Therapy with GLB/TGI Clients: Raising Clinician Awareness and Identifying Treatment Approaches

Presenters: Y. Gavriel Ansara, Liz Cantor Ph.D., Beth (Stump) Olsen
Venue: Psychological Ctrs, Inc./URI Counseling Ctr Training Program
Date: Friday, February 29th, 2008 Time: 8:30-4:30 a.m.
Credits: 6 Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists, social workers, mental health counselors, and marriage and family therapists
Cost: $100

Description:
This workshop is designed to raise clinician awareness and understanding of clients who may be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, gender variant, or intersex.

Presenters will offer specific information and guidelines to offer more appropriate and effective clinican services for persons with identity or experience as a gender or sexual minority. Case examples, personal testimony, a panel discussion, and a review of the literature will be offered to provide a program that is comprehensive, engaging, and informed by psychological research.

Participants will be able to:
-Identify strategies to create inclusive environments and services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, gender variant, intersex, queer, and questioning clients.
-Describe the differences between trans gender variant, or intersex (TGI) individuals and those who may be lesbian, gay, or bisexual, as well as the unique needs of TGI clients who are also LGB.
-Summarize key points of relevant psychological research that informs clinical work with LGB, TGI, and queer individuals, and related discussion of parenting, adoption, and marriage equality.

Presenter Bios:

Y. Gavriel Ansara is founder and Executive Director of Lifelines Rhode Island, Rhode Island’s only advocacy, education, and support organization focused on meeting the diverse needs of trans, Two Spirit, genderqueer, gender variant, and intersex individuals. Gavi has 15 years of experience as a GLB and TGI activist, outreach worker, and educator. He also serves on the editorial staff of Developmental Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association. He has presented on TGI topics throughout New England at settings that include high schools, colleges, medical schools, clinics, youth programs, and regional conferences.

Liz Cantor, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist who received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Denver, and received her C.A.G.S.in School Psychology with a specialization in deafness from Gallaudet University. Since moving to Rhode Island she has worked at the Child Development Center at RI Hospital and Delta Consultants. She is currently at Psychological Centers where she conducts child evaluations, supervises child therapists, and consults with school clinicians. Dr. Cantor has recently co-authored Same-Sex Marriage: The Legal and Psychological Evolution in America. This volume received the Distinguished Book Award from APA’s Division 44.

Stump Olsen is the OUT spoken Program Coordinator at Youth Pride, Inc., a Rhode Island organization dedicated to meeting the social, emotional, and educational needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth. She has 13 years experience as a community advocate and organizer. Stump is the lead developer of the OUTspoken speaker’s bureau training curriculum. She has worked throughout the state in conducting training, social justice organizing, coalition building and program development.

For brochure or other information contact:
Psychological Centers
765 Allens Avenue, Suite 102
Providence, RI
Phone: 401-490-8900
Fax: 401-490-2619

27 Tevet 5768
Exodus 6:2 – 9:35, Comment on this essay

Parashat Vaera offers deep insight into the insecurity and hesitation many of us experience when challenged to respond to injustice, providing a concrete example of the power of advocacy and the importance of being an ally. The parasha commences with Moses, a man who would become a great spiritual leader, as G-d directs him to relay to the Israelites four promises of redemption from their physical and spiritual oppression in Egypt. The Torah tells us, “Vayedaber Moses ken el-b’nei Yisrael velo sham’u el-Moses mikotser ruach ume’avodah kashah / Moses related this (G-d’s promises of redemption) to the Israelites, but because of their “short spirit” and hard labor they would not listen to him.” (Exodus 6:9). While “short spirit” is often translated as “shortness of breath,” it can also mean disappointment or broken spirits. At this juncture in history, the Jewish people were so inured to their daily suffering and mistreatment that they had lost their agency, the will to fight for their rights.

After Moses’s first attempt to relay G-d’s promise of redemption to the Jewish people goes unheeded, Hashem commands him to speak to Pharaoh to ask him to grant the Jewish people their freedom. Moses retorts that the Jewish people did not listen to him, so why would Pharaoh? After all, Pharaoh is far too powerful and ruthless to pay attention to someone whose own people have ignored him. Moses adds the following clarification: “va’ani aral sfatayim / and I have uncircumcised lips,” alluding not only to his lisp, a speech disability that he had since childhood, but also to his trepidation and lack of oratory self-confidence.

