On June 27, 2009, the Transgender Community of Georgia gather at the First Existential Church in Atlanta, to honor the transgender heroes of the Stonewall Riots, 40 years ago in Greenwich Village.We had 300 people packed into the church to hear inspirational speeches from Pastor Paul Turner, Tracee McDaniel and Dr. Maxwell Anderson.
The six people who spoke that day are shown here in videos.We made a video for each speaker, presented in order from when they spoke.
We also presented to Georgia State Senator Vincent Fort and State Representative Karla Drenner a parchment with three of the most important concerns of the Transgender Community of Georgia.They promised us that they will read the list on the floor of the Georgia House and Senate during the next session in January.
The first video is that of Pastor Paul Turner.Pastor Turner gave the opening prayer and then spoke later on.I edited these two together for convenience.
I have this wonderful part of my being that I like to pull out and play with every so often.Okay.I suppose that sentence could have been written differently. I am referring to my “imagination.”My imagination has play tricks on me quite often, but then I get many chances to tame it with the wave of my typing fingers.This happens to be one of those times.
On June 28, 1969, at about 3 AM EDT, one of the most pivotal events in LGBT history took place in front of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher St. in Greenwich Village.Like a super nova, the explosion that happened that morning expanded rapidly outward to engulf the entire planet with the sounds of millions clamoring for their equality and freedom.The events from that moment in time have continued to expand even today, 40 years later.
But, I have to ask the one most important question that hides within my imagination, waiting for the next time to appear.“What if?”Countless fiction writers have made a comfortable living asking those two famous words.So, I ask the question with the qualifying words that allow this piece of writing to continue.“What if the trans people at the Stonewall Inn that night did not have the guts to start the riots?”
As an activist for the transgender community, I never know when an opportunity will come up to educate a company or an organization. Sometimes it’s by accident and other times it’s intentional. However way it comes about, myself and others have to take the time to help them understand. To me, the opportunity happened with Boost Mobile, whose parent company is Sprint Nextel, the company I’ve worked for nearly twenty years.
The education of Boost Mobile on trans issues started with this commercial featuring Danica Patrick as their new spokesperson:
As you can see, this commercial just looks plane dumb on the visual level, but it also uses men in women’s clothes in a negative context. Trans people who saw this commercial went ballistic. Even though the commercial does not specifically make fun of trans people, out of the 300 million Americans, many will use this as another excuse to discriminate and hold back equality for Transgender Americans.
(This piece is what I submitted for the book called “Trans People in Love,” published by Routledge, June 6, 2008. The editors are Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox. “Sex and the Single Trannie” is Chapter 12, on page 111.)
By Monica F. Helms
“NO!I refuse to believe you!”
“Sorry, Monica.Once you start hormones, you’ll lose your libido.”
“I will NOT let that happen.”
“You’ll have no choice.”
“We’ll see about that.”
One may ask, “What does libido have to do with love?”This is, after all, an anthology of transsexuals and love and very little about sexual desires.That maybe so, but I cannot separate the strong connections between all of those parts of my personality.
Most people understand that humans are extremely complex biological organisms that have the capacity to experience a large range of emotions, including the elusive one known as “love.”They also can feel a multitude of physical sensation and understand what they all mean, especially sexual pleasures.Over the course of the last decade, I’ve experienced love and sexual pleasures on so many levels that it would be hard to isolate one special moment or one special person.Others in this book may have a partner or someone special, but I don’t.Yet, I have loved and lost enough times to know what the experience feels like.
The music changes to deep bass tones and the woman on the screen backs up slowly into the dark living room of her dark house.The kitchen door window shatters and the door slowly swings open.In the opening stands a silhouette of a figure, outlined by the lighting strikes behind it.Something ominous can be seen in the hands of this figure.The scene cuts quickly to a close up and when the next lighting strikes, we see an ax with fresh blood on its blade.The woman has plenty to fear.
One of the most debilitating emotions that can grip a person’s heart and freeze a body in an instant is fear.Everyone of us fears something, be it spiders, rats, crowds, small spaces and even death.These fears don’t last long, and we can easily get past them, with the exception of death.We’ll all go there, eventually.
