transgender – Baltimore Magazine

Into the Woods

Jess Mayhugh — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 08:30:00 +0000

After years of participating in local bikepacking trips, Danielle Parnes and Kimberly Wiman were fed up with the male-dominated rides—which felt more competitive than welcoming—and started searching for ways to create more inclusion within the region’s bikepacking scene.

Once they learned how groups in other cities organize trips for bicycle adventurers who identify as women, transgender, femme, and non-binary during the WTF Bikexplorers Summit and Ride Series last August, they looked to build a similar community in Baltimore. “It was very powerful to see that riding bikes, having fun, and getting to know each other on a personal level could bring such a wide range of people together,” says Parnes.

The two now co-lead WTF Mid-Atlantic Bikepacking, a group that encourages local women and trans, femme, and non-binary people to strap camping gear—including tents, food, and water—to their bikes and ride together to a campsite destination. Since forming the group in October, Parnes and Wiman have hosted four trips, including rides along the C&O Canal and through Michaux State Forest, as well as an introductory workshop at Baltimore Bicycle Works.

Along with making the excursions free and accessible to those without cars, the pair also prioritizes creating an open dialogue so that bikepackers of all experience levels feel comfortable asking questions and traveling with the group. “Some people feel like they need to have a ton of knowledge or experience before they start riding—that’s a big barrier in WTF groups,” says Wiman. “When in reality, we can support and teach each other a lot.”

Above all else, Parnes and Wiman strive to empower fellow bikepackers by creating a space for them to create relationships based on honesty and a love for the outdoors. “Bikepacking is really difficult,
and oftentimes on non-WTF rides, there’s not much acknowledgment of how physically and mentally tough it is,” says Wiman. “That vulnerability of feeling able to ask for help allows for a much deeper bond to form between people who go on a trip together.”

Source

Ever Forward

Kaitlyn Pacheco — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 08:30:00 +0000

For almost a decade, Dariel Peay was afraid to hug people. Assigned the male sex at birth, Peay began presenting as a woman once she started working in the dermatology department at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2007, spending two-and-a-half hours every morning positioning pads onto her hips and pushing cotton-ball-stuffed stockings into her bra. Although filling out her dresses made her feel more feminine, she worried about someone going in for a hug and feeling the “rocks” on her chest.

“One morning, I couldn’t find the pads, and I thought I was going to lose my mind,” says Peay. “I tore up the house because I felt so uncomfortable going anywhere without them.”

She spent the next nine years trying to convince plastic surgeons and her health insurance company that her need for breast augmentation surgery was not simply cosmetic. But despite dozens of disappointing appointments, she was determined to create an outward figure that matched her true inner self.

So when she heard that Hopkins was planning to launch the Center for Transgender Health in 2017, Peay ran to the department of plastic and reconstructive surgery to get an appointment. After a months-long intake and consultation process, the day finally came. Peay woke up from surgery that October and, after calling for her mother, cautiously looked down at her chest. Two years later, she still remembers that moment as one of the first times she felt like a person.

“As reality kicked in, I couldn’t believe it really happened,” she says. “If I could’ve, I would’ve run to my doctor and thanked him so many times. He changed my life.”

While the gender-affirming surgeries and care made available by the Center for Transgender Health have created transformative opportunities for patients like Peay, many still question why these resources were missing from local health care for so many decades prior.

“Where has this been?” says Peay, reflecting on the years before her surgery. “Johns Hopkins is one of the top hospitals in America and globally—why were we not making sure that all patients were being taken care of?”

“If I could’ve, I would’ve run to my doctor and thanked him so many times. He changed my life.”

It turns out, Hopkins has a long and complicated history with what were once called “sex change” operations, now referred to as gender-affirming surgery. During the early 1960s, patients who had travelled abroad to receive gender-affirming surgeries started checking into the Baltimore hospital. Many had experienced serious side effects following the overseas procedures and turned to Hopkins to repair the damage and, in some cases, provide further reconstruction. Although a few U.S. surgeons had performed less than a dozen gender-affirming surgeries by 1965, many hospital boards refused to permit it.

But when faced with questions of how to evaluate and care for transgender patients, a small group of Hopkins professionals decided to address their own lack of knowledge. Milton Edgerton, then the hospital’s chairman of plastic surgery, asked assistant professor John Hoopes to develop a research protocol to resolve questions about the appropriate treatment of gender dysphoria—the feeling that one’s gender identity and given sex don’t match. Hoopes gave the green light for further study into how surgical procedures could play a role, and the two men began assembling an interdisciplinary committee—including psychologist John Money and endocrinologist Claude Migeon. They wanted to not only provide gender-affirming care, but also establish factors that could predict positive medical outcomes.

The Gender Identity Clinic was officially established on June 20, 1966, making Hopkins the first academic institution in the U.S. to perform gender-affirming surgeries. “I created the team and established the clinic only after much study and soul-searching and with the realization that current methods of therapy were not solving the problem,” says Hoopes, who received emeritus status and retired from the hospital in 1990.

Although the clinic began accepting patient applications almost right away, the news of the opening didn’t go public until later that year. On November 21, the front page of The New York Times read, “A Changing of Sex by Surgery Begun at Johns Hopkins.”

