so virulently anti-gay use this idea to justify their own evil deeds.

So his conscience is more important to him than I am, than the lives of the people who he talks to that may have been open to actually getting to know for themselves where I am at and what I am going thru but after he gets done will almost certainly avoid me…and the lives of the people who may have been touched by newly open-hearted lovers of God who would reach out to transgender people in love because of knowing me, and who I am, and my being transgender makes it not as weird as they thought it was…

And lastly, he said he would never ever call me “Sister”, or a woman…that this would be him empowering my lie and participating in it by proxy! What does one do with that…besides just shake off the dust and move on?

Constance: I had no chance of persuading him that this was a good thing, a fruitful thing, a blessing. None.

Everything I said to counter him was evidence of my deception and was a regurgitation of the evil that the deceptive spirit had spoken to me…and everything I was silent to I was silent to because I was incapable of refuting his great convicting words (he is wrong…I was silent because I didn’t want to destroy him by stripping him of every vestige of intelligent discourse and exposing his xenophobic foundations…when someone says they read about transgender issues for a few minutes the night before, and really don’t need to do any more research because God is speaking to them…well, there is nothing to be said there, is there?).

So here is my resolution: I will never again submit to such so called “expression of concern”. I will seek to find out ahead of time why someone wants to discuss my transition, and if it is for right reasons I will go ahead after giving the caveat that if they begin to “correct me” I will shut them down and leave the situation.

This is not evidence of my not being correctable…it is evidence that I am finally going to not be a dormat and put myself in harms way…which I have always done before (ask my wife, she can tell you of years and years…)

This man right this moment thinks me in error…nothing I said made a difference…and the others who will be coming, and many far worse than he, for he is at least merely passive aggressive, so his demeanor and voice are calm and pleasant…well, they will be even less persuadable!

They will do this (and it is a fact…ask any of your church friends, they can tell you): they will conclude that I am deeply deceived and in sin…because I won’t let them befoul me with accusations…so why should I even try to persuade them?

My therapist said something very powerful…she asked me what would be the result of my refusing to allow them to savage me so…and I said if I don’t, they will think me a heretic and not a true christian…and she then asked me “and what will happen then? Will you become a heretic? Do you care what those people think right now? Does their thinking anything change you or effect you in any real way?”

and I laffed!! Cus the answer is “no”.

This I resolve:

To do justly

to love mercy

to walk humbly…and love Them with all my heart

to be kind and gentle and full of Grace…upon Grace.

Love, love always,

Charissa Grace, beloved of her Mama the Holy Spirit, joint heir with Jesus the first fruits of the resurrection, and a daughter of the Father of lights, from Whom comes every good and perfect gift.

Trans* Women Are Not Drag Queens — Everyday Feminism

Posted on September 26, 2014 by charissagrace

Trans* Women Are Not Drag Queens — Everyday Feminism.

Constance…yes, it is very early. I cannot sleep. Usually I am good until the dread 3 AM. But tonight sleep is shy and skert of the potential I face for conflict today…

I am meeting with a person who has indicated that he has “great difficulty” with my choice to transition.

Think about that: this is a person I see less than a half hour a day…a person that I run into infrequently in everyday life…and yet somehow knowing that I am transgender is a burden unbearable to him, and the choice to transition is anathema and repulsive to the point that he wants to meet with me, so he can…what?

Tell me I am a freak? Tell me that I should not transition? Tell me to just suck it up and tough it out?

What…does he really think he is more creative, more insistent than my own heart for the last 48 years??? That I have not said these things to me already…and worse?

How does his life change if I transition…and how does it change if I do not (which is too late, by the way…I am never going back. It is Charissa Grace full and free or the grave)?

No…I think what he doesn’t like is that someone whom he knows and assumed many good things about is now acting in ways that are unexpected and unusual…and this is stretching him. It is challenging his lil boxes and tightly drawn lines…it is forcing him to confront things without the luxury of being able to write off the source of the conflict as a monster or immoral pervert…for he knows I am not that.

I ran across this link again today…and I may have posted it once already. No matter…it is a pretty good piece defining things well. I ask that you please read the piece…

…and then give us the chance to be. Please??

Charissa

Lassos and Lanky Lines

Posted on September 13, 2014 by charissagrace

For too long
lassos and lanky lines
have spun round my neck
and held me to this dirt in time.
I listened, a few words here like grime,
a big fat echo there like slime,
up in the sandstone and
limp mountains like bars
around my world.

I believed them,
I let them choke me
tame and chain me
to plantations of shame
and fields of blame

Well, I am rearing now…
I smell water in the air!
My Mama tells me I am
Her work and She is
Filthy with loving me!
____5894820_orig

Streaked and smeared
with my red clay,
with my white heart,
Her hair standing
glowing, flying as
She works the treadle
and spins me loose
and into my shape yet born
but always known.

The dry skies crackle, and victory rumbles
in my throat like thunder,
in my heart like lightening
and the cowpoke slides sideways
and decides it’s time to go have lunch
and forget to ever come back here

and I will run on winds
my passion-fires will ever burn
in freedom so fine, so full.

Thanking Laverne Cox

Posted on September 13, 2014 by charissagrace

I have been thinking about her recently…and I just want to say here that she is really walking an amazing example so far of being a visible and vulnerable woman in the public eye.

She is inspiring to me as a transgender person and someone I am somewhat looking up to…

…and I want to say thank you to her. For being calm, collected, articulate and passionate. For never giving in to hatred and striking back, but always affirming acceptance and kindness.

May Lady Grace bless you for the sacrifices this must entail.

Much respect, Laverne…love,

Charissa

A Year Later, “Nothing” Has Changed Since Transgender Woman Islan Nettles Was Killed

Posted on September 2, 2014 by charissagrace

A Year Later, “Nothing” Has Changed Since Transgender Woman Islan Nettles Was Killed.

*tears*

Constance…I really need your support…we human beings who are transgender need your support. This link documents how we transgendered people are considered essentially sub-human, when we are considered at all.

It can only change as your identification of us as human is made an absolute axiomatic given.

I have sought here, at Grace Notes, to be an educator, a dialogue starter, an exhorter, an encourager…it is my hope that as you read here, listening to my words and feeling my heart, you can get in touch with the life, and verve, and passion, and hurt, and joy, and highs and lows (in other words, the human experience we share in common).

I am incredibly blessed…I am rich beyond compare when I consider my plethora of talents and gifts that have been bestowed on me…and I have a voice here through my writing, an opportunity to speak for those who have no voice, or have no way to express what they feel so all they can d is howl in despair and rage and pain.

But without you, we are nothing, and we count for nothing, and we can do nothing…because we do not have access to the power and privilege that you do.

Please…go read…and remember that each one of those precious souls was created in God’s Image, loved infinitely by God, and is just like you in their hopes, dreams, longings, fears. They might have made different life choices, and we all know that life choices have consequences…but that doesn’t mitigate their worth, value, and significance.

I have been soo incredibly honored by so many of you with your trust, and rewarded beyond belief when someone will comment “my friend Charissa”…thank you!

I would be honored even deeper if you would begin to watch for an opportunity to befriend someone in your area, someone whom They would lead you to…there are a lot of “Charissas” out there…your kindness just might make the different between life and death.

Soo much grateful love…soo much earnest exhortation!

Charissa

Dara Hoffman-Fox and Me

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I want to tell you about a very important resource for your education and growth in matters transgender related. My new friend Dara (who getting to know is like coming back to a childhood home from long ago, and having memories flood back clear and full) is a therapist, specializing in transgender humans.

(I love this photo of her, because it shows the Peace she carries on her shoulders!)

Dara is a true bright light, and her energy and commitment is literally saving lives that otherwise quite likely would be miscarried and malformed, or even lost altogether. Dara has a sense of mission that is of the ilk I refer to when I plead to you cis-gender people to pluck up your courage and conviction and make a place for the dispossessed and stranger and alien.

I truly believe that real significant cultural transformation will only occur when the current possessors of power willingly insist on the inclusion of the outcast. Dara has that vision, that passion, and that calling, and dives in whole heart. I was fortunate enough to first encounter Dara thru a podcast. At the time, I was at the crisis point, that place where all has fallen apart enough for the power and life in the seed to burst the hull and come forth.

Just hearing Dara, this cheerful certainty that transformation was possible, was enough for me, and I began to nose up once again…and knew in my heart in that moment that sometime in the future, somehow, somewhere, Dara and I would cross paths. I was filled with the conviction that our nexus would be significant and that together we would be able to have great impact. I am mindful of that old prophetic declaration “…and one shall put a thousand to flight, but two shall rout ten-thousand!”

I signed up for Dara’s newsletter and went to the website where I found links to educational materials, resources for my own growth and mental health, and just that indomitable cheerful strength that Dara simply exudes. And then flash forward one year…

…and Dara is asking for input from readers regarding different resource ideas. Well, I felt that “baby” kick in my gut, hit the reply button, and jabbered away for 10 pages…apparently those words were a similar lil power bomb in Dara’s heart as that podcast and other writings were in mine! Dara liked it! Which thrilled me, obvi…it has been a struggle in my life to ever know I am liked.

One thing led to another, and we emailed in fun flurries of fancy and vision, and voila! I had an article written.

This article is aimed at you, Constance…you cis-gendered individuals who might find yourselves tapped by transgendered people who desire to have you in their life as a pillar of support. It lists a few points that explain why you are the one that has been chosen to come out to, it details what the trans experience is like from a transgender perspective, and finally it gives counsel in ways you can be present and help your loved one to live…and not die.

Please? Head over to Dara’s site?

http://darahoffmanfox.com/

There you will find a wealth of resource and support…and my own lil article called

Gender Transition: The Leap of Brave Beginnings, and 8 Ways You Can Help

Dara and I have been brainstorming in a beautiful serendipity over creating some things that would be available for a small fee with all proceeds going to those without anything so that they could live and transition without having to partake of destructive things just to survive. We have lots of ideas…

…but we are finding that when cis-gender people who are curious about things ask, well it gives us such good direction and focus…so as you read, as questions arise or topics surface, let us know? You can reach me here at Gracenotes and charissa_grace@comcast.net and Dara has contact information easily available over on her page.

Think of it…one snowflake sets off an avalanche…will it be you? And if not, will you take your place so that the “one” can have a place to land and set it off?

Thanks Constance, and blessings to you this day

(Dara and Charissa brainstorming! Lololol!! 🙂 )

Clues

Posted on August 24, 2014 by charissagrace

Okay Constance…I am gonna confess a lil indulgence of ego: I really like my new poem “Her Door, Her Red Door“, and frankly I am a little disappointed there have not been very many likes on it…but I am also not surprised for it is inference, symbol, veil, subtly blatant while blatantly subtle…

I actually and for real think it is one of my most skillful poems to date.

But I get that it is not necessarily appealing…but consider, if you would, the poem itself in the context of the work of the poet: I once said “The poet is a desperater man than most. He must get it all down before the ages are up. Which, as any poet will tell you Is A BITCH!” (waaay back in 1982)…

…I was trying to say that there is a “job” in poetry, or perhaps a better word is quest? No matter…if you consider yourself a poet (and I do) then you find this inability to see life as any other thing but a poem and events/circumstances/happenings are all snapshots into the heart of the poem.

