(crossposted at Amplify)
Creating Change 2009…this has been a wonderful week. There are so many powerful spirits here in Denver. On Friday I was scheduled to present a session on the Advocates for Youth Anti-Homophobia/Transphobia Project. The intended purpose of the session was to inform session participants of the project work we have been doing at Advocates in concert with project partners around the country. Also, we wanted to give participants tangible tools to utilize when working to redress homophobia and transphobia in communities of color.
As usual I asked participants to introduce themselves by telling us their name, preferred gender pronoun, and they motivation for attending the session. As you might imagine, the last request assist me in gauging participants’ expectations and needs during the session. As we went around the room I quickly realized that the needs of my participants were not going to be fulfilled by my "professional” presentation on the work that was being done around the country to build capacity of providers to re-dress homophobia/transphobia. No. Instead, I had a room full of individuals that were eager to discuss the real life challenges to dialogue about homophobia/transphobia and racism. I was ready.
I threw the entire session agenda out of the window and we went to work. We discussed common challenges of being a part of a community of color and the reality that queer issues are not always a priority. In reality, many individuals of communities of color are more concerned with the everyday struggles of battling oppression, sometimes dealing with the constant fear of deportation and possibly trying to figure out how to keep a roof over their families’ heads. We talked about the ever-present divide between the queer groups (majority white) and the Black student groups on some college campuses. People expressed their personal challenges with bringing the two groups together on common ground. And, of course we had a conversation about the infamous Prop 8 debacle.
What I realized was that we, The GLBTQ community, have so many conversations to have. Together we processed through sentiments of frustration about the seemingly unwillingness of those in our people of color communities to consider how homophobia and transphobia effect use all. I challenged people to consider how we attempt to work in people of color communities, to consider that our feelings of urgency are our own and not those of many of our communities at-large. People were open about how they made special effort to consider the intersections of oppression that POC communities are often faced with. Folks were clear about the importance of history and culture in EVERY community, and so on.
We spent a lot of time discussing challenges and experience, but I didn’t want use to leave the space without some concrete tools that could be used when having these difficult conversations in our respective communities and I thought I’d list some suggestions here:
1. Know the community, be clear on cultural norms, beliefs and values
2. Establish trust within the community
3. Consort the gatekeepers an popular opinion leaders
4. Meet people where they are
5. Don’t make any assumptions
6. Do your homework
7. Work at the intersections of social issues (queer issues are not the only issues of importance)
8. Honor the collective experience of the community
9. Be respectful; and
10. Ask questions
By no means is this is not an exhaustive list but it is a start. We all have many parts that make up a whole. The GLBTQ community is not homogeneous, and therefore we must be willing to have difficult conversations about race, class, gender, etc. And if we want to make changes in other communities we must be willing to step outside of our comfortable queer activist/advocate boxes and get down, dirty and honest about how to tackle the huge problems that plague us. It was both an honor and pleasure to share space, knowledge and power with my session participants yesterday. I look forward to the work ahead …collectively and with honesty and love we will get the job(s) done.
This led me to thinking - has Obama used his power of executive order to send any positive signals to the LGBT community? Please, if he has done one concrete thing that actually helps us (rather than giving the haters ammunition to block progress, as with the DADT study), let me know.
I suggest that he at least proclaim Valentines Day a national day of respect for all loving couples. But I suspect we're more likely to see him promise to, someday, if we're good and if the normal people allow him, proclaim the day after Valentines day as National Love Crumbs Day for Teh Gayz.
For those who think the postings about the personal lives of the Pam's House Blend baristas are self-indulgent, this is probably a diary to skip. This is one of those save-for-the-weekend discussion kind of posts, and it's in the spirit of Pam's House Blend being a virtual lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender coffee house -- and in such a coffee house, the baristas will occassionally discuss what's going on in our lives. So, if you're interested in me blabbing away about my experiences in the real world this past week, head up to your coffee house counter and pick up a real of virtual cup of your favorite espresso beverage -- 
pick me up a virtual double-shot hammerhead (that's black and bitter as death) while you're up at the counter -- and then we can blab!
