Category: News

Posted on

Trans-Blackface!

Yeah - that's a white dude
Yeah, that’s a white guy

There’s a row that’s been going on for three days over Mark Ruffalo’s movie about a trans sex worker. Jen Richards, who I have a secret crush on (only for her smarts. Damn! She’s wicked smart) took the actor, producer and seemingly good guy to task for casting a cis-man in the role of the trans character. She makes really good points. And while Ruffalo extends an olive branch in his own way, both the twitterverse and the transcommunity have a new bone to chew on.

I understand the frustration. When I first heard about this new film, my first thought was “I hope they put a transwoman in the sex worker role.” Bummed they didn’t. But really, not surprised: A lot of hollywood is about making money. It’s not surprising that it’s using the spotlight on the transcommunity as a money-making whore. After all, they did the same thing with black people.

Back then, when blacks were sweeping trash and staffing white bathrooms handing out towels, white actors (men) played black roles. They smeared their face with black paint (called blackface) leaving their white eyes, big lips and white-gloved hands starkly contrasting their pitch-black faces. It took many years before blacks finally wrested black roles from white men wearing black paint.

I think the same thing is going to happen with transgender roles. The Universe delivers on every desire, spoken or unspoken. Hollywood is not exempt. Yes, it seems to make sense to decry the fact that trans roles are being portrayed by men. Jen says it leads to violence against transwomen. That’s an overreach IMO. The real reason for (especially) male on transwomen violence is masculine insecurity. But that’s a whole other story.

I love films because they tell stories of all kinds that have all kinds of societal effects. Many films catalogue our collective cultural canon. But life is the real story telling stage. And we’ve seen this story before. Remember transcommunity. It took many years before black artists wrested black roles from white men in blackface. The same will happen here. Don’t fret too much. You only make the present moment worse for yourself. The Universe is creating a world for you. Focus on that.

Posted on

God: Transgender or something more?

God is transgenderPeople can be so obtuse.

There’s an opinion piece flying around the internet. It’s written by Rabbi Mark Sameth for the New York Times. The article, provocatively titled Is God Transgendered? posits that God is not a man or a woman, but is instead a blend of all genders.

I think this is spot on. But there are people around the internet who are aghast that someone who believes in God thinks God is not a “he” or any other aspect of the normalized binary.

Egads. What is the world coming to?

I’m not going to cover all the strange responses people are throwing about in response to this well-written and provocative piece. I will write this though: folks, the headline of the article was specifically meant to provoke you to read it. I think the headline is doing a great job.

What’s more interesting to me though is what the Rabbi has to say about gender as described in the old testament. It’s pretty thought-provoking. Read it for yourself:

“…the Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, offers a highly elastic view of gender. And I do mean highly elastic: In Genesis 3:12, Eve is referred to as “he.” In Genesis 9:21, after the flood, Noah repairs to “her” tent. Genesis 24:16 refers to Rebecca as a “young man.” And Genesis 1:27 refers to Adam as “them.”

Surprising, I know. And there are many other, even more vivid examples: In Esther 2:7, Mordecai is pictured as nursing his niece Esther. In a similar way, in Isaiah 49:23, the future kings of Israel are prophesied to be “nursing kings.”

Why would the Bible do this? These aren’t typos. In the ancient world, well-expressed gender fluidity was the mark of a civilized person. Such a person was considered more “godlike.” In Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the gods were thought of as gender-fluid, and human beings were considered reflections of the gods. The Israelite ideal of the “nursing king” seems to have been based on a real person: a woman by the name of Hatshepsut who, after the death of her husband, Thutmose II, donned a false beard and ascended the throne to become one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs.

The Israelites took the transgender trope from their surrounding cultures and wove it into their own sacred scripture. The four-Hebrew-letter name of God, which scholars refer to as the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was probably not pronounced “Jehovah” or “Yahweh,” as some have guessed. The Israelite priests would have read the letters in reverse as Hu/Hi — in other words, the hidden name of God was Hebrew for “He/She.” Counter to everything we grew up believing, the God of Israel — the God of the three monotheistic, Abrahamic religions to which fully half the people on the planet today belong — was understood by its earliest worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity.”

Sameth also reveals something I’ve known for a very long time: that the bible is a hand-curated tome specifically designed to control the believing masses. It is not meant to accurately represent a Spiritual Truth. There are Spiritual Truths in it, but they are so obscured by allegory, metaphor, misinterpretation and the gap of time between when it was written and our current times, it’s really hard to figure out what those Truths actually are. I don’t know if the Rabbi meant to reveal all this obfuscation, but there it is.

If God – or All That Is, which is the term I prefer – was transgender it would mean he was originally one gender and “born” into a different one. Or some other aspect along the gender spectrum. All That Is has no gender and simultaneously is every possible gender imaginable. This may be too complex for “believers” to comprehend. But I find it interesting that the Hebrew Bible, at least according to this Rabbi, alludes to this reality.

Nice.

