Monika: The transgender community is said to be thriving now. As Laverne Cox announced, “Trans is beautiful.” Teenage girls become models and dancers, talented ladies become writers, singers, and actresses. Those ladies with an interest in politics, science, and business become successful politicians, academics, and businesswomen. What do you think in general about the present situation of transgender women in contemporary society? Are we just scratching the surface or the change is really happening?
Fran: The simple answer: It’s complicated. And it depends on whom you ask.
On a certain level, some transpeople are thriving. There are more opportunities and fewer prejudices than there were even a decade ago, now that there’s a greater understanding of who we are and what we’re going through. Also, the old prejudices are dying out as older generations either accept us or pass on. I find acceptance to be a generational thing. To my teenage nieces, for example, it’s no big deal. Same with the co-workers at my current job, many of whom are in their 20s and 30s.
Sure, some of us are doing well – but are we really doing all that well if not all of us are treated the same? After all, there are still 31 states where our legal civil rights aren’t recognized, and often with much resistance from Republicans and/or the “religious” “right.” And there are still far too many places where transpeople present themselves at their own risk, especially transwomen of color. Also, there’s the acute economic inequality; as a group, transpeople make a hell of a lot less than non-trans people. We’re not there until we’re all there. We still have a lot of work to do, as if the current swamp in Washington hasn’t made that any clearer.
Sure, in a generation, trans will be an afterthought. But the people living in the here and now who are suffering from prejudice and poverty and violence can’t wait for a generation for their rights to exist to be recognized. They might not live long enough to see it. No congratulations for the victories yet – the fight is still being fought, and there’s a sense of urgency about it.
Monika: On the other hand, the restroom war is raging on and transgender women are killed on the streets…
Fran: I’ve been spoiled and I know it; I’ve worked in two states (California and Connecticut) where trans discrimination is illegal under the civil rights laws and worked in a third place where it’s illegal (while New York state doesn’t have trans protections yet, New York City does). But there’s the rub – none of us should have to feel spoiled, or lucky, that governments actually recognize civil rights already guaranteed us as citizens of the United States! Yes, I’m one of those people who believe that trans rights are protected under the Civil Rights Act, and to discriminate against transpeople violates the very spirit of the law. Which, at the moment, as I said, 31 states are doing. We shouldn’t be begging for something guaranteed to us already by the laws of our country. Beg, no; demand, yes.
So yes, I’m as outraged, livid pissed, as everyone else over the “bathroom bills” – especially when it comes to trans kids. Don’t get me started. I have very little patience with ignorance to begin with. It’s the worst form of stupidity – a willful disregard of facts, even when confronted with them. Discriminatory laws always seem to come from a state with a significant religious “right” population, a place where people often use the word “Christian” when they mean the opposite, use the word “conservative” when they really mean “radical.” North Carolina, of course. Texas. Mississippi. Missouri. What the hell happened to common sense? To live and let live? To kindness? Getting all Christ-like here, what happened to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Love one another as I have loved you” and “What you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me”? I’ll step off the pulpit right now, since I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Until we can flip Congress and flip state legislatures (again, spoiled here; all five representatives and both senators in Connecticut are Democrats), we don’t stand much of a chance – especially with the Supreme Court on the precipice.
So yes, I’m as outraged, livid pissed, as everyone else over the “bathroom bills” – especially when it comes to trans kids. Don’t get me started. I have very little patience with ignorance to begin with. It’s the worst form of stupidity – a willful disregard of facts, even when confronted with them. Discriminatory laws always seem to come from a state with a significant religious “right” population, a place where people often use the word “Christian” when they mean the opposite, use the word “conservative” when they really mean “radical.” North Carolina, of course. Texas. Mississippi. Missouri. What the hell happened to common sense? To live and let live? To kindness? Getting all Christ-like here, what happened to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Love one another as I have loved you” and “What you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me”? I’ll step off the pulpit right now, since I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Until we can flip Congress and flip state legislatures (again, spoiled here; all five representatives and both senators in Connecticut are Democrats), we don’t stand much of a chance – especially with the Supreme Court on the precipice.
