the NY Times tango: two steps forward, one step back

Many folks have been sending me the article that was published in the New York Times yesterday (available online HERE) about the Board of Health considering a change to its birth certificate policy to enable trans folks to receive new, amended birth certificates with their chosen sex marker on them.

My reaction to the article is decidedly mixed.

The news is, of rourse, great- it's high time that the city reviewed and changed its policy around birth certificates. This is an important step towards removing some of the gatekeeping hurdles that are keeping trans folks from going on about their lives. I think it's highly important that people be able to have birth certificates which accurately reflect their gender identity and presentation, both for personal peace of mind, and also for identification purposes. Everything needs to match up if one wants to avoid a lot of potentially difficult, hurtful, and confusing situations. I've been fighting my own identity document skirmishes, as you well know, which I'll write about in a minute. But back to the Times article.

While the news is good news, the reporting and language of the article, on the other hand, don't get the highest marks from me. I certainly didn't appreciate the quotation from Dr. McHugh, the psychiatrist from John's Hopkins...he was the one who said that he'd "heard of" someone harassing people in the women's restrooms. I think that retelling such a fearmongering anecdote (just where did he "hear" this story?) is exactly the kind of smoke-with-no-fire vilification of trans people that hurts our cause the most. For one thing, putting an image of a stick person in a skirt on the door isn't going to make a restroom any safer, nor is this law (or the recent decision by the MTA to allow trans folks to use bathrooms of their choice) going to make restrooms less safe...anyone intent on harming or harassing someone is going to find their way into the bathroom anyway.

This isn't about allowing men to use women's restrooms- it's about not harassing women who might not look like most women, but have a right to use the women's room nonetheless. Which is a a crucially important distinction that's also completely missed in this article, and the poor reporting that really frustrates me.

The reporter repeatedly refers to trans people as "women who become men" or, as when referring to the lawyer quoted in the last paragraph, a "man who has lived as a woman since 2000." Those are innacurate and offensive characterizations. Transgendered men aren't "women who become men." We ARE men. We may have a different medical and social history than most men, but that in no way diminishes our identity and standing as men.

And frustratingly enough, it appears that the reporter has been told this...he quotes a transwoman who testified at the hearing, and notes that she "asked to be identified as a woman for this article." Such a disclaimer should not be necessary! If he isn't sensitive enough to know that he should refer to her as a woman, then it's a good thing that she asked him to. Following that, though, he shouldn't need to mention it in the article! Furthermore, he should follow those guidelines and refer to ALL transpeople respectfully, rather than with the invalidating "women who become men" lingo that he uses thoughout the rest of the article.

I know I'm being particular here, and that reporting around trans issues has come a long way, especially lately. At least this reporter got everyone's pronouns right, covered the topic in an essentially unbiased way, made sure to get quotations from people with multiple perspectives, even if some of the perspectives are frustrating.

And I am wary of making blanket pronouncements about what is or is not respectful to trans folks. "Transgender" is an enormous blanket term, and not all of us have similar ideas about what is and is not appropriate. I'm sure there are trans folks out there who wouldn't mind being described as a "man who became a woman," just as there are those of us who flinch at such binary terminology.

To me, such a description is both inaccurate- I don't think saying that I used to be a woman is very useful at all, since I never really fit any of the common definitions of the term, except perhaps anatomically- and insulting- it feels like an attempt at invalidation, an attempt to say "See! You're not REALLY a man."

I think that most of the people I know, trans or non-trans, would agree with me on those counts. The notion that gender oughtn't be defined by anatomy is one that has long since burst out of Women's and Gender Studies Departments, and I think it's clear to most reasonable people that describing someone who has transitioned as "a man living as a woman" is both hurtful and disrespectful.

So yeah. Anyone else have thoughts?