More on Gender

Yesterday's post was lazy, I admit. I didn't make any connections or delve deeper. It be's like that sometimes.

I could have elaborated and said that there have times that I've felt like an honorary boy in my family and described what that meant. I could have talked about the limits that rigid gender roles created in the family, for both women and men. I could have written about gender perks that I enjoy (like usually having a young brother step up to lift my old lady cart onto the bus for me when it's heavy with groceries). I could have shared that I have this longing to be a gender outlaw when I'm really fairly boring in my gender expression.

Since I didn't do any of that, in today's post, I am sharing some of other folks' work about people who are transgender because I started thinking that to talk about gender roles, maybe you need to look at the gender line and people who've seen both sides of it.

Daisy Hernández wrote a very interesting article titled "Becoming a Black Man." It actually includes perspectives from both transmen and transwomen, as well as sharing snippets from individuals who are part of a few other communities of color. The bulk of the story does focus on the words of Black transmen.

Louis Mitchell described how he has had to change since transitioning:

Before transitioning, Mitchell recalls being “cavalier and reckless” about what he did in public and about his interactions with police officers. “I didn’t think about it so much,” he says about cops. “At some point they would find out I was female” and that would diffuse the situation. Now, Mitchell finds that he doesn’t engage in small transgressions like jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk. “I never know if they’re just waiting for something to happen to roll up, and I do not want find myself in custody. That would be just precarious and dangerous in so many ways.”

In the article, Monica Roberts shared that in addition to no longer being viewed as a "suspect," she has felt more powerful in the community:

Her father, a local radio commentator, tried to groom Roberts for leadership as his eldest child. Yet, it was only after transitioning that Roberts felt able to take on such a leadership role. Perhaps it was due to the toll that living in the “tranny closet” had taken on her self-esteem. But Roberts also noticed a difference in the responses she received from other people to her leadership as a Black woman. She got positive reactions, she says, “because I was basically doing the traditional work of Black women in the community in terms of uplifting the race.”

The following is the trailer for "still black," a documentary about Black transmen.



The blog post Trans Woman of Color Erasure & Objectification makes the point that transwomen of color are doing a lot of important work, though that might not be the impression you get if your only exposure is from the mainstream media. Another blog post, America’s Undeclared War On African American Trans Women, observes that Black transgender women are a target and that the violence is minimzed by the press and law enforcement.

Life is a many gendered thing

My family believes in gender roles. Strongly. Which you think would be a little difficult to do since we are a family of primarily women, but nevertheless true.

The Mucha (my absolutely adorable one and only nephew) is not even two years old yet. Countless times I've heard my grandmother remark "That's the boy in him" when he's done something. He throws his blocks around? "That's the boy in him." If you leave him in a queen size bed, he will have touched every square inch of it before morning. Why, you ask? "That's the boy in him." He pulls the folded laundry off the couch? "That's the boy in him." Really? Now, when the girls in my generation, say, ran around, talking to everybody and trying to take things away from people like my nephew does, no one said "That's the girl in them." Likely, they were labeled busybodies and everyone wished that they would just sit still. The Mucha sleeps much like I used to, yet all I remember is having people shake their heads and tell me how I slept wild.

This all annoys me to no end. I do not appreciate his world being circumscribed. I just don't.

Gender is a strange thing. Based on the appearance of their external genitalia we create these ideas of how babies should be and reinforce and shape their behavior accordingly. I want there to be a world where he feels that being a dainty ballerina is as possible as growling football player (okay, I'd prefer he not set himself up for bodily harm...but theoretically I mean). I'd like the gender police to leave folk alone.

The Bougie Princess of America (that would be The Mucha's mother...I swear I heard her call herself that once. I think she thinks it's a good thing), I'm pretty sure, has never mowed her lawn. She has no idea what yard tools are in her garage. She thinks this is The Way It Is Supposed To Be. Sometimes Princess worries me.

Unfortunately for the dear Mucha, this is not just confined to our family. We are but a symptom of the larger society. Good luck, child.

Lesson of the Day

I learn something new every day. Most of these lessons, I don't seek out. They just come to me on their own. Today I learned that broccoli is a flower, that those little green knobs atop the crown are flower buds. I didn't learn this in a gardening catalog, in an encyclopedia, or even from Wikipedia. I learned this as I went out into the garden this morning. My little florets are giving way to little yellow flowers. Oh, well. Supposedly those are edible too. Hopefully they're good.

Artists and Paying Bills

Last week I went to the India Arie concert at Chene Park. And it was a great concert...it was so good that even though she was forced to wrap it up mid-song due to rain that insisted on joining her onstage--even with that I was still happy and contented afterwards. But this post is not about dear, sweet India Arie who described how she almost lost the love of making music working in the recording industry.

As people were starting to fill the venue, Jessica Care Moore shared some of her poetry with us. One of her poems described her financial struggles. And there seems to be something wrong with her having to struggle to pay for her son's daycare bills. She has performed her work internationally. I first heard her perform in 1996. I was in New Jersey for the summer and we took a field trip to Amateur Night at the Apollo. I heard "Blackgirl Juice," which affected me enough that I talked about the poem, quoted a snippet on the little web page I had back then, and remembered her nearly a decade later when I heard her perform in Atlanta.