Yes, we all experience fear, but for many in the transgender community, fear becomes their constant companion.Society gave us a lot to fear and because of that, some trans people have raised fear to an art form.For many, fear has kept them from realizing their potential in life.It serves as their crutch, their excuse, their way to avoid growing as a person.“No.I can’t do that.It scares me.”
The country’s fifth largest city, Phoenix, AZ, served as my home from 1953 to 1961, then again from 1966 to 2000.I arrived there because my military father received orders to Luke Air Force Base, located west of Phoenix.In that year, the city’s population had only reached 100,000 people.My parent’s bought their first (and only) home in 1955, in an area that later became Maryvale.This predated John F. Long, the builder who pretty much created Maryvale, and since no one else had moved into any of those other homes yet, we were the official very first residents of this new tiny section of tract homes.
In 1997, my life as Monica began, changing not only the obvious, but internally as well.I started my activism for the trans community in 1998 and by the time I left in June of 2000, myself and a few others had accomplished enough to give the gay, lesbian and bisexual people of Phoenix a new respect for transgender people.However, shortly after I left, activism in the transgender community came to a halt.“Why?”I don’t know.
(This is the 3rd and final installment in the “Stuck in . . . ” series.)
We all know that loneliness does not limit itself to LGB or T people.This feeling probably strikes 100% of the human population at one time of another, many living in perpetual loneliness for most of their lives.A person can feel lonely because they have no one special in their life who loves them.Others can be lonely in a crowd of people who do love them.A majority of people don’t go out of their way to choose to be lonely, yet some do.But, loneliness goes out of its way to chooses us.
Even though the feeling of loneliness does not differ between LGBT people and straight people, the causes can be different.If we can believe the figures for the number of LGBT people in the population, between 5% and 10%, then that means that there would be far less LGBT people in the world to find your special someone from.Of course, bisexual people have more numbers to choose from, as do straight transgender people.If an LGBT person lives in a rural area, their chances become zero in many cases.However, numbers alone don’t keep people from feeling lonely.
Loneliness in the lesbian community is such a large issue that it generated a joke.When two lesbians fall in love, one quickly rents a U-Haul so they can move in together.It might seem funny, if it didn’t have its basis in reality.For gay men, you’ll find dozens of cruising bars in large cities to accommodate their need to cure loneliness, even if it’s for just one night.Everyone tries to cope the best they can, but loneliness keeps its own time.
Think of how dull the world would be if everything came in just twos.We would only have two different colors, two different smells, two different tastes and two different sounds.People would appear in just two different varieties for each sex, and only thinking in just two different ways.From our diverse perspective, it would be a boring existence, except that in that world, boredom would only come in two forms as well.
Being a science fiction fan and writer, I can easily imagine how a world of true binaries would look.I’m envisioning a novel coming from that right now.We should consider ourselves lucky that Mother Nature can think beyond binaries.Unfortunately, even with all the evidence in front of us, Human Nature cannot think beyond binaries.
I should clarify that last sentence.When it comes to all that exists around us, we easily bask in the beauty of a world that goes way beyond binaries.We see flowers of all colors and varieties.Our pets come in all shapes, sizes, species and temperament.One could take a decade sampling all the varieties of food the world has to offer.Yes, we don’t live in a binary world, yet in some forms, binary thinking exists in people.
I’m sure that many of the readers have been in a situation where they needed to make a left turn at an intersection with a left-turn arrow that lasts so short that only two or three cars can get through at a time, and you sit fifteen cars back. The other lights last for over two minutes each, making it a long wait before you can “transition” to the direction you needed to go. Frustration sets in, especially if you’re late for something. Many transsexuals can also get stuck in transition, waiting for their “trip” to be over. Is there such a thing as being stuck in transition?
First of all, in order to understand why a transsexual feels they get stuck in transition, you need to know the definition “transition.” There isn’t one. No real definition for transition can actually exist, because like a person’s gender identity and gender expression, how they define “transition” or “transitioning” becomes as personal as wearing cotton or silk underwear . . . or none at all. Since each person gets to decide what transition means to them, then no definition or description would be wrong. What we see as “wrong” takes place when a person feels their definition of transition has to be the only one other people have to follow in order to be correct.