Thus, when I write I try to emulate the layers, hidden and revealed, that comprise this Mystery we swim in.

In “Her Door, Her Red Door“, you find me operating on a few very intentional levels…I do not want to just lay it out there. That is a bit too clinical, sort of like the difference between sex education class in Middle School Health class, and the wonder and poignant pain of Love’s First Kiss. But I do want you to have some sense of the structure, the themes and the interplay of them. I can be obtuse…lol.

First of all, consider that it is a poem written by a trans-gender woman who is in the midst of transition. This overall context puts the other elements in perspective and frames the picture.

Secondly, it is a poem dedicated to a person whom I have openly spoken of and the role she has in my life. That role has permutations and multiple facets when considered poetically. What is her “business” with me? What is mine with her? What is our mutual end? And more fundamentally, Constance, what is your position in all this as well? Are you somehow about the same things, in the salient areas of becoming that you face?

Next comes the unfolding of my view of our essential business: becoming. She is a facilitator of mine, and as I participate in her provisions I aid hers as well…and each of you, as you become day to day, may perhaps find touchstones in this poem’s point of view and approach to that becoming. You will, of course, have to make inference and feel your way under the sheet to the true bones of your own transitions in this life as a sentient, conscious being stuck between the macrocosm and the microcosm infinities, and with eyes…

I choose a physical aspect of her and invest that with meaning far other than the expected trope culturally in our pornography laced times…there are only three capital letters used in this poem. That is on purpose.

There are obvious references to musicians…why specific ones? Why them? What are the specific characteristics of those humans? (Remember to ask this inside the “frame” of the picture I mentioned earlier). There are single words that link back to lyrics, and those lyrics in turn echo back the essential business of this magic woman, which echo back to my own quest of becoming.

There are many puns laced throughout, intentionally slanted in relation to the core…that way they can make the connection and then…like leaves in early autumn, gracefully drop away once their purpose for the tree is completed, and reveal the strong and vital branches of the tree beneath that leafy veil…

The door: resist the temptation to skim over this, thinking it is obvious…no? Perhaps, like usual with me, it is a sonar reading on a larger diamond lurking in the dark of unknown knowns…but if you will try, you may very well enjoy letting those things bubble up inside you…from your heart.

Lastly, and remember that I have said before that wine and the process of creating it is for me the central metaphor of the universe, think about the poem again, in entirety (which means you can reinterpret the words on the 4 layers of existential being: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual)…and once you have that palate built? Start to pull elements from one read through, and combine them with elements of the other…sensual elements mixed with sacred elements…becoming and unbecoming mixed with living and dying…

…and always, always: Communion. Bread…Wine…in the presence of knowing knowers broken and shared.

We are given our birth…but we have to achieve our being, and enter in.

I hope these clues assist you into at least understanding why I am so proud of this one. It was “easy hard” to write down and weave, and it tested my limits at this stage of my becoming…as a poetess, as a prophetess, as a woman, and as a lover of God.

In heartfelt passion,

Charissa Grace

My Son Wears Dresses and That’s OK With Me | xoJane

Posted on August 16, 2014 by charissagrace

My Son Wears Dresses and That’s OK With Me | xoJane.

Hi Constance…pretty sure I pressed this already? But just in case I didn’t, here it is again.

Mama, please bless this father…a true confident and faithful man, who refused to be his child’s first bully.

Love, Charissa

Raising a trans child is not child abuse.

Posted on August 16, 2014 by charissagrace

Raising a trans child is not child abuse...

Dear Constance…

It is hot, and sultry in the night. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and stumbled out to the lappy and I am sitting in the velvet thick wraps of heat and cool, dissipating, swelling, gaining strength and washing away.

I am thinking of the waves of years, like waves washed up onto the shores of my soul, and how those waves have all at once sculpted my edges and eroded my interface with the world…and yet left me untouched, in the deep hinterlands of identity and meaning.

I have always been drawn to the ocean, and its hungry sad roar, its insatiable throwing of itself onto the earth it loves, the constant assault on that mass which resists its efforts to billow over it, washing it down a hungry mouth and being unable to swallow such a juicy morsel…the high cliffs and stubborn trees, given shape and scope by winds and rains and time…and how time and the ocean are one and the same.

Always there. Changing everything. Changing nothing.

As I have worked to dig deeper and deeper into the roots and genesis of my origins, I have wondered…constantly…what would have happened if I had the chance to grow up in a time and place where being transgender was understood, accepted as something analogous to cleft palate or some other differently abled condition that we so easily and quickly address with modern medical understandings…could have been welcomed into that sphere that I was excluded from then, socialized and policed so heavily that even now, having walked out of that penitentiary of thought I find that I carry the prison bars within and they have managed to grow into the roots of my heart and entangle themselves there.

I am still in a cage, a horrorshow of entangled lies and terrible truths…lies regarding who I am…and truths silently standing in towering clarity of who I am not…what I am not, and what I always will be. And I must keep walking forward. The only thing that will keep me out of the penitentiary is forgetting what lies behind and pressing on towards the upward calling…

What ifs still linger though, and one of the greatest is what if my parents had truly known? What if my classmates had truly known? What if I had never been infected with the awful mentality that tells me I am ugly, and repulsive, and never shuts up even underneath smiles and during the recitation to myself ot the catechism of mental health?

If I could have had puberty blockers followed by the very hormones I am at long last taking which have brought me immeasurable inner peace and relief?

I will never know…but I see the efforts of people like my Hero, Kat over at Dandelion Fuzz, like so many (mostly) mothers and fathers who have grasped the simple basic truth that their child is a gift from God and needs only to be fed and watered, loved and nurtured to emerge as a unique and eternal embodiment of one facet of God’s heart…and I want to cry with relief that things are changing, and my prison is becoming like Alcatraz, shut down and decommissioned as inhumane and unprofitable.

And then I see the actions of wanna-be jailers, and listen to the wild and desperate cries of “gloom and doom, gloom and doom!” They are now classifying the acceptance and active care of a trans-gender child as child abuse!

I guess to them the spankings I received were nothing more than loving efforts to keep me in line with who everyone else said I was? The teasing I got just a jovial activity to “toughen me up and make a man outta me?” The forever nights of turmoil workouts to empower me to have no emotions and feelings and end up with strong muscles to resist suicide and depression? The guilt and shame that was thrown down on me from so-called people of God was merely the loving ministrations of “God’s Servants” to purify me and make me holy (read wholly oppressed and chained)?

No.

Constance, those things were child abuse! I deal with the fallout to this day.

But I have posted this link to an article about them, about those like me, in hopes that you will know better what we have gone thru and what we face daily, and what is available to be our help…and also what we face from our accusers.

Stand in the gap? Reach a hand, not of pity, but of support…and educate those you encounter whose minds are still chained to images of boogeymen and monsters.

In solemn longing,

Charissa

For Kat: My Friend, Sister, and in many ways my Hero

Posted on August 14, 2014 by charissagrace

Mom confronts TERF bigotry aimed at her family | The TransAdvocate.

My friend Kat is a mom like this…Perhaps this article will not only educate you about a very specific form of trans-phobia, but show you the awesome power of a parent whose only lense for viewing their child is that of love.

Thanks Kat…

Your friend ‘Rissa

Forcing Kids To Stick To Gender Roles Can Actually Be Harmful To Their Health | ThinkProgress

Posted on August 9, 2014 by charissagrace

Forcing Kids To Stick To Gender Roles Can Actually Be Harmful To Their Health | ThinkProgress.

Dear Constance…I ran across this fascinating study of gender roles in adolescents and how they are harmed health-wise. It is from Portugal, and fascinates me with how those stereotypes have bound and held captive with the same chains and lies.

It is almost like there is some force in this world…some evil which wants all to be slaves of its hungry destructive self…(coff coff…satan!..coff coff…)

I was most struck how all of the kids surveyed wished they could “just be themselves”…

I get it…I know that feeling…see “Haunted By A Lovely God” in case you have missed my feelings on this…

But I have found my stride, and am running with my Mama, walking with Jesus and finding fulfillment in fulfilling the Father’s will that we each be free and unfettered, to blossom and bloom in His Garden of Grace.

Flower to Flower…

Charissa

Whipping Girl: Interview with trans feminist Julia Serano

Posted on August 7, 2014 by charissagrace

Whipping Girl: Interview with trans feminist Julia Serano.

Brilliant Interview!

Just. Go. Read.

Fighting Back Against Anti-Transgender Talking Points | Brynn Tannehill

Posted on August 6, 2014 by charissagrace

Fighting Back Against Anti-Transgender Talking Points | Brynn Tannehill.

Good Morning Constance. 🙂

I do not spend a ton of time (any time) questioning the legitimacy or reality of my being transgender. Too many things that never made sense ever in my life now do…too many good and fruitful things are happening in my life as I heal and integrate and actualize who I really am vs who I was “trying to be”, too many good fruits of the spirit are blossoming and coming forth in the last 1 1/2 years that were not there previously.

But: Ignorance is great, fear is greater, and their bastard child hatred is the most vengeful of all. As knowledge is the greatest answer to ignorance, and wisdom is the greatest answer to fear, I am reposting this article to assist any of you who might be “okay with Charissa:” but not so okay with other transgender people or their lifestyle choices.

I get that. It is definitely a brave new world outside the binary and learning about all the gender variations that have always existed but been shunted away to the side because they are not “convenient”

Well, Time Magazine just did some writing on Transgender issues, and it stirred up a bit of ignorant backlash. Brynn Tannehill does a great job of rebutting that backlash, and it should give you plenty of ammo to lay aside questions of legitimacy, and return to the essential question present always with all people:

“How can I live so as to embody faith, hope, and love?”

Shining in new life, and being changed by degrees, from glory to Glory!

Charissa Grace

Why Do We Need Labels Like “Gay”, “Bi”, “Trans”, and “Cis”?

Posted on August 4, 2014 by charissagrace

Why Do We Need Labels Like “Gay”, “Bi”, “Trans”, and “Cis”?.

Wowsa…Constance, this is a long, well thought out, and somewhat complex article on the necessity for words to describe our experiences…and also how power segments of our culture control words, define the ones allowed and the ones that will be known as “labels” and thus verboten.

The complexity lies in the need to keep a few ideas simultaneously in mind as you read, and to patiently assimilate the foundational things at the beginning to roll with understanding at the end.

Please…roll up your sleeves and give it a go. It will greatly assist you in having a greater connection to my life experience, and more effectively equip you to be a tower of kindness and compassion to those you meet each day, especially trans-folks.

Love, Charissa

(pic by Charissa Grace)

Transgender Children Today: Shifting the Responsibility for Change Away From Children and Onto Society | Aidan Key

Posted on July 24, 2014 by charissagrace

Transgender Children Today: Shifting the Responsibility for Change Away From Children and Onto Society | Aidan Key.

Constance, this is a very good report by a person helping families understand and help their transgender children just as they would their cis-gender kids.

It does a marvelous job of highlighting how being transgender strikes across class, race, creed, religious, political, cultural and historical boundaries.

May it assist you, and contribute to your courage to speak up and speak out on behalf of transgender people in your lives: the ones you know…and the ones you don’t!