[I grabbed the poem below online, no guarantees that it's formatted properly here. But it is in her book, The Words Don't Fit in My Mouth (that link takes you to its page on Amazon)]


BLACKGIRL JUICE
By Jessica Care Moore

MAPLE syrup

In the morning

Brown sugar that sweetens
Cinnamon twists in apple cider
Magic Black dust is inside her

Wheat Bread with homemade spread
This Juice goes straight to the head
Coffee without dairy cream
Any man’s dream

Black cat That will bring you luck
Aphrodisiac you’d love to suck!
You wish! Black twisted licorice.
Cooking black-eyed peas.
Wearing black knee-high stockings
Black pump. Black hat. Black dress.
Black eyes.

This juice makes you wise
Allows the sun to shine
Black eagle. Black butterfly.
Black tears she sometimes cries
But one sip and you’ll believe
Braided hair natural cut or curly weave

Nails with acrylic tips, and wide-shaped hips
Most men fiend to hump her
Nails cut off she has a nice touch on her jumper.

Revolutionary waters she’s your mother,
Auntie, sister-friend and daughter
You oughta recognize her eyes

She rolls them when she’s mad and
she keeps her eyes wide open whe she makes love
cause she’s bad to the BONE!
Blackgirl Juice is a nutrititional boost
Bananas Strawberries and Melanin Nectar
No average man can affect her

Ingredients are Spicy-Mild-Sweet
Burns your tongue like an Jalapeno
Pepper steak with authentic chopsticks

First round draft pick. Black Afro Pic.
The one with the fist!
Tight.
Deep.
Loose.
Have you ever tasted Black Girl Juice?
You might want to pour some inside a jar
let it linger on your top lip
take it on a trip

or dab small circles of it on your wrists ankles or ears
And if you’re daring enough to ask…..
I’ve got some Black Girl Juice
If you have an empty glass

Transition and change...

Someone said that when we transition and become ancestors, we become more than we were and what remains of us is not faults, only our greatness. I don't know if I believe this on a regular day, but that's what I'm feeling today.

Bus Update

I spoke with the supervisor this morning. She confirmed that there was no policy prohibiting passengers from using headphones. Additionally she was really interested to learn that the driver had been on his cell phone. It turns out that DDOT has a policy that drivers should not use headphones or cell phones. I was able to give her all the necessary information (bus number, route number, direction traveling, and time) so she will be following up with this. I was transferred to an agent who collected my personal information and apologized on behalf of DDOT and thanked me for calling because if no one calls, they will not know. I also have a complaint number to use to follow up on this issue.

That is good customer service.

Speaking of buses: there is an organization called Transportation Riders United (TRU). I don't have any experience with them, but their focus is public transportation in the metropolitan area. They are organizing action kickoff meetings throughout the region (see below). I won't be able to attend the meeting next Tuesday, but I do plan to look into who they are and what they are doing and seeing if that might be something I should get involved in.

Not my day for customer service

So yesterday just really was not my day for customer service. In addition to my fun at the bike shop, I got to have fun on the bus.

I had to wait 20 minutes for a bus, but it was a good 20 minutes. I had beautiful weather, a radio on my cell phone, and a pleasant enough stranger waiting at the stop with me. My easy contentment was squashed by the bus driver.

Before I could even greet him, he demanded that I remove my headphones. He claimed that the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) has a new rule that forbids headphones. I asked him for literature on the rule. He did not have any. I asked the reason for the rule. He said (repeatedly) that five people on a bus listening to loud music can distract a driver. I asked how my listening to my radio quietly would be a problem. He insisted that it disturbed him. He further stated that the problem came from people not keeping their volume to a reasonable level. When I asked why those people weren't the ones affected then, he dodged the question and told me that he didn't make the rules.

Not having my radio to keep me entertained, I got to soak up the full sounds of the bus. Like the really loud ringtones of some passengers. There were the three LOUD cell phone conversation that lasted nearly the whole time I was on the bus. My favorite sound was the sing-along that involved a line something like "I'm an 80s baby and my parents say I'm crazy." During all this, I and the woman who got on with me kept looking at each other "And our headphones would disturb him? For real?"

Then, of course, the kicker: that driver, who claimed headphones would distract him, got on his cell phone and talked for 15 minutes. Riiiight. Not only was he annoying me, he was endangering my life (the effect of cell phone use on a driver is similar to the effect of alcohol).

Me being me, I called in (FYI DDOT is at 313-933-1300). The customer service agent I spoke with knew of no new rule. She read me the only rule she had regarding headphones. It stated that headphones must be used to listen to electronic devices on the bus. Mmmhmm.

Unfortunately, the supervisor was not available so I will be calling back in the morning.

Really, I'm wondering if I should have forced the issue. If I had refused to take the headphones off and then refused to be put off the bus, what would have happened? Hmm...I ask because I'm not so sure I would be willing to take the bus if I couldn't listen to my radio. While I was sitting on that bus, the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that I should not have to make that choice. And once again that brought me to that fact that the bus service we get in metro-Detroit is ridiculous and we really need to do something about that.