“In a period of two weeks [following the article], we got about 3,000 letters from all over America from transsexual patients,” said Edgerton, now deceased, during an interview with the American Association of Plastic Surgeons in 2016. “[The letters] were eight to 10 pages long; people begging for surgery.”

With the world watching, the Gender Identity Clinic spent the next few years operating on trans patients from across the country. Although thousands applied, only a small percentage met the requirements for surgery, which included living as their identified gender for at least six months while undergoing hormonal therapy, as well as extensive psychological, genetic, and physical examinations. It was also difficult to find patients who could afford the cost—about $4,325 for male surgeries in 1970 (equivalent to roughly $28,190 today)—especially since most insurance companies would not pay for it.

By the beginning of 1972, the team had completed gender-affirming surgeries on seven trans women, 16 trans men, and nine others who received revisions of procedures performed elsewhere. The limited number of patients prevented them from making any definitive conclusions, but the clinic did demonstrate the importance of taking an interdisciplinary approach to transgender health care, with input from specialists in medicine, mental health, and surgery. And as word of its initial successes spread, the clinic became a template for other national institutions.

But despite its progress, many still disapproved of the Gender Identity Clinic’s work. Most prominently, Paul McHugh, the hospital’s then chair of the department of psychiatry, had a self-proclaimed anti-transgender bias, even publicly stating, “It was part of my intention, when I arrived in Baltimore in 1975, to help end [gender-affirming surgery].” McHugh’s view on what he called “guilt-ridden homosexual men” seeking such procedures was that being transgender was a psychological problem that should be treated with psychiatry.

Meanwhile, the clinic was facing new challenges at every turn: it lacked a stable funding source, several original team members (including Hoopes and Edgerton) left Hopkins, and new department staffers were not supportive of the surgery program. In 1979, Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit (SBCU) chair Jon Meyer conducted a study to evaluate the difference in quality of life between trans patients who did and did not undergo surgery. Later that year, he announced that, after studying 50 subjects, he could not conclude that those who had surgery were any more adjusted to society than those who had not.

Meyer’s results starkly contradicted the findings of other researchers at the clinic, including Money, who previously reported that all but one of 24 surgery recipients said they were sure they made the right decision. The conflict between Meyer’s and Money’s scientific findings played out in national newspapers and professional journals, stirring a public debate about the role and morality of these procedures.

But with the study in hand, McHugh asserted that Hopkins was “fundamentally cooperating with mental illness” and shut down the Gender Identity Clinic within two months. Many other university-based academic programs that had followed Hopkins’ lead, such as Stanford University, also closed their doors over the next few years.

“One of my big disappointments,” said Edgerton, “is that although some American surgeons took up treatment of the transsexual patient, very few did.”

“Part of the legacy of the center is helping people who are better off for having come through it.”

Without the Gender Identity Clinic, Maryland’s transgender community was at a loss. For the next three decades, those seeking gender-affirming care in the region could access hormone therapy and other health services at centers such as the SBCU or Chase Brexton Health Care, but surgery was limited to plastic surgeons and specialists willing to perform select procedures. Peay remembers being excited to start her transition process in 2008, but she was discouraged by not only the lack of coverage for trans services, but also the dearth of knowledge among local physicians.

“I remember going to one hormone appointment and the resident said, ‘Well, I don’t really know anything about that,’” she recalls. “That experience made me realize that these people didn’t have a clue about trans health.”

But by 2015, the societal shift that increased public acceptance of LGBTQ individuals had taken hold within the halls of Hopkins. Hospital leaders recognized the growing need to provide gender-affirming operations to its patients, and they pledged to resume the surgical program. They quickly assembled committees to plan the structure of what would become the Center for Transgender Health while the hospital’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion worked to educate staff about transgender care.

Paula Neira, now the center’s clinical program director, co-chaired a task force that spent months examining the strengths and weaknesses of how Hopkins treated transgender patients. As a transgender woman who previously worked as a naval officer and a lawyer on the legal team that fought to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, she is well-versed in such challenges.

“How a transgender person interacts with the health system—from being in the cafeteria and not being misgendered to interacting with security personnel to ask for directions—plays into their overall experience,” says Neira. “That means everybody in the organization has to at least have a basic understanding of how to talk to people with dignity and respect. Everyone wants to do that, but they don’t always know how.”

Hopkins leaders also recognized the need to rebuild trust within the LGBTQ community. After a 38-year hiatus in its surgical program, there was a built-up skepticism about the hospital’s commitment to its transgender patients. They conducted third-party surveys and held focus groups to learn the expectations of potential patients, such as alerting the trans community to job openings at the center.

“It was a cautious optimism [from the LGBTQ community],” says Neira. “They were happy to see Hopkins providing gender-affirming care again, but they wanted to see if we were going to put our money where our mouth is.”

But even as plans for the center came together in the fall of 2016, the 85-year-old McHugh, now a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Hopkins, co-authored a special report called “Sexuality and Gender” for the New Atlantis, a magazine published by a conservative Christian think tank. The study contended that sex and identity are innately tied and biologically determined. While it was met with alarm from many in the medical community, conservative media groups cited the paper as a reason to support legislation against transgender people.

That October, seemingly in reaction to the article, Hopkins released a statement that reiterated its “strong and unambiguous” commitment to the LGBTQ community amidst “the varied individual opinions expressed publicly by members of the Hopkins medicine community.”