I’m also outraged, but with a sad feeling of helplessness, at the violence that transwomen suffer in the everyday world. Since I’ve come home, I’ve regularly attended the Hartford observances of the Trans Day of Remembrance at the Metropolitan Community Church (where the minister, the Rev. Aaron Miller, deserves a shout-out for the work he does). Any given year, over 300 transpeople – at least the ones we know about – are murdered. Most of the victims are women. Most come from Latin countries with a huge Catholic influence: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico. And in the States, most, if not all, of the victims are women of color. Through the second week of August 2017, 18 transpeople we know of have been killed in the States – all but one of the women of color (black, Hispanic, or indigenous).
At last year’s Day of Remembrance, I met a woman who lived in Hartford. She’s black, in her late 40s, very sweet, and she, too, waited a long time to transition. At work (she was a bank guard), she was treated very well by both co-workers and customers. Home was a different story, though. She told me how she was assaulted in front of her own apartment building one day by the boyfriend of one of the other tenants. I mean, what do you do if you’re a gentle soul who economically can’t get away from your situation and have to worry constantly about a beatdown or getting killed? I just didn’t know what to do except hold her hand as she told me her story. My frustration, though, is nothing compared to the fear she’s had to deal with daily.
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| My house is my studio. Franorama 2.0 is on the air, Cygnus Radio, March 2015. |
Monika: The transgender cause is usually manifested together with the other LGBTQ communities. Being the penultimate letter in this abbreviation, is the transgender community able to promote its own cause within the LGBTQ group?
Fran: What I say might piss off some people, but my own experience is that there really is no trans “community.” Part of it is the natural but mistaken notion of painting all of us across the spectrum with the same broad brush. You and I know we’re all as different from each other as non-trans people. We all have different backgrounds, experiences, ages, places on the spectrum, economic statuses, cultures, and yes (as I painfully found out in the last election), political persuasions. What we do share is the sense of being different in similar ways – of knowing what it’s like discovering, as some call it, our authentic selves, of having to fight for our civil rights, of having a certain degree of fear.
As it seems to be the problem with much of our society now, our differences get in the way. Don’t get me wrong – I do have friends who are trans, and they’re friends for the same reason my non-trans friends are my friends: they’re good people, we have some common references, and we share good chemistry. But in the larger, day-to-day world, I found I’ve been treated much better by non-trans people than by any LGB and especially T groups. I learned it early on, in the first months of unemployment and job-hunting, when I’d make trips up to San Francisco – for Pride events, and for job seminars and job fairs at the LGBT Center. Up there, I encountered a lot of cliquishness and standoffishness, and judgmentalism, something I definitely wasn’t expecting. I’ve also felt the downside on both coasts when I’ve applied for jobs with name LGBT organizations – either strung along after an interview or, like the rest of the world, not even the decency of a rejection. (And you’d think people who’ve been through lousy treatment in the job world would know better than anyone how to treat others in the same boat. That was a real shock.)
As it seems to be the problem with much of our society now, our differences get in the way. Don’t get me wrong – I do have friends who are trans, and they’re friends for the same reason my non-trans friends are my friends: they’re good people, we have some common references, and we share good chemistry. But in the larger, day-to-day world, I found I’ve been treated much better by non-trans people than by any LGB and especially T groups. I learned it early on, in the first months of unemployment and job-hunting, when I’d make trips up to San Francisco – for Pride events, and for job seminars and job fairs at the LGBT Center. Up there, I encountered a lot of cliquishness and standoffishness, and judgmentalism, something I definitely wasn’t expecting. I’ve also felt the downside on both coasts when I’ve applied for jobs with name LGBT organizations – either strung along after an interview or, like the rest of the world, not even the decency of a rejection. (And you’d think people who’ve been through lousy treatment in the job world would know better than anyone how to treat others in the same boat. That was a real shock.)
