PRESS RELEASE

TransActive Education & Advocacy ("TransActive")

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 5, 2008

Contact: Jenn Burleton, Executive Director
Phone: 503-252-3000
Email: jenn@transactiveonline.org
Website: www.transactiveonline.org

There is an urgent need for all of us, transgender and cisgender alike, to break down the inherently misogynistic cultural prejudices, expectations and limitations surrounding gender expression in order to save our children from many of the challenges and issues that adult transgender people face.

Transforming Faith: Divining Gender Plenary Speech

by Jenn Burleton

Portland, Oregon, April 5, 2008 - This morning I’m going to talk about the most invisible members of the gender non-conforming population; children, teens and their families. There is an urgent need for all of us, transgender and cisgender alike, to break down the inherently misogynistic cultural prejudices, expectations and limitations surrounding gender expression in order to save our children from many of the challenges and issues that adult transgender people face.

I will begin though, by sharing some details of my life that I don’t normally discuss. Perhaps it will offer some insight to the work I am committed to. It also gives me yet another opportunity to self-servingly vent at my parents, which is why I didn’t charge a fee for this speaking engagement.

My parents grew up during The Great Depression which meant that, as my mother repeatedly reminded me, their lives were far more difficult than mine would ever be.

Born to a family of Louisiana sharecroppers in 1919, my mother had 18 sisters, brothers, half-sisters and half-brothers. Her mother was half Native American, a citizen of the Choctaw nation. Her father, my grandfather, was already in his late 50’s when my mother was born…which means I get to tell people that my grandfather was born during the Civil War. He was also an enthusiastic member of the Ku Klux Klan. Shortly after my mother was born the family moved to Mississippi.

In 1925, when my mother was just 5-years old, her father, my grandfather, shot my grandmother to death for unknown reasons. A year later, my grandfather, the Klan member, became the last white man executed by hanging in the state of Mississippi. My mother and her many brothers and sisters were split up and spent the next 10-15 years in orphanages throughout The South during the Depression.

In 1939, at the age of 19, my mother married a young jazz musician named Eddie Burleton and together they set off on a musical adventure through the years of World War II on tours with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and others.

In 1940 my much, much older brother Hugh was born and in 1953, obviously displeased with the quality of their first-born son, my parents decided (and I use that word very loosely) to have another child.

I was named after one half of a popular comedy duo and was never given a middle name. Apparently my parents overlooked that little detail, which as my life has evolved, turned out to not really be that much of a problem.

When I was 4, my parents separated and I was sent to live with my mother’s sister and husband, while my older brother stayed with my mother. One year later, in a drunken rage, my father walked into a bar owned by my mother’s boyfriend at the time and shot him to death with a handgun. He then turned the gun on my mother, but (to his dismay) he’d absent-mindedly used all the bullets on the first victim, so he sat down, cried and waited for the police to arrive.

My father went to prison, my brother went to New York City to be an actor and my mother became a raging alcoholic…and at the age of 6, in 1960, I was returned to her custody - just in time for me to reveal a growing awareness of my transgender identity.

It was at that point the REAL drama began. Tennessee Williams, eat your heart out. I told anyone who would listen that I was really a girl and wondered with ever diminishing patience when others would finally catch on and get with the program?

Early on I became aware of who Christine Jorgensen was when I overheard a conversation between my mother and brother about her. For those who might suggest that influenced my gender identity, I need to say that the news that Christine Jorgensen had changed sex did not give me the idea to do so myself; it gave me HOPE that there were others like me and that that it was possible for me to someday be recognized as the person I already knew myself to be.

For those who don’t already suck up transgender-related history & information like the last drop of a BurgerVille strawberry milkshake, I will recap some of the highlights:

Was there a connection between my coming out as trans in 1966 and the world events of 1967? I guess we’ll never know for sure. Anyway, here’s what happened to me in 1966:

The year was 1966. A 12-year old child working the day watch went into a corner drugstore to buy comic books with $.50 his mother had given him. His favorites were Spider-Man, Daredevil and The X-Men. While looking through the newsstand, he noticed a spinner rack filled with paperback books. There were the best sellers of the day; “Born Free”, “Peyton Place”, “In Cold Blood” “Gidget Gets A Pimple”. But there was a new title that caught the kid’s attention - The Transsexual Phenomenon.