As proof of the life-altering work done at the center, O’Brien-Coon points to its first-ever vaginoplasty patient—the first at the hospital in 40 years—who declared that her birthday is now the day she received her surgery. “Part of the legacy of the center is helping people who are better off for having come through it,” he says. “People can doubt it or think whatever they want, but the proof speaks for itself.”

The center involves about 30 Hopkins professionals across eight departments who work with patients to provide services such as hormone therapy, hair removal, and a host of gender-affirming surgeries. Neira says they underestimated the pent-up demand for care among the LGBTQ community and, although they only planned to serve 200 patients during the first year, they interacted with more than four times that within 14 months. As of April, the center had seen 1,400 patients and performed more than 300 surgical procedures.

Along with day-to-day care, O’Brien-Coon and a team of Hopkins researchers have spent the past two years conducting a review of transgender health care literature to determine how the center’s patient experiences can contribute to modern medical study. Because, for some questions related to gender-affirming care—such as surgery recovery times—there are still no definite answers.

One topic they aren’t running research on, though, is whether gender-affirming surgery is an effective treatment for gender dysphoria. “There is no legitimate debate for those who argue that gender affirmation is still experimental,” says Neira. “There are people who discount four decades of research because it doesn’t match their worldview. And that’s not going to change.”

With the history of the clinic behind them, the center’s team keeps Neira’s credo—“ever forward”—in mind, which serves as a reminder that it’s the only direction they can go. “Today, victory is connecting one patient to the care they need,” says Neira. “We’ll do it one person at a time until we have a change in the system and the resources to do it on a larger scale.”

Looking ahead, they’ll continue to work through the center’s ongoing challenges, such as the need for more staff and resources, while carrying out the philosophy of the clinic’s founding members from all of those years ago: treating patients with the recognition that gender-affirming care can improve their quality of life.

For Peay, that means taking hours off of her getting-ready routine and feeling like her body is one step closer to matching her true self. “I see Dr. O’Brien-Coon all the time at work, and when I do, I want to hug him and thank him,” she says. “And all he did was give me the opportunity to have the body that I’ve always wanted.”

“I’m a hugger now,” she says, beaming. “I finally feel free.”

Source

Faces of Pride

Aaron Hope — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 08:00:00 +0000

On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, we celebrate our city’s LGBTQ community.

By Lydia Woolever with Lauren Bell
Photography by Sean Scheidt

Grooming by Perryn Morris | Photo Assistance by Travis Marshall

News & Community

Faces of Pride

On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, we celebrate our city’s LGBTQ community.

By Lydia Woolever with Lauren Bell
Photography by Sean Scheidt
Grooming by Perryn Morris | Photo Assistance by Travis Marshall

ride was born outside of a dark seedy bar on a hot summer night in the heart of New York City, fifty years ago this month. It was an ordinary Friday evening, with members of the city’s LGBTQ community congregating for drinks, dancing, and camaraderie inside the bustling Stonewall Inn. That is, until it wasn’t.

At the time, homosexuality was still considered a crime in Manhattan, as well as much of the United States, and establishments such as Stonewall often operated under the table, leading to routine raids by police. But as the hours pushed toward morning on June 28, 1969, patrons had reached a tipping point after years of harassment and discrimination. Instead of fleeing or simply complying, some 200 people decided to resist—then riot.

No one knows who threw the first quarter or bottle or brick that evening—it’s long said to have been started by drag queens and transgender women of color—or why that specific night, but this one moment would galvanize the gay rights movement and act as a rallying cry for queer liberation across the globe.

Today, the Stonewall Inn still stands, designated the first LGBTQ national monument in 2016, and in the five decades since the uprising, real progress has been made. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed in 2010. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015. New language and gender options are taking root nationwide, including here in Maryland, where driver’s licenses will soon offer a nonbinary gender “X” designation, and cultural representation, from the Emmy-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race to the latest slate of Oscar nominees, has officially gone mainstream. And every June, thousands gather to commemorate that historic summer evening and the events that followed under the umbrella of a word that, from that time forward, would forever be linked to the LGBTQ community: Pride.

But the fight is far from over. Earlier this year, the Trump administration restricted transgender people from joining the military, the United Methodist Church denounced same-sex marriage and gay clergy, and now more anti-LGBTQ legislation is on the horizon. Hate crimes—particularly toward the trans community—are on the rise, and one is too many as queer kids continue to take their own lives.

Fortunately, in Baltimore, where Pride festivities began in 1975, a broad coalition of artists, activists, and educators are working hard to carry on the legacy of Stonewall, transforming the city and its LGBTQ community for the better. They’re reassessing and reevaluating, like the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Baltimore (GLCCB), which recently rebranded as the all-encompassing Pride Center of Maryland. They’re breaking down old barriers, with the “gayborhood” expanding beyond Mt. Vernon to nearly every neighborhood in the city. And they’re becoming more inclusive, as new spaces, events, and ideas come into existence. In short, they’re embodying and evolving the essence of Pride.

In 2019, Pride looks different than it did in 1969. A lot has happened, thanks to those pioneering protesters, and continues to happen, thanks to those who carry the torch. It’s still a shared struggle and celebration, and yet it’s wholly unique to each of the many faces that make up the LGBTQ community.