At this point, G-d commands both Moses and his brother, Aaron, to go to Pharaoh with the aforementioned message. The Torah follows this request with an impressive litany of Moses’s and Aaron’s provenance, concluding that this was the Aaron and Moses to whom Hashem directed his command regarding Pharaoh. In a moment of doubt that seems shocking given Moses’s devotion to Hashem, Moses balks a second time, despite G-d’s robust reassurances. “Vayomer Moses lifney Adonay hen ani aral sfatayim ve’eych yishma elay Par’oh / But Moses declares before Hashem, ‘I have “uncircumcised lips.” How shall Pharaoh heed me?’” (Exodus 6:30)

In response, Hashem tells Moses, “re’eh netaticha Elohim le-Far’oh ve’Aharon achicha yihyeh nevi’echa / See, I have made you a master over Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your spokesman.” (Exodus 7:1) In Aaron, we find an archetypal advocate, a figure who uses his verbal skill to demand justice, speaking on another’s behalf. “Atah tedaber et kol-asher atsaveka ve’Aharon achicha yedaber el-Par’oh veshilach et-beney-Yisra’el me’artso / You must announce all that I order you to, and your brother Aaron will relate it to Pharaoh. He will then let the Israelites leave his land.” (Exodus 7:2) The presence of Aaron, his advocate, provides Moses with the support he needs to confront Pharaoh and begin the divine process of liberating the Jewish people from Egypt.

This parasha contains the first seven of the ten plagues that herald G-d’s later redemption of the Jewish people from their captivity. Yet this entire series of events is catalyzed by Aaron’s fulfillment of the advocate role, without which Moses’s confrontation with and ultimate triumph over Pharaoh’s human rights abuses could not have occurred.

In May, 2001, my home state of Rhode Island passed legislation that prohibits discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations (specifically including bathrooms) on the basis of “gender identity or expression,” a phrase defined broadly to include people of trans, gender variant, or intersex experience, identity, or perceived experience or identity. Despite this legislation, people contact Lifelines Rhode Island, a trans advocacy organization, almost daily with accounts of discrimination and abuse. One case involved repeated mistreatment of a man of trans experience (designated female at birth) who had disabilities that made it difficult for him to advocate for himself. He shared Moses’s fear at challenging his oppressors. I helped him to relay his words to the state commission charged with investigating human rights abuse when he experienced the “sealed lips” reminiscent of Moses. During this process, I was surprised and unsettled to discover that our claim constituted the second case ever brought before the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights (RICHR) for discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. I had falsely assumed that the ubiquitous violations about which I had been hearing had been reported more than once in almost seven years.

Discrimination against trans and gender variant people is perpetuated by store clerks who deny access to bathrooms consistent with the gender identities of their customers, leading many trans and gender variant people to develop bladder problems or social phobia; by the doctors who refuse to provide basic medical care for trans and intersex patients; by the agencies that deny housing and employment to people whose genders differ from their birth assignments; and by those of us who assume that it is someone else’s responsibility to challenge this injustice, when the Jewish covenant with G-d demands that we fulfill that ethical obligation.

I meet many trans people with broken spirits. Most are not natural activists, but are simply human beings trying to survive. Most do not attend rallies or protests, fearing the loss of jobs, spouses and personal safety that would result. Weary from the barrage of insults and disrespect that they encounter daily, many have become like the Israelites in Egypt, too accustomed to their lot to muster the energy required for campaigns and strategies. It is my responsibility as an activist – and ours, as a people – to serve as advocates for these unaddressed grievances, to ensure that the experiences to which these voices bear witness are not silenced. As heirs to Aaron’s legacy, we inherit the sacred charge of using our speech to empower others and condemn injustice, in Jewish communities and in the world at large. Parashat Vaera reminds us of our spiritual obligation to empower others by speaking out and confronting those individuals and institutions in our communities who refuse to heed the message of equality.

Shabbat Shalom.

You are a Captain of Industry, tucked safely into your
Pornographically polyester pantomimes,
Denying your provenance:
The sweet, sweat stench of earth-drenched hands.
It is their child you bear,
Milk-sour and thick in your belly, a clandestine Caliban.

Your craving to abort their essence
twitches at the corners of your eyes,
Beckoning that daring interloper, Ambition,
To penetrate between your oil-drenched thighs
To baptise you in steel and concrete
Behind the wheel, inside the cogs
Where you are laughing
Mad and empty
Like a string puppet
A death rattle
Conducting the shrill symphony of accruals and deletions
As your
Light
Goes
Out.

Parashat Terumah opens with G-d speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai and commanding him in meticulous detail regarding the construction of the Mishkan, or “tabernacle,�? the portable dwelling place of G-d’s presence that the Israelites could promptly assemble, dismantle, transport, and then reassemble during their sojourn in the desert. G-d tells Moses: “Daber el Bnai Yisrael veyikchu li terumah me’et kol ish asher yidvenu libo tikchu et terumati./ Speak to the Children of Israel and have them bring Me an offering. Take My offering from everyone whose heart impels him to give�? (Exodus 25:2). Hashem continues by commanding Moses to acquire fifteen materials for the construction of the Mishkan—each item a gift or offering (terumah), and each to be brought by someone “whose heart impels him.�? The offerings include gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and red-dyed wool; flax, goat hair, and animal skins; acacia wood, olive oil, spices and gems. This lengthy description of the offerings necessary for the Mishkan emphasizes the multiplicity and diversity of color and material, a symbolic acknowledgment that sacred community cannot exist without embracing the unique experiences and identities of all Jews.