Love, Charissa

“That’s Good Enough” (Debi Jackson, Mother Of Transgender Child, Gives Moving Speech)

Posted on July 16, 2014 by charissagrace

G’Morning Constance! Another amazing mom tells her story of love and finding her girl inside a little boy’s skin.

I listen to these stories, and wonder what if…

This story is somewhat different, in that this Mom, Debi Jackson, experienced quite a bit of discrimination and trans-misogynist blame. She takes on the typical tropes that were thrown at her like stones in attempts to police her and her family…and her daughter.

She is a fabulous, poignant speaker. She is not afraid to show tears and passion…she is unashamed of her love of God, and knows biblical references to refute the hatred thrown her way by so-called christians.

Please…won’t you take a look? These stories are all similar, but each unique experience adds a special tile to the mosaic of the expression of God to us in humanity. I am excited to be a part of shining forth the parts that trans-gender people have to show for Them.

Love, Charissa

Debi Jackson, Mother Of Transgender Child, Gives Moving Speech

The Huffington Post | By Noah Michelson

Posted: 07/15/2014 11:43 am EDT Updated: 07/15/2014 11:59 am EDT

“My daughter is six years old. She transitioned, which means she changed her outward appearance from male to female and started living full time as her true gender, when she was four. Until that point she was quite a rough and tumble little boy with a buzz cut and a shark tooth necklace.”

And so begins the absolutely beautiful speech Debi Jackson gave earlier this year about her transgender daughter, AJ, at the Unity Temple on the Plaza in Kansas City. As Jackson continues, she outlines how her family came to realize that AJ is transgender, what happened the first day she went to school “in girl clothes” and the bigotry her family faced.

But the best part of the video may be when Jackson addresses the comments she’s heard about her daughter and sets the record straight about statements like you “wanted a girl so you turned your child into one” and “kids have no idea what they want or who they are — my kids wants to be a dog, should I let him?”

Spend six minutes and get to know Jackson and her family a little better. You’ll be happy you did.

(h/t A Note To My Kid)

I told myself that this “happens” to other people — not me. Wrong.

Posted on July 15, 2014 by charissagrace

Hi Constance…I found a cool article about yet another parent who has the vision, courage and love to raise her transgender daughter with love, acceptance, and support.

She made a statement in her article, and it so resonated with me, because I remember that fateful late March afternoon just last year (!!!)…after extensive reading about transgender people and lives…I was so lonely, and so separated from everyone and everything. Surrounded by people who loved me, but not me me…just who I posed as for their security and happiness, and yet I felt totally alone.

I was worthless. I had no meaning. They had actively and intentionally sought me, found me and time and again healed and sustained me…and I still just wanted to disappear.

And on that day, rain drizzling coldly outside, heaters ticking and popping, I read of the loneliness and alienation of my trans sisters and brothers…and I was soo struck by how their stories jibed with mine, how people whom I had never met wrote as if they were inside my head! My compassion welled up, and I wept for them, because I truly knew what they were suffering…and then the stories of the people who decided to transition instead of kill themselves, and such a longing consumed me…a longing to feel something normal, a longing to be “right”, a longing to know I belonged to someplace…

…belonged to myself…

and then I heard Mama say to me in my heart, that if I was totally honest with myself, I would see that I too was transgender, just like the ones I was reading of.

And that is where the statement that Julie Ross makes came out of my mouth…”No Lord…that happens to other people, but not me. I mean, I have always thought I was a girl trapped in this male body with no way out, but that doesn’t make me transgender! lol!

But She persisted, and besides…I knew, right then that she was right. All that had to be dealt with was the constructs of immorality and perversion that had been formed in my mind and heart due to the childhood experiences I went through.

All of that is going to be avoided for Julie’s lovely daughter! She will still have trials, and heartache like every human in this shattered world…but she will never feel the emptiness, the horror of nothingness where there ought to be life.

May Mama shine on each of our hearts with Her convicting love that upholds us, sustains us, and washes us everyday…and may we find the courage to go out of our way to ease the journey of someone else today.

Much love and rejoicing, Charissa

Julie Ross

Blogger, George.Jessie.Love

Raising a Transgender Child: A Star is Born

Posted: 04/20/2012 5:08 pm

Adventure , Children , Family , Courage , Honesty , Keeping Perspective , Parenting , Social Transition , Support , Transgender , Work In Progress , Parents News

Eight months ago, my 9-year-old son tearfully shared with me that “his whole life, he had wanted to be a girl”. Pressed by the therapist (who, thank G-d, was in the room with us) to clarify whether he wants to be a girl or is a girl, George immediately replied that he is a girl. And so began a crazy-ass adventure that I never, in a million years, expected to find my child or, frankly, myself, on.

To be clear, my husband Rich and I always knew that George (who is now Jessie) was different from not only our older son, but from other kids — male and female alike. With sparkling eyes and a wildly observant and funny personality, he was known by everyone everywhere we went. Never one to shy away from a conversation or situation (particularly if it involved dolls, dresses, wigs or mermaid tails), he captured the attention of anyone he came into contact with. When behaviors that concerned us in preschool and kindergarten — including, but by no means limited to his self portraits (a frequent drawing assignment) consistently depicting a girl in a dress with long, flowing hair — continued with even greater vigor in first, second and third grades. We concluded that he was probably going to grow up to be gay, yet didn’t quite buy it ourselves. He was a boy who greatly appreciated a beautiful girl and what she was wearing. He never met a doll, wig, dress or mermaid tail that he didn’t feel a total compulsion to own — no matter how strongly he had to fight for it. And despite the fact that he was not even slightly effeminate, there were several occasions that he harassed and harangued me for hours on end requesting everything from hair extensions to wigs to dolls. It never added up. And then he asked for (and by “asked for” I mean “demanded”) a pierced ear.

Our initial reaction to the earring request was that “little boys don’t wear earrings”, but he was having none of it. As he obsessively pursued this request, it became increasingly clear that it was not a desire, but a need. Since growing out his traditional little boy haircut was going to take some serious time (we had agreed to allow him to grow his hair — anything to stop hearing about hair extensions or wigs), a single pierced ear seemed an easy enough allowance in hopes of placating him. Of significant note was, just prior (and I mean as the alcohol was being rubbed across his lobe) to the piercing, he implored the piercer to be sure to do it in the ear that doesn’t mean “gay”… clearly he was building up the courage to tell us something, we just didn’t know it yet.

It was not long after the newly-pierced ear that our confusion was put to rest and we were told of George’s truth. It took me about a minute and a half to absorb what he was saying and to give myself a virtual whack upside the head. It all started to make sense now, except for the part when I told myself that this happens to other families — not mine. Wrong.

We continued along with our “if-it-was-ever-normal-it-isn’t-now” lives for a few weeks, noticing a huge change in our child’s mood and temperament. Clearly, an enormous weight had been lifted. And then there came what we refer to as “the article”. It was a Sunday in December, which also happened to be George’s tenth birthday. On the front page of The Boston Globe there was an article about identical twin boys, one of whom had identified as transgender and was now living fully as a girl. I, not surprisingly, was raptly reading the story when George came up behind me, noticed the photo and asked who they were. Upon telling him he responded, with his mouth agape, “You mean I’m not the only one?” It was at that moment that Jessie was born, moved in and has since made herself comfortable in my house.

The following day, I dropped George off at school and told him to be cool; we would come up with a plan. He was cool. Until 11 a.m. (not bad considering the school day starts at 8 a.m.), when he simply could not keep the truth to himself and, without fanfare or drama, told one of his teachers about his “secret”. The cat, ladies and gentlemen, was out of the bag. The next day, as it happened, was pajama day and, after a hasty, late night trip to Target, I successfully outfitted my “son” in head-to-toe pink, purple and green polka dotted pajamas in which he ran (not walked) into school with zero hesitation and without so much as a glance over his shoulder for support. Jessie had been waiting her whole life for this day. I almost wonder if that was why she felt the need to share when she did… just to ensure the perfect little girl pajama ensemble for what will likely (hopefully) be her last school sanctioned pajama day ever.

Since those first crazy days, we have had her second ear pierced and have had countless meetings, discussions, questions, plans and concerns hurled in our direction. At times we have laid low: mostly at the beginning, when we were nearly immobilized by the mere thought of what it meant to have a transgender child. Other times we have been “out there”: when, for example, we announced on Facebook (with her encouragement) “George becoming Jessie”, complete with a photo of her in her inaugural dress. This was a means of survival for us and done mainly so that we weren’t forced to explain the situation to everyone, everywhere, every time we left the house. But no matter how people learned of Jessie having identified as transgender, the response has been consistent: total acceptance with a healthy and appropriate dose of trepidation — both for us and, frankly, themselves.

Our family has been lucky. We know that we are just getting started, but are grateful that Jessie’s social transition, thus far, has been as seamless as we ever could have hoped for. She has that sparkle in her eye and a new confidence which is the envy of many an adult. We take each day as it comes and have as little an idea as to where this will land as we did eight months ago… but at least now her self-portraits make more sense.

PS: At this point, it is noteworthy to tell you that it felt strange to refer to my child as George or to call her a “he”. “New normal” surprises me every day…

This post originally appeared on George.Jessie.Love.

Exhortation (1981) edited 2008

Posted on July 11, 2014 by charissagrace

EXHORTATION

Listen

I who have dwelt for a season
at the root of a scream,
I who have read my heart like one
with no hands reading a book
whose pages turn with the wind…

I say Listen, hear me.

When you play at “strife-in-eyes”
and you stare to see which will go
under first–PLEASE PLEASE

be the first to smile.

Do not harden yourself…yourself…
Though it mean surrendering all
Turning yourself out
To Be Known at the world’s mercy

You may lose your name, you may not know

your shape, even the words
you breathe, spoken out so clearly
will loosen and disperse
possibly forever
all given over to the wind crying upon distant seas.

Moment of terror, should the
Moonlight name you a profile
Among Fallen Flowers

Yet you may survive, for many have done so.
You need only to close your eyes…

(Beautiful, Feminine Gesture)

And do not be afraid of the strange woman you find
Lying in the Chamber of your throat

So it will be: Dark. A Long Vigil.

far among splendours of despair…but
everything will be true, pure,
your love most of all.

But now, please, open your eyes.
Have we not said, down with all tyrants–

even our own?
ESPECIALLY OUR OWN!
OPEN YOUR EYES!

They will glitter with knowledge of the other side

of the moon–their light of such
a quiet intensity that smiles and frowns

will fall away like shadows of
wild birds flying over–

Yet a degree of affection remaining, like
when you find an old Bible in an

old cupboard in an
old empty house–so it is.

Freedom and Beauty. Do not be afraid.
Assume the freedom of those
born in captivity
who find the purity of being.

Do not be over-modest.
Wear the delicate beauty of those crippled

at birth who earn the grace
of their maiming.

You must look and you must seek

in the dreamless dark.

But I await you there…

The Dark Light Of My Eyes Burning With Patience

And then, my eyes will answer…

but they will not command a summons.

Transgender Violence Is a #YesAllWomen Issue | The Nation

Posted on July 10, 2014 by charissagrace

Transgender Violence Is a #YesAllWomen Issue | The Nation.

Constance…this is must reading, but even more so…must living.

It must stop.

I do not care if you are male, female, gender fluid, straight, gay, bi, asexual…

I do not care if you are conservative or liberal, christian identified or not…the killing of women in general, and trans-women specifically is literally unacceptable!

