Some of us survive and even thrive, while some of us do not get that chance. Agnes Torres Sulca is one of the latter.
We condemn this crime against a woman, an academic, a psychologist, educator, role model and activist for human rights for women in general and for sexual diversity as a whole. We are distraught, pained, enraged and saddened by this crime, and feel powerless over how, yet again, a brave person has succumbed to the most brutal of gender-based violence… in this case, violence against a transgender woman.
--Vida Plena Puebla
Ms. Torres was last seen a week ago Friday when she left her home in Puebla to attend a party in Chipilo. Her body was found on Saturday in a ditch outside Puebla, only partially clothed. Her neck was slit and there were burn marks across her body, giving the appearance that she had been tortured.
Is this not the month when we are suppose to celebrate women? If so, then why are trans women not seen as the women that we are in this society? How many of us need to die before the violence against us stops?
--Bamby Salcedo, publisher of xQsi magazine
Police have detained four men, from what I can determine (not being fluent in Spanish), who reportedly had a motive of stealing her car. That wouldn't explain the torture though.
Juan Pablo Castro, a member of the conservative PAN party, tweeted that Torres was known for preying on youth and that she deserved to die.
Thinking like that is why, of course, we die in this manner so frequently.
But all that is not what I meant to write about this morning.
As I said at the beginning, some of us survive…and even thrive.
And sometimes our stories get told.
I have my own experience with that. When I came out as a professor at a state university in Arkansas, the local news media thought my life demanded to be shared with the entire community…no matter how I might feel about it.
And it is typically the case that the reporter seems required to share our former first name and most often, before and after photos.
Some of us do end up choosing to share our lives, with the hopes that others of us get treated a little bit better. So I hope that by introducing you to some of the following folks, I do them no harm. They've been in the news recently.
Kaitlyn Bogas used to be a successful restauranteur (there is video at the link). She owned the Vancouver, BC area eateries Saltimbocca, Mangiamo, and Cocco Pazzo.
But life in the food industry doesn't always involve success and she lost Coco Pazzo and a small fortune in a dispute with her landlord. Spiraling into depression as a result, in danger of losing their marriage to go along with the career that was in the tubes, Bogas listened to that still, small voice calling from within:
When the noise was cleared away, there was silence. In that silence, Bogas finally heard the voice that he had been suppressing, denying, trying to ignore since he was five years old. “I said to myself, ‘You have to deal with this. You know what this is about.’ ”
In 2008 Kaitlyn began transitioning. Then she was publicly outed.
“I was outed in a really nasty way,” [s]he says, referring to a gossip post by an online food columnist that characterized Bogas’s change as “either malicious rumour, bizarre publicity stunt” or “unfortunate joke.”
It was awful, it was really hurtful to my family. I knew after that I wanted to become an advocate, and that I was strong enough to deal with whatever came along.
She lost her marriage, her in-laws and couldn't find employment. She began doing landscaping and living in the moment.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of transitioning is relationships. People look at you differently. OK. I realize I am different, but it’s only my gender, really. If I loved you before, why wouldn’t I still love you? If you loved me before, why wouldn’t you love me now?
Bogas is now going to be head chef at Eagle Lodge, a fishing lodge in Bella Coola.
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While investigating the Bogas story, I stumbed upon the story of Nina Arseneault. Now I'd encountered mention of Ms. Arseneault before, but had always had a rather negative opinion, to tell you the truth. I think it was something about the 60 surgeries.
But I have to admit that I probably wasn't being fair to her. It turns out she has some interesting things to say about the objectification of transpeople by our visual appearance.
Nina had been telling her story in the one-woman show, The Silicone Diaries, in Vancouver through February.
She is now back in Toronto, where her short video,
Plane of Immanence, co-created with Jordan Tannahil, is showing through March.
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Brody Runge likes to say he got his start in life at the age of 22. The 24-year-old transman singer has told his story at KearneyHub.com.
Runge appeared on the TLC network's Strange Sex in May, 2011 and auditioned for American Idol in Denver. But he said his changing voice {from the testerone treatments) caused him to bomb in front of Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Stephen Tyler.
He now plans to audition for The Voice.
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While gathering info for that story, I discovered that another transman had been haunting Nebraska as well. :-)
Ryan Sallans spoke at Doane College last week. Ryan describes himself as a full-time professional speaker, mentor, diversity trainer, and consultant.
Hmmm…Brody is from Kearney and Ryan from Aurora. Maybe there is something in the Nebraska water.
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Joy Ladin has a book you might like to read. Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders is an examination of her gender transition. She also wrote an essay about the book for Huffington Post.
But I don’t see myself in her bitter mirror, because I’m not transitioning for the sake of happiness. I have no illusions that becoming a jobless, homeless approximation of a middle-aged woman is a recipe for bliss. This isn’t a typical male midlife crisis—it’s a typical transsexual midlife crisis.
Joy is the David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, making her the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. She is the author of five books of poetry,
Alternatives to History,
The Book of Anna,
Transmigration (a 2009 Lambda Literary Award finalist),
Coming to Life and
Psalms.
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Sam Taylor has been a conservative Southern Baptist boy, a student, soldier, and now a young woman who is studying to become a religious leader. She didn't tell her family about the last two parts until she returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, having been deployed as a chaplain's assistant.
If my dad had asked, I would have told him. I’ll admit I was really nervous, not because my dad is in any way a mean person or a bad person, but I’ve just known so many people whose families have just absolutely rejected them when they came out.
--Sam Taylor
She will talk to a priest later this year about seeking to be ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
Some Christians say the Bible and literary history support transgender identity. Taylor pointed to the Ethiopian eunuch who accepts Christ in the eighth chapter of the book of Acts, becoming the first non-Jewish Christian, and to the male daughters mentioned in the Hammurabi code.
Taylor has found a mentor in Cameron Partridge, an openly transgender Episcopal chaplain at Boston University who also happens to lecture at Harvard's School of Divinity.
Partridge said the growing number of transgender youths in the church is “a sign of the new realities emerging.”
“Not simply of the growing acceptance of trans people,” he said, “but of the growing presence of thoughtful, critically engaged young adults – indeed, people of all ages – who refuse to be boxed into neat and tidy categories.”
If I had tried to go into family life as broken, dishonest, desperately trying to hide basic facts about myself from those that loved me most, I can’t even imagine how much of a mess that would have been, how much pain my decision not to be right in the world could have caused my loved ones.
--Sam Taylor