I can’t even recall the name of the event, since such events are fairly commonplace and frequent in Washington, DC. There we all were—a gathering of transgender women from around the United States. It was midway in my own transition, probably around 2010, and both Mara Keisling and Amanda Simpson gave short speeches. Mara is indomitable, smart, bitingly funny, and exudes confidence; she and her small staff have done so much good work on behalf of American transgender persons through her courageous leadership and remarkable energy at the helm of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in Washington—an organization that she founded.4 Amanda was the first transgender woman political appointee in the Obama administration, and she was working at that time for the Department of Commerce. She later transferred over to the Pentagon, where she continued her competent and highly regarded service until the end of the Obama era; in doing so, she managed to shatter all manner of wicked stereotypes. I don’t remember if Dylan Orr, a transgender man who was the very first transgender political appointee (Department of Labor), was present, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. Dylan is a stalwart champion of transgender rights in the United States. After Mara’s and Amanda’s excellent speeches, the mood in the room was buoyant.
Still, I recall feeling very awkward and ill at ease. I had impulsively sat at a table of four transgender women all in their fifties or sixties, and all from Midwest states. They were each large of stature, with somewhat gravelly voices, and faces that remained stubbornly masculine. I knew right away that each of their lives must be so challenging; our society is ruthlessly unforgiving to transgender women who struggle to “pass.” Yet there they were, uplifted by each other’s presence, and thrilled to be at that gathering. Their delight to be at that table was manifest in their broad smiles, and they were very cordial to me in that reliable Midwestern way. Wonderful women, each and every one of them; I do hope that I reciprocated in kind.
Despite their congeniality, I’m acutely embarrassed now to confess that as soon as I sat down at their table I wished I could’ve found somewhere else to sit. I wanted so deeply not to be them, and not to be viewed by others outside the transgender community in the same way. Certainly I didn’t want to be the embodiment of one of the worst transgender stereotypes: the man in a dress. The whole luncheon was colored by my realization that being among transgender women was not where I wanted to be, but that I was well past the point of no return. I simply wanted to be Chloe, a woman, and not Chloe, a transgender woman.
Nothing excuses the meanness of my mindset that day, but with the distance of time and now being so settled in my identity as Chloe I can forgive myself a little. I was frightened, and at that vulnerable stage of my own transition I was very worried about my future. Safety and security are the most fundamental needs of any person in any situation, and at that time and in that place I felt neither. I’ve long since moved on, and now am honored and delighted to find my place among any transgender persons anywhere. We all share so much, even if each of us has a unique story. As my friend Dylan—a trans man—is fond of saying, “When you’ve heard one transgender person’s story, you’ve heard one transgender person’s story!” That’s largely true, but we all face many of the same obstacles—pernicious stereotypes rooted in ignorance chief among them. We face them every day in the media, in casual conversations, in passing comments, and in decisions made that directly affect our future prospects. I’ve written often to National Public Radio, the Washington Post, and other respected media outlets to express concern about “humor” or stories that exploit or distort the plight of transgender persons. I push back about their misinformation that confounds our efforts to overcome ignorance about who we are, or about missed opportunities (mostly when they are discussing issues of sexual orientation such as same-sex marriage) to offer a small comment in passing that would let readers or listeners know that the “T” (for transgender people) exists, that we are here, and that our stories are primarily about gender identity and not to be conflated with sexual orientation. As far as the mainstream media goes, we are all simply “gay,” which makes invisible the lives and challenges of many transgender people. Personally, I have become something of a bore (or what we once called a “broken record”) speaking out indignantly on this topic, yet my experience is that I find myself and the transgender community labeled as “gay” so often. I also bristle when people use “LGBTQI” to discuss exclusively gay and lesbian issues. It’s almost certainly a losing battle—the media have us firmly under the gay tent, but calling all transgender people “gay” obscures what it is like to be us—transgender.