By any standard, in any ethical system.

And yet it continues…

Men: if you do not begin to lead out strong in your groups and spaces, and live out just and humble relationships, then you are as guilty of these crimes as the actual perpetrators…

Women: if you stay silent, in word and deed, and do not find a way to make it clear to the people you are in relationship with that this way of living is unacceptable, then you are the modern day equivalent of the 1940s Jewish collaborators who sought to avoid persecution by collaborating with their oppressor.

I regret that I did not understand these things years ago…but that is irrelevant, for this is now.

Change must start now. Right now…for if not, when?

After thousands more have been brutalized and senselessly slaughtered?

Sober and sorrowful,

Charissa

A-maze-in- Me

Posted on June 30, 2014 by charissagrace

Those years,
early and freshly spinning
out of the Mystery,
or fresh to me,
blessedly unknowing
how ancient, how creaky
the turning sun as he blazed
across the hot and endless skies
of my childhood…

and how mournful and shadow-soft
the moon’s glimmering
elegy to my innocence
as she
with unblinking open silver eye
saw me there,
hidden and trapped
in the maze of myself.

Slowly I woke up…
and found cruel mirrors
making carnival claims,
barkers of snake-oil siren songs
seeking to snow my heart
white and cold with icy lines
written for what I looked like,
not who I was, heart warm
and red and pulsing,
throbbing to know and be known
in connection and union with
that unstoppable yearning,
welling, bubbling, running out
on thirsty ground.

I figured out I didn’t match
the carnival caricatures’
deceptive drifting distortions…
I realized my designated place,
in the shadow of the freak show,
or somewhere far away…

I was forbidden the Deep Well,
but Grandma showed me paths
unknown and long forgotten,
and I peered into the Well,
under soulful moon’s argent gaze,
under different sheltering shadow
of silver comfort and lustrous grey
grace streaming, I saw me there,
shimmering and free, and rising,
and I leaned forward to let my lips
be blessed with the kiss of life,
the kiss of liberty,
and happiness…

That awakening kiss,
it never came then,
for the sun growled,
groaned and poked
and peeked long before
I could rise
from the Deep Well’s depths,
under the moon’s blessing lament,
to find me standing,
yearning in the dry dirt,
and breathe, tremble,
touch, kiss, mingle.

Under his harsh and razor light
I ran ragged and breathing rough
thru tears of salty-sorrow,
racing to beat that searing
pumpkin-threat of outing me.

And just in time
I caught the bus
to school, still dreamy
and mindful always
of that Deep Well
and her starry night
Living Water pool.

Sadly I ran
under sun
those days,
stick in hand
and hoop so simple,
while wistful I watched
myself under moon
those nights,
complex and intricate,
intuitive and knowing
nooks and crannies
of souls and hearts
and minds.

I watched me,
I was blind to myself.
I ran that Labyrinth
lurching longingly
between
Pasiphaë and Theseus,
but really just
the monster in the maze,
and bellowing blind
and wandering.

And no one knew,
and no one saw,
and no one heard,
so on I ran under sun
and waiting for
the moon’s soft voice,
running my fingers
thru her light
and desperately feeling
with my heart
the braille she beamed on me,
so I could find at least
the realms and rims and limits
of the maze of me.

Those years have trudged by,
feet dragging under sun,
but days dance and spin
and whirl beneath
the moon’s soft care
of this lune-enchanted girl.
I have found my hovering place
twixt night and day,
glad in my graceful
gloaming time, my gleaming
gloaming years.

Grandma’s paths were always there,
within me hidden, in that maze
whose secrets are at last revealed
by moon’s insistent pulse and gaze
in me, and I go so unerringly
to that well

Deep and Purple and Silver,

and I see myself
and touch myself
and kiss myself,
at long last
become

amazing me.

Last night I was publicly shamed…

Posted on June 21, 2014 by charissagrace

I am sitting here, trembling and hardly able to see the screen, scrambling inside to find what my heart tells me is true, and Mama is telling me…but the titanic clash with self-loathing habits and rejection-reflexes is tossing me and turning me inside.

What I think the truth is: that Lady Grace, Holy Spirit, my Mama is proud of me and is honored by my actions tonight…what I fear the truth is: I am a freak and outcast and should just rid the planet of my blighting pimple on its butt. That is the realm of feelings and while I acknowledge they are real, I have chosen, do choose and will continue to choose to not believe their accusations.

So…in our town there are charity fundraisers, where it is a contest to raise money for several charities. We like to do charity fundraiser events. They are strong opportunities to serve, give, and also have fun with items that we would normally not buy…we actually spent some money on a wine country equestrian event, picnic, dinner, and overnight at the Inn at Red Hills…a fab fun thing we will be doing later in the summer.

So we were getting ready…and since it was not in the big city, but our small town, I was really conflicted about what to wear…all my tops are a lil too girl-side, and all my boy clothes are just…uuuggghhh! Grrr…I couldn’t find anything and had to settle for my jeans, and a boy pull over top. I wore my pink hat and pink vest (as they are wine oriented for outsiders, but me oriented for me).

We got there, and I did what I usually do in groups of strangers…be gentle and polite, smile a lot with soft eyes and stay off to the side. I used to do that even before transition, and even more so now. We were sitting off to the side, against the wall actually, just my baby and I, and the auctions began.

There were two local wags up there…young, facile vocally, glib, sorta dorky and full of themselves as any small town big fish is…and totally nice guys, just really asleep, ya know?

The epitome of white male privilege.

So even tho I sit off to the side, we bid pretty heavy, as it is Their money, and we feel very good about contributing it to things like that . So we were bidding, and an item got over our limit, which was substantial…and when one of the MCs looked over I gave a subtle head shake, and drew a finger across my throat, saying I am out. So he starts cajoling me…fair enough, that is the game.

But then he says…omfg…right in front of several hundred people!!!!…”Hey nice hat, I will give you $25 for your hat!”

I froze…I freaking literally froze. I mean, my mind wouldn’t work, my heart wouldn’t beat, I couldn’t breathe, and my face felt like it was frying off the bones…I felt like my skin had been shredded, and my heart was just clobbered, like blindsided by a car (which has happened to me on my bike several times, but this was worse, cus it was inside me and I couldn’t get away).

I was sitting there, and my darling figured it out but not right away, so she touches my leg and then the spell broke, and I was quietly ranting to her that I was gonna let that asshole have it, just rip him for what he did…total reactive thinking…and I started to tremble and tear up, and felt like when I was little and we would lose a game I would cry cus I was sooo upset.

Time passed, and as I sat there, I heard Mama talking to me, reminding me that She had made this man, and that he was a good person (She said this, not what I thought), and that he was just asleep, ignorant, tone deaf, a guy made from dirt, (not living flesh like us girls)…and that if I just took out my hurt as anger and vocal violence, I was demonstrating that I was a concubine to the patriarchy!!! Mama is a pretty radical political Holy Spirit!! Lol

Concubine to the Patriarchy??? REALLY??? Wow.

So I asked Her to please help me and She was soothing me and I was just bleeding, and then I thought “fine…I will just swallow hard, like women always have, wash his mess off my face and have done with it and be tough and move on…” and She was like “that is not what would bless Me either.” So I began to still myself and center down, and really open to Her will…and She reminded me of the 3^rd way…She reminded me of the situation in the jet way in Philly…She reminded me of the destiny of being someone broken enough to speak for the broken, and whole enough to speak to the broken ones who know not how broken they are.

And I started understanding what Her preference was…I had choice to embrace it, or not, but I knew that is what She would want from Her daughter.

So during a break I walked up to him, and I said “Excuse me, sir?” He turns, acknowledges me in a friendly but distant way, and raised his eyebrows like Yes? I said “Do we know each other?” He said no, and got ready for some pleasant schmooze…and then I said “we really have never even met before tonight…so I am wondering, what is an appropriate way of interacting with someone you have never met, never been introduced to, and you are interacting with in a very public situation when you have a microphone and I am merely sitting?”

He just stood there, deer in the headlights…and then I said “Did you notice where I was sitting? Off to the side? Out of the way? Not drawing attention to myself? Every signal I was giving was that I was here to support, but was not in any way desiring the limelight. And yet you called me out publically, in front of hundreds of people and you did so because my appearance was distinct. But you didn’t do it to any of the other dozens of people here with hats.”

He took off his glasses, and was suddenly deadly serious, realizing he had stepped into a huge crap pile, and that he was on very thin ice.

So I said, “Sir, I am speaking to you as hopefully a person who loves you enough as a fellow human being to gently confront you now, with little harm done, to save you from potentially harming someone in the future very badly in complete ignorance.

“It is never ok to joke with a stranger that you have never met, especially in front of other strangers, and have the basis of that joke be their appearance, or their orientation, or their gender presentation, or their race…” (and I named off all the categories of the oppressed in our society).

I continued “tonight your words hurt me, but I am not here because of that…I think I am whole enough and supported enough that I will work thru it…but I am here for the one you might speak to who isn’t, who is on the verge, on the edge, and they leave and kill themselves or take drugs to forget…or just get even more broken…”

He says to me “My name is Nathan, and I am soo deeply sorry.” I said “I forgive you freely…I also wanted you to know that I am in no way seeking to hurt you or wound you, but you need to know this to save you and someone else from a great regret…and I do believe that my therapist would be proud of me for showing the courage to speak with you but not in a bad way”…I know I felt Her inside telling me I was ringing the bell.

So I shook his hand (yes, he did crush mine, sheesh!), and said “well Nathan, just put it behind you, after you really think about it, and learn.”

He asked me my name…omfg he had no idea what a veiled threat that was! I freaked out inside it felt so sinister and risky to me…Mama gave me words and I said “Oh, my name isn’t important, but rather the hearts of the little ones with no voice and no strength…THEIR name is what is important, and really, their name is like unto the name of everyone that these charities here tonight are all about.”

And I excused myself and walked off…my baby was there and I told her about it, and was shaking very badly (it was in a break).

Got it under control, and the event continued…and we won a great auction, and then it ended.

She went to get the van, as we had to load some things into it, so I sat in my place and just listened to the night, enjoying being there, but out of the way…and I see him coming over. I was thinking “Oh crap, here it comes” but he takes off his glasses about halfway over to me (his nonverbal indication that he was speaking openly and with no mask)…

…he sits down and wants to shake hands again, but this time, he was very gentle…and he said to me “I want to say thank you, thank you so much for loving a stranger enough to tell me what you did, and save me from potential horror in knowing that I had messed up.”

I told him, oh you are soo welcome, and I am so sorry that it hurt you, I really was seeking to avoid that. He said no, it was perfect, seriously…I was totally wrong, and just talking with no thought whatsoever, and you really blessed me.

At that I was crying hard inside, but I bit my lip bloody to stay together and not fall apart…so I said to him can I tell you a statistic? He indicates yes, so I said out of the population of people who are even willing to acknowledge they are transgender, 41% of them have attempted suicide, and even a higher percentage think about it constantly. This compares to 2-4% in the general population.

He was so still…and so I pressed in and said again that something like that could literally put someone over the edge…and then he said how wrong he was, on every level regardless of my status or identity.