The glaring contrast between the luxurious aesthetics describing the Mishkan and the profound displacement of our people is intentional. It is at precisely this juncture in our history that our people achieved what many Jewish sages characterize as the height of human achievement. The Mishkan becomes the standard from which melachah, (constructive activities prohibited on Shabbat and holidays) and thereby major halachot (Jewish laws) concerning Shabbat, are derived.

Why does the construction of the Mishkan occur during this period of strife and disaffection? What motivating force drives the desire to give offering to Hashem at the height of exile? It is the same drive that propels gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, genderqueer and intersex (GLB/TGI) Jewish refugees from oppressive communal environments to renew the empty realms of their hearts by turning to Hashem, transforming derelict emotional landscapes into the Binyan Adei Ad (everlasting home) that their souls crave.

While a superficial glance at Parashat Terumah may give us the misleading impression that it is simply a verbose list of materials and building instructions, these lavish descriptions serve a profound purpose: To remind us that even in the midst of the most severe and abiding wilderness, we not only continue to be bound by G-d’s commandments, but often find ourselves in greater need of them than before. Two of the most powerful verses in this parasha are G-d telling Moses “Ve’asu li mikdash veshachanti betocham/ They shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them�? (Exodus 25:8) and “Veno’adeti lecha sham/ I will commune with you there�? (Exodus 25:22). This entire parasha is a prescription for allowing the Jewish people to receive Hashem’s tender loving presence during hard times!

The weekly maqaam (a type of melody) we use in several Mizrahi (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) traditions provides us with melodies and tunes to express the main theme and emotional state of each parasha. The maqaam for Parashat Terumah, Maqaam Hoseni, (hosn, meaning beauty or splendor) focuses on the expression of beauty. This maqaam allows us to transcend the often bleak situations of our physical realities by evoking the lush qualities of the Mishkan, thereby emphasizing the rich possibilities of our spiritual lives. This message of transcendence resonates powerfully with many Jews who struggle to reconcile traditional Jewish observance with self-affirmation as GLB/TGI people.

In my outreach work as an observant Jew, I receive frequent phone calls from people who feel abandoned by G-d, whose inner emotional landscapes invoke images of that same wilderness in which the Israelites found themselves. The psychological “homes�? of these callers have been devastated by the rejections and aspersions they have received from their communities. While other callers report unexpected, positive responses and affirmation from their rabbis, loved ones, and community members, it is the former group, whose spiritual needs seem most dire, with which I am most concerned.

Cast out of familiar territory, these Jews often find themselves wandering in a spiritual desert. More liberal religious environments fail to satisfy many of them, because they crave the intensity and lifestyle immersion of traditional Jewish experience. Yet returning to their previous religious environments would require negation of self, disconnection from the very spiritual nakedness and sincerity that form the basis for a meaningful relationship with G-d. So these Jews find themselves adrift, traveling far from past sources of religious nourishment in search of a place in which they can integrate their psychosocial and spiritual selves toward the achievement of wholeness and well-being.

Many of the GLB/TGI Jews who contact me have renounced religious observance altogether, expressing anger at G-d for the bigotry they have experienced in Jewish communities. Yet in Parashat Terumah, Hashem makes the potent assertion that it is precisely during moments of rejection and despair that prayer, relationship with the Divine, and spiritual observances are essential to restoring our dignity. The rage and pain that so many people express often deepens their sense of isolation. Yet it is not Hashem who has spurned them; it is not Hashem who has cruelly propelled them from the sheltering warmth of their social networks. The harmful actions of other people are not direct statements of Divine Will, regardless of assertions to that effect by those who inflict emotional and spiritual damage upon others in the guise of religiosity. In Parashat Terumah, G-d offers these embittered outcasts the gift of a safe space, filled with luxurious beauty and sustenance, to nourish them as they journey in search of places where their values as GLB/TGI people are not pitted against their devotion to Jewish observance.

This crossing is arduous enough that we cannot afford to take any opportunities for spiritual enrichment for granted. Parashat Terumah provides us with an empowered model for survival precisely because both our traditional observance and our GLB/TGI experiences are integral to our existence. It may be a Friday night Shabbat gathering in a small living room containing a handful of similarly devoted friends, or the quiet peace of lighting candles alone in your kitchen with your same gender bashert. It may be laying tefillin at home in the morning as a trans man who finds himself unable to pass in a small community where everyone knows his history, or lighting candles to welcome the Shabbat Queen as a trans woman carrying on the legacy of her foremothers. These simple acts of affirmation define us in the same way that the Mishkan defined our spiritual ancestors in the desert. To my fellow travelers in this struggle for spiritual affirmation, I urge you to turn toward Hashem, to allow yourselves to receive the awaiting bounty of your own private Mishkan. Shabbat Shalom u’Menuchah.

Also, consider sending an email to Mars, Inc. explaining your reasons for boycotting Snickers and other Mars, Inc. products. You can give feedback to Snickers at this link.

Thanks!

Gavi

_____

From Americablog.org:

Snickers Superbowl Web site promotes violence against gays and lesbians. Bears and Colts players react in disgust, on camera, to gays.

by John in DC – 2/05/2007 12:37:00 PM

TAKE ACTION: Contact Snickers here.