All marginalized persons confront stereotypes. It’s what the majority do to “others,” and perhaps it’s hardwired into human nature. Many of these stereotypes do great damage to their targets, limiting our chances of being accepted as part of the recognized diversity of the human condition. Stereotypes of the awkward “man in a dress” cast us as powerless victims of our own mental instabilities, the butt of jokes and sniggers, people who are by definition exemplars of humiliation, stigma, and otherness. It’s why I cannot rewatch that otherwise funny old Woody Allen film Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex. That film has one vignette in which the actor Lou Jacobi is cast as a middle-class Jewish man who feels compelled to cross-dress. Seeing this man’s shame as he is discovered dressed in drag elicited boisterous laughs in the movie theater, but not from me, even way back in 1972 when the film was released. Cross-dressing isn’t necessarily indicative of being transgender, but even a cross-dresser who doesn’t identify as transgender is not deserving of ridicule and belittlement. That film came out over forty years ago, but still to this day the prospect of an awkward transgender person or unpersuasive cross-dresser finds its way into comedy routines all the time. I’m now perpetually on alert watching Saturday Night Live (where the humor is otherwise a much-needed balm to assuage the rough edges of enduring the Trump administration), as SNL has twice (at least while I watched) sacrificed the dignity and humanity of transgender folk in exchange for a laugh at our expense. One SNL show in 2011 had a mock advertisement for estrogen therapy, ridiculing transgender women by featuring an overweight middle-aged man (with ample facial hair) dressed in women’s attire. Much more recently, SNL host Colin Jost asserted that the reason Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the presidency was because the dating app Tinder had introduced non-binary gender classifications. Overlooked in such cheap-laugh humor is the fact that a transgender woman in a dress isn’t a man at all, or that the socially imposed rigidity of the gender binary can be an insufferable straightjacket for many transgender people. Some cisgender people push back, arguing that I am being overly sensitive, but people need to learn that laughing at transgender people when they are reduced to a comical absurdity isn’t okay. “It’s just a joke” can dehumanize us in ways that are far from harmless; the extremely high rate of suicides and attempted suicides for trans-gender Americans is no laughing matter. Statistically no other American demographic comes close to that somber suicide distinction.5
Pernicious stereotypes are spread and sustained by the media, and American media has much to answer for this. I won’t attempt to summarize the excellent and appropriately scathing review of the media that well-known transgender woman Julia Serano provided in chapter two of her marvelous book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, originally published in 2007 and updated in a second edition in 2016. Suffice it to say that most portrayals of transgender persons in print or film depict us as pathetic, mentally unstable, sex-crazed victims, or people given to deceit and to leading hapless men astray. The media largely ignores transgender men, but then the media has regularly shown a predilection for the objectification and sexualization of women, transgender or not. Even the few more credible efforts to portray transgender persons humanely such as the television series Transparent, or the made-for-television 2003 movie Normal, are fundamentally flawed by casting their respective transgender characters using actors who themselves are not transgender. Jeffrey Tambor and Richard Bull are fine and talented actors, but would we accept a Caucasian actor playing an African-American person? It makes no sense, and is a disservice to transgender persons. Okay, I’ll make an exception for Eddie Redmayne who was cast as historic transwoman and artist Lili Elbe in the 2015 film, The Danish Girl. To date, I have yet to see a more moving and sensitive portrayal of our lives; it reduced me to tears with its poignant depiction of that very early attempt at a medically-assisted gender transition.
There are a few positive signs, however, even in the media. For many years, I have appreciated that Oprah brought transgender persons onto her television show and let viewers see them—us—as interesting, genuine, but refreshingly ordinary people; in doing so, Oprah dispelled many negative stereotypes. She normalized transgender people more effectively, and with more respect and tenderness than anyone else at her level in the public media, letting her viewers see transgender persons as accomplished professionals, family persons, or otherwise gifted, talented, and well-balanced. We are also finally seeing the emergence of a few prominent actors who are actually transgender, playing transgender roles. Laverne Cox played the role of Sophia Burset in the television series Orange Is the New Black so well that she was chosen to feature on the cover of Time magazine on June 9, 2014, under the heading “The Transgender Tipping Point.” She stands tall, elegant and beautiful; there’s nothing pathetic or unconvincing about this woman. We are also beginning to see prominent transgender women athletes and models, alongside more troubling transgender examples such as Chelsea Manning, who was convicted under the Espionage Act in July 2013 after releasing to the public a major hoard of classified documents. Wikipedia has finally begun to use the correct feminine pronouns in its coverage of Ms. Manning, but her photograph remains confusingly and inappropriately male. Shame on Wikipedia, an organization that asserts its caring values. At least Ms. Manning found a reprieve from her harsh sentence and absurd incarceration in a men’s military prison, in the final days of the Obama administration.