It was a true apology! I think he really meant it? So I told him how just a couple of years ago his words would have shattered me, but now I was able to at least talk to him…and he said something about how in his church there was a m2f who was coming out in the community, and how ignorant he was, but that I had connected so many dots for him, and he was deeply grateful.

So Constance…it seems like it was all a success, right? Good fruit, wholeness exceeding brokenness, educated ruling class member…So why do I feel so bad right now? Why am I still crying, bleeding, and having all those tiresome hounding jackal voices yipping at me?

One Q, and he knows my name and who I work for…one comment and everyone knows…but part of me wants that, they have to deal with me as I am…and part of me wants to just disappear down a rabbit hole.

Constance,I beg you, on behalf of those whom you will talk to, interact with and relate to who are transgender or gay, or some other hidden brokenness and you have no idea, to take stock of your words…I am pretty whole, very loved by Them and I know it…but your words could literally kill someone, and I am not joking with wild hyperbole. If I wanted to do something after tonite, imagine…and the power of some kind word…again you have no idea how powerful your words are…my friends here, when they comment have at times given me courage to face my day, my life.

Silence can kill too…but it is better than saying the wrong thing, which can never be unsaid, unheard.

Oh…and one more thing: if you are of the opinion that being transgender or gay or transgender friendly or gay friendly is an inherent sin and that it is your duty as a member of christendom to “represent” and make sure that everyone you meet knows that you are so devoted to God that you will kill them in the process, Please…don’t bother speaking…you wear your own pride and your own opinions masquerading as the so-called heart of God like a butcher’s apron. Our eyes can see the blood stains of your victims, we can see the steel silver flash of your butcher knives in your eyes, we can smell the stench of death on you (and no it isn’t the savory aroma of the gospel which is the aroma of death to the perishing!) It is the decaying smell of horror become ho-hum and your own comfortable wallowing in your worship of yourself in God’s Precious Name.

We tremble at your approach…and at your fate, when the word “mercy” finally has meaning to you as you are judged by the children of your slaves that diligently work your gospel plantation!

That is my experience…and I still cannot sleep. But perhaps you would join me in a vigil…until all are cherished from the least on up.

Love, Charissa

The Footprints of Ghosts (commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself)

Posted on June 15, 2014 by charissagrace

The fire crackles and pops
its diphthongs and phonemes
in that hot and feisty
rapid-snap delivery.

“Dad! Dad! Daddy! Father!”
It says this in living
letters of merry blazing
iterations of what,
repetitions of who,
and smoky, hazy eye-burning
questions of…
how?

I shiver and draw close,
grateful for warmth
this late spring day.
It is still early, and summer
slumbers in the dawn,
as I sit shiva with spring …

and the fire sings, keens,
quests, warms and shows us
the way of all things,
fading natural-like, and
giving up its ghost.

Ashes drift lazily,
footprints of wandering ghosts
free at last from their entombment,
in limbs of wood and sap,
and finally I see ashes
are ghostly release,
are seeds, promises of Phoenix,
gathering, bunching,
heaving and inevitable.

Smoke gets in my eyes,
clears my eyes, blurry and stinging
and stirs my memory pools
as I think back on 31 spectral years,
as a ghost encased in a word,
in a role, entombed
in limbs of alien thick
coarse wooly flesh.

Those long years of walking on water and anxious,
with no idea
what was a daddy
and inherent universal
knowing of love so deep it makes
the shores of the galaxy seem shallow.

Love was my fire,
my ghost, my ash-seeds,
and I my own Phoenix
sleeping, waiting,
looming, wanting.

I gave myself, my blood and sweat,
my upturned nose to fear and downturned face to them…
I threw me on the fire
and I screamed silent,
solitary inside no-one-else-here land.

I popped and hissed
and seethed and whistled
and snapped as I
gave up the ghost each day,
turned to ash each day,
diminished, but growing…
disappearing and becoming

until I walked
free and disembodied
and covered with ashy afterbirth
and filled with knowing
I could do nothing more
than give the love of one called father
even if I could not bear the
name of man.

Summer stirs, and my reverie is snapped
by the sharp chirp of robins
wanting to scritch thru the fire remnants for sowbugs.
Spring has closed her eyes,
her breath has slowed
even as mine has quickened
and I stand to face
my first father’s day of
fully knowing me.

Love calls 4 times.
And I know that somewhere,
somehow, someway
that feisty fire-voice
was naming and liberating
and I have been reborn
from all ash,
a ghost no more
but bodied, present,

and turning in my joy.

Kevin Williamson shows us how to dehumanize a trans person, in three simple steps.

Posted on June 5, 2014 by charissagrace

Kevin Williamson shows us how to dehumanize a trans person, in three simple steps..

Constance…this will give a snapshot into ways that so often we dehumanize one another…specifically in the LGBTQ community.

But think about it: how often do these same concepts and methods get applied to one another in whatever social context we find?

Love Mercy.

Do Justly.

Walk Humbly.

Love and Grace,

Charissa

Kevin Williamson shows us to dehumanize a trans person, in three simple steps..

Dialogue: the key to kind acceptance of another person

Posted on May 27, 2014 by charissagrace

Think about a time when you met someone, someone you instantly clashed with, without a word being spoken…go ahead, I will wait…we have all had that happen. Now: think about someone that happened with, and then as time passed and you got to know them you discovered you were totally wrong about them, that your reaction had been all within you, and was unrelated to them completely. I am not going to wait on this one, for these sorts of endings are more rare…at least in my life they were. Sadly, far too often I just avoided the person and then lived…until I forgot about them, and went on in my cushy-comfy zone of complacency.

Wanna know the basic root of this phenomenon? I think it is Xenophobia: fear of the unknown. A person will look different, or act different, or some other factor about them is something unknown to us…so we clench up, clam up, and withdraw…and then make up all sorts of rationales to justify our low and venal rejection of a fellow creature made in Their image.

Generally, at least for me, dialogue precedes the change of heart and mind that I undergo when I have been in this boat. After talking with the person (not at, or over), I discover that we have so much more in common by virtue of our shared human experience and reality than we are different. Especially when I was firmly locked away in the christendom ghetto…I dared not talk with different people, unless I totally dominated the exchange in a monologue “devoted to evangelism”, but in truth designed to shield and protect myself from having to stretch and include someone in my world.

I think this is why so many so-called “evangelistic-efforts” end fruitless, and at times even exacerbate the divide between we who call ourselves “saved” and they whom we designate as “needing to be saved”.

Genuine dialogue bypasses all this. Trust me, if your faith is living and genuine, and you are in relationship with Jesus more than with His book, then you will not be able to miss the chances to give an account for the Hope that is in you…they will beg to hear why you seem different (you do seem different…don’t you???). You will find that connection…and begin to learn that the things you hid behind as reasons to not connect with people have become touchstones of punctuation in the quilt of common experience.

This is one of the main reasons I post essays on a lot of topics, and other people’s interviews of interesting people…and it is why I recommend reading the interview with Janet Mock that I post below. It originally appeared at http://www.rookiemag.com/2014/05/janet-mock-interview/ and it is a fabulous window into the existence of one of the most influential people in our times. Janet is uniquely positioned to touch a lot of spheres in life, and she is articulate enough to create that dialogue.

Dialogue is not something that is sorta like the old “I won’t hit you if you don’t hit me” game…that is stasis, and dead waters. No…dialogue is living, interesting, and often the very vessel They can get into to reach our hearts and minds.

Check out the interview…I am pretty sure you will be glad you did.

Love always, and Grace upon Grace…

Charissa

You Can Be Free: An Interview With Janet Mock

In which we talk about her feminist icons, how teenagers are way cooler than the media thinks, and why she identifies with Tracy Flick.

05/26/2014 Julianne gender identity, identity, interview, janet mock, trans, transgender

Pardon the hyperbole, but Janet Mock may be the best person ever. I felt this way after reading her 2013 book, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, a beautiful, powerful memoir that follows Janet from her childhood in Hawaii, where she grew up as a transgender girl, to her current position as a high-profile (and still young!) writer and activist who inspires people everywhere to live exactly as they want to live.

She decided to come out as trans in a 2011 essay in Marie Claire magazine; since then, she has worked hard to increase the visibility of transgender people, including starting the hashtag #girlslikeus, which encourages trans people to share their stories on Twitter. (She is also very good at social media.)

My feelings about her greatness only intensified when I actually got to talk to her on the phone last month, when she’d just returned home to New York from one of her many college speaking gigs. You know how sometimes you’re talking to someone and they’re just so on it that their voice crackles with electricity? That’s how Janet was.

JULIANNE: So much of Redefining Realness is your very specific memories from your childhood, some of which are so wrenching! How did you remember all of that, and how were you able to get it all out in your writing?

JANET MOCK: I started by writing journal entries. I made a commitment to myself to write 500 to 1,000 words every morning—to just catalog every memory, even if it was just a fragment, on paper. Once I really got into that space and got disciplined, I was able to re-imagine what happened and to mine the feelings and the details of that time period. That’s why there are a lot of pop culture references, because I watched so much TV! I would try to remember certain things by asking myself, What song lyrics was I trying to memorize? What type of dance moves was I trying to learn?

But then you have to remember the pain, too, and that was the hardest part—the wrenching part, as you say—having to revisit that, not as an adult, but going back as a child and feeling it again as a young person who didn’t have much agency over their body and how it felt to go through those traumatic events. So I just had to be very kind to myself as a writer, but also kind to those who wronged me, kind about the mistakes people made and how they contributed to my pain.

As a fellow writer, I have found when you’re accessing those painful things, there is an instinct to lie to yourself, in order to protect yourself. How did you avoid that?

There are certain moments in the book where I call myself out for wanting to soften things or exclude things, and that was part of being transparent. I was committed to being transparent not just through the stories I chose to tell, but throughout my writing process. I talk about my mother’s suicide attempt, and about not wanting to [write about it] because I didn’t want to see her that way. Also, some of the details of the sex work I went through as a teenage girl—sometimes I wanted to erase those from the record of my life. But being honest about that actually helped me. It relieved me from my silence and shame, and hopefully it can help other people feel that sense of relief about something that may be heavy that they’ve been holding on to for a long time.

Was wanting to find that relief one of the reasons you started writing the book?

Yeah. At first I wasn’t writing with the intention of making a memoir—I just did it ’cause I wanted to have a record for myself. It was a selfish project—there was no sense of intersectionality or social-justice jargon or anything like that. It was just about me, this girl, and her story and her pain. I was trying to get it as raw as possible on the page so that I’d know that it was real.

But when I stepped forward publicly in Marie Claire, I was like, Wow, there’s a powerful story here that I think I’m supposed to tell. I don’t mean that in a boastful way—there just aren’t many books by young marginalized women like myself who did what I did, the way I did it.

Since that Marie Claire piece came out, social justice ideas and words like intersectionality have become way more widespread, especially for young people, partly because of Tumblr. Have you seen a shift?

Ooh, Tumblr’s powerful, yes. Those words are very powerful tools for describing this oppression. And it’s great that some people have access to them—but most people don’t. For me, it was super important to not use those terms in the book, because they exclude a lot of people who don’t have educational access, or who may not be engaged in social-justice stuff, but who want to be enlightened about things, to have their political consciousnesses raised a bit. I wanted to write the book for everyone—including that girl who I was in seventh grade who didn’t even know the term transgender. I wanted to give her a book so she could also feel like she was in the know, without being talked down to or made to feel like she has to aspire to something “higher” when she already has all the knowledge she needs to define her own experience. It’s not for me to define it for her. So I wanted to use words and language that she understands.

