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I've mentioned alliance when dissecting the problems with umbrella thinking in transsexual and gender diverse activism, in "The Death of the 'Transgender' Umbrella" and "Why The Umbrella Failed." It's easy to pull something apart - the more challenging question now becomes: how do we do activism if not as a single umbrella community? Why do transsexual and gender diverse peoples ally, and how do we ally? Or should we ally at all?

For the moment, I'm speaking specifically about the rifts between transsexual and gender diverse groups, although many of the same principles apply to LGBT activism as well. Personally, I'm in favour of building communities and building alliances - but ones that are not fraught with the structural framing issues or conformity requirements that umbrella activism is susceptible to. I don't expect everyone to be on board with that, and that's fine - but there are excellent reasons to seriously consider it.

Continue reading "Decolonizing Trans As Allies"...

While writing "The Death of the 'Transgender' Umbrella," it became necessary to clarify something in my own mind. The language is changing, yes, but the aspect of the word "transgender" that had especially changed was also the thing that seemed to make it most valuable: its use as an umbrella concept.

While it's true that the specific words we use are ultimately irrelevant to how human rights protections are encoded in law, the way we're framing our issues currently does, in fact, set us up for serious conflict between binary-identified and non-binary trans people when addressing issues of legal documentation and accommodation. It also spawns confusion and misunderstanding when the general public is faced with multiple narratives and tries to figure out how to parse them into a single entity. We need to recognize - and sooner rather than later - how couching transsexual and gender diverse issues under a single umbrella creates an expectation of a single narrative with a single solution to all associated challenges.

I doubt very much that people who embrace a trans umbrella of any sort ever intended to erase these differences - instead, the intent often was very much a spirit of "let's accomplish everything together." But umbrella thinking usually leads us down a path where we're looking to one solution - one neat and tidy accommodation that will work for everyone. It also causes us to give the impression (intentional or not) that a single, one-size-fits-all solution will work for transsexual and gender diverse people. Just like some of the things we struggle against, it too expects a certain amount of conformity. And this is where shedding a trans umbrella hurt most - acknowledging my own hypocrisy.

In my defense, this was largely because I wanted to believe that gathering under an umbrella didn't have to mean erasure, and didn't have to mean forcing a single narrative on everyone, provided we were all conscientious and diligent. But what I know about decolonialism tells me otherwise.

Continue reading "Why the Umbrella Failed"...

On Thursday, the Veterans Health Administration, the body responsible for overseeing medical and mental healthcare for U.S. military veterans, announced a directive that acknowledges the unique health care needs of transgender and intersex veterans. The directive establishes new policies to ensure that trans and intersex people are treated respectfully and without discrimination by health care providers.

The directive reads:

VA provides health care for transgender patients, including those who present at various points on their transition from one gender to the next. This applies to all Veterans who are enrolled in VA's health care system or who are otherwise eligible for VA care, including: those who have had sex reassignment surgery outside of VHA, those who might be considering such surgical intervention, and those who do not wish to undergo sex reassignment surgery, but self-identify as transgender.

Trans patients are now eligible to receive all medical benefits, which include a list of trans and intersex veterans' specific needs. These include hormonal therapy, mental health care, preoperative evaluation, and "medically necessary post-operative and long-term care following sex reassignment surgery."

The directive confirmed that sex reassignment surgery and "plastic reconstructive surgery for strictly cosmetic purposes" would still not be covered, under existing regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Continue reading "Access to Health Care Expanded for Trans Veterans"...

In honor of all the bathroom bill scares out there.

Continue reading "Poem: Walking for Samantha"...

Books by or about transgender people are experiencing a literary renaissance similar to the one enjoyed by lesbian and gay books back in the 1970s. The transgender experience has been written about in so many good books recently that this year's Lambda Literary Awards included two transgender categories (Fiction and Nonfiction) for the first time.

The American Library Association's Stonewall Award for LGBT Children or Young Adults Literature was awarded this year to Almost Perfect, Brian Katcher's touching novel about a high school's jock relationship with a trans girl. But there are as many transgender experiences as there are transgender people, so the best "transgender books" are often anthologies that attempt to showcase the diversity of the trans community.

Two books, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation and Balancing on the Mechitza, are examples of some of the excellent trans literature that has surfaced in the past few years.

Continue reading "Two Recent Entries in the Transgender Literary Renaissance"...

For decades, the diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has drawn protest from trans and transsexual communities, their allies and supportive medical and mental health professionals for its depiction of gender diversity, gender transition and medical transition care as mental illness and sexual deviance. However, many community advocates and supportive medical professionals agree that some kind of diagnostic coding is necessary to facilitate access to medical and/or surgical transition care for those trans and transsexual people who need it. There is a need to replace the GID category with diagnostic nomenclature that is consistent with transition care, for those who need it, rather than contradicting transition care. The American Psychiatric Association is requesting public input until June 15 on its newest proposed revisions to the GID category for the Fifth Edition of the DSM.

The Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup of the APA's DSM-5 Task Force has partially responded to concerns about the GID diagnosis in the fifth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For example, the derogatory title of "Gender Identity Disorder" (intended to imply "disordered" gender identity) has been replaced with "Gender Dysphoria," from a Greek root for distress. DSM-5 authors have expressed a desire to focus on distress with incongruent physical characteristics and assigned gender roles rather than on difference.

Moreover, the workgroup has articulated a historic shift in diagnostic focus away from the stereotype of "disordered" gender identity:

We have proposed a change in conceptualization of the defining features by emphasizing the phenomenon of "gender incongruence" in contrast to cross-gender identification per sé.

However, the workgroup has not reflected these principles in the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria. They retain much of the flawed language from the DSM-IV, casting differences from birth-assigned roles and desires for medical transition treatment as symptoms of mental disorder. Worse yet, post-transition people who are happy with their bodies and affirmed roles remain entrapped by the diagnostic criteria and specifiers - they are permanently labeled as mentally and sexually disordered. The proposed diagnostic criteria and categorical placement in the DSM-5 continue to contradict transition and describe transition itself as pathological.

Continue reading "Proposed Gender Dysphoria Diagnosis in DSM-5"...

Incredibly beautiful models in this vintage (ca. 60s?) magazine. A sweet note of irony that Sonny and Cher, parents of the amazing Chaz, appear on this cover.

If you've traveled anywhere among trans or LGBT blogs in the past year or three, you've inevitably come across an ongoing battle over labels, and particularly "transgender" as an umbrella term. It seems to be a conflict without end, without middle ground and without compromise.

Yet for discourse on human rights and enfranchisement for transsexual and transgender people to move forward at all, at some point that discussion needs to have some sort of resolution, and some thorough dissection of the argument will need to take place. Could an alliance-based approach be a solution? Or more accurately, could enough people on both sides of the argument be willing (that is, to not see their position as immovable) to seek an alliance-based approach for it to make a positive difference in the discourse?

I don't know. But something that has become clear to me over the past while is that the language is changing. And I don't have to like it, but I have to understand what that means.

Continue reading "The Death of the 'Transgender' Umbrella"...