Jesus, Bake Me A Cake Already!

There’s a video floating around the Internet and Fox News has probably been running 24 hour coverage of the story as “American families are under attack.”

Melissa and Aaron Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes bakery, with their children. Photo taken from kxl.com.

The story is told that a baker and her husband refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple who needed one for their wedding. The Kleins (the family owners of the bakery) were interviewed for a tear-jerker of a mini-documentary about their experiences in which Melissa Klein spends most of time choking up about how she just wanted to live out her beliefs, that she didn’t intend to do anyone harm. The documentary claims they have been charged and fined for refusing to bake this cake. In the end, the fiasco caused them to lose a substantial amount of their business and eventually they had to close the bakery.

While I’m not unfeeling, I really don’t care if a bakery ends up going out of business because nobody wanted to shop there after such an incident. Y’all made your bed, now you can lie in it. Speaking of lying, did I mention that judge fined them, not because they refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding, but because they posted the lesbian couple’s home address online? The lesbian couple received some very disturbing calls from some good Christians and I suspect it didn’t start with, “Do you have moment to talk about our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ?” That’s right, the Kleins, who said they were just trying to follow the teachings of the same Middle Eastern hobo who pitched a fit in the Temple over some money-changers; used a very childish tactic to harass the lesbian couple.

Since I used to be a Christian, I feel comfortable speaking this way: This wasn’t about following the teachings of Jesus, this was about unexamined bigotry and hate. I think too often we associate hate with anger, we incorrectly assume that in order to hate something or someone we must be angry or bitter. Hate is more akin to poison than fire. It might smell, taste, and look good but it’s deadly and it’ll kill someone if it goes unchecked. You can be a sweet, crusty, old Christian white couple living in Duluth, Minnesota and still be the most hateful and vile human being on the planet.

In Christian Scriptures, there is a lot of talk about not being able to tell who to trust, but Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). This story about the Klein’s bakery debacle is one of many examples in which we can clearly see that the influence of false prophets has led these Christians down a path of hate and bigotry. I don’t have the time or energy to feel sorry for them, but perhaps some good Christians can find it in themselves to come alongside this couple and mentor them in the teachings of Christ and perhaps lead them back to that straight and narrow path.

For the Sympathizers

Someone asked me what they, as someone who can sympathize but not empathize with the trans experience, can and should do?

I’ve wrestled with this question because I’m just one person. I can’t speak for every trans person. My experience isn’t necessarily the trans experience, but a trans experience. I’m kind of tired of explaining this distinction, but it’s apparently important for me to reiterate it because I think people want me to answer questions that aren’t solely mine to answer. Additionally, I’m made to answer for all the trans tropes, all the stereotypes, and assumptions rather than being allowed to exist as I am. That is something you could help me with. Could all y’all just let trans people formulate our own narratives instead of trying to dictate a narrative that you’re familiar with onto us? I can’t even begin to tell you how hurtful these ill-conceived ideas about trans people’s lives are and I personally immediately distrust anyone who tries to project them onto me.

This thought process came out of a discussion on why the legalization of gay marriage is a crock and the criticism of this legalization is not hindrance to queer communities, but a valid and important critique of the historical and current social and political climate in queer communities. It’s exhausting to have to deal with cisgender straight people who are making problems for me, but then to get it from cisgender queer people who claim to be on the same side is infuriating. Often times this pushes me to the point where I’m ready to say, “forget allies.” Setting aside some of the troublesome issues surround current Internet culture and the need to label everything ever so precisely and categorize it neatly like my mom’s baking ingredients cabinet, allies (of queer communities) are simply those people who commit themselves to putting the needs of queer communities to the forefront and working to see those needs met.

Just a year ago, I would have told you that allies are a myth. I was frustrated and disillusioned, admittedly, but I was also responding to a very real problem. Today, I work with some really incredible people who demonstrate quality ally behavior without really talking much about themselves being allies. These people sympathize with my struggle and actively work towards making it easier for me and others like me. They listen, they internalize what I’ve told them, and then they turn around and make stuff happen to make the world a safer, better place. I’m not saying they’re perfect, I don’t know anyone who is, but I’ve also seen many of the people I work with take criticism and do something productive with it.

I’m in a very special place where I can have such amazing care and support, but I’m quite fortunate to have that. Many don’t have this and that’s a big problem because trans people are a marginalized people. Trans people are less likely to have access to quality affordable healthcare, be hired, be able to get housing, and on top of that trans people are at a significant risk for suicide. If you look at me and think this is typical look and feel of a trans person, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m in the top of the top when it comes to privileged situations for a trans person.

Sympathizers: listen, internalize, and create positive change.