The child gulped and looked around to see if anyone had noticed him looking at the book. There was a problem. The child had only had $.50 for comic books and the paperback cost $1.95.

With sweaty palms, the child considered his options. On the one hand, the kid REALLY wanted that book. Then again, Spidey was in the clutches of The Green Goblin. What to do, what to do…

I stole the book.

Tucking it down the front of my pants, I grabbed Spidey, Daredevil and The X-Men and headed to the counter. I was more afraid of being caught with the book because of the subject matter than I was of being caught for stealing.

Luckily, the nice man behind the counter was fooled by my innocent, freckle-faced charm and I made a clean getaway.

I read The Transsexual Phenomenon cover to cover in little more than a day, and even though I didn’t understand everything in the book, I got the general idea. I’d always known I was different, but now I knew there were more of us than just Christine and me. In fact, there were enough of us for an American doctor to have written a book about us.

That conclusion led me, at the age of 12, to play hooky from school, dress in my mother’s clothes, ride a city bus all the way across town to County General Hospital, take an elevator to the 4th Floor where the Child Psychiatry Clinic was, put that paperback book on the counter and proclaim in a quiet, but certain soprano voice; “I’m like the people in this book, and I’m here to start treatment.” Thus began the segment of my life that I affectionately call “The Inquisition”.

Within of few weeks of that hospital adventure, which resulted in my being whisked into “masculinity reinforcing therapy” faster than Oprah could give away a car, I decided to take another self-help approach.

Armed with information I learned from the pages of The Transsexual Phenomenon I began ingesting my mother’s little, yellow Premarin pills. I was aided in this early act of self-medication by a mother who was both alcoholic and menopausal. As a result of her drinking, she didn’t keep very good track of exactly how many estrogen pills she had at any given point in time. This went on, to one degree or another for the next 4 years or so.

As I stand here joking about those days, I realize that finding humor in difficult times comes only with adult perspective and the passage of time. Having a sense of humor, in the face of depression, stress, indifference, humiliation, shame, hopelessness and an uncertain future may be the most powerful survival skill of all. But it’s impossible to ever attain that perspective if you don’t survive long enough to become and adult.

More than 50% of gender non-conforming and transgender children & youth ideate suicide. That is the highest suicide risk population on the charts. Far too many of them succeed.

A few months ago a 10-year old child in England took her own life after telling her mother that, despite having been born anatomically male, she felt like a girl and indeed, wanted to begin living as a girl.

Sadly, she is not alone. Children below the age of adolescence are generally not considered to be at risk of intentionally taking their own lives - unless they happen to be transgender or gender non-conforming.

So, why do the needs of gender non-conforming children, youth and their families continue to inhabit the fringes of both general public awareness and the transgender community itself? We seem to focus on, for the most part, a trans-adult, queer-centric approach to what are considered issues affecting the trans-identified population:

None of those issues, with the possible exception of bathroom privileges, affect the youngest transgender or gender non-conforming children.

Most of the information available and discussion surrounding these issues occurs within the queer community, either in so-called real life or over the Internet. And while access to information on transgender issues has exploded as a result of search engines like Google and Yahoo!, only adults and some adolescents have the autonomy and wherewithal to turn that information into action that can positively impact their lives. Children and adolescents, if they are lucky enough to access the information, still need the cooperation of loving, knowledgeable and supportive adults to put it to use on their behalf.

Beyond that, the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of families with transgender and gender non-conforming children are NOT part of the queer community and aren’t ready to immerse their entire family into queer culture as a result of one of their children being gender non-conforming to one degree or another. And this is where communities of faith can have a profound impact on the lives of these children, youth and their families.

At present, the ultra-conservative, anti-gay voices within the evangelical movement do a much more effective job of criticizing and character assassinating the parents of a transitioning Colorado second-grader than the progressive and welcoming community’s do of speaking out in support of these children and their families. The open and welcoming faith community can be first-responders to families who may have a child who is gender non-conforming. You can provide a safe and supportive environment in which all members of a family can be reassured that not only does the child in question have the unequivocal support of their faith community, but so do their brothers, sisters, parents and extended family. You can provide a foundation of spiritual support with which to counteract any negativity or condemnation they may receive from the purveyors of religious and cultural intolerance, fear and hate.