And I’ve felt it at home with some of the people I’ve encountered at trans nights at clubs – some great people, but some degree of cliquishness and looking down noses. I post a lot on Facebook (which is where you found me, of course), and sometimes that includes throwback photos, and some of those are of me in my Frannie 1.0 days. I might not have liked myself much then, but I certainly don’t disown my past. I’m not ashamed of it. One day, I got a Facebook message from another transwoman I knew from the clubs and considered a friend – she said, “You’re beautiful as a woman, but I wish you’d stop posting photos of yourself as a man.” I was too stunned to even respond in anger. I mean, who the hell was she to judge me or my life that way?
So in a roundabout way, I’ve seen the differences and the downside of transition, and – in my case, anyway – they’ve come from within our loose, splintered, dysfunctional, dysphoric tribe as if we don’t have enough crap to face from outside of it. And that’s something we have to get past before we can move forward. We may or may not like each other much, and I don’t have to have coffee with you, but damn it all, let’s treat each other well … and let’s unite over the ties that bind us and fight the common enemies. If we splinter into factions again later on, fine – but let’s confront the big issues and win first. God, now that I think about it, I feel like I’m talking about the Democratic Party.
Monika: What do you think in general about transgender news stories or characters which have been featured in films, newspapers, or books so far?
Fran: Well, we’ve come pretty far – not all the way, but pretty far – in a relatively short time. I mean, you can see "Transparent," a series created with a lot of nuance and sensitivity, with quite a few transpeople in side roles and behind the scenes, and Jeffrey Tambor capturing the awkwardness of a 70-year-old transwoman coming out after a lifetime in the closet; or Laverne Cox – transpeople shown in a positive, or at least more accurate, light. And I’m a big fan of Showtime’s "Billions," and was pleasantly astounded this past season to see the first non-binary actor in a meaty role in a bigtime series (Asia Dillon). Trans on TV or in the movies isn’t people playing dress-up for yuks anymore.
There’s also been a huge shift in tones of news stories, and how the media approaches gender dysphoria, from Associated Press style to news outlets that even get the pronouns right for non-binary people, to coverage of political issues (as we’ve seen with the “bathroom bills”). I was on the news copy desk at MSN when Chelsea Manning’s prison sentencing and coming-out took place, and my colleagues did ask me about the right way to address this. And I know that my former paper in Fresno, the Bee, has taken great pains in this regard.
A year or two after I left, there was the story of Karen Adell Scot, a longtime high-school science teacher, and former sheriff’s deputy up in the foothills just south of Yosemite, whose intended low-key coming-out became public – and national – after a teacher who objected to her gossiped about it. The Bee was on the story and got all the nuances and vocabulary right, and while some of the comments were really vile, the stories treated her well. (As did many of her students and some of her fellow faculty.)
There’s also been a huge shift in tones of news stories, and how the media approaches gender dysphoria, from Associated Press style to news outlets that even get the pronouns right for non-binary people, to coverage of political issues (as we’ve seen with the “bathroom bills”). I was on the news copy desk at MSN when Chelsea Manning’s prison sentencing and coming-out took place, and my colleagues did ask me about the right way to address this. And I know that my former paper in Fresno, the Bee, has taken great pains in this regard.
A year or two after I left, there was the story of Karen Adell Scot, a longtime high-school science teacher, and former sheriff’s deputy up in the foothills just south of Yosemite, whose intended low-key coming-out became public – and national – after a teacher who objected to her gossiped about it. The Bee was on the story and got all the nuances and vocabulary right, and while some of the comments were really vile, the stories treated her well. (As did many of her students and some of her fellow faculty.)
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| I don't think I ever looked better than this. Heading to a wedding, Fresno, September 2010. |
I know that the Bee had a sticky situation a couple of years ago. It was in the killing of an elderly Fresno transwoman. She was white, in her 60s, and had just come out not long before. Late one night, a passenger in a van called over to her, and when she got to the window, he jabbed his knife in her neck and killed her. The images on the camera on the building in front of where she died were grainy; the killer was never caught; and, Fresno being Fresno, the cops misgendered her in the media.
She had only begun to transition maybe four months earlier, and even her brother, her next of kin, didn’t know. He knew that his sibling crossdressed, but didn’t know she had gone full-time and by the name K.C. But the cops (the police and the public in Fresno generally don’t have a good relationship to start with) kept referring to the victim as male. The paper, in turn, initially identified the victim as male, based on the info from the P.D. But the Bee did do a follow-up story that focused on the public misgendering, as the story had gone national, and gave light to all sides of this: the victim’s family, her friends, the local trans organization, the police.