Grumpy on Day of Landmark Decision by SCOTUS

It’s no secret that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it was un-Constitutional for any state to ban gay marriage. My Facebook, Twitter, and dashboard for WordPress are covered in rainbows. Part of me really wants to be happy, but when I think about it I get frustrated. I’m particularly fond of the phrase, “Love Wins” with a rainbow background because it coincides with a controversial book in Christian circles written by Rob Bell. On the other hand, I don’t understand why we don’t just abolish marriage altogether. For clarification, I’m not saying people can’t go to their local church, temple, synogogue, or mosque and have a ceremony that binds two people together in the eyes of family, friends, and their god(s). Why does the government have a say in who can marry? Keep in mind that for a good portion of US history, marriage laws were put in place to prevent interracial marriages. What business does the government have in who I love and marry? Benefits? Why don’t we just give those benefits to everyone? How about we stop favoring State-sanctioned unions?

I want everyone to be able to love and love freely, but it just seems like we’ve got it backwards that we’re celebrating something that belonged to us from the beginning. If someone were beating you senseless, would you celebrate the moment they stopped hitting you? This brings me to another point. Gay marriage is not even close to the finish line for gay rights. I’ve griped and complained about the way President Obama and esteemed guests at the White House reacted to Jennicet Gutiérrez calling for an end to the detention and deportation of queer immigrants.

Basically, a room full of cis straight and gay people shushed a trans woman of color for demanding more than gay marriage. Those of us who have been studying the struggle for gay liberation throughout history will be reminded of the time when Sylvia Rivera, another trans woman of color, was shushed and booed as she tried to speak to what was more important than feel-good things.

https://vimeo.com/45479858

When people ask why I’m not in favor of gay marriage, I point to these things first. The detention and deportation of queer immigrants will always be more important to me than gay marriage. The fact that gay marriage was legalized in the US before taking care of the problems of homeless queer youth, detention and deportation of queer immigrants, the 41% attempted suicide rate among transgender people, and the violence that black Americans face at the hands of, well, everyone is what should have been addressed before gay marriage. Gay marriage may seem like a big deal, but in the larger context it’s like getting a stale cookie when you really needed a full-course meal.

I don’t really begrudge people for celebrating, but I am frustrated with people who think this is the end. I’m frustrated that gay marriage was made a priority at the expense of everything else. If you’re not familiar with much of what I’ve been talking about, I highly recommend you read all the articles I linked to and watch both the videos I embedded here.

A New Star Trek Series

There’s been a lot of talk about a new Star Trek series in recent months (here, here, and here). Most of that is purely speculation or information from 10 years ago, long before J.J. Abrams completely wrecked whatever respectability Star Trek had. As Adam Holmes of CinemaBlend (second link) points out, CBS is focusing on the alternate timeline of Abram’s disaster films. I call them disaster films because they did nothing to push the envelope of what our future will look like. It just reflected the same systemic social ills faced in 2009 and 2013. Granted, most of the purported radicalism was just a hyped-up fantasy which Gene Roddenberry created in his war with NBC studios during the production of The Original Series. This image of a television show that was spearheading social change was later co-opted to benefit CBS and Paramount (CBS owns the rights to the television series, Paramount to the film rights).

Part of me wants a new Star Trek series, mostly because I’ve watched every series (except the animated) and I’m now working my way through them a second time. It’s getting to the point where an episode starts and I groan because there’s something about it I don’t like (the Ferengi, pointless sex appeal moments, or terrible CGI effects). Part of me recognizes that Star Trek is only entertainment and that the idea of it being a revolutionary show was simply to sell more product, but I also want Star Trek to be revolutionary. I want there to be boundaries crossed, censors pissed off, and the quiet suburban white society disturbed by the things they see on a show they previously thought of as safe. I want a complex exploration of how the Federation eliminated capitalism and the acquisition of wealth as the motivating factor for doing anything. I want an all queer bridge cast. I want non-nuclear families, trans women cast as women without the need for a big reveal moment on the show, and I want writers of marginalized identities doing all the writing.

I also hate that so much of Star Trek talks about issues through the analogy of an alien situation. The entire Klingon-Federation feud which served as a plot point for The Original Series, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was a thinly veiled analogy for America’s Cold War with the Russians (despite having a faux-Russian, Pavel Chekov as a bridge officer). Star Trek: Insurrection is basically a sci-fi white-washed version of the Pocahontas story (sorry, James Cameron, but Star Trek beat you to the punch). In Enterprise, there’s an episode that addresses the stigma of being HIV-positive aptly named “Stigma” through the analogy of a disease communicable through mind melds and the Vulcan medical community refused to treat anyone who had the disease because they considered mind melds to be unclean. Another Enterprise episode called “Detained” discusses the morally bankrupted actions of the American government for putting Japanese Americans into internment camps (as well as al-Qaeda paranoia). They did this through the lens of Archer and Tucker discovering a Suliban detention facility for which the only crime the Suliban had committed was being of the Suliban species (only the Cabal sect was responsible for terrorist actions).

