This is GenderQueer the Bear.  Note hir pink, blue, white, and lavendar coloring — that’s why I gave hir that name. 

I found a handbag and wallet at a Burger King, returned it to the owner, and then I wouldn’t take a cash reward.  The greatful woman gave me GenderQueer instead.

When I began my transition in 2003, I remember having days where I didn’t pass as my target female sex. I remember once being in a Veteran’s Administration Medical Center parking lot, and a child pointing at me, saying to his mom “That’s a man!”

Ouch. As I drove out of the parking lot on my way home, I remember crying about the reality that I didn’t pass as Autumn. I knew that the process of changing from male-to-female (or female-to male, for that matter) is called a transition for a reason — changes that allowed one to live as invisibly in one’s target sex don’t occur overnight. Emotionally, it was tough to live as my target sex but often be perceived as my natal sex.

How important is it to be photogenic to the general public when one identifies as LGBT? Should we, as a community, ever exclude emasculate appearing lesbian women, effeminate appearing gay men, drag queens, genderqueers, and non-passing transmen and transwomen from the LGBT community because they might not look straight? The obvious answer seems no, but the PC answer and reality sometimes clash.

The question of straight appearance is a question that’s recently come up in San Diego. San Diego LGBT Pride Director Ron deHarte was quoted indirectly regarding drag queens after James Hartline, Set Free Ministries, and the Thomas More Law Center made a big deal about Pride buying a thousand ticket block for last Sunday’s Padre game. The article had a some comment on the subject of appearance that reads as follows:

San Diego Pride is promoting the night as “Out in Petco Park” and the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego will perform the national anthem before the game, which will be shown on ESPN.

San Diego Pride’s response to the hubbub: It’s people enjoying a game together, not a drag show.

“We’re going to be wearing ball caps and jerseys. That’s the extent of the lifestyle they will be seeing,” Pride Executive Director Ron deHarte said.

My friend Brenda Watson called up deHarte on July 10th to ask if he actually made the drag show comment, or if it was something the reporter writing the story misinterpreted. Brenda told me that deHarte said he did make the comment, but he didn’t think it was that big of a deal — more was being made of it than should be.

And, maybe deHarte is right. I don’t know any drag queens who’d even consider going to a Padre ballgame in full drag, and probably most LGBT Padre fans would be just going to the game wearing Padre gear and rooting for the team as deHarte said. Appropriate wear for a specific events doesn’t go out the window just because one is LGBT.

But, of course, the possible hidden implication of deHarte’s drag show comment is that if one is LGBT, how photogenic or straight looking one appears in public spaces really matters. It’s not the message that it matters how one dresses given the “dress code” of a specific event/venue, but the broader message that it might matter how one appears overall — if one is male, perhaps one should look masculine; if one is female, perhaps one should look feminine.

As a transwoman who has paid some dues as a non-passing transwoman, I don’t like the idea of a message that says how much I pass as female at a public event should be a consideration for how much I’m accepted personally into the public LGBT community.

I’m just not sure though if deHarte’s message was about wearing event appropriate clothing to a ballgame, or about being straight appearing when in view of the general public. Given the history of discrimination against the LGBT community, especially for those who don’t conform to gender norms, I wish deHarte would have just left out the comment on “drag shows” in the first place.

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Note: James Hartline is scheduled to be on the Bill O’Reily show tonight discussing San Diego Pride.

PublicEye.org: Gay Conservatives; Unwanted Allies on the Right
Excerpt: In the high-adrenaline, and heavily heterosexual, world of Beltway lobbyists, the gay Log Cabin Republicans have their work cut out for them. Ostracized by the Republican Party which continues to receive their fierce loyalty, the LCR is the group that represents the dilemma of gay conservatives: they want to be players on the Republican team, but who is willing to put them in the lineup?

Same Same: That’s So Gay vs The N Word
Excerpt: Stephen Henry, a teacher with 21 years experience and recently-elected vice president of the Metro Nashville Education Association, has been placed on administrative leave and will face a three-day suspension from his sixth-grade teaching job after asking the student how she would feel being called the N-word when he reportedly heard the student describe something as “gay”.

Feminist Mormon Housewives: Defining Woman
Excerpt: …This is where transsexualism comes into play - a biological man may feel like he’s actually a woman, and vice versa. … The idea fascinates me, and I’ve known enough transexual individuals to believe that gender is a very complex thing indeed. I have no problem referring to a biological man who presents herself to the world as a woman with the feminine pronouns “her” and “she”. For all intents and purposes I would consider her a woman. If she was in the restroom with me I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. … At the same time, though, we’re taught that being Man and Woman is an eternal and essential part of who we are. So what does that mean?

Trans Group Blog: Hello, an apology & compulsory genderqueerness
Excerpt: …in doing research for my book, I went back and actually read all of those yucky lesbian-feminist critiques of transsexuality, and came to realize that this notion that trans people should strive to constantly shatter conventional gender categories rather than identifying as women or men (what I’ve started somewhat jokingly referring to as “compulsory genderqueerness”) has its roots back then. It’s a blatant double standard: Non-trans feminists and queers are not questioned when they identify simply as women and men, but trans folks are.

let them eat pro-sm feminist safe spaces: BDSM women’s spaces and transphobia
Excerpt: When bending gender around can be described as a fetish, and you combine that with a sizeable population of transmen and transwomen in a smallish subculture, the results can be explosive, confusing and often pretty offensive.

Associated Press: A Full Moon Brings Out The Freaks & Extra Police
Excerpt: A British resort town is deploying extra police during full moons, convinced of a link between the lunar cycle and violence. The vibrant seaside city of Brighton on England’s southern coast is adopting the new approach after reviewing crime statistics for the past year, Sussex police said Tuesday.

The Advocate: Jesus, the transgender terminator?
Some citizens of Largo, Fla., cited religious grounds for the dismissal of Susan Stanton, the transgender city manager. Would Jesus really have terminated her employment? This and other transgender tales from the Bible.

AEBrain: Cosmos 15
Excerpt: “We think in terms of ‘male’ and ‘female’, but gender doesn’t stop there. Up to a whopping 2 per cent of people have some form of intersexual features, from mixed chromosomes to ambiguous genitalia. Some people don’t even know they’re intersexual. David Salt asks why society and science struggle to understand the spectrum between the sexes.”
(Cosmos 15: Online Issue)