Faith communities can provide non-queer centric resources that may seem less intimidating to families that are otherwise hetero-normative. While I am not personally a big fan of heterosexism, I refuse to ignore the needs of gender non-conforming and transgender children simply because they happen to have been raised in a hetero-normative environment. There is no doubt in my mind that any child, every child, should be supported whole-heartedly in whatever gender identity they feel most comfortable with, at whatever age they feel compelled to express their feelings about it.

Those of us who do outreach, education and advocacy on freedom of gender identity expression often talk about gender expression being a spectrum, rather than a binary…and I believe that to be true. But we must also be vigilant to not exchange one set of gender restrictions for another set of restrictions, however flexible we may intend them to be. The message should be that while gender expression is not exclusively binary in nature…there is nothing wrong with an individual choosing to express themselves in a way that is more or less conforming to a gender binary. I have had Trans youth come to me and say, “My gender-queer friends make fun of me because I dress too much like a ‘straight’ girl or a ‘straight’ boy.”

There is no “right” or “wrong” way to express gender identity. The only thing that matters is what works for the individual.

That being said…I would be less than honest if I did not discuss the ways in which Trans adult issues can complicate the job of those of us who educate and advocate on behalf of gender non-conforming children and youth. This may be, I say unapologetically, somewhat politically incorrect.

For example:

Thomas Beattie…I celebrate your pregnancy and the decisions you and your spouse have made in deciding to bring a child into this world. I celebrate this as a humanist, a woman and a believer in your absolute right to conceive, carry and raise your child. And yet, I know that your decision to do so and to publicize it in this way will further complicate and obfuscate the issues that already arise in our advocacy work for gender non-conforming children and youth.

Unaware or ignorant of the suicide rates, depression and loss of self-esteem experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming youth as they approach the unwanted changes of puberty, the medical establishment frequently counsels parents to delay puberty blocking and/or cross-gender hormone treatments that can save their children from the financial and emotional trauma of;

They justify this clinical foot-dragging by saying; “Well, we want to protect the child’s reproductive capabilities. Besides, what if they change their mind?”

This is why I say, Thomas Beattie, I’m happy for you, but your story makes our job a little more difficult.

Susan Stanton’s statement, while acting as an HRC transgender spokesperson, that she’s not like other transgender people; that she feels uncomfortable even looking at some, “like I’m seeing a bunch of men in dresses.”, does nothing to reassure the parents of an 8-year old transgirl about their child’s future, nor does it give hope to school officials, social service agencies and court systems who may need to make decisions related to the benefits of childhood transition or parental custody issues.

Convicted felons seeking gender-reassignment surgery get more press coverage and by extension, more public identification with the transgender community than do parents who lose custody of their child simply because they supported the child’s expression of their true female gender identity.

The exploitative images of transwomen as overly theatrical, masculinized stereotypes of women does not provide a visual foundation that most parents will embrace for their 3rd grader who is saying “Mom, Dad…I’m really not a boy, I’m a girl.” Conversely, we don’t see as many stereotypical or negative representations of trans-masculine identified people, and that may be because the effects of testosterone allow them to more often effectively blend into the cultural background. Of course another reason may be the misogynistic notion that it is more transgressive to surrender the privileged position of a male birth sex than it is to reject the assumed second-class status of a female birth sex.

That is not to say the media doesn’t cover the lives of transgender and gender non-conforming children and youth. Sometimes they even make movies about them. Brandon Teena, Gwen Araujo and most recently, Oxnard murder victim Larry King.

It’s important to note that tragedies related to gender expression are often swiftly hijacked by the gay, anti-gay and mainstream media and linked instead to the issue of sexual orientation…and the ensuing frenzy overwhelms any discussion of the primary role that non-conforming gender expression plays in what is often mislabeled as homophobia. With the notable exception of marriage equality, the vast majority of oppression, violence and discrimination directed at gay, lesbian and bisexual people in our culture is based on how much an individual strays from an expected gender stereotype as opposed to who they are actually having sex with.