If you thought the Snickers ad during last night’s Superbowl was somewhat homophobic, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. My good friend Andy Towle alerted me this morning to the fact that the Snickers’ Web site outright endorses violence against gays.

A bit of background. The ad in question showed a mechanic eating a Snickers bar. Hi co-mechanic is so desirous of the Snickers that he starts eating it from the other end of the same bar that’s already in the other guy’s mouth. The two butch guys eat their way down the bar, like the dogs eating the same string of pasta in the Disney movie – until they’re accidentally kissing. The guys, naturally, recoil in disgust – then, oddly, start ripping out their chest hair with their hands. Yeah it’s homophobic, but it’s also kind of funny, though a bit weird, so I was going to let it go. Well…

Snickers has set up a Web site where you can view the ad that aired last night, and you can watch recorded-live-on-video reactions of real Bears and Colts players watching and reacting to the ad, and you can even watch the ad with 3 additional endings not shown on TV. You then vote on the three endings and the most popular one will air during the Daytona 500.

Why is this a problem?

1. Because the reactions of the Bears and Colts players to two guys kissing is outright disgust – you can watch the reactions by clicking under the “extras” button at the bottom of the site. “That ain’t right,” one player says. A second player crinkles his face into absolute disgust as the guy’s kiss. The interviews with the players reacting to the gay kiss continue on and on. These are role models for kids, and they’re telling America’s kids, and rather scary adults, that two guys kissing “ain’t right.”

2. Then you really need to watch the endings of the OTHER three commercials that Snickers shot, the commercials they’re considering airing during the Daytona 500.Ad 3: “Motor Oil.” After the guys kiss, they say “I think we just accidentally kissed – quick, do something manly,” and proceed to drink motor oil and I think anti-freeze – they guzzle it down, screaming at the top of their lungs, making them sick to their stomachs. The ad is vaguely violent – better to die than be gay.

Ad 4: “Wrench” (these are the actual names Snickers gave the ads). The two guys accidentally kiss, they say to each other again “quick, do something manly,” and one guy proceeds to pick up a huge oversized wrench and violently attack the other guy, while the second takes the first and throws him under the hood of the car, slamming it down on his head. Yes, the appropriate reaction to a guy kissing you is to beat the crap out of the guy who kissed you. Maybe Snickers should rename this ad “Matthew Shepard.”

At 13, he learned the colour of longing when his family abandoned the arid, burnt sienna desert sands of his youth for the strange, green wildernesses of Southern and Northeastern America. His mother had lied. The streets were not paved with gold. On cool, crisp mornings when strange ivory tears called snow had fallen from the sky, he would awaken from dreams of golden browns, oranges, and red like fire scorching the chalky earth of his youth, to find the streets paved with melting ice.

At 14, he had believed that he knew all there was to know about colour, its gradations and complements. This belief lasted until the time that he described a friend’s hair in exquisite detail, the dozens of tiny plaited strands that fell in ebony rivulets down her back. A citizen of the Land of Ivory Tears had interrupted him with a colour. Black. It had not been uttered as a compliment, and the unfamiliar usage of the word as an all-encompassing descriptor for another person stole a sort of colour from his world. His own skin was dark bronze in the desert summers, then deathly pale against the backdrop of the thread-bare alabaster trees in the new green land. He learned that his skin was dangerous because it did not represent his race in any season.

Many people associate green with life and with rebirth, but for him it represented the colour of uniformity, a military drab emblazoned with two types of insignias that cancelled his heritage out of the equation. White, black. Men in this new green land had slaughtered one another over the meanings of these terms; wars had been hard fought and won to ensure an uneasy peace that sometimes managed to pass for equality.

Men and women who shared his winter pallor would approach him periodically, assuming a conspiratorial tone as they recited a litany of complaints about people whom they reduced to mere colour. Black. At these moments, the colours of his childhood would vanish suddenly before his eyes. Cape Verdean, Ghanaian, Dominican, Haitian, Moroccan. Igbo, Yoruba, Fon.

He supposed that the allure of elemental colours was their simplicity. Perhaps it was easier for people to control what they believed they understood. Then there was the opposing colour, a word that had equal power to eradicate entire histories and narratives with an utterance. White. Celtic, Norse, Fleming, Sicilian, Finn. Pict, Lapp, Rom.

His border flesh refused either descriptor. Desert sun rendered him a wholesome brown that those unfamiliar with the colour wheel called black. Cold northern sky lent his skin the shade of freshly churned cream, a hue so pale he barely protested when it was termed white.

Even in religion, his winter skin was a passport to instant acceptance in this place, while the skin of his mother drew questions about blood and belonging, despite her ancestral Jewish lineage. Black. His lips hungered for another colour to describe the melted caramel sweetness of her face.

