Interview
— I think identity politics are somewhat like an
adolescent phase in life, where you're trying to figure
out who you are, and you need that space.
Which you might need to
retreat to every now and then, you know, that's why we
have clubs for, you know, Blues lovers, and clubs for gay
people, and we do this and that, but we don't live in
that club.
Internationally-known FtM
trans activist and author Jamison Green took time out
from his hectic appearance schedule to chat with BTL on
Oct. 11.
Between The Lines: How
far back does awareness of "transness" go in American
culture?
Green: I think in
popular American culture it began when Christine
Jorgenson stepped off the airplane in 1952. It was front
page news all across the country, "Ex GI becomes blond
bombshell." And that was the beginning of education about
transsexual issues, and also opened up in a more
underground way the possibility for cross-dressers to
express themselves more openly. I think that actually,
trans culture has existed since the beginning of
time.
Trans people have been
present in every race, every class, every culture, in
every epoch. There's mythology within every culture -
Chinese, Greek, Nordic - about people who change their
sex. It's everywhere. It's not new. People in America
thought it was just - that changing sex was something
that just started in the 50s. Actually, people have been
changing their sex, according to the agreements of their
culture, since the beginning of time. Otherwise we
wouldn't have this kind of mythology. And I think that -
well, we know that surgeries were performed in the early
part of the 20th century. The first FtM surgery that was
written up in the medical journals was in
1948.
But we know that there
was a surgery performed in the 20s in Europe. And that
there were definitely some surgeries being performed in
Germany in the 30s.
BTL: In your opinion, has
their been any credible research done to try to figure
out why people are sometimes born in bodies that are
obviously not gender-suited to them?
Green: There
hasn't been anything that involved enough people, or has
been far-reaching enough or long enough, because there's
very little funding for this kind of area of study, as
you can imagine. We have problems right now with the
National Institutes of Health approving anything that
mentions homosexuality or even purports to deal with HIV
to some extent. So, imagine trying to study transness.
People think it's completely frivolous and ridiculous and
they don't want to spend any money on it. However, Dr.
Milton Diamond at the University of Hawaii is doing
research on it now, he has been doing this research for
awhile, but he has not had the opportunity to write up a
lot of his stuff yet. And his study of twins right now is
still going on - he's trying to study pairs of twins in
whom one or both are transsexual or transgendered and
looking at that to see if there's a biological component.
Most doctors who work with transsexual people believe
there's a biological component.
BTL: BTL has run a series
of articles looking at local trans issues. Since you have
the national perspective, how are employment issues
looking nationally for people who are trans?
Green: There's
been an incredible improvement in the area of
discrimination in the corporate world. Most large
businesses - well, not most - a lot of large businesses
like IBM, J.P. Morgan, Chase, Bank One, Apple, - a lot of
major corporations have added gender identity and
expression to their non-discrimination policy and are
actively - I mean, IBM has an active office of LGBT
recruitment. These companies recognize the fact that LGBT
people are talented and can make a contribution to the
corporate bottom line. And they do not want to lose the
best and the brightest people that are available.
BTL: Is there a
difference in the statistics regarding violence against
LGB folk and violence against trans folk?
Green: Well I
think if we - if it's true that what stimulates violence
against people who are different is actually gender
characteristics, then the violence against LGBT - excuse
me - violence against T people is broader, but it's not
recorded. Most - many instances of violence against
transgender people are not noted as a transgender
offense, or an anti-trans incident. These people are
often disappeared; the thing, the incident might be
recorded as anti-gay violence, not anti-trans violence,
or it may not be recorded at all. So it's very difficult
to know. I don't think we're clear enough about the
distinctions, and often there are trans people - for
instance in communities, many communities of color, who
don't identify as trans, even though they are living a
trans life, they are identifying as gay, and a lot of the
violence occurs in communities of color.
BTL: What is it about
gender and differentiation from cultural gender
stereotypes, at least in this country, that causes some
people to feel violent? What's the issue?
Green: I really
think it's a part of our reptilian brain thing. It's a
fight or flight situation. It's a learned behavior that
we haven't trained out of ourselves. There are many other
cultures in the world where gender variance is not a
threat and where there is a social place for
gender-variant people. Polynesian society, Hawaiian
society, some Native American tribes, had places for
gender-variant people. And we, however, have not
cultivated that in our culture, whether it's because of
religious beliefs or simple survival issues and the use
of oppression.
Gender-variant people
present this conundrum for people who need this assurance
about the order of their universe. And you know the
problem is, not that there are gender-variant people,
because gender-variant people have always been with us.
The problem is people don't know how to respond to
difference. They have not been trained and they allow
their fears and their prejudices to get the best of them
and they respond with the fight or flight
response.
BTL: What progress do you
feel has been made in incorporating "T" in LGB, in terms
of politics and in organizing - and what do you think is
left to be done?
Green: Well, I
think there's still a lot of places in this country, let
alone the rest of the world, where we don't really
clearly understand both the difference and the
simultaneous synergy between LGB and T. I think a lot of
places have tried to just tack on the "T" and say, "Ok,
you know, now we cover that," but they don't know what it
means. We still are in the sort of upward swing of the
educational effort that's needed. And I think that there
are a lot of well-meaning people who simply don't have
all the information they need. And I think that trans
people have not held up their end, to a certain extent,
by not coming forward and contributing to organizations
that don't expressly serve their interests. And they need
to do that to build coalition with other people and also
to help people understand what your or our issues are.
... And I think that's what people [also] need to
take on - people who are leading these [non
trans-specific] organizations need to take the
responsibility to learn about trans issues themselves and
understand them and understand why they need to be
including them.
BTL: Given what you've
said about people who don't identify as straight or trans
or gay - given that this is not an identity block in the
same way, say, as are African-Americans - what kind of
models for organizing and education do you think we
should have?
Green: I think we
have to get away from identity politics, frankly. And we
have to talk about the issues that affect human beings. I
think identity politics are somewhat like an adolescent
phase in life, where you're trying to figure out who you
are, and you need that space. Which you might need to
retreat to every now and then, you know, that's why we
have clubs for, you know, Blues lovers, and clubs for gay
people, and we do this and that, but we don't live in
that club.
We live in the bigger
world, and I think the trans community can use the model
of diversity because we are diverse. To promote the
issues of real actual human acceptance. The trans
community is the example for why we need to include
everyone. Because we can't isolate it down to one
characteristic. The trans community is the door to real
human equality.