“Straight Acting” doesn’t have anything to do with who you are sexually attracted to. It means “a guy or gal who acts like/looks like/talks like/dresses like the majority of other gender conforming people. A so-called homophobe doesn’t have to actually witness a same-sex physical act being performed in order to pick someone to bully, discriminate against or oppress. All they need do is look for someone who is the most gender non-conforming.

Long before children develop a sexual orientation, they begin being tagged as probably “gay” or “lesbian” based on how feminine-acting a boy is or how masculine-acting a girl is. This makes transgender and gender non-conforming people, especially children & youth, the cultural canaries in the coal mine of gender identity oppression. But transgender children and gay and lesbian youth aren’t the only ones being oppressed as a result of gender stereotypical expectations. Perceived gender non-conformity can be as stigmatizing for those who do not self-identify as it is for Trans, gay, lesbian, bi or queer people.

This is the part that Joe Solmonese, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy and so many others missed with regard to ENDA and continue to miss in our everyday culture. Gender expression oppression is everyone’s problem…and is second only to physical appearance as the most common reason for bullying at the middle and high school levels. As one of the students at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California said in the wake of Larry King’s murder by a classmate, even though they knew previously that Larry identified as gay, the other guys really started freaking out when he began coming to school dressed more and more femininely.

A friend who works locally with GLSEN and I recently returned from a week-long trip to Oxnard where we met with parents, school officials, community leaders and members of the Southern California gay community. It was the first of what I expect to be several trips I’ll be making to that area in the coming months. I made the decision to undertake that trip within hours of learning that the death of Larry King was being broadcast as the murder of a gay boy who recently began dressing in girl’s clothes. I knew from both experience and instinct that something else was going on. Something that was too complex, too nuanced and even more threatening to the social order than youth homosexuality for the mainstream media to sum up in a sound bite or a headline.

If I’m being completely honest, I was also overtaken with survivor guilt.

I transitioned at 18, in the early 1970’s. I came out to the whole world at age 12 in 1966. Despite coming close several times, I managed to beat the odds regarding the suicide statistics. I’ve had a career in the music industry that exceeded my wildest dreams and traveled all over the world in the process. I recently celebrated my 25th anniversary with my life partner, a woman I can honestly say I fall in love with all over again every single day. I am enormously privileged to work with people like Hayley Klug, Kaig Lightner and others too numerous to list here.

Why did I get to have this life, while Brandon Teena, Gwen Araujo and Larry King had theirs taken from them?

I don’t have an answer to that question…but it draws me back to a line I remember from the film, “Saving Private Ryan”.

Near the end of the film, the title character, Private James Ryan, leans down to hear the dying words of infantry Captain John Miller who led, and lost, almost a full squad of his own men on a mission to locate and send Private Ryan home after three of Ryan’s brothers had been killed in combat.

With fighter planes flying overhead and the battle coming to an end, the mortally wounded Captain Miller whispers to Private Ryan; “Earn this.”

I know the courage it takes for a child to affirm their true gender identity, knowing that they are completely at the mercy of the adults around them and dependent upon their love and support to affirm that identity. Far too often, when a child has the courage to do so, it seems to be a disappointment to the very people they want so desperately to please. And yet, so very many of them persevere.

I know the struggle a child wages between being true to themselves and taking the path of least resistance. I know that the courage of people like Christine Jorgensen  and others pales in comparison to the courage of children I know like the sweet boy who loved butterflies, Larry King. For them and for all the children, youth and families who manage to shine through when the days seem the darkest, I continue to do my best to earn this life I’m living and to surround myself with people who help me to be a better person.

While I am an adult woman of transgender experience, I do not view myself as a trans-adult. All of my formative experiences related to my gender identity occurred in childhood and adolescence. My sense of self was informed and shaped by my persistent, consistent and undeniable awareness of a subconscious female identity from as far back as I can recall.

Perhaps that is why I feel more connected to gender non-conforming and transgender children and youth than I do to most adults. My partner, Cher, on the other hand, thinks it’s because I’m inherently immature and unwilling to grow old. Both may in fact, be true, although the latter may be something of a moot point.

According to a recent Barbara Walters special, we may be just around the corner from living to be 150 years old…in which case, I’m just getting started.

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TransActive educates the public on subjects useful to the individual and beneficial to the community. We provide necessary support to improve the quality of life of transgender and gender non-conforming children, youth and their families through education, services, advocacy and research.