The Reality of How Trans People are Treated

[Drawmack]

Here’s a male view. From a guy I know. It may help you understand, a little. I’m not sure complete understanding is possible, but I really appreciate your honesty and goodwill here. Sometimes understanding is helpful, rather than necessary.

Part 1

Zoey,

Thank you for that story, and if you’re still in contact with them please thank the author for writing it for me too. It was powerful and touching. I think I understand much better than I did before what this must be like. There one sentence that really got me to thinking.

I know how the body can say one thing, while the mind screams the opposite - even if no-one can hear.

While it is not a perfect analogy this got me to thinking about how everyone has felt torn at one time or another. Everyone has laid awake at night mentally and emotionally raging between what they knew was right and what they wanted to do. Everyone has been ripped to pieces between doing what felt right and what you knew was right. This seems like about the best the rest of us can do to imagine what it’s like to be a transsexual.

 

[melissa1980]

Zoey,

Thank you for that story, and if you’re still in contact with them please thank the author for writing it for me too. It was powerful and touching. I think I understand much better than I did before what this must be like. There one sentence that really got me to thinking.

While it is not a perfect analogy this got me to thinking about how everyone has felt torn at one time or another. Everyone has laid awake at night mentally and emotionally raging between what they knew was right and what they wanted to do. Everyone has been ripped to pieces between doing what felt right and what you knew was right. This seems like about the best the rest of us can do to imagine what it’s like to be a transsexual.

How well I understand the dilemma posed to others in attempting to get their hands around this reality when I have chosen to reveal myself to them [as I am yet in the early transitional stages and live the boy life to fit what I must for now]. Most to whom I have revealed have chosen not to try to think about it much less read the results of medical research and instead have chosen to react out of raw emotion and condemnation. Your inquiring mind is refreshing and helpful. The charity you display is a gift we whose minds have screamed in terror over the gender disconnect we have known from early age is a blessing regardless whether you believe it is about the best you can do.

Thank you so much from one who has been so tormented.

 

[Zoe_Brain]

Thank you for that story, and if you’re still in contact with them please thank the author for writing it for me too.

I am. He’s doing post-doctoral research at the same University I’m doing my PhD at.

Meanwhile…
From the New York Daily News:

A transgender female walking down a Queens street was attacked by a pair of bigoted thugs who pelted her with rocks and beer bottles, prosecutors said.

“I was being attacked because of who I am,” said victim Carmella Etienne, 22.

“I’m pretty traumatized.”

Nathaniel Mims, 25, and Rasheed Thomas, 22, allegedly screamed anti-gay slurs and threatened to cut the woman’s throat Wednesday night in St. Albans.

They face charges of assault as a hate crime, menacing and harassment.

“I didn’t know you could get locked up for calling somebody names,” Thomas said after his arrest, according to prosecutors. “I called her a bunch of names. I called her a [expletive deleted], but she didn’t see me throw anything.”

Etienne, hit in the leg, told cops she saw the men throwing things at her.

“They were yelling homophobic slurs at me. They threatened to kill me. Chunky rocks and empty beer bottles they were throwing at me,” said the aspiring fashion designer. “Don’t ever walk that block anymore or we will slash your throat,” one of the defendants said, according to cops.

Etienne is now afraid to leave her home.

“The law will hopefully put them to justice. I love being myself,” she said.

The attack comes on the heels of another one on a transgender woman. Leslie Mora was assaulted with a belt buckle in Jackson Heights last month by two men. Prosecutors haven’t determined if they will pursue hate crime charges.

“There’s mounting concern in the community and anger at the violence and prejudice,” said Brendan Fay, a leader in the LGBT community in Queens. “Clearly these aren’t isolated incidents.”

 

[Drawmack]

How well I understand the dilemma posed to others in attempting to get their hands around this reality when I have chosen to reveal myself to them [as I am yet in the early transitional stages and live the boy life to fit what I must for now]. Most to whom I have revealed have chosen not to try to think about it much less read the results of medical research and instead have chosen to react out of raw emotion and condemnation. Your inquiring mind is refreshing and helpful. The charity you display is a gift we whose minds have screamed in terror over the gender disconnect we have known from early age is a blessing regardless whether you believe it is about the best you can do.

Thank you so much from one who has been so tormented.

Melissa,

As a Christian I am called to love my fellow human, and true love understands – or at least makes the attempt to.

Drawmack

 

[Drawmack]

I am. He’s doing post-doctoral research at the same University I’m doing my PhD at.

Meanwhile…
From the New York Daily News:

This is horrible. No person has the right to do anything like this to another person except in self-defense. Really what are people so afraid of, it’s not contagious.