Your book has done a lot to help trans people be recognized in the larger culture. Did anything help you feel recognized that way? There aren’t that many books out there like your book.

My reflection of myself has always been a composite of many images and people that I have met along the way. I talk a lot about Beyoncé and Clair Huxtable and Toni Morrison, and I talk about the trans women who were in my life as a teenager, and the women around me when I was growing up, my father’s sisters, my grandmother, and my mother. I saw all of these women as mirrors, and made them into my own little mirrored mosaic.

But regarding the whole genre of “trans books”—I guess they would call them “transition stories” or “transition books”: So many of them do not have the intersection of youth, and that’s pretty important, because young people oftentimes don’t have much body agency in our culture. Like, your parents can literally pick you up and take you somewhere and put you wherever they want and tell you want clothes you can wear and what clothes they’re willing to buy you. All of these things are what make finding yourself and expressing yourself and your own authenticity difficult [when you’re young]. That’s one of the things I notice when I speak to young people, that sense of struggling with their lack of agency. I just tell them that, yes, you do have agency, despite your parents. Live your life on Twitter, put up some selfies! Reblog some things! That sense of self-representation is so important.

In terms of trans women, I’m happy that there are more of us visible in mainstream media. Platforms like Tumblr and YouTube allow people to create images that they don’t see in the mainstream media—and to also talk back to mainstream media when they fuck up. Rookie is a testament to that!

Thank you, we’re trying! You’ve talked about how reading the work of several female authors of color—like Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison—helped you get to a place where you could “just be.” As you were reading them, did you feel like you were being seen?

I think the first one I was exposed to was Maya Angelou, in probably eighth- or ninth-grade English class, when we read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Being the only black student in class I was like, Oh god, we have to read this? I knew everybody was gonna look at me and think this was my experience. But then I read it, and I was like, Oh my god, this is my experience! It was powerful to read—specifically the parts where she talks about sexual abuse as a child. That was something that I had never told anyone I had gone through, so seeing that someone had written it down in a book that we were reading in class, I was like, Oh my god—this exists in the world?

So that was one of those things where I was like, I need to go to the library and read more books. Because I also didn’t have access to books, unless it was school. (I always talk about my youth struggle of never being able to order anything from the Scholastic catalog that was passed around in class, and always yearning for those books delivered to me the following week!) [Reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings] prompted me to get a library card and just sit among those stacks and read books by women who looked like my self-image. That was important to me, because [those women] lived the life that I saw myself living one day, as a black woman. In my own reality, that didn’t exist for me yet. I was this trans girl who wasn’t out, who wasn’t revealing herself to the world or even to herself. It was so helpful to be able to look into those books and be like, Wow, this is what life could be like for me.

But the top one would be Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. For me, that book was everything. The idea of this woman on a quest to find herself and to find the right kind of love and fulfillment and identity and not being smashed into her community’s fantasies of her—that gave me so much agency. It pushed me to dream of greater possibilities for myself. It just blasted my mind open! You can be free!

What were you like as a teenager?

By the time I turned 13, I had met my best friend, Wendi. When you have a pivotal bestie, you kind of become the same person but you also complement each other. Wendi was so unabashedly unapologetic about who she was that no matter what I did—even when I started transitioning—I could never seem as “out there” as her. I was always slightly in her shadow, which gave me safety. From 12 years old all the way until we were 18, we were like close close close tight. So when you ask me what I was like, I can’t talk about my teenage self without talking about Wendi, because we’re so linked.

But I was very internal, if that makes sense. I think I was a deeper thinker than my best friend was. I enjoyed the library. I enjoyed quiet space, because I didn’t have that at home. But I also wanted attention, right? I was always kind of seen as a natural leader—people listened to me, and what I said mattered. So I never felt as though I was dismissed.

I loved school, and I was someone that people would ask for style advice. I always seemed like I was with it. I wasn’t a popular girl, but people liked me. I wasn’t ever going to be the prettiest girl in school, because I was a girl that wasn’t even supposed to exist. But I hung out with the popular girls, and they were my friends, so that gave me access points. It was almost like I was tolerated because I had these cool friends. So I always felt like I was internal, but I bet a lot of people from high school would remember me. I felt like I was invisible, but I knew I wasn’t, because I was so visible.

I think that once you’re out of high school, you start to understand that the way people see you does not necessarily line up with how you see yourself.

Mm-hmm. I had this sense of like…oh my god, I was such a victim. But then I realized that I’d internalized what people think trans people go through in high school. Like, it was tough, but high school was tough for a lot of people! I’m sure that my multiple layers of identities that I inhabit made it more difficult, but to be honest, I enjoyed high school. I wanted to go every day.

It wasn’t my peers who gave me problems—it was mostly teachers who didn’t understand how I could thrive, how I could be so liked, how I could be in marching band and debate club, how I could be captain of the volleyball team and be elected a student leader and become a peer mediator. They didn’t understand how a trans girl could do all those things, so it’s almost like they didn’t want it to be true.

When I was in the eighth grade, me and Wendi started a petition to get the intermediate school to allow us to wear makeup. [Laughs] I didn’t include this in my book because it’s something I forgot, but other people remembered us going around with a clipboard and some notebook paper and getting people to sign a petition so that we could wear makeup. In my memory [Wendi and I] just walked into school wearing makeup. I don’t remember ever getting in trouble for wearing makeup. I was that student, though, that’s who I was. When I watch Election, I’m like, Oh, I was soooo Reese Witherspoon!

Related, the times I’ve seen you speaking on TV, you seem to have so much grace and poise. Where do you learn those things?

In the mirror!

Do you think [poise is] something you can learn, or do you just embody it?

[Laughs] I feel like because I’ve had to juggle so much, that there’s not much that bothers me. There are a lot of high-pressure things that are stressful—especially live TV appearances! They’re so stressful, no matter what. Even if it’s a “safe” environment with a host that you really like, it’s still super stressful. What grounds me in this idea of having “good composure” or being eloquent or graceful is over-preparedness. Over-preparing puts me at ease and allows me to be present when I’m there. I can control how I act, how I react, how my face looks, how I sit, and what comes out of my mouth, which allows me to appear as though I’m totally at ease. It call comes from just growing up, juggling a lot at home, family dynamics, my own struggles with identity—wanting to be great, you know? Daring for greatness. Juggling all of these things was the boot camp. But preparedness is what grounds me. Knowing your environments so you can expect them, and even knowing the failings of your culture. Like, if you’re going into a racist, capitalist, sexist corporate environment, and you know what it is and its failings, then you can know how to operate around it. You kinda seem like #unbothered.

What do you do when you are suffering, and how do you help your friends when they are suffering?

The space of suffering, I struggle with, because I’m part of a community that’s so steeped in trauma. A lot of people talk about trans women of color and the violence that we deal with. But when we’re together, we don’t talk about that. Because the world will remind us of that. We know that when we walk in the world, we are under attack. We understand that. And so when we get together, we wanna talk about Beyoncé and have a couple cocktails, you know? Hang out and just be. Just be happy. Being happy together builds our sisterhood, but it also builds our resolve and it’s just like, This is revolutionary for us to be in this world and its suffering and to deal with suffering, but be fucking happy, too. We don’t need to sit in it all the time, because we exist in it.

Do you keep inspirational Post-it notes around your workspace?

Well, I do have one that my boyfriend, Aaron…he was listening to an audiobook about the I Love Lucy show—it’s random, but he loves inside-Hollywood stories. The head writer who helped them create that juggernaut of a television show said the two things that matter in Hollywood are ownership and perception. So I have a Post-it note that says ownership + perception.

The work that I do, it really informs me. I want to own the content I make—I don’t want to just be a subject on someone else’s show. I want to be leading those conversations. “Perception” is the idea of definition–I can create the image of myself that I allow others to see. And I can maintain my boundaries in a public world.

Also, I have a sticker on my planner that says It’s your turn to change the world.

Speaking of, I read that you work with Youngist, a platform for young people to do citizen journalism and have an amplified voice in mainstream media. What do you do there?

I mostly just giving editorial advice, but I think it’s so important for any silenced group of people, like young people, to have their own platforms. Everyone loves to talk about millennials—I guess that’s you guys!—but it’s important to give them power to have their own voice. Everyone always asks me, “What advice would you give young people?” and I’m always like, young people know exactly what they wanna do! If they want advice from me, that young person will come to me, you know? They know their experiences. They know what they’re going through. They know who they are. And my job is not to talk down to them, or to give them some aspirational message. It’s just to let them know that they have all the power to determine their own lives, to define them, and to declare them.

Youngist takes the political and pop culture news and really gives [millennials’] take on it, instead of older people always being like, “The millennials are taking selfies! They’re so absorbed with themselves!” It’s like, uh, no, look on YouTube, look at what they’re doing.

It’s nice to hear you say that—those selfie articles are so make-fun-able.

It’s always like, some 50-year-old cisgender white hetero man talking about young girls and what they’re doing. It’s like, this is so pervy, first of all! [Laughs] It’s these people who think all young people are the same. No, they’re not! It’s really simplistic and reductive, and I think young people can just, like, grab their computers and blow shit up. ♦

Sarah Hoffman, author of new children’s book, speaks with GLAAD about raising a gender non-conforming child and education through storytelling | GLAAD

Posted on May 25, 2014 by charissagrace

Sarah Hoffman, author of new children’s book, speaks with GLAAD about raising a gender non-conforming child and education through storytelling | GLAAD.

Good morning Constance…another really fabulous article about Parenting Gender-nonconforming children. The strength of this article is how it brings out that the gender non-conforming behavior occurs thru nothing the parent has done or failed to do!

That means that a lot of guilt, and therefore shame that many parents of gender-non-conforming children experience can be laid to the side as trash to discard.

Any reader who is a parent: think about the things with your children that “just were”, and you had to accept them or divorce from your child…those were tough things…

…and then think about all that, and add in the whole Q of gender identity…

…and let your compassion and kindness grow. Perhaps even reach out parents in your area that you know have this responsibility laid on them…let them know that they are accepted and loved and affirmed.

As you do to the least of these, so too you do to Him.

Sarah Hoffman, author of new children’s book, speaks with GLAAD about raising a gender non-conforming child and education through storytelling | GLAAD.

Why Do So Many Folks Hate Transgender People? | The Bilerico Project

Posted on May 21, 2014 by charissagrace

Why Do So Many Folks Hate Transgender People? | The Bilerico Project.

Constance, I have not pressed this right away, as I am really in a hurting place for reasons that are unrelated to this topic…just aching, longing, missing what never was, and finding it difficult to believe that it will ever be…trying to hold onto Jesus hand and be drawn thru this valley of the shadow…trying to hold onto Mama’s waist, and hold tight as She crashes time and space, and makes a way for me…birth is HARD!

But the topic needs to be looked at…posted and reposted so that you can see some of the basic things faced by transgender people. And, you know what? Hate of anyone really boils down to these areas.

Think about it.

Love God.

Love yourself.

Love your neighbor.

