Features
Understanding the T in LGBT
Understanding the T in LGBT
UVM's Translating Identity Conference Grows in its Second
Year
by Dot Brauer and Euan Bear
The
first page inside the conference packet says it so simply, and yet the
issue can profoundly shake up our understanding of the world and our places
in it: "Translating Identity is a free conference focusing on gender
and gender identities." February 28, 2004 marked the second year
that a group of dedicated UVM students associated with the undergraduate
organization Free to Be planned and organized a substantive, successful
conference. More than 350 people attended this year, traveling from as
far away as Montana and Puerto Rico.
Clearly, issues of gender - what gender
is, how it defines our lives, what happens when we don't conform to a
prescribed gender role or identity, understanding gender options, making
bodies match an internal gender - are of great importance to student activists
on campus. It becomes of interest to the wider community as we await the
outcome of a Vermont case where transman and former Hardwick police officer
Tony Barreto-Neto charges he was harassed into resigning when his trans
identity became known. The Attorney General's office conducted an investigation,
and, according to a report in the Caledonia Record, settlement talks may
be underway.
Further, a bill, H.366, is in the
House Judiciary Committee that would explicitly add "gender identity"
to the nondiscrimination law. The bill is not expected to move out of
committee, but testimony on its merits could be taken toward the end of
the session.
At the UVM conference, the two
consecutive 90-minute morning sessions included "Trans-what?"
for beginners, personal stories by female to male (FTM) and male to female
(MTF) folks, and a session entitled "SOFFA's: Agents of Change or
Casual Leisure Furniture?" SOFFA stands for Significant Others, Friends,
Family, and Allies. Other choices included presentations or panels on
trans youth, understanding gender and sexuality across cultures, trans
sex, being gender queer, "Sex at Work" on nondiscrimination
policies, and "The Art of Bioterrorism," a reference to forced
gender selection, not to agents of mass destruction.
Local author (and LGBTQA Services
staff member) Eli Clare, presented "Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies:
Telling Our Scars" in the first of two afternoon sessions. Clare
offered a moving analysis of the ways that oppression can alter and damage
our relationships with our bodies, and used slide images to show how it
is possible to reclaim the beauty and sexiness of "marked bodies."
The other session was "Finding
Common Ground Through Trans Inclusion." In "Trans Inclusion,"
Sadie Crabtree suggested there is common ground between advocates for
trans liberation and those for reproductive freedom: the right to control
our own bodies. In the same session, Elizabeth Green questioned the validity
of separatist policies that have excluded transwomen from women-only space
to maintain emotional safety for "womyn-born-womyn." She suggested
that lesbian feminism denies its own underlying premise questioning the
gender dichotomy of male and female that defined and restricted roles
based on genitalia. Green argued that separatists have retreated to a
position that accepts the assumption they fought so hard against - that
there are essential biological differences between men and women that
separate them and are based in anatomy, unchangeable by any means.
A large and enthusiastic audience
greeted the talk presented by keynote speaker Dean Spade, a young FTM
attorney who started the NYC-based Sylvia Rivera Law Project on mostly
his own sweat and inspiration. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project works to
guarantee that "all people are free to self-determine our gender
identity and expression, regardless of income, and without facing harassment,
discrimination or violence."
Spade made a clear and passionate
case for the issues he feels the LGBT community should be addressing:
poverty and prison reform. He began with a startling and compelling critique
of the liberal, middle-class, white agenda of LGBT organizations, effectively
securing the rights of well-off couples to leave their wealth to their
partners, while ignoring the abuses suffered by impoverished, gender-variant
people of all ages. For example, he said that progressive Democrats were
wasting time and energy on partisan bickering, instead of developing alternative
strategies for fixing welfare, because, as he pointed out, "welfare
needs fixing."
Spade wove a complex analysis of the intersections
between class, race, sexual orientation and gender-identity oppressions
as he laid out the conditions facing transgender people. "Trans people
face enormous, and mostly unaddressed, discrimination in education, employment,
health care, and public benefits. Many trans people start out their lives
with the obstacle of abuse or harassment at home, or being kicked out
of their homes by their parents on the basis of their gender identity
or expression. A disproportionate number end up in foster care and corrections,
or homeless after experiencing harassment and violence at the hands of
staff and other residents in public facilities."
His theme echoed statements
he made in a recent paper: "The adult homeless shelter system, similarly,
is inaccessible to them due to the fact that most facilities are gender-segregated
and will either turn down a trans person outright or refuse to house them
according to their lived gender identity. Similarly, harassment and violence
against trans and gender different students is rampant in schools, and
many drop out before finishing or are kicked out. Many trans people also
do not pursue higher education because of fears about having to apply
to schools and having their paperwork reveal their old name and birth
sex because they have not been able to change these on their documents.
Furthermore, trans people face severe discrimination in the job market,
and are routinely fired for transitioning on the job or when their gender
identity or expression comes to their supervisor's attention. In most
of the US, this kind of discrimination is still not explicitly illegal."
The goal of Translating Identity is
to help community members understand what has become a defining struggle
in the lives of these scholars: what it’s like to live beyond the
binary of "he" and "she": "This conference
seeks to translate gender identity to both the queer community and its
allies."
The student organizers of the conference
think many LGB folks have as much to learn about being trans as heterosexual
folks do, and they may be right. Different generations take on different
struggles. While gay men and lesbians are - after decades of difficult,
painful, often tedious political and personal work - finding more and
more acceptance by mainstream society, the new frontier appears to be
in helping to erase barriers to the exploration of gender and its effect
on our jobs, our healthcare, our families and our lives. As Riki Wilchins,
last year's TIC keynote speaker, said, "Gender affects everything."
And, paraphrasing, homophobia is based on gender non-conformity.
The Translating Identity Conference
has become a signature event for the UVM Free to Be GLBTQA. Members promise
they will be hosting the third annual conference next year, despite losing
the club's current president and vice president this May. President Caitlin
Daniel-McCarter is graduating and heading for law school, where she plans
to become an even more effective advocate for LGBT issues. Danny Robb,
the club's VP, is heading home to finish out his degree in political science
at SUNY Albany. He is already setting up internships at the Statehouse
to help prepare him to run for public office so he can help make laws
that protect the rights of LGBT people.
Dot Brauer is the director of LGBTQ Services at the University of
Vermont and a long-time activist. Euan Bear is the editor of Out
in the Mountains.