Posted on

This from conservatives?

McBride_with_Vice_President_Biden
Sarah McBride with VP Joe Biden. She undoubtably represents a big step for the LGBT community.

As I’m writing this, I’m having a cognitive dissonance. Especially during this election year.

With all the blahooey coming from the republican campaign, it’s easy to collectively dismiss the conservative agenda. That agenda though is actually  pretty good. Hang on to your knee-jerk reaction and hear me out.

Yes, Trump republicans must be denounced as do people who are bigoted, full of hate and suffering from personal stories which cause them to lash out at others. But we mustn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Case in point, this interesting little conservative gem The Daily Signal.

The Daily Signal is owned and was created by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The foundation’s mission is:

To formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

We believe the principles and ideas of the American Founding are worth conserving and renewing. As policy entrepreneurs, we believe the most effective solutions are consistent with those ideas and principles. Our vision is to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.

As far as stories go, I can think of worse ones. And though America’s Founding is rife with horrendous events waged on people of color and other minorities, “freedom, opportunity, prosperity and a flourishing civil society” sounds like a story all people could sidle up to. Too bad today’s conservative POLITICAL agenda includes a whole lot more.

But I digress. The reason I’m writing this blog is because of this article The Daily Signal. The title “A Look Inside 4 Important Goals of the LGBT Movement” caught my attention, but when I read it I thought I was reading an article from a progressive online news organization. I thought I detected a slight slant in the direction of “pro-LGBT” in the writing. That’s when the cognitive dissonance came. Because right in the middle of the article The Daily Signal Senior News Producer Kelsey Harkness mentions her parent organization. I knew The Heritage Foundation was conservative, so I had to research to find out why the conservative organization’s news organ was reporting so balanced on a LGBT issue. I found my answer.

This morning I wrote to congratulate Kelsey on her great reporting. In 5 minutes she replied. Here’s what she wrote:

Thank you so much for reaching out and sending this kind note. Although The Daily Signal is owned by The Heritage Foundation I was hired as a reporter, not an advocate. I do my sincere best to report on these issues fairly and appreciate your feedback about this piece. (Unfortunately, LGBT groups often ignore my press requests but hopefully this article is a step in the right direction.) I like to think we would all be better off if we were more willing to hear and understand all sides of these sensitive issues, which is what I tried to do here.

Glad you came across it and I do appreciate your email very much.

Best,

Kelsey

Her last point bears repeating: “I like to think we would all be better off if we were more willing to hear and understand all sides of these sensitive issues, which is what I tried to do here.” 

 

 

Posted on

We are all connected

IMG_3717Why do so many miss this obvious fact? Wait. Don’t answer. I already know. The question is: do you really know?

Beautiful case in point. This article tells Tracey “Africa” Norman’s remarkable story as the first transgender BLACK model. It’s a great read. The way Tracey tells it, she had a much less difficult life as a female presenting male than the stories I see and hear about. When she finally aligned her reality with what she knew inside, her intuition had her finding work among some of the most successful black models in the world.

That didn’t last. Once the industry found out – as was often the case – all doors closed. Still.  Late in the story we discover how trans black icons today only recently discovered Tracey. But here’s the point: one of these people’s lives,  Laverne Cox, includes this seemingly “bizarre” juxtaposition of events, which, really just are examples of how connected we all are in this world.

Tracey had modeled “multiple times” according to the article for Essence magazine right up until around the 80s. That’s when her secret got out.  Her secret got out just as she was shooting her first Essence cover. She never got the cover and except some modeling opportunities overseas, Tracey’s modeling career ended abruptly.

Fast forward to 2014. Laverne Cox on her first cover shoot for Essence is tearing up thinking about Tracey and the trail she blazed, seemingly specially for Cox.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m doing a cover shoot for Essence and this is the magazine that 40 years ago fired a trans woman when they found out she was trans.’” She chokes up. “It just means a lot to me that history can be rewritten.”

Back then when the modeling industry canned Tracey, she had a thought about what she was doing.  Rather than sue (she said in the article she didn’t have the presence of mind to even think of doing such a thing) she thought differently of events unfolding in her life:

“I’ve always said that the person that walks through the door first leaves the door cracked. There was a perception that a transgender woman couldn’t be passable and work in fashion magazines and land contracts. I proved that wrong. I left the door cracked for other [transgender people] to walk through.”

The door stayed open for 40 years before Cox stepped through.  Not just once.  Multiple times.

These kinds of events, these connections which span decades, are happening in your life every day. They happen every day.  Some are decades old. Some open the moment you need them. Why don’t you see them? Why is your life not charmed like Cox or some other person you know?

Comparisons are futile.

What’s important is the nature of your stories.  What stories are you telling yourself? Your stories are the access to events being organized on your behalf. You can tap in to them effortlessly, including that event where you naturally, effortlessly meet your ideal partner.

It’s not magic. It’s not miraculous. It’s just how the Universe works. Claim your share.