 

[A_R_Smith]

I read that article and I can’t stop crying for that poor lass. This is obscene! I’m hoping to attend a college in San Francisco by summer or autumn of 2010 and I am terrified of being attacked…ironic, considering I was in mixed-martial arts for a decade.

 

[Drawmack]

I read that article and I can’t stop crying for that poor lass. This is obscene! I’m hoping to attend a college in San Francisco by summer or autumn of 2010 and I am terrified of being attacked…ironic, considering I was in mixed-martial arts for a decade.

San Fran is pretty accepting. However, when I was at East Stroudsburg University (esu.edu) I knew a group of students, from San Fran, who went all the way across the country to ESU because of its reputation for tolerance.

 

[Dale_M]

I’m hoping to attend a college in San Francisco by summer or autumn of 2010 and I am terrified of being attacked…

I haven’t lived in San Francisco for 15 years, so perhaps things have changed, but although gender transgressive persons were occasionally assaulted, its probably safer than most major cities. And SF certainly is more accepting of persons who are viewed as gender non-conforming.

 

[Dale_M]

From someone whose experiences with the Church were less than good:

But what sealed it was when my parents sent me to a priest for
counseling regarding my obvious case of transsexualism
I told him I was suicidal and he counseled that suicide would spare
others the pain of my growing up transsexual only he used the word queer.

The online magazine Salon, citing a recently published book, reports a similar incident.

In the fall of 1998, Lisa May Stevens, a 32-year-old from Idaho, went on a camping trip. Stevens had been told for most of her life that she was a boy, but in her 20s had discovered the truth about her sex – that she had been born a hermaphrodite, and that doctors had conducted surgeries on her genitalia as an infant. After learning the news, she consulted her priest, who said that while God usually condemns suicides, for her he might make an exception. A decade later, on the third day of her camping trip, she put a pistol under her jaw and pulled the trigger.

salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/07/xx_xy/

The article goes on to mention a book by Gerald N. Callahan, an associate professor in the microbiology, immunology and pathology department at Colorado State University. In in the book, and in his interview with Salon, he makes the claim that all of us are intersex - no one is purely male or female.
Prof. Callahan:

There’s no other place where we so quickly divide humans into two categories as sex. When I started doing research on the biology of sex development, one of the things that I realized is that the process is controlled by a series of enzymes and the reaction may be more or less complete. It’s not just two poles where that whole process can end up. In between what we call the ideal biological male or ideal biological female, there’s a whole range of other possibilities that don’t differ from our basic preconceptions to the extent that we have names for them or call them a disorder. Just like with every other human trait, there are an infinite number of possibilities.

 

[Zoe_Brain]

This is horrible. No person has the right to do anything like this to another person except in self-defense. Really what are people so afraid of, it’s not contagious.

And in the last two weeks, the bullet-riddled bodies of two trans people have been found, and another was found beaten to death. However, until we get evidence that these were “hate crimes”, they should not be counted as such.

It’s easier when the victim is alive, and can testify.

And some are victims of serial killers.

Police aren’t sure why someone beat transgender Teri Benally to death last weekend.

Witnesses found Benally, 42, unconscious on Maple Street SE near Coal Avenue. Benally died at a hospital.

Last month, another Trans person, Frederick Watson, was found beaten to death a few blocks away.

And police still have not found the killer of Ryan Hoskie who was also found dead in the street four and a half years ago in the same neighborhood. Hoskie also dressed as a woman…

"These three crimes, we are not saying at this time if they are linked,” said Walsh. “They are similar in what has occurred.”

Albuqueque is a dangerous place for Trans people, it seems. Though not as bad as Memphis, where 6 Trans women have been shot in the head in the last 2 years. 3 are dead, one’s still in a coma.

Teri was a wonderful person. She was kind, overwhelmingly helpful, and full of laughter. I pray that whoever ended her life be held accountable here on this earth, or thereafter. I, for one, could not label her. She was born a male, but she was always my aunt, in every and all ways. When I went to school at UNM and couldn’t afford a place of my own, she welcomed me into her home and found a job for me where she worked. I loved her then and I love her now. Where she is at there are no more labels, there is no more hate, and she can be at peace. I now pray for those out there who are persecuted for being themselves. No one should have to live in fear.

That is the reality of how trans people are treated, in the USA, and in 2009. Not somewhere far away, or in the dim distant past.

It’s just that I bet you’ve never heard about this in the news.

 

[Drawmack]

And in the last two weeks, the bullet-riddled bodies of two trans people have been found, and another was found beaten to death. However, until we get evidence that these were “hate crimes”, they should not be counted as such.