“Pride is really about trusting and having faith that you’re part of a great legacy,” says Jamie Grace Alexander, community director of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance. “Pride is a community celebration, but the fact that it comes from an individual identity is a really important and special part of our culture. Pride is about feeling powerful.”

JABARI LYLES

LGBTQ Affairs Liaison for the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office

“What is Pride? This being the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, the word that comes to mind is resistance. But more than that, it’s fight. Pride is a fight to exist, to be who you are, to be seen. In Baltimore, we’re always fighting, but in our community, it’s all exacerbated by our gender and who we love. What about the black trans women who still can’t find housing? We still have to fight for them. True unity in our community looks like us all knowing that, and us all pitching in for our most vulnerable. We still have to fight.”

JAMIE GRACE ALEXANDER & AVA PIPITONE

Community director, Baltimore Transgender Alliance | Co-Founder, HostHome, An Emergency LGBTQ Housing Network

“Pride has always been about unabashedly taking up space. There’s a really long legacy of trans organizers who are critical to Pride being left out of the ceremony and equal tradition of those trans organizers making sure to include themselves. The foremothers of the trans movement had to do the work of inserting themselves into the front of the Pride parade.” says Jamie. “And I think we’ve had to do similar work . . . Trans involvement in Pride has always been something that is complicated and has to be done consciously. There’s a lot of violence that happens when the T gets shoved under the LGBT umbrella.”

“Trans people have been doing the work,” says Ava. “The legal support, the jail support, the emotional community support. And it’s always cisgender, non-trans, white mostly men who get the credit.”

Nikki, Elise, & Sansa Richard

Writer | Caturday Style blogger | 7-year-old

“I realize that my existence itself is a political statement,” says Nikki. “But at the end of the day, I’m also a parent and a person. With Sansa, what we’ve tried to model is just unconditional love. That’s what family is. A choice. We adopted her five years ago. We chose her. And she chose us.”

“For us, we grew up in church. We have lost relationships with family since Nikki came out,” says Elise. “Going to Pride, there was just so much more love here and it was a really big healing moment.”

Carlton Smith

Longtime HIV/AIDS advocate, advisor, & HIV survivor

“What is Pride? That I’m liberated. Like Lady Gaga said, I’m a free agent, baby. I can live freely. I am also a deacon at my church, The Baltimore Unity Fellowship Church. I can talk about what liberation and Pride means to me to a mass of people. They may not have been able to come out yet, but maybe if they see me, they might think, ‘Oh, I can do that, too.’ We can love our neighbors and people for who they really are.”

KOTIC COUTURE, AMY REID, DDM, ABDU ALI, HUNTER HOOLIGAN & TRILLNATURED

Musicians

“Pride means representation. And I think that’s important in Baltimore, because we get a rough rap. We’re seen for all the bad things, but people forget how beautiful this city really is. Pride is one of those times where you really see that, from every walk of life.”

—KOTIC COUTURE, RAPPER AND EMCEE OF VERSION

“The past year-and-a-half has been really important to me. I just came out to my mom and dad. You just hit a point where you can’t be someone you’re not anymore. And to be open about it, to celebrate it, to just be comfortable with it and yourself, and also be an example for other people who might have a hard time coming out…it’s a way to connect with people. ”

—AMY REID, ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN AND FOUNDER OF GRL PWR ARTS COLLECTIVE

“We need more spaces where people can go and have a good time. I loved being able to go to the [Club] Hippo and listen to rap music and dance with boys. It made me feel great. Thursday night hip-hop? I’ve never seen so many black butch queens in my life.”

—DDM, RAPPER

“To me, the word I wish was presented more than ‘pride’ is ‘love.’ It’s important to celebrate love for queerness and transness and gayness, lesbianness, intersect, bisexuality. It’s important for us as marginalized people to celebrate loving ourselves, and each other. Me loving myself is a journey. It’s something I’m working on and it’s something I encourage other people to do.”

—ABDU ALI, EXPERIMENTAL RAPPER

“For me, Pride is a time for me to reflect on my journey of my own self-acceptance and my own understanding of who I am. Sometimes that’s a new understanding of my gender or my relationship with others or what it means to me to be queer. Time to reflect, to share, to listen—to hear what other people’s journeys have revealed to them—and learn ”

—HUNTER HOOLIGAN, ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN

“Pride is like a family reunion. There’s nothing wrong with it being just a huge weekend to party and celebrate each other and the way we look and the way we are.”

—TRILLNATURED, DJ AND FOUNDER OF VERSION

Steve Ziger

Trustee, LGBTQ Fund, the Baltimore Community Foundation

“Pride is being able to make a difference, and we are part of a community in which we can. Baltimore is of a scale and sense of place and community with some immense needs, across every spectrum, and with so many invested people and organizations—you actually can change things here for the better.”

IYANA DESCHANEL, JASMINE BLUE, CHRIS JAY, BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, & BETTY O’HELLNO

Drag Performers

“The importance of the festival is that it gives people who haven’t come out yet or are just coming out a place to go and experience everything at once. If it’s going out to a club or family values, you get all that at Pride, the whole weekend long.”

—IYANA DESCHANEL

“Pride is being confident, honest, true to who you are, and loving it no matter who or what that might be.”