And so it was that he found himself remembering his experienced history of colour as he drew a cyan candle to the mouth of its magenta twin in a slow kiss of fire. Black and white vanished as the Menorah flames writhed in flickering dances that illuminated a variance of colour. Moss green, lavender, azure, midnight blue. He stayed silently mesmerised as the candles reminded him of the many colours of his soul. He watched until his eyes blurred and he could not distinguish anything but the colour of light.

Copyright, Gavriel Ansara, 2006

The casual observer will note almost immediately the subtle uniform required for entry to this social tier. Youth is everywhere, flaunting its smooth cheeks and bleach highlights, a few scattered and self-consciously exotic types positioning themselves at intervals across the room as if by assigned quota. There are no wheelchairs, almost never skin darker than the faintest olive, and few words of broken English other than those of wait staff frozen into their servile positions by barriers far more formidable than language. Posters on the walls may boast of liberation and diversity, but there is more variety among those two-dimensional paper men than in this place.

A man walks in wearing business slacks and a neatly pressed, blue shirt. He is shorter than these Mayflower heirs, his hair a darker brown than the creamy lattes poised like handguns near a dozen slim trigger fingers. He walks to a table with high-backed, red leather booths filled with what appear to be his friends. He orders a drink. It does not matter which drink. A dozen thirsty eyes glide like tongues from neck to crotch, sampling this new addition to the menu. The lattes foam, frothing and neglected as the man joins his apparent companions.

Let us imagine this man laughing at the jokes of his companions, taller men whose angular, pale faces assure onlookers of their membership in this curious cult of image. The men banter about life and politics, their eyes occasionally darting toward their newcomer friend, as if expecting him to shock them or object to one comment or another. Let us imagine that the conversation turns to sex as it invariably does.

One man insists that he will not do without leather harnesses and rope in his encounters. Not to be outdone, his neighbour to the left recounts a daring adventure with his married college professor while the professor’s unsuspecting wife played piano in the adjoining room. Another friend regales the group with the story of how he met his current boyfriend, a museum curator who plays baseball on the weekends. They know this game well, their lines flowing seamlessly in tendrils of witty banter that stoke the firelight of this fraternal hearth.

After revelling in the dish and braggadocio of these able-bodied men, the observer experiences an increasing sense of discomfort, the source of which is impossible to pinpoint. The unaffected gestures and genuine warmth reverberating between these men entices the observer with its stark contrast to the vapid stares and machinating smiles at other tables. As the observer glances back at this table to admire these carefree, honourable brethren, the locus of his discontent becomes apparent.

The newcomer is cautiously restrained. He laughs at the right moments with the others, leans in toward each respective speaker like the others. Yet the stiffness of his shoulders, the solid set of his jaw, defies the smiles that never reach his eyes. The observer realises at this point that the object of his scrutiny has barely contributed to the discussion at all. Where are *his* tales of passion and lascivious encounters, his romantic rebuttals and denouements?

As if by telepathy, plied by the illusory sweetness of his latte, the newcomer’s shoulders unfurl until his posture more closely resembles that of his fellows. The smile fans across his eyes as he begins to sing the peacock melodies of his flock.

The men turn quickly away and back as their cheeks blossom to rouge. They shuffle in their seats, embarrassed. How did this post-modern Caliban manage to penetrate their selective clique, they ask themselves? Their car keys jingle reassuringly in their pockets to remind them of their successes in achieving the capitalist wet dream of conspicuous consumption. One by one, they withdraw their attention and their hearts, even as their vacant gazes focus on the newcomer and they nod, mutter ‘uh-huh’, their surface masks tuned in as they begin to tune him out.

Eventually, indifference yields to insecurity, at which point the remarks that give those shoulders their perpetual stiffness will emerge. ‘I would never sleep with one of you, but of course I accept you,’ a voice asserts, the others nodding with evident relief at this feat of interpersonal acrobatics. ‘I mean, no offense, but I like… real men.’ Another man chants the chorus of disenfranchisers everywhere: ‘I am fine with it, but you should stick to (your own kind).’ Another is even less subtle. ‘What would I even do with you? If I wanted a (insert term for female genitalia) in my bed, I would be straight.’

It would be convenient to imagine that these men are fictional extrapolations, garish creatures that bear little resemblance to the men I claim as fellow travelers, my fellow gay men. After all, the acronym ‘GLBT’ is tossed around so casually that even I am tempted to forget it is a lie. Recently, a gay leather contest in San Francisco became the subject of controversy when some trans gay men and those who respected them criticised the contest’s refusal to admit contestants who were not ‘born male,’ or, more accurately, who were not designated male at birth. During this controversy, dozens of public commentaries and responses circulated in gay publications. Online and offline, dozens of gay men expressed their bigotry, ignorance, and viciousness toward trans men who dared to claim gay identity and belonging.

There was far less outcry against the blatantly hateful and biased comments in the nominally activist gay public realm than someone versed in gay liberation rhetoric might expect. Several highly respected gay publications printed letters to the editor that read like Nazi diatribes with the word ‘trans’ (or various synonymous epithets) substituted for ‘Jew’. Even some gay trans men posted on listservs alleging the fairness of excluding them from activities for which they lacked complete physical equipment. Apparently absent from this debate was any mention of the politics of ableism or the inherent link between gay transphobia and discrimination against people whose bodies are different enough to preclude them from obtaining able-bodied privilege.