I’m sure some people are reading this and confused why I would be so against it. If people cannot sympathize and empathize with the stories and experiences of the people supposedly represented by those episodes and films without it being masked by an a different planet, some pointed ears, and strange names then how can we expect actual change to happen? Society has to learn to listen to marginalized people on the terms set by those marginalized people. To do otherwise is to further entrench the privileged against the marginalized. It’s refusing to see the suffering the privileged cause the marginalized.

And that’s why I am content to wait for another Star Trek series to hit, because I don’t want to have to settle for another faux-revolutionary capitalist orgasm.

What Trans Lifeline Means to Me

As a disclaimer, I am not speaking for or under the direction of Trans Lifeline, the leadership, or board of directors. These are my personal experiences and opinions and may not reflect the views and opinions of Trans Lifeline.

Some of you may know that I’m an operator for Trans Lifeline, a crisis hotline for transgender people by transgender people. I’ve been an operator for about three months and recently discovered that I’m in top 30 most active operators. That’s a moment of pride for me, to know that I’ve actually been putting in a solid amount of hours even throughout my transitional periods. I wanted to write a few thoughts about Trans Lifeline because it means a lot to me. Just as much as I’ve had an impact on the people calling, they’ve had an impact on me.

I’ve spoken to trans people from across the country and into Canada. I’ve taken calls from people who identify with all over the nebulous region that is gender. It’s been such a privilege thus far. There have been some awful calls, some great calls, some calls that made me cry, and some calls that filled me so much hope. I’ve talked to people who have been out for 30+ years and people for whom telling me was the first step they’d taken towards coming out. Suffice to say that I’ve spoken to a wide range of people and it’s changed the way I think about trans communities. It’s changed the way I think about gender. It’s one thing to go to school and get your major in gender studies (I did not) and it’s another thing entirely to understand gender as the people whom it affects understand it. Before starting as a operator I had just my own ideas about gender, but with each new caller I undergo a transformation of understanding.

Trans Lifeline is run by volunteers. All the operators are volunteers. There’s no headquarters, no call center, it’s all very cost-effective and last time I checked, Greta Gustava Martela, the Executive Director of Trans Lifeline, isn’t driving a gold-plated Hummer around town. Not only is Trans Lifeline operated by volunteers who donate their time and energy, but it’s run by trans people. That’s a major difference between Trans Lifeline and other specialized hotlines. For people who are frequently misunderstood and ostracized because of their unique experiences, it can mean all the difference to speak to someone who “gets it”. I’m sure that other hotlines could probably be trained to help trans callers, but that doesn’t hold a candle to that feeling you get when someone says, “I understand” and you know through talking with them that they’re telling the truth. There are so many experiences which trans people often times have hard time putting into words, but another trans person can relate because they’ve been there too.

It’s not only the people who call in who have made a difference, but also the fellow operators. We support each other and often times help each other with everything from the emotional toll of a rough call to the administrative aspects of being an operator.

So now I’d like to make a shameless plug for this beautiful resource, and you have options!

You can straight-up donate by clicking this link.

You can purchase a Trans Lifeline shirt here.

You can purchase a Trans Ally shirt here.

If you’re trans, you can purchase a “Yes, I’m Trans/Stop F***ing Staring” shirt here.

Give so that others don’t give up

Late Night Thoughts

I’m watching the last episode of Game of Thrones, the season 5 finale that’s had everyone going bonkers for the past week or so. While this show has definitely had surprises, I never found those surprises to be in the things others do. I’m surprised by the graphic terror, the cruelty depicted, and the fact that a younger me probably would have taken the time to read all the books. I’m not sure why. I loved Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but I don’t enjoy the films much anymore. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s just a general apathy and even disgust at the grotesque, “let’s put more blood, more guts, and more plot-choking sex into it”. Granted, Game of Thrones is an HBO television series and therefore must have an absurd amount of nudity. It’s what people pay for when the buy these premium channels. They want tits, they want ass, and they want a view of the pubic area to let their minds imagine what vulva lies behind the hairy mount.