—JASMINE BLUE

“Things are changing, and we have to change our language and adapt our vocabulary. I identify as genderqueer. My pronouns are they and them. Having that conversation about my identity and gender expression and developing language to define who I am has been eye-opening for me.”

—CHRIS JAY

“We don’t take a lot of bullshit in our community in this city. As much as the drag queens battle, we always have each other’s backs, no matter what.”

—BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

“Pride for me is about being the person you weren’t allowed to be when you were a kid, when I was growing up especially. Pride for me is just getting through life alive and saying I don’t care what other people think because it’s too short, so I’m going to be my best self. And if that means I’m going to wear wigs and makeup and not play football with the guys, that’s totally cool. But you can also play football with the guys, too. It’s whatever you want to be. Except an asshole.”

—BETTY O’HELLNO

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Chelsea Manning Plans to Shake Up Maryland Senate Race

Michelle Evans — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 11:02:00 +0000

On the one-year anniversary of her release from prison, Chelsea Manning wants the world to know that she means business. After spending seven years in prison for passing sensitive government documents to Wikileaks, Manning is seeking to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. Originally sentenced to 35 years, her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama to time served and she was released in May 2017.

While in prison, Manning came out as transgender, though she’s not the first (even in Maryland) to challenge a sitting member of Congress. Retired Navy SEAL Kristen Beck attempted to unseat U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer in 2016, but only got 12 percent of the vote.

Manning, who officially filed on January 11, will be challenging two-term Democrat Senator Ben Cardin, who is up for reelection in November. (Cardin’s spokesperson told Baltimore that the Senator “is looking forward to a vigorous discussion of the issues and a robust conversation with Maryland voters.”) We got a chance to talk with Manning about her time in prison, her political platform, and what she thinks of her critics.

You’re originally from Oklahoma. Why did you choose to run in Maryland?
I’ve been a resident of Maryland since 2006. I moved here after living homeless in Chicago for several months. I went to Montgomery College and I lived here for a few years before I enlisted in the military. Even when I was in the military, I was always coming back home to Maryland. My aunt lives here—I have roots here.

What inspired you to get into politics?
This time last year, I was still in prison. When I was released, I had this notion that I’m going to go home, retire, and live this quiet, comfortable life. And I get outside and the world is such a very strange and different place. Being out and about made me recognize just how important it is for us to combat the forces of political repression and oppression that many people all over the country—not just in Maryland or Baltimore—face every day.

It’s been getting progressively worse. I’ve said this enough times, but I came outside and it seemed like a dystopian novel, like the world that I just entered into is just the most boring dystopian novel I’ve ever read.

You are going up against two-term Senator Ben Cardin. What do you plan to do differently?
I voted for him twice. What makes me different is I’m trying to present issues that are important. It’s not about him—it’s more about the establishment, regardless if they are left or right. We have a lot of these nameless, faceless career politicians who are not dealing with the issues in our communities that we’re worried about. We live in this domestic population where the criminal justice system, our police system, our surveillance state have taken over our entire lives. Many of us now live in fear.

What current issues are you passionate about?
We need to roll back a lot of those federal bureau prisons. It’s become a very militarized force. We have police and we have these massive prisons and instead of defending these systems, we have to start rolling it back, releasing prisoners, start sending people home, and we need to end this. We have the largest incarcerated population in the world and that should give us thought.

What about healthcare and immigration? Those are hot topics right now.
I believe that every single person that needs healthcare should be given access to healthcare that is free, that is unconditional, and that is private. The Affordable Care Act was a handout to insurance companies and a Band-Aid to a much deeper problem in our healthcare system—it didn’t go far enough. I support a single-payer healthcare system, how that gets implemented is up for debate. I certainly believe that the end result should be free.

I also believe that people have an absolute right to come into this country. The immigration system is being used today to go after minority groups. The immigration systems have been weaponized against minority communities in our country and we need to roll back on that and we need to stop.

Tell me about your campaign slogan, #WeGotThis.
It’s a personal mantra of mine. Whenever things looked hopeless [in prison] and we had no evidence that we were going to get through this, I would say “we got this,” and I would repeat this to myself and the people around me. Even when we could see the light at the end of the tunnel, it was important to remember that doesn’t mean the end of the tunnel isn’t there. “We got this” is an embodiment of that. I started saying it on Twitter without even realizing it and it morphed into a hashtag over the last several months.

What do you have to say, if anything, to the critics who say you shouldn’t be trusted and think that your past deems you unfit for the job?
My team is going to have a chance to show ourselves, we’re going to have a chance to make this campaign work and we are going to be able to address these things. The haters are going to hate no matter what, we’re going to face criticism, and deal with conspiracy theories. The pundits are often wrong, they’ll give their two cents, but pundits don’t make policies and they don’t determine how the country is run. So we’ll see what happens. We got this.

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Born This Way

Aaron Hope — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 08:30:00 +0000

By Ron Cassie
Photography By Mike Morgan

News & Community

Born This Way

Faced with discrimination and sometimes outright hostility, the Maryland transgender community perserveres, pioneering civil rights breakthroughs.