From my perspective, the worst transgender stereotype of all is the assertion that we’re not real, or authentic, or genuine. We’re accused by some of pretending to be something we’re not, often couched in arguments along the lines of “God doesn’t make mistakes.” To my own deep chagrin, well-known feminists such as Australian-born academic and writer Germaine Greer have asserted—and continue to assert—in the strongest terms that transgender women like me are “not women.”6 The audacity of our claims of authenticity provokes many people, who in turn seek to place themselves in judgment of our being, who diminish us as irrational, confused, or mentally incompetent, or assert that we’re pursuing a very selfish, fanciful fiction or “lifestyle.” Some people are more narrowly focused in their bigotry and ignorance, worrying that we may be using the “wrong” public toilet room, and in more and more cases this has become a heated political debate filled with fearmongering and disinformation. After a concerted campaign in Houston, Texas, in which transgender women were portrayed as “disturbed men” and as sexual predators in pursuit of young women and girls, a referendum on an anti-discrimination ordinance known as the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) was defeated on November 3, 2015. Because of that vote, transgender persons in Houston continue to be legally barred from using public toilets other than those which align with their gender designation at birth. The last time I was at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston to change to a connecting flight, I took a selfie of me outside the women’s toilet room, and posted it on Facebook with the text “Shame on Houston!”
The expanding debate about accessing toilets is demeaning, and has become even more prominent as North Carolina legislated that we be required to use only those public restrooms that align with the gender marker on our birth certificates. Some people seem to find the public toilet situation either sufficiently vexing or amusing to stimulate them to write letters to the editors of major newspapers. Such letters pick up the old trope that transgender people are sexual predators who stake out re-strooms to abuse or harass young women. Other letters publicly muse over the apparent irrationality of “men dressing as women” to stand in much longer lines at the women’s restroom. In early March of 2014, a woman lawyer in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, marked the occasion of ongoing deliberations by the Maryland State Senate on the pending Fairness for All Marylanders Act (which ultimately did pass) to write the following letter to the editor of the Washington Post:
What a boon the Fairness for All Marylanders Act will be for female theatre-goers. Rather than waiting in an interminable line, hoping not to miss the beginning of the next act, women need only assert that they feel they are really of the male gender to take advantage of the always-shorter line for the men’s room.
While the language of the act requires “consistent and sincere expression of sexual identity,” who is to say when that begins? Certainly not this legislation. As women take advantage of this law, there will no doubt be even fewer men in the men’s room line.
The writer couldn’t have been more exemplary in trumpeting her own ignorance and arrogance in this cynical attempt at humor, but clearly she felt that transgender people are neither authentic nor deserving of basic respect. In the most forgiving of interpretations, such sentiments attempt to find humor at the expense of a small and generally silent minority; at worst, they are hateful and malicious words. In all cases, it’s unacceptable. As I have done so often, I wrote my own letter to the editor in response, which the Washington Post also published.
My life as a transgender woman will continue to be plagued by people with very confused notions about who I am, based on stereotypes that simply do not reflect transgender realities. Many of the stereotypes are not intentionally caustic, but there remains a great deal of misinformation in American society about who we—transgender people—are. Even within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) movement,7 there are many who believe that transgender women are just hyper-feminine gay men, and that transgender men are the extreme end of being a butch lesbian. Again and again, I explain to people that sexual orientation and gender identity are different phenomena, yet from the persistence of this misunderstanding I don’t think I’m making much progress.
As someone over sixty years old, society reckons that I’m at the upper end of middle age and that spares me from the worst sexualization stereotypes, Caitlyn Jenner (who is a year older than me) notwithstanding. Many Americans decided long ago, however, that younger transgender women are all about sex. They see young transgender women as prostitutes or sex workers, not understanding that for many such women there are no other viable ways of economic survival. They see us as flamboyant drag queens, which only a very few of us are; certainly not me or any transgender friends I know (of any age). Since American culture assumes most people over sixty are “past it” or asexual, I’m spared the worst accusations that transgender women are sexually perverted, predatory, or pedophilic. In reality most of the younger transgender women I know are shy, caring, and like all of us deeply stressed by the long ordeal of overcoming imprisonment in the wrong bodies. Given such personal histories, the stereotype of transgender women as hyper-sexual, sexually deviant, predatory, or morally questionable threats to society is nonsensical, and profoundly offensive.