Having been deaf for a brief but memorable part of my childhood, I have experience as an insider to a deaf community. (I lack the arrogance to describe any community as THE community, as if all gay or deaf people were a united and homogeneous group into which all who claimed membership were welcomed.) My exposure to deaf activists and to the disability rights movement imparted an acute awareness of the interpersonal incarcerations people impose on those whose bodies threaten their sense of security or uniformity. Ableists express their body imperialism by examining wheelchairs while overlooking the vibrant and alert gazes of their inhabitants. They shout at blind people who have perfect hearing because they have placed all of the body diverse into a greyscale box of Otherness that lacks room for distinction or nuance.

One ubiquitous complaint voiced by gay people in heterosexual environments is that they are viewed as sexualities first and as complex human beings second, if at all. A similar complaint is echoed in disability rights forums by people who are frustrated by being constantly treated like walking medical conditions instead of as potential friends or colleagues. Trans people have only recently begun to learn that it is acceptable to assert our right to exist at all, and so the corresponding complaint is uttered far less frequently than it is experienced.

When trans men talk to me about oppression, they often begin by questioning their right to be upset about transphobia at all. Like men in the disability rights community who challenge the social castration and psychic emasculation they experience as a result of ableist assumptions that they are asexual, gay trans men must contend with gay male communities that will accept their hours of labour for fundraisers and spout their tokenistic acceptance with hollow acronyms, while refusing to admit them as full equals by opening their hearts- and beds- to gay trans men.

How tragic and ironic that gay men, whose historic oppression should afford them a unique empathy for trans men seeking to belong among other gay men, have positioned themselves as oppressors now that they have finally discovered men whose masculine legitimacy is even more embattled than their own. Despite the staunch denial by many gay men that their sexual and romantic preferences have anything to do with transphobia, the personal is political, as gay men in the disability rights movement continue to assert. There is a significant conceptual difference between rejecting a potential lover based on known facts and doing so without knowing the relevant facts. Men who categorically reject the possibility of sleeping with- or, even riskier, of loving- a trans man are not expressing a sexual preference on a par with being into leather or liking older men. The sweeping generality of a blanket ban on trans men lovers implies fear, insecurity about their masculinity or orientation, fear of difference, fear of the Other: Transphobia.

I am not suggesting that gay men disregard their sexual or romantic attractions to force themselves into encounters with trans men. In particular, I am thinking of the many gay men who reluctantly admit to me and to others that they have been attracted to trans men before, but that of course they would never consider exploring that attraction once they discovered their estwhile paramour’s trans status. To these men I say, challenge your transphobia and your ableist privilege. Stop building barriers to keep your brothers- your gay trans brothers- out of your mysterious and wondrous male Jerusalems.

Gay Jewish men and the GLB’T’ Jewish community have not demonstrated any less transphobia than the ableist contingent of the San Francisco leather scene. After devoting over five years to gay and lesbian- nominally ‘GLBT’- Jewish community service, I have grown accustomed to the precarious paradoxes of my role. I have served as a board member, project coordinator, and committee chair for diverse endeavours designed to create inclusive and affirming environments for ‘GLBT’ Jews. After five years, I am still unable to join general flirtatious banter among my supposed brothers without blunt and stinging reminders that- at the core- I am not accepted as one of them.

It is not about my appearance. My full beardline and unmistakably male face are not the problem. None of these men has ever seen me disrobed, nor would any of them be able to correctly ascertain the current state of my anatomical attributes from our interactions to date.
Many have even expressed sexual and romantic interest in me before- until one of their companions smoothly ushers them away from whatever conversational interlude we were sharing, murmuring low into their ears until their eyes narrow into divining rods that prod along my clothed silhouette, revealing newborn questions that have killed desire.

In his frank examination of gay racism and Black gay male empowerment, Black gay activist and filmmaker Marlon Riggs asserts that “Black men loving Black men is a revolutionary act.” Trans gay men loving other trans gay men is also a revolutionary act. But it is not the act that completes my gay trans revolution. I refuse to be forced into a sexual ghetto, a separate but (un)equal status, by gay men whose stated tolerance of gay trans men is rendered suspect by their ableist notion that I should only be allowed to consider other gay trans men as potential partners. Some gay men have even blatantly said, to me and in print, that they ‘have no problem with transgenders (sic) as long as they join their own groups and they can date other transgenders.’ I refuse to be barred from an entire dating pool simply because I was born with an anatomy and designation that differ from how I choose to configure my body and soul.