By Ron Cassie. Photography By Mike Morgan.

ssigned the female sex at birth, James Van Kuilenburg came to the realization at 12 years old, just as puberty began its onslaught, that he was transgender—a boy. Then living and attending middle school in Shepherdstown, WV, he shared his revelation with several friends, who proceeded to “out” him to the entire school, including the faculty and administration, which had very little experience with LGBTQ students. The principal, James vividly recalls, summoned him to his office, sat him down, and told him that he had to Google "transgender" to find out what the term even meant. “He showed me a Wikipedia definition of transgender on his phone asked me, ‘Is this what you are?’” remembers James, now a 17-year-old senior honor student at Governor Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick. Later, the principal informed him that he could no longer take gym class, which is a state requirement, and could only use the restroom in the nurse’s office.

“I didn’t have anyone to trust at school. Not other students. I was bullied pretty badly,” he says. “I couldn’t trust the teachers; they had reported me to the principal. I couldn’t trust the principal who had called my parents. I’m 12 and feeling really scared. Really alone. I mean, was the way I felt so strange that the principal had to look it up on his phone?”

This past June, spurred by a grassroots effort led by James and his mother, Nicola, after the family relocated to Frederick for James' schooling, the Frederick County school board passed a pioneering policy that recognizes a student’s right to be referred to by their preferred name and pronoun and granted access to the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Called “Creating Welcoming and Affirming Schools for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students," the action, also known as Policy 443, addresses discrimination, harassment, and bullying of transgender and gender-nonconforming students. It also prohibits dress codes based on gender and requires school personnel who work with students to participate in training that covers gender expression and identity.

“Frederick does not have a reputation as the most progressive county in the state, but James and Nicola, the two of them, became incredible transgender activists,” says Nick Steiner, an attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. “They created a groundswell of support. The policy they helped pass is groundbreaking in Maryland. I am only aware of a couple of others like it in the country. The hope is that it can be replicated in other counties in the state.”

Nicola Van Kuilenburg wept as the school board announced the decision. “To go from a place a few years before, where you are worried about your son’s safety, his ability to pee while at school—the basic stuff of existence—to watching five board members each explain why they were voting for this policy was incredible,” she says. “It told me they ‘saw’ my son. That he mattered to them as much as any student in the school system.”

In many ways, the fight for transgender equality is in its infancy. But the victory for the Van Kuilenburgs, along with other LGBTQ students in Frederick, and their families and allies, was not the only watershed moment for equality in Maryland in the past year.

In November, a federal judge in Baltimore issued an injunction temporarily blocking President Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, ruling on behalf of Petty Officer 1st Class Brock Stone, an 11-year Navy and Afghanistan veteran stationed at Fort Meade, and five other transgender service members. Afterward, Stone said that he was only seeking “the opportunity to continue to serve his country as long as he remained qualified” and that he wanted his fellow transgender Americans to have the same opportunity.

Recently, after the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance march and rally in Baltimore—there have been 14 transgender homicide victims in the city since 2005—Jamie Grace Alexander (pictured, opening spread) said that she has garnered a sense of resiliency from her mentors in the LGBTQ community. Tragedies, such as the murder of 38-year-old Alphonza Watson last year, are heartbreaking, but the political ups and downs should not be dispiriting.

“Instead of taking a reactionary attitude—feeling you have to respond each time a politician or an institution wants to marginalize trans people—it is more important keep building community every day,” she says. “I love my community.”

Ava Pipitone, executive director of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, says more than anything, transgender individuals simply want to be in charge of their own lives. “And tell their stories in their own words.”

What follows are four of those stories.

jamie alexander

Public heath administrative assistant, student, poet, 19

I work with Native America LifeLines, a health care nonprofit. I’m also a communication writer for The Baltimore Transgender Alliance, sharing its stories on social media and handling press releases. I’ve been doing that for six months, and unofficially for the past year. I am from Bel Air and always wanted to get to know Baltimore, and that’s why I decided to go to UMBC. For me, moving to Baltimore meant a chance to interact with different groups of people without compromising myself. I knew I wanted to be around black people and experience those relationships. I probably fell in love with Baltimore more than I should have.

I think being trans matters a lot. It also doesn’t really matter. My trans identity just allows me to be myself. Once I came out as non-binary, people stopped expecting me to be one way or another. I’ve always been a queen. In pictures when I was 4 or 5, there I am sashaying with one hand over my head. I’m also a product of an interracial marriage and have distinct memories of everybody in my life, my family, wrestling with that fact that I was black and I was queer—before I had come to terms with those two things. Before I had the words to understand those things. I wanted to be a gay man when I was younger. That would have been easier. But the trans identity allows me to explore different aspects of myself, and being around other trans people, I get to engage in those discussions.

I don’t know how I feel about being 19. I had to grow up fast, but I also had some really good mentors. I’m not the kind of person who waits for things to happen. I learned very quickly how to respond to racism and discrimination and how to speak up to people in power when they were wrong.

Resiliency is real. It’s awesome. Whatever we go through, it is all for the best if we are being authentic.

I do a lot of outreach to youth. Of course it is hard, I tell them. But it is also less hard than you think. Resiliency is real. It’s awesome. Whatever we go through, it is all for the best if we are being authentic. You’ve got to try to be your most authentic self. And, for me, that means I can’t be a cis-male. It is not an option. Not realistic. Only when you are being yourself can you feel good. When you are not connected to your true self, not connected to your body, you feel like a ghost. It is not comfortable at all. In terms of romantic relationships, no one will ever love the real me if I’m not myself. Really, all the relationships in my life will be off-center if I am not myself. Everything will be askew, and that’s how things felt for a long time.