Tolkien, of course, didn’t put such detail into The Lord of the Rings. He was a world-builder, not a storyteller. George R. R. Martin strikes me as a bit of both. Why then am I so uninterested and unsurprised by the majority of the shocking twists? Have I been reading too much? Am I becoming a prude? I’d like to think not. Sex has always been a weird thing for me. Ever since I became aware of it, I was given the distinct impression it was evil, dirty, and even something to be feared. I devoted a good portion of my teenage years studying and developing a strong fear of sex. Needless to say, much of that has been stripped away but perhaps not enough for my liking. I don’t much care to see sex on television or in movies. It’s often dull, often cis heteronormative, and quite often it doesn’t look anything like sex I’ve ever experienced. How can I connect to a character who’s having sex with people I wouldn’t have sex with in a manner that would be impossible for me to imitate?

Furthermore, I find myself completely unamused by the action of this television series. If it weren’t for the fact that I care so much about the Stark sisters and Tyrion Lannister, I’d probably not bother to watch the show at all. I’ve seen so much blood and gore since I started watching R-rated movies and MA-rated television shows that pretty much none of it phases me, yet all of it disturbs me profoundly. Maybe that’s how they keep all their viewers. If people care about even one character enough, suddenly all the the rest of the objectionable material gets filtered and ignored by the desire for something one wants.

Why I’m Leaving Tumblr

I think it was about four years ago that I discovered Tumblr. It started out as the place I used to put a bunch of filth, all my foul-mouthed ramblings and non-sensical yet verbose garbage. Eventually, I left Blogger/BlogPost because college e-mail address wouldn’t allow me to host a blog with it. I created a new blog and began more thoughtfully posting ideas and life’s goings-on. For those who are not aware, Tumblr is a culture unto its own. There are inside jokes, linguistic trademarks, and expectations that people have for how Tumblr is used. It’s an incredibly complex world that bridges the gap between social network and blog. I’ve met interesting, wonderful people through Tumblr (some of them from the Land of the Frozen Chosen, aka my home state of Minnesota). I learned a lot from the personal experiences of people I didn’t know through anything other than Tumblr and I was able to gather a lot of information about gender and sexuality through Tumblr.

Lately, I’ve been feeling discouraged and bewildered by the behavior of people on Tumblr. Yeah, sure, there will always be people who are rude or downright scum who perpetrate harassment and hate, but this was something different. There have already been several criticisms, serious and otherwise, of Tumblr’s Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) who have made name for themselves for taking an absurdly narrow ideology. It goes beyond simple flame wars that members of online forums are accustomed to seeing from time to time. This usually involves harassing messages and something called doxxing, which is basically gathering real-world information about a person and releasing to the public on the internet for the express purpose of intimidation and harassment.

But more fundamentally is the lack of willingness to engage with new ideas. Any new idea that doesn’t conform to a certain agenda or makes someone feel uncomfortable in any way is summarily rejected, mocked, and sometimes the person receives the above mentioned forms of harassment. This may have been born out of a defensive posture, since Tumblr has no functional policy against Neo-Nazi’s and other white supremacy groups, Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), and several other vile types; the need to deal with these people quickly and harshly was essential for the emotional and physical health of the individual. The other aspect is Tumblr latching on to the idea of trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are supposed to be a warning system for people to be advised that content which may trigger a psychological event (i.e. people with depression might experience a very strong low as a result of being triggered). This is considered a common courtesy, but recently I’ve noticed something more than this. Anything, anything that doesn’t conform to a narrow ideological framework is considered bad and therefore dismissed completely.

This is particularly true of media: books, TV shows, movies, etc. There are definitely individual shows, movies, books, comics that I don’t think should exist. Do we really need to have Birth of a Nation on Netflix? What possible benefit is there to having a Civil War-era film featuring the KKK as noble defenders and black-face stereotypes of black people as the evil vermin? I think there are more productive ways to talk about propaganda and racism than to actually put a piece of racist propaganda on Netflix. But should you cancel your Netflix subscription because Birth of a Nation is there? Current attitudes on Tumblr would suggest the answer is yes, but I think that’s a personal choice. For me the answer would be to not watch the movie. Netflix keeps an incredible amount of data on the usage of their service in order to calculate what is popular and what isn’t, what to renew a license on and what should be let go. If you just not watch something and others not watch it either, Netflix will see that the film isn’t appreciated. There’s always pirated media.

Then again, there is no such thing as ethical consumption within a capitalist system. You might get Netflix to take Birth of a Nation off of their movie selection, but what have you achieved? Netflix is still getting your money. Not buying from Netflix is going to hurt them, but if you do it under the pretense of just going somewhere else to subscribe to content more to your liking then you’re still participating in the ethical consumption myth. This is a complex issue that affects everything we do and therefore deserves careful consideration and the flexibility to change with new information. The climate of Tumblr is such that someone would post a very strong stance on the issue and 20,000 people would reblog it without critically analyzing that opinion. That’s a problem. It has all the hallmarks of absolutist, fundamentalist ideology without the religious connotation.