For me, being a gay trans man and refusing to tolerate gay or lesbian transphobia is a revolutionary act. I accomplish this act every time I attend a community service meeting at which a non-trans gay man expresses his ableism by stating that he is the only ‘real’ man present, or a non-trans gay or lesbian leader informs me that I cannot count as a gay man for demographic purposes because I have not had ‘the lifetime experience of being raised male.’ I commit to this revolution by challenging the sheer audacity and presumptiveness of any non-trans gay or lesbian person who would dare to decide for me what my life experience has been and how it will be catalogued in their imperialist gallery of token Others. I build my revolution by calling gay men on the transphobia that allows them to dismiss me or tolerate me without genuine affirmation. I revolt by refusing to accept the ableist notion that I am ‘a flawed, disabled freak who should go away and mate with the other flawed, disabled freaks’ without disturbing the ableist landscape of youth-obsessed botox bunnies and steroid musclequeens.

I hold gay men accountable when they fail to speak out against trans oppression in gay environments, for laughing at trans jokes and for promoting stereotypes that all trans guys are just misguided lesbians who don’t belong in gay male space. I hold gay men accountable for creating an environment where most gay trans men are more stealth (the trans equivalent of closeted) among other gay men than around straight people. I challenge the ableist privilege that allows gay men to deny the beauty and legitimacy of the same gay trans men who fight for non-trans gay men’s rights to love and live as equals. What, exactly, are we fighting for if not freedom for ALL gay (and bi) men?

Being trans is not my disability. My disability is that I have allowed gay male transphobia to infiltrate my consciousness, to cast me as an unseemly Other even in my private erotic productions. My disability is that, when I sit among you- among gay men at a committee meeting- and listen to your transphobic comments, I feel like something is wrong with me instead of with you. My disability is that I have allowed your transphobia to convince me that I am incomplete, unworthy, dickless. I have allowed you to desexualise and objectify me as an emblem of your activist sincerity. I have permitted all of these travesties and more because I believed the lie that my trans experience made me lesser than you, less of a man, less human, even. You spread this lie every time you ridiculed trans men or tried to police my mannerisms to detect whether I walked, talked, ate, breathed to your specifications.

You, my brothers, I accuse you of the silence that you claim equals death for not welcoming me, defending me, affirming me and those like me. You who offered me the choice between the mask of invisibility and the mask of a grotesque circus performer that was no choice at all, I accuse you. I accuse you of denying my existence because to recognise me would be to recognise the inner fragments of your tortured masculinity, to open fresh scars of homophobia and misogyny that you dare not face.

What do you see when you catch my gaze, brother? Is it the slow and seething torment of imprisoned flesh, a hideous elephantine chimera that steals your thoughts and renders you impotent? Or do you see what I see, what I feel… the sensual limbs of a man who shares your hungers for intimacy with other men? Do you see that we are both beautiful, male, whole?

Trans men loving trans men is a revolutionary act.

But gay men loving other men- whether they are trans or not, whether they are gay or bi- is the act that will bring our revolution the unity we require for Victory.

“Go back to your country and stop taking American jobs.” This accusation from a stranger unravels the apparent order of my morning. I am standing at the bus stop on an otherwise quiet street. The warmth of the sky belies the ugly chill cast by my detractor. I have convinced myself that I am whole and beautiful, that I should wear my Mizrahi garments without fear of derision. My detractor pours his words over me like gasoline, staining my djellaba with the dirt of judgement. He brands me thief, infiltrator, enemy. It does not matter that he thinks I am Muslim or Arab, not Persian or Jew. I am as much a part of those things that he hates as he believes I am.

I have not yet fastened my battle armour for the day; it takes shields to simply be myself and refuse to be destroyed by public condemnation. Once armed, I bear the invincibility of detachment; I sacrifice my natural empathy in exchange for thick skin that alienates me from my soul even as it buffers me from external attacks. I am not yet thick-skinned; In the peculiar mathematics of disenfranchisement, I have convinced myself that dangerous people do not awaken before 10 a.m., and so I am caught off-guard by this early morning racist. I must revise my battle plan. I must resolve to screen potential enemies more carefully. My elemental joie de vivre is endangered by each exposure to the public sphere; when was I so free that I could be myself without knowledge of the risk involved?

I counter my detractor’s argument with intellect. I note that most of the people who now claim this land were immigrants, not the original inhabitants of North America. I brandish the standard verbal weapons to combat his claim.

Now the accusation shifts. A man who argues with words instead of fists is not a man at all, goes the unspoken rule of a culture so foreign to me that I can barely comprehend its existence. “Why do you talk like a girl?�? he forages, a hint of menace prickling down my back in a hot, spiky trail. I mutter disagreement out of unwillingness to admit defeat, sheer tenacity that hints at a will I do not feel. I weave down endless back streets until I reach the safety of my office. I wonder when my world became a cage.

What is it about my presence, about my mere existence, that has enraged this detractor? A woman whom I respect asserts that I have experienced another unspoken rule of mainstream heterosexual U.S. masculinity: When another man bests you, insult his masculinity by accusing him of being a girl, of being feminine. This stems from the unspoken rule that women are inferior, that to be compared to them is the gravest insult a man may wield against his fellow. I am shocked by the ubiquitousness of this abject misogyny. I begin to hear it murmured in cafes, tossed from casual lips like petals falling at the advent of winter. I wonder how I could have failed to hear before.

