10th Annual Day of Remembrance

Today is the 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. I especially want to urge those of you who have been organizing for same-sex marriage in recent weeks to attend your local DOR event tonight...Because it's a question of solidarity. Because it's a question of intersecting identities.

Because I've got your back and I need to know that you've got mine.

DOR is about honoring the lives of the community members we lost in the past year at the hands of hate and transphobia. It's about celebrating their lives and acknowledging their deaths.

Today, I am 12 days away from beginning hormone therapy, and I feel a tremendous sense of displacement. In addition to the 23 years of work it's taken to get to this point, I've spent the last several months coming out to family and friends about my plans and process, assuaging people's fears about "who I will become" once more testosterone enters my system, about whether all of this is really necessary, about whether I'm bringing a stigma upon myself that could easily be avoided.

About whether I will be safe.

It's a real, legitimate fear--this worry over safety. And while there's something very real about the fear-induced hate towards visibly trans bodies, this body of mine has never felt safe. It's felt wrong, it's felt weighed down, it's felt surreal-ly unknown, it's felt painful as hell, it's felt numb, it's felt bigger than I can handle, it's felt freakishly foreign, it's even felt like the excruciating trade-off for dual insights.

But it's never felt safe.

And yet, I've made it work for me. I've dwelled here for 23 years, and I've made it work. Now that I'm finally taking a stand for myself and owning my right to feel at home in my skin, I feel displaced.

I think it's because this entire process involves so much uprooting. It involves tearing up foundations that really weren't ever doing much service to anyone, and in so doing, risking the possibility that a new framework may never be laid. This is the case with body, with family, and with community.

With body, I am letting go of what I've made work for so long, and I'm banking on the fact that the visions of self I hold in my mind's eye are about to manifest. With my family, I am letting go of the need for their approval and understanding, putting faith in the hope that they will come around as time progresses. With community, I am letting go of my pre-op, pre-t trans identity, of my woman of color public hologram (which depends heavily on the light, angle, and context in which I'm viewed). I'm leaping out and hoping that I will find a healthy trans masculinity and a community of folks with whom I can have a healthy, growing relationship.

This journey is a scary one, but the risks are not really new. At worst, I am opening myself up to ridicule, alienation, hate, and death. At best, though, I have a shot at freedom; I have a chance to finally be able to breathe.

Stopping the Religious Right from Taking Over California

Note: This post was originally posted on my office blog. I work for a liberal religious organization so the following post will contain religious language. You know, just in case anyone was wondering.

Each year California residents are bombarded with initiatives on the November ballot. The 700,000 signatures needed to put an initiative on the ballot are fairly easy to come by in the nation’s third largest state. Indian gaming and parental notification laws for abortions are usually on the ballot every other year and are often soundly defeated by California residents.

Unfortunately, gay marriage has not been treated as kindly. In 2000, Proposition 22 passed with a 60% yes vote by California residents, banning gay marriages performed in other states from being recognized in California. In the following years the California legislature passed a law allowing gay marriage three separate times, each being vetoed by the governor. Now California is facing another attack on BGLT rights. For the past few months the religious right has been gathering signatures to take Proposition 22 a step further and change the state constitution to forever ban gay marriage in California.

In recent years states all over the country have passed constitutional bans on gay marriage. California is by far the most liberal of them all, yet as was seen in 2000, when put to a vote gay marriage does not hold up.

This is why Equality for All began a campaign to stop the initiative from even making the ballot. For the past three months, Equality for All staff and hundreds of volunteers have taken to the streets to stop the initiative. Paid signature gatherers (PSG’s) funded by the religious right stand in front of stores and gather signatures as customers enter and exit. The PSG’s have six different petitions and are paid between $1-2 for each signature giving them an extra incentive to collect signatures for all of the initiatives. The majority of the PSG’s are poor and some are addicted to drugs. Most do not have an invested interest in the “Limits on Marriage” initiative.

Last week I worked with Equality for All. I stood in front of grocery stores, Targets and Walmarts and asked people to not sign the "Limits on Marriage" petition. Sometimes I stood in front of PSG's and warned people not to sign any of the petitions. Other times when there were no PSG's I asked for a pledge of support that they would not sign the petition if approached.

It was not easy work. Blocking PSG's from gathering signatures was hard for me. I didn't want people to sign the "Limits on Marriage" petition but I also did not want to block people from signing other petitions even though there had seen cases of signatures being copied from one petition to another.

As a Unitarian Universalist it was important for me to make sure that the group was reminded that the "opposition" felt just as strongly for this issue as we did. They may have different views that we do not agree with, but they are still people and they should be respected. I learned during this time that it is easy to forget this, especially when some of the opposition called us names or said homophobic comments. "The inherent worth and dignity of every person" and "Justice, equity and compassion in human relations" were the most important Unitarian Universalist principles for me to remember. I was talking to a lot of people over the week and received a wide variety of responses to my question "Do you support the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian couples?" (The term BGLT while inclusive was not used since it is not widely known) Responses ranged from "Of course!" to people running away with a look of shock and disgust. No matter what I ended my conversation with the person with "Thank you! Have a great day!"

Petitions are due at the end of the month. We are hoping that they will have not gathered enough signatures but if they do that they miss the November ballot deadline and our put on the June 2010 ballot instead. This would give us two years to raise money and mobilize California to support marriage equality.

Even though it has been a tough battle and regardless of the outcome, it will continue to be, I have great faith and hope for the American people and for California. One day I approached two older women at a grocery store. I asked if they were supportive of marriage equality and one went running inside. The other stopped and took my pledge sheet. As she signed she said "I am a conservative Christian.." and then she looked directly at me and said "but this is wrong. My step sister is a lesbian and she is the most loving and caring person I know. She should have the same rights as everyone else." I couldn't help smiling for the rest of the day. It's an uphill battle, but we will move forward and achieve equality.

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido

The people united will never be defeated!

Monday, March 31 is observed as Cesar Chavez Day, at least in the states of California, Texas, Arizona and Colorado. It is the first and only holiday in the United States to honor the legacy of a Mexican American. And unfortunately, it is a holiday that many pubic school districts in these four states chose not to observe, much less teach their students about—especially sad in the Los Angeles School Unified School District, which has a considerable Latino student population.

I first learned about Cesar Chavez in my first year in high school. I would love to say that I learned about his civil rights activism, approaches to nonviolent resistance, and campaign for labor rights through some cool, hip teacher fighting the monotony of high school education books. But, that was not the case. I learned about the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, the Delano grape fruit boycott, and Cesar Chavez's approaches to nonviolent resistance through an array of library books I devoured over the course of the summer. By the time I had returned to school, I had written what I thought was one bad ass research paper on his legacy, which earned me a top grade in the class. Not bad for my growing nerd status.

Celebrate Cesar Chavez Day this weekend. Click here to learn more about his work as an activist. March this weekend in the recognition of his life's work, click here to find an event near you. And sign this petition to transform Cesar Chavez Day into a national holiday.

By the way, Cesar Chavez didn't do it alone. Let's not forget Dolores Huerta's work as co-founder of the United Farm Workers and her continued activism for civil rights.