Trans people definitely have a different understanding of how the body and mind work. We have a whole different set of chemicals surging through our bodies. And it opens up other questioning. If I suddenly have a vagina, am I suddenly a cis-person? One reason why I think trans rights, and working for trans rights, is so important is that opens up a dialogue to talk about certain issues. What is gender? What does it mean? I wouldn’t want to be anything other than trans. Everything I have, my friends, my job, my relationships, I have because I’m trans. It just feels right. I know people who like me, like the real me.

ken jiretsu

Community health program director, advocate, parent, 46

I am a single, but recently engaged, father of four special needs kids—I gave birth to them all before I transitioned, which was a little more than three years ago. My oldest is 24, two are 18, and my youngest is 16.

I grew up in East Baltimore. When I was 12, around the time puberty kicked in, I knew something was totally different with me. I knew I had an attraction to girls, but I didn’t feel like a lesbian. I felt like a boy. I liked everything they were doing, not the girls. I liked track, baseball, playing the drums in the band. I was a tomboy.

I told my mother the personal stuff that was going on as a teenager, but it went over her head—the term “trans” wasn’t around. I thought about my identity and a sex change a lot. I even had a male name picked out then. There just wasn’t anybody to talk to. No one in my family. Not because of religious beliefs or anything like that, just a lack of education. It took a toll on me. I eventually got into a relationship I wasn’t really interested in—with my children’s father—and then was dealing with domestic violence. When I got out of that, I was in my 30s, and I stepped back and did some soul searching. I needed to figure things out. Did I identify as a lesbian? No, that wasn’t it. Was I bi? No. I fell into depression.

Right before I turned 42, I found a good therapist and the result was I started living for myself instead of trying to be a people pleaser. In the spring of 2014, I attended a B’More Proud program at Johns Hopkins, got some information, and sat in on a Transgender 101 group. And then I sat in on another workshop where two men told their stories [of transitioning]. “That’s it,” I realized. “That’s me.” And I learned about Hearts & Ears, a support institution, where I work now.

Eventually, I got assistance from FreeState Justice and changed my name, which changed the way I felt about myself. You get to start all over in a way—even though there is still baggage. When someone refers to you by your “dead” name, for example, or the wrong pronoun, it can be emotional. One of the worst experiences I had was at the child support office. I had to tell them I had changed my name and I couldn’t cash the checks anymore. I explained to the woman that I had a new name and was making a gender transition. She looked at me like I had two heads. Then she said she needed to talk to her supervisor, and she walked through a glass door and I watched her tell her colleagues. All you could hear was the outpouring of huge laughter. Back then, even a little snicker would make me so mad. I’m still on the defensive when I go there. I do find inspiration in the people that have done this and gone before me.

The dysphoria comes from people not seeing me as I see myself. You don’t want that to affect you, but it does.

There are so many changes—emotionally, physically, mentally—with testosterone, which has been prescribed to me. I am not the same person I was three years ago, but I am calmer when I am on an even dosage. My self-esteem has come up. For some, transitioning happens fast. You see physical changes, like facial hair, immediately—for others, like me, it takes time. I have facial hair now, but still get misgendered all the time. I use it as a teaching tool. I also still deal with gender dysphoria. For me, it’s with my upper body. Some get surgery, a double mastectomy. I am not there, yet. But I am also not comfortable walking out my door with a tank top or a V-neck, even with my chest bound. The dysphoria comes from people not seeing me as I see myself. You don’t want that to affect you, but it does.

As far as my family, my 18-year-old son is gay and my 16-year-old daughter is bi. So with two LGBTQ children, we have been talking about these issues all along in our household. My daughter calls me Dad. The boys call me Ken. My mom is cool. She’ll say, “She’s my son,” mixing pronouns sometimes, but then she’ll correct herself. My dad is taking time. There was a period when we weren’t talking, but we are having conversations. And he’s been friendly to my fiancé. “I’m learning,” he says.

rahne alexander

Artist, performer, producer, 48

I was raised in California’s Central Valley to Mormon parents and lived in California until 2002, when I moved to Baltimore. I was pretty clear about my being a girl as a child. I tried on my mother’s clothes and things like that. I didn’t particularly like wearing my mom’s clothes, but that was because her style wasn’t mine. I read a lot as a kid—my best friend was always a book—and I discovered “trans” was a thing by the time I was 8. I also had misgivings about that patriarchal Mormon church early on and realized I didn’t want to engage in that.

While I knew who I was at a young age, I also recognized that I needed to stay on the traditional path in rural ’80s California, which was terrifying, to survive. Growing up queer in the 1980s, during the HIV/AIDS crisis, it was not a time when being different was going to be taken lightly. I made a deal with myself that once I got through high school and college, then I’d become my real self. There wasn’t a lot of information about being trans in those days. I’d go to the library looking for bits of information, finding a footnote here or there about making a medical transition. LGBTQ didn’t exist yet as a term, and even in the gay and lesbian community, I was an outsider. It got easier as time progressed.