I refuse to do Western drag on days when I crave the comfort and familiarity of Middle Eastern clothing. I refuse to affect the crudely overacted mannerisms of culturally dominant masculinity to “pass�?- as what? I refuse to shave my beard or restrain my hands from gesturing when I speak. Is my detractor’s venom a form of envy for the precarious freedom that I covet, a freedom delicately revealed by dancing hands only to be veiled in pockets once more when the threat of loathing eyes encroaches?

His insults join their brethren in the tohu va’vohu, the desolate and disorderly chaos, the grey canvas stretching across my multi-coloured mind. I do not understand the source of this baseless hatred, this sinat chinam that many authoritative biblical sources claim was responsible for the destruction of our first two Temples. My detractor appears abstract, even while he stands concrete and resolute before me; he is a symbol of the bigotry against which I position myself. I am a fortress of flesh that is never quite solid enough. Knives make me bleed. Cruel words invoke tears. Does my compassion make me less of a man or define my right to claim that term at all?

And where is G-d in the midst of this struggle? I am reminded of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s commentary on the book of Job, in his When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Iyov (Job) rails against G-d at the indignities he has suffered, while his friends rationalise about the reason for Iyov’s misfortune. In these deliberations, Kushner posits that Iyov and his friends must contend with three statements, at least one of which must be false:

A. G-d is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without (G-d’s) willing it.

B. G-d is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.

C. Iyov is a good person.

As Kushner points out, the simultaneous veracity of these three statements is only easy to believe as long as Iyov is healthy and blessed with good fortune. Yet when Iyov suffers wretchedly, despite his observance and his faith in Hashem, how do we comprehend the nature of a G-d whose will is at the centre of events? Kushner’s answer, which fails to satisfy me fully as a traditionally observant Jew, is that G-d is just and fair, but removed from influence in world affairs and thus not the cause of our misfortune.

Kushner’s G-d is one who stands with us as ally and consoler during times of strife. While this vision has significant benefits over the arrogant notion that G-d willingly inflicts suffering upon people who need spiritual discipline or for reasons that we are too miniscule to comprehend, what credibility does G-d maintain once we conclude that G-d is powerless? This toothless G-d may serve the needs of those who need to absolve G-d of wrongdoing, but what of those whose very definition of G-d requires omnipotence?

I believe that there is a third possibility, one hinted at later in Kushner’s text, though rendered a bit differently than I propose. What if G-d- all-powerful and intimately involved in directing the course of each human life- chose to fashion a universe in which human beings are given the autonomy necessary to forge order and holiness from tohu va’vohu, from a chaos so amorphous that we cannot adequately define it. In such a universe, imagine that a Natural Order- a general set of governing principles from gravity to entropy- was vital to endowing us with this freedom. G-d could intervene. Indeed, G-d could retain the power to overturn each natural law, but in doing so would undermine the foundations of the world G-d sought to fashion from the formlessness. In certain dire cases where the course of human history would be derailed, perhaps natural laws must be contravened, but the basic structure of natural life is provided to us as a gift with which we are enjoined to build, to create, to heal, and to complete. In this view, the strife and suffering we experience as a result of natural disasters and human-made tragedies are unfortunate realities of our autonomous humanity. Perhaps the tikkun olam that has become synonymous with social justice to so many Jews is another term for our role as beings conscripted by G-d to bring order from chaos and structure to void. Perhaps it is imperfection in our world that justifies our existence as menders and weavers of life.

Is there, as Kushner implies later in his commentary, an inherent evil in chaos? I reject this notion, as that belief would easily lend itself to extrapolation that human fluidity is negative, a view that runs counter to a celebratory view of human diversity and our capacity for change.

Instead, I find an inherent thread of evil embedded in one particular sort of psychic chaos, the chaotic fear of the unknown. The fear of the foreigner, the gender diverse, the hue that appears green in one light and blue in the next: These fears are those of the person standing at borders, edges of horizons, determined to root out advancing growth, afraid of becoming obsolete in a strange, new world.

Am I feared by my detractor because I represent the chaos of human diversity, the infinite spectrum of light that cannot be fully captured by mere human eyes? Or does my detractor represent chaos, the unruly element of hatred that clashes with an orderly life steadfastly devoted to empowerment and justice? Chaos, as all elements of the known universe, appears different from each vantage point. The trouble is that, like order, chaos is neither inherently good nor evil. It is merely a tool in the vast obscurity we call the universe.

After these post-Rosh Hashanah reflections, I am left with far more questions than answers, with far more chaos than order. I do not believe that this situation is the result of entropy. I believe that tikkun olam- mending the spiritual fragments of our world- involves the arduous task of gazing into endless mirrors of shifting sands to extract the hidden meanings of a seemingly random and often brutal universe. Rather than allow racism and cruelty to deter me, I resolve to let them motivate me to pursue growth and social justice with increasing passion. Whether G-d is my Consoler, my Controller, or a mystery that I have not yet fathomed, I do not merely believe that G-d is with me, for I know it with each fibre of my soul.