Okay. This past Friday I went to the Veterans Administration Weight Control Clinic for a post gastric bypass surgery follow-up appointment, as well as an appointment with the clinic's dietician. Just as my primary care physician did a week ago last Wednesday, the folk at the follow-up clinic declared me physically "healthy."
From the physical health perspective, I'm now in the normal Body Mass Index (BMI) for my height; my blood pressure is significantly lower than it was when I was heavier; my pulse rate has slowed to something age appropriate; and all the results from all the blood tests (blood taken on Wednesday) are within the normal range. Plus, the dietician approves of my diet and exercise plan, and considers me a success that she wants to show off at one of the gastric bypass support group meetings..."Soon."
Oh. Filling out some background on the BMI stuff, fully clothed (minus my shoes) I weighed in at 168 pounds. My peak weight was 296 pounds in July of 2007 -- so I've experienced over 125 pounds of total weight loss in the last 18 months. My goal at the start of the weight loss process was to float between range of 165 to 170, and well -- I'm there.
[Photos of before and after weight loss, as well as my thoughts about being skinny, and being noticed by middle-aged-and-older heterosexual military veterans, after the fold.]
Even when I put this in context of me still having hidden disabilities, this is still mighty good news from the Weight Control Clinic. 
My high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, and pre-diabetic conditions are essentially either completely in check, or as in the case of the pre-diabetic condition -- completely gone.
And as a side benefit, I look skinny. Sure, I'm still big boned, so size 0 skinny was always out of the question, but I never did really want to be 5'10" and size 0 skinny anyway. 
The strange side effect of looking skinny though is I'm no longer invisible as a woman.
I guess I need to explain that last statement. When I began my transition from male-to-female six years ago (this coming February 6!), I didn't pass as my target sex of female a good deal of the time. After removing much of my dark facial hair and seeing my skin soften as a result of taking estrogens and a testosterone blocker, 
I did start passing as female, but I'd gained so much weight from medications I was taking at the same that I'm turned that kind of invisible that obese people experience. In other words, when I began my transition I was only visually noticed as someone who was often perceived to be a male dressing as a female, and when I started passing as a female I had become so overweight that most people just looked past and through me.
Well, losing weight has changed how noticeable I am as a woman -- people are not looking past or through me in the way I've been used to.
I really notice this change of how I'm looked at when I go to appointments at the San Diego Veterans Administration Medical Facility. The patient load at the VA is -- well, how do I say this -- perhaps a bit testosterone rich. Basically, there seems to be a significant percentage of the middle-aged-and-older heterosexual veterans who are eyeballing me in ways I've not been eyeballed at any time at any previous point in my forty-plus years of life. If you can imagine a world where no heterosexual man had ever in your entire life found you to be attractive, and then finding yourself in a world -- in your forties -- where a good number of heterosexual men in their mid-thirties-and-older are finding you attractive...well, that's my world right now. I can tell you that this is a very odd feeling world for me to wake up to.
I'm finding the attention flattering, even though I know it's a pretty shallow thing to feel flattered in this way. But hey, I know this isn't a bad thing; it's just a brand new and different experience for me. Who knew I'd have be having new experiences like this in my late forties? I didn't, that's for sure.
And then to this, add the dimension of having spent much of the recent couple of weeks being referred to as a homosexual transsexual, a tranny, and spoken of with male pronouns¹ by some people who've been associated with terms such as women-born-transsexual (WBT), women of transsexual history, classic transsexuals, and/or Harry Benjamin Syndrome (I don't know which identification goes with each individual making the specific, unpleasant comments). My ponderings of my new attractiveness to a number of heterosexual men strikes me as somewhat incongruous to the unpleasant, blogosphere comments being made about me.
But enh, such is life. So what's new in your life? Anything interesting?
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¹Comment: suesue, January 26th, 2009 @ 2:43 pm
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