What about cross-dressing? In the old days, transgender persons (particularly those moving from male to female) were pejoratively termed “transvestites,” commonly understood to mean a person who dresses in a style or manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex. I still find well-meaning people using that derogatory, anachronistic term when they try to weigh in with some comment about transgender issues. It’s seldom worth explaining that I’ve never seen myself at any point of my transition as being either a transvestite or a cross-dresser; I was just dressing in my clothes like any woman would. Rationally, it might be construed that I was unintentionally a cross-dresser all those years I was wearing boy clothes! In any event, I’m hugely relieved to be unburdened of male clothing and would never deign to put it on again. The day that the Goodwill truck drove away with my entire wardrobe of boy clothes was one of the best days of my life.
There are people under the transgender tent who derive meaning and pleasure from gender tourism, experiencing what it’s like to play the role of another gender out in the world. I don’t think there’s anything wrong, threatening, or harmful about those who cross-dress, but no doubt it does make some people very uncomfortable. Frankly, neither cross-dressers nor I owe a comfortable life to others; none of us do. Generally, cross-dressers have no intention of irrevocably changing their gender identities, and their excursions across the gender divide are transitory and often only symbolically persuasive. I’ve met and talked with many cross-dressers, but not being a cross-dresser, I still don’t understand what motivates them to do what they do. I don’t need to understand; I respect their right to experience that particular adventure.
Cross-dressers, transgender or cisgender, gay or straight—I’ll admit that it gets complicated. I’ve frequently detected a look of bewilderment and consternation on the faces of people I’ve spoken with about my life as a transgender woman. More than a few people have surprised me by concluding that once a transgender person pursues a gender transition (which doesn’t necessarily entail surgeries), that person really doesn’t have a genuine sex at all. Take it from me, being de-sexed by others isn’t any fun. In the minds of too many people we’ve somehow become processed persons, or “transgendered” (an absurd addition of an “-ed” that removes us from being men or women). In my case, I’ve known that I’m a woman for a very long time, even if I did not always have the right words to describe this awareness. Transgender isn’t a noun, and being a transgender woman doesn’t diminish being a woman; it just says something about my history. My sex is female, and my gender identity is as a woman. Other transgender persons identify as women, men, genderqueer, Third Gender, Two-Spirit, Hijra, and other genders. Who are you to tell me—or them—that we are wrong?
Stereotypes can be intentional, even strategic. As the recent election season made clear, transgender persons are also a convenient scapegoat for the ills of the world, and some politicians have been quick to exploit this scapegoating opportunity. Among the slate of those initially competing for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas took the occasion of a heinous attack in late November 2015 on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs to brand the killer of three persons as a “transgendered [sic] leftist activist.” Another candidate, Dr. Ben Carson, described transgender status as “the height of absurdity” and said that our demand to be able to access public toilets that align with our gender identity was “beyond ridiculous.” Sadly, there was little public outcry in response to these vicious characterizations,8 and in the case of Ted Cruz’s assertion, the perpetrator of the Planned Parenthood attack was certainly not transgender.
We are not predators, murderers, absurdities, or imposters. We are not “beyond ridiculous.” We simply—but emphatically—claim ourselves as whole persons, and no one is better qualified to know us. So yes, we’re self-ish, but not selfish. Knowing the difference matters.
4. I had the good fortune of doing a six-week consulting gig at NCTE early in 2017, providing legislative outreach and lobbying to Congress as the organization pivoted to address the many challenges inherent in the Trump presidency and the Republican lock on Congress. My admiration for Mara, and the staff at the NCTE, only grew.
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5. The 2015 US Transgender Survey by NCTE revealed that 40 percent of the nearly 28,000 transgender participants surveyed had attempted to take their own lives at some point. By comparison, only 4.6 percent of the overall US population has self-reported a suicide attempt.
6. See Radhika Sanghani’s excellent article “Germaine Greer Defends Her Transgender Views and Starts Another Row,” in The Telegraph, dated April 12, 2016.
7. In the United States, the prevailing norm is now to use the “LGBTQ” acronym, where “Q” represents “queer” or “questioning” (or both). Internationally, however, the “LGBTI” acronym is far more common, where “I” represents “Intersex.” Increasingly, the acronym most preferred is becoming a combination of both, or “LGBTQI.”
8. An important exception was Senator Orrin Hatch, a prominent Republican who on July 20, 2016, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, strongly admonished Dr. Ben Carson for his pernicious characterization of transgender persons.