It’s easier when the victim is alive, and can testify.

And some are victims of serial killers.
Last month, another Trans person, Frederick Watson, was found beaten to death a few blocks away. Albuqueque is a dangerous place for Trans people, it seems. Though not as bad as Memphis, where 6 Trans women have been shot in the head in the last 2 years. 3 are dead, one’s still in a coma.

That is the reality of how trans people are treated, in the USA, and in 2009. Not somewhere far away, or in the dim distant past.

It’s just that I bet you’ve never heard about this in the news.

Actually Zoe, I have heard about these types of things. The University that I attended was just about a 50 / 50 population between straight and LGBT students. So, the student paper there did cover these types of things.

It is horrible when any person murders another person. It is even more horrible when that murder is based on some type of prejudice against a group than, at the very least, something the individual murdered actually did.

I just don’t understand why people treat each other this way. Until we all can learn how to cohabitate on this planet in a peaceful way – there is no hope for humanity.

 

[A_R_Smith]

This is why common media representations of trangendered people, especially those who transition to female, needs to change. I am sick and tired of seeing transwomen portrayed on television shows and in novels/comics/video games as immoral, underhanded people or prostitutes. I am also tired of seeing every transman in the same media portayed in the same way. Another point I would like to clarify: There are transmen like myself who have always been atracted to men and have never harbored any romantic interest in women. Granted, we’re not exactly common, but we are out there!

 

[melissa1980]

This is why common media representations of trangendered people, especially those who transition to female, needs to change. I am sick and tired of seeing transwomen portrayed on television shows and in novels/comics/video games as immoral, underhanded people or prostitutes. I am also tired of seeing every transman in the same media portayed in the same way. Another point I would like to clarify: There are transmen like myself who have always been atracted to men and have never harbored any romantic interest in women. Granted, we’re not exactly common, but we are out there!

Well said, A_R

 

[Holly3278]

**2358 **The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Emphasis mine.

I say that we should treat transsexuals the same way that we treat homosexuals, without unjust discrimination. I also believe that transsexualism is objectively disordered just as homosexuality is.

That said, I condemn violence towards transsexuals just as I would condemn violence towards homosexuals and bisexuals. I condemn it with the strongest of terms possible. It is utterly despicable to commit violence towards another human person because of a sin they are involved in. Just as I condemned the murder of George Tiller (who I refuse to call a doctor), I condemn the murder of the girl in the OP and the murder and violence towards any and all homosexuals and transsexuals.

 

[A_R_Smith]

I completely understand your views and I do want to say God bless you for standing up for simple decency.

 

[Zoe_Brain]

I completely understand your views and I do want to say God bless you for standing up for simple decency.

*(ANSA) - Lecce, September 9 - A Catholic choirmaster who was sacked after changing sex says he’s still waiting for an explanation from the cathedral in the southern Italian city of Lecce.

‘‘They gave me the boot without any explanation, beating about the bush without coming out with the real reason,’’ said Marco Della Gatta, who decided to change his name to Luana Ricci last year and is waiting for an operation.

Della Gatta had been organist and choirmaster at Lecce Cathedral for 18 years until his August 31 sacking.

In his former life he married and had children who are now 15 and 18.

‘‘Both they and my wife love me for what I am. I never would have thought that my condition would have caused problems in the workplace,’’ Della Gatta told local dailies.

The Lecce Curia on Wednesday hinted it would take to Della Gatta about her firing, voicing the hope that ‘‘dialogue can clear up the various aspects of this complex matter’’.
*

Simple decency is a rare commodity sometimes. Even in the Church.

 

[aspawloski4th]

(ANSA) - Lecce, September 9 - A Catholic choirmaster who was sacked after changing sex says he’s still waiting for an explanation from the cathedral in the southern Italian city of Lecce.

‘‘They gave me the boot without any explanation, beating about the bush without coming out with the real reason,’’ said Marco Della Gatta, who decided to change his name to Luana Ricci last year and is waiting for an operation.

Della Gatta had been organist and choirmaster at Lecce Cathedral for 18 years until his August 31 sacking.

In his former life he married and had children who are now 15 and 18.

‘‘Both they and my wife love me for what I am. I never would have thought that my condition would have caused problems in the workplace,’’ Della Gatta told local dailies.

The Lecce Curia on Wednesday hinted it would take to Della Gatta about her firing, voicing the hope that ‘‘dialogue can clear up the various aspects of this complex matter’’.

Simple decency is a rare commodity sometimes. Even in the Church.

Funny how famous proabortion Catholics get away with bloody murder, but on an issue with no difinative stand from the church gets someone loosing their job. Shame shame