So that really only scratches the surface of why I’m leaving Tumblr. I think it’s a toxic environment and while there might be some really great things on Tumblr, I personally cannot justify the damage it does to my emotional state. While I’ve been speaking about Tumblr in a monolithic way, there are definitely people who use Tumblr who aren’t like what I’ve described above.

What I Believe

Those of you who know my story of who I was when I came to Shimer and coming out can skip to the jump (aka “Read More”). 

The past four and half years have been life changing. My time at Shimer College has been transformative in good and bad ways, the same goes for my time as a student worker at Illinois Institute of Technology. When I first arrived at Shimer I was, as one person phrased it, “a Christofascist”. That phrase may seem a bit harsh, especially to Christians, but the brand of fundamentalism I was raised with and came into Shimer with had many of the hallmarks of fascism. I spent quite a bit of my time at Shimer uncovering the assumptions I had always had without even being aware of them (hence the uncovering part). Around this time two years ago, I began experimenting with the way I expressed myself through clothes and mannerisms. I felt liberated the first time a co-worker painted my nails. But it wasn’t quite enough because I realized something else, something internal. I started reading about gender and found something that felt comfortable for me: genderqueer. It’s an ambiguous term that means a lot of things for a lot of people. For me, it has meant that I am definitely not a man and not distinctly a woman. A man from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was following my tumblr blog and, as it turns out, collecting snippets of what I was writing. He decided to confront me on Facebook and say that I was living a lifestyle of sin, that God made me a man and that I was supposed to live an honorable life that God commanded me to. I came out publicly to my school, work, family, and friends in an effort to reduce the amount of rumor that would spread if I did not. I was not really ready to come out, but I had to because I knew that this man was probably going to talk to others about me through the delusional lens of his Christofascism. I posted a few pictures on my old tumblr blog and not more than a few weeks later was contacted by the staff worker at the IIT chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

I was forced to step down from my leadership role because I was premarital sex with my then-girlfriend and didn’t believe it was a sin. I was questioned for my comments about Apostle Paul, I believe the exact phrase I used to describe him was “a misogynistic pig”. The man from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship had taken those snippets and photos and sent them to the staff worker after our confrontation on Facebook. I alleviated their concerns about whether I believed in the authority of Scripture, but was not convinced premarital sex was a sin. Just as the meeting was about to end, it was mentioned that if someone was gay they would not be allowed to be in leadership either. I don’t think I let on what I was feeling, but inside I knew (despite claims to the contrary) that I was not safe there. They had just removed the Chapter Jesus Hippy, my leadership role, who was responsible for making the chapter a welcoming place for people of every culture, creed, and political affiliation (among other things). I had already been removed from the executive board, so basically my role was a way for them to keep me in line and out of the way. They apparently didn’t see the irony in removing the leader responsible for making the chapter more inclusive for having divergent theological views and coming out as a marginalized gender and sexual identity.

Over the course of the next few weeks I was told time and time again by people from InterVarsity, people who called me friend, that they loved me but that I was living a lifestyle of sin and that the Bible “was clear”. The discussion was not centered around premarital sex, as was the official reason for being removed from leadership, but around my gender identity and sexual orientation. Looking back now, I question why I really kicked out of leadership but I don’t care enough to go through the emotional turmoil I went through during that time. The point was the despite how progressive student leaders and the staff worker of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship claimed to be, it was all crock. It was built on a lie of interpretation. IV (that’s what everyone calls it, pronounced “eye-vee”) was fine with working towards racial justice, but you want to talk about gender and sexuality? Nope. Not allowed. Dishonor and banishment. This period of my life was especially tumultuous and I spent quite of bit of time feeling bitter. I wrote a lot of angry things which were fueled by tumblr’s penchant for polemical and vindictive language (I’ll get more into that later).

The only community loosely affiliated with Christianity I felt remotely safe in was with the liberal Quakers. After a couple of Meetings, I realized the Quakers probably weren’t for me, but I was grateful to know that there was one place where I could experience God without the hate and bigotry I had just escaped. I spent the next several months trying to figure out who I am and what I believe. I gave up on Christianity when it became clear that Christianity had given up on me. I struggled for a year with the pain and anger I felt towards my former friends of IV. It was a mourning process. I lost my friends, my community, my world. I had been told time and again that people loved me only to be turned out when I didn’t conform to a specific ideological framework.