A fantastic and very informative essay helping to clarify gender

Posted on May 10, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I think the biggest obstacle between most people and acceptance of the multiple gender expressions in our world, is ignorance.

Ignorance.

So, the most effective way to eradicate that obstacle is education. In that spirit I offer yet another reblog of a post that does a great job providing such education. As technology has advanced, the nuances of our universe are increasingly revealed…they have always been there. We have defined things by what we see, what we know…it is only natural to do this.

So…I pray that your eyes would be enlightened and your horizons expanded by the following post.

Love, Charissa

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Intersex: What is It, and What It Means for Sexuality

Kat Callahan

Intersex: What is It, and What It Means for Sexuality

If some people are born neither male nor female, what does that say about our traditional views of sex and gender, and as these individuals will grow up to have sexual orientations, how can those orientations be defined? These are the questions asked by Michael Passaro in an essay which explores the possibility for a labeling system which validates and makes visible intersex individuals.

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about the gender and sexuality spectrum. I’ve discussed many things, from how we can and should define bisexuality, to whether sexual orientation should be a special class from other attractions. I will most likely do separate posts on each of these but one of the topics which interests me most is that of biological sex. What is sex? What are its defining characteristics? And how does it intersect with our many other characteristics and identities?

Lets start with the very basic. What is sex? Seems obvious to most. Sex is being male or female. Right? Well, yes. But maybe no. At least we can say that this is the widely understood use of the word. Let’s note that sex is not to be confused with gender. Gender is the social construct of categories of people and the behaviors and ways people are supposed to feel and relate to those categories/behaviors. But let’s explore a little bit into what it means to have a sex.

I suppose the simplest way to do this is to ask how do we know what sex you are? This is determined at birth by a doctor and is dependent on your developed sex organs. If you have a penis and testes you are male. If not, female. Simple right? We run into problem with this system when we encounter infants born with differences in their sex organs’ development so that they don’t really have a penis or a vagina or a clitoris. So which sex are these people? Well, doctors have decided in the past that they should be altered to fit into a binary system that cannot represent the form of the child.

As you can imagine, this worked for a time but soon came under scrutiny. People were slipping through the cracks. Because most of the children who were operated on were made into ‘girls’ these cracks were pushed open when people started to experience problems related to men’s health. This combined with the growing science around DNA moved sex’s definition to determined more by the the chromosomes contained within your cells.

This has led to even more interesting areas of what it means to be male or female. Almost everyone knows by the 7th grade that a female has two X chromosomes and a male has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. However like all things in life, things aren’t this simple. There are many variations that can occur. There are people who only have one X chromosome. People who are XXY or XYY. There are XXX people and there are XXY people. What do we make of these? If DNA is the defining factor and there are so many different possibilities why do we only have 2 sexes?

Science has created a circular loop. We look at your physical characteristics at birth, and if needed we look at your DNA, but if your DNA isn’t fitting into the XX or XY categories we then look at your physical development again.

I, and many others, propose that there is a false sense of security in there being only two sexes. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor in biology and gender studies at Brown University, put forward that there could be as many as 5 different sex classifications (in a thought experiment). There is growing recognition in the scientific field that intersex is a legitimate claim against a binary understanding of sex. Germany and Australia have officially recognized that sex may not necessarily be only male and female. Australia allows for a sex “X” and Germany allows for children to be born with an indeterminate sex (to be determined at a later time).

There are many issues to deal with for intersex individuals. Issues of gender, issues of recognition, issues of bodily integrity and many more. All of these are best addressed by those who are directly affected by such things. So I would like to look at what this means for the rest of us who are (think we are) conventionally sexed. What does this mean for our understanding of sexuality?

The most glaring complication is what this means for our understanding of sexual orientation. In general sexual orientations are in relation to one’s self and the object of desire. Namely, if they are your sex, or the ‘opposite’. This is complicated when we talk about sexual orientation in terms of gender instead of sex but let’s focus on sex. Because now we do not have a binary what does it mean to be ‘heterosexual’? What is the opposite of male? What is the opposite of intersex? This is further complicated dependent on the number of sexes we allow. Can only some people be heterosexual then?

A further complexity arises when we look at what it means to be bi/pansexual. Again, operating under the assumption of sex as the object of sexual orientation, bisexual and pansexuality are the same (because traditionally there is only two sexes). However with the introduction of intersex this changes. Do we then interpret bisexual to mean two sexes? Do we adopt the view of many bisexual activists and say its attraction to one’s own sex and others? Maybe this would depend too on how many sexes we deem there to be.

Lets assume there are 3 (male, female, and intersex). Is a bisexual person still the same as a pansexual one? A person who is attracted to their own sex and others? Or is it a person attracted to two sexes? Many people might say the latter. To those I raise this question: Suppose I am a male, and I am attracted to females, and attracted to intersex individuals. BUT let us also say that I am only attracted to intersex people who resemble females. What is my sexual orientation? I seem to be bisexual. Because technically I am attracted to two sexes. However, am I really attracted to intersex people or am I actually attracted to their female-ness? It seems inaccurate to say that I am attracted to intersex people as a whole because its really only some.

This seems to justify breaking sex down further than only 3 sexes. Lets say we adopt the 5 sex system put forward by Fausto-Sterling (or even more sexes). Now how do we deal with the bi/pansexuality issue? Does/should bisexuality apply to those who are attracted to 2, 3, 4 sexes (and on and on)? Or ought we have trisexuals, quadsexuals, etc.? I’m not sure.

For clarity’s sake maybe classification ought be specific to the number of sexes you are attracted to. But is it the same for a male to be attracted to a female and a male as it is for a female to be attracted to females and female-presenting intersex? I’m not sure. Maybe we ought overhaul our entire classification system? Maybe the number is not the important bit but the specific sexes we are attracted to. Is it better to have a more complicated but also more comprehensive/accurate system?

Its clear that the system that we have doesn’t work. We can’t decide how to determine sex, let alone tell how many there are. The current binary places people into tiny boxes and clearly others many. It has been used to justify altering infants bodies unnecessarily, not only dangerous for the child then but then altering their entire life (forcing them to take hormones and still have the risk of medical complications later). As for sexual orientations – as a classification system we need to make a judgment call as to what it is that is important. Is the defining characteristic the number of sexes your attracted to? Or is the sex of the person important? If all we want is simplicity then clearly numbers is the way to go but I would question the value of a classification system that doesn’t accurately reflect the diversity that exists.

Read more about sexuality here.

This essay was originally published at Issues of Humanity. Republished with Permission. Image via Shutterstock.

Janet Mock: Why I Asked Alicia Menendez about her vagina, & other invasive questions

Posted on May 2, 2014 by charissagrace

Alicia Menendez Interview: Trans People & Media’s Invasive Questions | Janet Mock.

Janet Mock is amazing! While she is physically beautiful, and incredibly blessed in that she was far less ravaged by Testosterone than many of us, the fact is it is her mind, her heart and soul, and her indomitable spirit that make her beautiful.

I love that she is so courageous and following her dream, and I love even more that she feels a sense of mission for the entire TG community, and to humanity in general. When people who have influence, like her, intentionally take steps to challenge the current paradigm, and then to educate and inform as well, it makes a way for everyone to gain access to greater liberty to actualize themselves as well.

Flipping the script: such a good way to really drive home awareness. Try it yourself after you read this and watch the video…put yourself into the space of a transgender person. Walk around an entire day dressed wrong and see how you feel (warning: it won’t feel good!! Lol!)

Blessings and Joy,

Charissa

Gender Performance: The TransAdvocate interviews Judith Butler | The TransAdvocate

Posted on May 2, 2014 by charissagrace

Gender Performance: The TransAdvocate interviews Judith Butler | The TransAdvocate.

I want to be sure to reblog this…Judith Butler is a very important voice for us, and I am wanting to place this article here for you to dip into, and also for myself to refer to later…

See…my oldest had apparently studied her in college and had long held positions similar to Judith’s. He told me that for years he wondered how to bring the topic up to me!! LOLOLOL!!

So anyway, thanks Son!

I love you and thanks Constance for showing up everyday

What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism

Posted on May 1, 2014 by charissagrace

What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism.

Constance, I signed up for this newsletter a week ago or so. I have been thrilled with the articles they have been sending. They are accessible to a broader audience than some of the other things I have read lately that, while extremely cogent and thoughtful, are nevertheless a bit more esoteric in that an understanding of some more uncommon philosophers is almost mandatory to truly comprehend and apply the thinking to lifestyle changes.

(Whew! What a run-on sentence! Giggle…that is the epitome of what happens in my brain as I wade thru those articles! 🙂 )

But on Everyday Feminism, the content is pitched a bit more at the generic level, the introductory level, and thus more accessible. This article in particular was quite helpful to me.

See, I am still learning about myself…I always knew what I was, even while I dwelt long in the land of Nod (disassociated), but I am just now knowing who I am! And I read the words of others who have long practise and great facility with these concepts, words, and are adept at translating them into a broader commonality, and I find my awareness and understanding growing well.

Please give it a read…there are very likely transgender people in your life, and you do not even know…heck they might not even know (consciously)!! In your jobs, in your schools, in your churches, and in your own families. We are not sexual deviants or perverts, we are humans, and we have been, for whatever reason anyone has been, created thus.

Love and prayers, Charissa

What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism.

Trans* Women Are Not Drag Queens — Everyday Feminism

Posted on April 15, 2014 by charissagrace

This is a very well written post that helps anyone not overly well-acquainted with what exactly a transgender person is…and isn’t.

I always soo appreciate writers that do such yoemen’s work in helping to push the ignorance boundaries farther and farther into the seas of forgetfulness.

Won’t you please click on thru, and learn some great things, not to mention enjoying the great writing!

Love, Charissa

Trans* Women Are Not Drag Queens — Everyday Feminism.

Understanding Gender

Posted on April 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Good morning everyone…the article I am posting is from the website https://www.genderspectrum.org/ , a very informative and balanced tool to peruse for your own education, or to point others in your life towards so they can become informed.

Constance, I have found that the number one barrier between people is nearly always ignorance.

IGNORANCE

That word means simply lack of knowledge. It doesn’t mean stupidity, vapidity, foolishness, or willful denial.

In my experience, you address the ignorance problem, and the other problems evaporate in the warm sunlight of knowledge disseminated in a wise manner. Phobias, hatreds, and indifferences are gone. Nowadays that process is called “Having your consciousness raised”, or “becoming radicalized”. While I think that both of those terms describe something that happens, I also find that people generally do not want, and are not willing to have their consciousness raised or become radicalized…but they are willing to read a few things out of general good will…and in that place, knowledge can gain a foothold and begin to pierce that great veil of unknowing that lays across the face of the deep within the hearts of those ignorant on a subject.

This article is some basic teaching regarding gender, and the difference between gender and sexuality.

I hope it is helpful to you, and even to someone you know…pass it along if you would? To that person who wraps herself tightly in their Jesus-Jersey, and that other person who is the little man behind the curtain of the Great and Terrible Oz…give it to the one who is most blase over the issue…you never know, you may give the keys to a person who has been locked up and quietly suffering from dysphoria for years, and in that gift they find courage to walk away from killing themself. God knows the horror of that place…so do I. tumblr_n3f1ehrikU1qdh7g0o3_500

Blessings and Grace,

Love Charissa

What is Gender?