Contrast that with what the Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com did in 2013 with the murder of a transwoman. She was only 20, she was black, she was brutally murdered, and her body was found in a pond a month later. The website ran a garish headshot of her that appeared to have been a mugshot – reddish-pink hair, facial hair shadow … and her male name. But that was nothing: Not only did the stories identify her throughout as a man, one headline read “Oddly dressed body found in Olmstead County pond identified.” On top of being murdered, the poor woman had her character assassinated by this alleged news outlet – and despite the firestorm of protest about the way her killing was handled, the paper doubled down on its stance. A columnist wrote, essentially, an I-don’t-see-what-all-the-fuss-is-about piece, but no apology was forthcoming. However, I’ve Googled some stories since and it seems they’re finally on board with the matter of getting the gender right with murder victims (and trans murders are still a huge problem in Cleveland, it seems), and talking to the families of the victims.
And, changing to another channel, there was one more glaring journalistic sticking point with me. It was Time magazine’s Laverne Cox cover story, which I approached both as a transwoman and with a journalistic eye. On one level, oh yeah – great! A transwoman has made the cover of Time. But scratch beneath the surface. First, it was nine pages, but five of the nine were photos of transpeople. The actual story was but a brief four pages, but worse, it was a shallow, not-very-faceted, Trans 101-type piece using Laverne as a launch point – something that could have, should have, been written years earlier, and in more depth. It was as if the Time powers-that-be said, “Look! We’re doing a transgender story! How hip and trendy of us to now notice that they exist!” A little late to the party, you know? And the crime, as sometimes happens, wasn’t in the story itself, but how it was played. In this case, it was the timing. A story on transpeople that should’ve run in a major publication years before was placed to coincide with the season-opener of "Orange Is The New Black." As I see it, our story was reduced to cheap product placement to promote a TV show. I wrote a blog post at the time with the headline “Dear Time: Thanks for Nothing.” I was pretty pissed about it. I don’t really read Time anymore, even in the doctor’s office.
Monika: Do you participate in any lobbying campaigns? Do you think transgender women can make a difference in politics?
Fran: I’d love to be able to work politically for the recognition of our civil rights, either in front of or behind the scenes. Who knows? Maybe run for office in a place where I might have a great shot of winning. But I live in a weird place geopolitically. The trans civil rights fight has been long settled in Connecticut, so maybe it’s best to look at national positions or offices as the best places to effect change. It’s a source of frustration for me. I mean, I’ve always believed that the best way to bring about change is to win over hearts and minds, one or a few at a time, and I think I’ve done at a lot of that, just by living the day-to-day and interacting with the world, and by occasionally giving talks.
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| A sea of storms beneath the surface. Cafe Nine,
New Haven, March 2016. (Tom Hearn photo) |
As I said before, it’s an afterthought to many of the people I’ve encountered. But progress is coming far too slowly – especially when many of us Americans across the board are in the fight of our lifetimes right now from the enemies within – and I’m not sure how effective any battle might be now unless we can manage to flip Congress next year.
In general, on the political stage, we’re not there yet but will be eventually. Progress, though, has come faster in other countries; four countries have had transwomen elected to Parliament: New Zealand (Georgina Beyer), Italy (Vladimir Luxuria), Poland (Anna Grodzka), and the UK (Nikki Sinclaire).
Here, in the States, there was Stu Rasmussen, who served three terms as mayor of Silverton, a town in northwestern Oregon. But on larger stages, the Land of the Free lags behind. I did follow Misty Snow’s campaign last year. She had a mountain of factors stacked against her – as a transwoman and a Democrat in Utah – but it didn’t stop her from running for the Senate against the incumbent, Mike Lee. She might have been beaten badly, but she did shine a national spotlight on transpeople and the possibilities of one day being in positions of power.
END OF PART 3
All the photos: courtesy of Fran Fried.
© 2017 - Monika Kowalska
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