I had been working on social justice issues in Santa Cruz, but when I came to Baltimore, I focused on building an arts career. I was deeply involved in the Transmodern Festival (which included artists and works that defied cultural norms before ending a 13-year run in 2016), where I performed, curated, and hosted. Similarly, I’ve done a lot with Charm City Kitty Club, a volunteer collective that showcases queer talent. There didn’t seem to be a large enclave of queer artists when I got here, although I know there had been earlier. Today, Baltimore feels like it is unique, like there is collaboration between the queer and straight communities in the arts. I’ve made a lot of good friends here and recently joined a new band, Santa Librada, which is exciting, after being a founder of The Degenerettes. We’re all chicks. Women in their 30s and 40s. A straight-up rock band. And I find myself writing some of the most exciting work I’ve ever done.

For me, waking up every morning in the wrong body was a big burden of sadness to live with each day.

For me, each day was hard as a transsexual (before hormone treatment and later surgery). I don’t speak for anyone else—everyone has their own relationship with their body—but for me, waking up every morning in the wrong body was a big burden of sadness to live with each day. I started my transition when I turned 23. I came out. I changed my name and dressed as a female full-time in public. I couldn’t start hormone therapy until five years later because of all the financial, medical, and insurance costs. And then, another 20 years later, I was able to get the surgery, which I just completed and took almost two years. I had been determined from a young age to somehow find a way to medically transition, but even with support from friends and family it had been out of reach.

Never did I think that I would see the day that an insurance company would cover transition surgery, which because of Obamacare changes, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield began covering in 2015. I had begun to make my peace that it would never be accessible as I got older. I couldn’t even get the initial psychological treatment covered in the ’90s. As a rule, transgender people don’t have great employment opportunities, either, so insurance coverage has been always been an obstacle to any medical treatment. I’m grateful.

Something else I never thought would happen: My spouse and I got married a few months ago in front of our friends and family at the Metro Gallery. Our first date had been at a bar called BAR in Fells Point. We’ve been together for 14 years. That was huge. That was amazing. Shocking and glorious.

JAIMES mayhew

Artist, educator, 38

I’m from Littleton, CO. I went to Columbine High School. My little brother was there when the shooting happened. One of the South Park creators also grew up in Littleton, which was really conservative, super born-again Christian. Just coming out as not straight, anything different in terms of sexuality, was not acceptable. But in high school, I did come out as a lesbian before I transitioned—I didn’t even know what trans was then. I went to a big high school, close to 2,000 students, and just two people were out. Me and a gay male student. There was a lot of bullying, but I did have support from our small group.

I took my high-school girlfriend to the prom, but initially the school wouldn’t let me buy a “couples” ticket. They told me I had to buy two “singles” tickets, and I refused. The school then called my parents and reported me, informing them that I wanted to go the prom with another girl and that they were “worried” about me. My parents weren’t happy. They were already scared about me being “out” in public, imagining it would have all kinds of negative consequences. The prom was amazing, though. I had a job at Orange Julius and only had enough money for our tickets—I finally did get couples tickets—but not enough for real prom outfits. So we wore princess dresses instead and went out for dinner at Burger King. It was all we could afford, but we had a great time.

Health & Wellness

The (Every) Body Issue

A Celebration of Our Bodies—and Ourselves.

I was living not far from Columbine after the shooting and decided it was a good time to move. I spent time in Boston, attending Lesley University, a humanities college. Then I took $500 from my tax return and went on a road trip to Seattle, where I saw two gay men holding hands and not being ostracized. I decided to work and save money and go back to Seattle, where I met some other transitioning people, and ended up living there for four years. What really helped was meeting my friend Jason. We talked a lot about gender. We discussed different sexual characteristics, different physical characteristics—and how your identity is connected to these things. He was my mentor basically. In art school in Seattle, I decided I was going to do a long-term performance piece that I was male. That was 2002, and it just never stopped. I got in touch with a doctor and jumped through all the hoops, going through six months of therapy to “prove” that you are truly trans, and he signed off and wrote a prescription for hormone treatment.

But I suddenly became the subject of everybody’s photo project in art school and didn’t like that.

But I suddenly became the subject of everybody’s photo project in art school and didn’t like that. So, I moved back to Boston, transferred to Emerson College, and tried to live stealth, which works for some people, but doesn’t for me.

My first job in Boston after college was at a cable-access TV station, where I started getting harassed by a coworker who was not on board with the trans thing. It was a small organization, no HR department, and I could get a lawyer or leave—and I decided it was easier to leave. Later, when UMBC said they would pay for my MFA, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to live there.”

My little brother is super supportive. My folks eventually came around. When I first told my mother about my desire to transition, I was living in Seattle, and she told my father and he drove 24 hours to see me. He was asleep in the alley in his car when I came home. He said he’d take me out to a nice place for dinner, and I picked somewhere really expensive. He finally said, “So I hear you are getting a sex change.” It felt like the whole restaurant went quiet. I was completely mortified.

In general, in society, it’s easier for a trans man to pass than a trans woman. We have so many more gender identifiable traits for women, which I think is what makes them more susceptible to violence. There are a lot of real issues, like wage gaps for trans men and trans women. The landscape is shifting, but it is still a hard time to be trans, especially if you don’t have family support.

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