For many people, the terms “gender” and “sex” are interchangeable. This idea has become so common, particularly in western societies, that it is rarely questioned. Yet biological sex and gender are different; gender is not inherently connected to one’s physical anatomy.

Sex is biological and includes physical attributes such as sex chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, internal reproductive structures, and external genitalia. At birth, it is used to identify individuals as male or female. Gender on the other hand is far more complicated. Along with one’s physical traits, it is the complex interrelationship between those traits and one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviors related to that perception.

The Gender Spectrum

Western culture has come to view gender as a binary concept, with two rigidly fixed options: male or female. When a child is born, a quick glance between the legs determines the gender label that the child will carry for life. But even if gender is to be restricted to basic biology, a binary concept still fails to capture the rich variation observed. Rather than just two distinct boxes, biological gender occurs across a continuum of possibilities. This spectrum of anatomical variations by itself should be enough to disregard the simplistic notion of only two genders.

But beyond anatomy, there are multiple domains defining gender. In turn, these domains can be independently characterized across a range of possibilities. Instead of the static, binary model produced through a solely physical understanding of gender, a far more rich texture of biology, gender expression, and gender identity intersect in multidimensional array of possibilities. Quite simply, the gender spectrum represents a more nuanced, and ultimately truly authentic model of human gender.

Falling Into Line

Gender is all around us. It is actually taught to us, from the moment we are born. Gender expectations and messages bombard us constantly. Upbringing, culture, peers, community, media, and religion, are some of the many influences that shape our understanding of this core aspect of identity. How you learned and interacted with gender as a young child directly influences how you view the world today. Gendered interaction between parent and child begin as soon as the sex of the baby is known. In short, gender is a socially constructed concept.

Like other social constructs, gender is closely monitored by society. Practically everything in society is assigned a gender—toys, colors, clothes and behaviors are some of the more obvious examples. Through a combination of social conditioning and personal preference, by age three most children prefer activities and exhibit behaviors typically associated with their sex. Accepted social gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way. As a result, individuals fitting neatly into these expectations rarely if ever question what gender really means. They have never had to, because the system has worked for them.

About Gender Diversity

Gender diversity is a term that recognizes that many peoples’ preferences and self-expression fall outside commonly understood gender norms. Gender diversity is a normal part of human expression, documented across cultures and recorded history. Non-binary gender diversity exists throughout the world, documented by countless historians and anthropologists. Examples of individuals living comfortably outside of typical male/female identities are found in every region of the globe. The calabai, and calalai of Indonesia, two-spirit Native Americans, and the hijra of India all represent more complex understandings of gender than the simplistic model seen in the west.

Further, what might be considered gender nonconformity in one period of history may become gender normative in another. One need only examine trends related to men wearing earrings or women sporting tattoos to quickly see the malleability of social expectations about gender. Even the seemingly intractable “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” notions are relatively new. While there is some debate about the reasons why they reversed, what is well documented is that until the 1950s, pink was seen as a more decided and stronger color, and thus more suitable for a boy, while blue, viewed more delicate and dainty, was commonly worn by girls.

Gender Terminology

Given the complexity of gender, it is not surprising that an increasing number of terms and phrases are developing to describe it. Below are some of the key terms you might encounter:

Biological/Anatomical Sex. The physical structure of one’s reproductive organs that is used to assign sex at birth. Biological sex is determined by chromosomes (XX for females; XY for males); hormones (estrogen/progesterone for females, testosterone for males); and internal and external genitalia (vulva, clitoris, vagina for assigned females, penis and testicles for assigned males). Given the potential variation in all of these, biological sex must be seen as a spectrum or range of possibilities rather than a binary set of two options.

Gender Identity. One’s innermost concept of self as male or female or both or neither—how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One’s gender identity can be the same or different than the sex assigned at birth. Individuals are conscious of this between the ages 18 months and 3 years. Most people develop a gender identity that matches their biological sex. For some, however, their gender identity is different from their biological or assigned sex. Some of these individuals choose to socially, hormonally and/or surgically change their sex to more fully match their gender identity.

Gender Expression. Refers to the ways in which people externally communicate their gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, haircut, voice, and other forms of presentation. Gender expression also works the other way as people assign gender to others based on their appearance, mannerisms, and other gendered characteristics. Sometimes, transgender people seek to match their physical expression with their gender identity, rather than their birth-assigned sex. Gender expression should not be viewed as an indication of sexual orientation.

Gender Role. This is the set of roles, activities, expectations and behaviors assigned to females and males by society. Our culture recognizes two basic gender roles: Masculine (having the qualities attributed to males) and feminine (having the qualities attributed to females). People who step out of their socially assigned gender roles are sometimes referred to as transgender. Other cultures have three or more gender roles.

Transgender. Sometimes used as an umbrella to describe anyone whose identity or behavior falls outside of stereotypical gender norms. More narrowly defined, it refers to an individual whose gender identity does not match their assigned birth gender. Being transgender does not imply any specific sexual orientation (attraction to people of a specific gender.) Therefore, transgender people may additionally identify as straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Sexual Orientation. Term that refers to being romantically or sexually attracted to people of a specific gender. Our sexual orientation and our gender identity are separate, distinct parts of our overall identity. Although a child may not yet be aware of their sexual orientation, they usually have a strong sense of their gender identity.

Gender Normative/Cisgender. Refers to people whose sex assignment at birth corresponds to their gender identity and expression. 1280869_775281615823053_1549559522_n

Gender Fluidity. Gender fluidity conveys a wider, more flexible range of gender expression, with interests and behaviors that may even change from day to day. Gender fluid children do not feel confined by restrictive boundaries of stereotypical expectations of girls or boys. In other words, a child may feel they are a girl some days and a boy on others, or possibly feel that neither term describes them accurately.

For a more complete list of terms associated with gender see A Word About Words.

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What an Edifying and wonderfully encouraging article.

Posted on December 22, 2013 by charissagrace

My sincere thanks and heartfelt gratitude to Adam Hunt, who posted an amazing apology and educational article about what we transgender humans face regularly. Coming from the gay community, this is huge, for it is exactly like he says, and unfortunately some of the worst hatred and vitriol directed at us comes from Gay and Lesbian identified humans, and that hurts even more than the regular kinds of hatred, for they really ought to know better, and have more empathy.

Thank you sooo much, Adam!!!

Dear Trans Persons Everywhere, I’m Sorry for Being a Bad Gay

Posted: 12/20/2013 8:27 pm

LGBT, Transgender Issues, Gay Men Transgender Issues, Trans Allies, Transgender,Transgender Allies, Gay Voices News

I wasn’t always an ally to the trans community. In fact, it was only a little over a year ago that I had pretty awful opinions about the trans community and the struggles they face. (“Why can’t they just accept that if they have a penis, then they’re a dude?”)

But then something happened. I met some people who changed my life and the way I see the world, the gender binary, and so forth. You see, it was really easy to judge what a trans person goes through, because I didn’t know any trans people. I thought drag queens were exactly the same as trans people (with a little more makeup and an extra boa or two). I also just assumed that a trans woman was just an overly effeminate gay male who wanted so much to be submissive that he decided to get an operation to have his dick chopped off. I know. I wasn’t a great human being, but is it really that far off what many members of the gay male community think? Or society at large? Maybe not, but that doesn’t make it okay.

I have these friends, and they’re some of the greatest parents I’ve ever had the privilege to know. Their fabulously autistic daughter was working in her phonics book when she came across the question: “Would a prince wear a fancy gown to the ball?” Her answer: “Sure! If he likes the dress, he should wear it everywhere!” It’s astounding that the one diagnosed with a social interaction “disability” is also the one with the purest innate understanding of gender identity and expression. It’s not a complicated notion for her, yet many of us in a progressive educated community can’t wrap our heads around the concept.

What it really comes down to is this: if a trans person is telling you he or she or ze is offended by the language you’re using, are you going to be the asshole that keeps doing it anyway? If a person says they’re a particular gender, whether you agree or not doesn’t change how they want to live their life. Does that sound like anything you’ve faced in the struggle for acceptance?

We’re an LGBT community, but somehow in our gay agenda we have lost sight of the misunderstandings and external ignorance transgender persons face on a day-to-day basis. So to keep it simple for now (because there is indeed so much more to learn), here are five things you can do to be a better trans ally. I mean, if we don’t stick together, what sort of community are we?

1. Pronouns: A person who was pronounced male at birth but identifies as a female (M2F) is a female. Don’t identify her with male pronouns (he, his, him…). It’s one of thosemicroagressions that can really tear at a person’s heart. The same goes for someone who is F2M, but the opposite.

2. “Cisgender” v. “Normal” or “Regular”: Refer to a non-trans person as “cisgender” or “cis” when needing to disclose their non-transgender status. When you refer to a non-trans person as “normal,” you’re effectively calling a trans person abnormal. Not cool.

3. Operations: No operation necessary to identify as a particular gender. It’s not about body parts, remember?

4. Gender and Sexuality: Very different things. Just because someone is trans does not mean they’re gay or lesbian. There are straight trans people just like there are straight cis people.

5. Verbiage: How dumb do you think a person sounds when he or she says, “Moving to L.A. gayed that boy,” or, “I heard Jennifer has been lesbianed by her friends at Hot Topic”? The same goes for when someone is “transgendered.” “Transgender” is not a verb. I can’t “transgender” a person any more than a church in Idaho can “straight” me, so make it easier on yourself. Drop two letters, or eight! It’s “transgender” or “trans” (or even “T”).

Gay dudes, we’re awesome. We have an awesome culture and history. We live awesome lives and go to awesome parties. We volunteer for awesome causes and we have awesome taste in just about everything. It’s hard to believe we can be more awesome, but we can! Be an awesome ally. Don’t you remember being told you were unnatural or against God’s creation? Were you ever isolated? Haven’t we been fighting for the rights we deserve? We have a lot of work to do to gain full acceptance and equality, and our trans brothers and sisters have even more. We’re stronger together, so if we can change some minor behaviors and pave the way for understanding, then why not?

If you’re looking for some additional resources to continue learning how to be a better ally to the trans community, Being Transgender in America with Melissa Harris-Perry is fabulous, as is Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook.

Follow Adam Hunt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AdamTopherHunt

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Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)

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1. Children are too young to know these things or make these decisions.

2. You are whatever your bits say you are.

3. Gender non-conforming behavior and identities are a result of something the parents did.

4. If you just made them behave like a proper boy/girl, it would fix the ‘problem.’

5. My kid said he is an elephant. Does that mean I should put him on an all-peanut diet? No! These parents are just being indulgent of a child’s fantasy.

6. When I was young, I was a tomboy, and I didn’t turn out to be transgender.

7. If you let them socially transition, you’re just setting them up to be bullied.

8. They’re giving ten-year-old children hormones!

9. What if these kids change their minds?

10. These kids should have to wait until they’re 18 before doing anything medically (including puberty-blocking drugs).

11. You transgender activists want to force all these children down a medical track.

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Raising a Transgender Child: A Star is Born

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EXHORTATION

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Concubine to the Patriarchy??? REALLY??? Wow.

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What is Gender?

The Gender Spectrum

Falling Into Line

About Gender Diversity

Gender Terminology

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Dear Trans Persons Everywhere, I’m Sorry for Being a Bad Gay

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