As a matter of fact, there is. I explain how the problem goes deeper than mean anonymous commenters and a random mistake and outline steps The Advocate needs to take to correct this ongoing problem in my open letter behind the cut.

Thanks for getting back to me about this. I think what caught me off guard the most is that such comments could be coming from an LGBT readership. I know that people can cut loose with inappropriate comments that they wouldn’t say to your face, but still, I deal with negative comments nearly every day in the LGBT blogs I write in and I’ve never had anyone ridicule and invalidate my appearance and my gender to such a degree except once in a very juvenile straight space and a second time when the picture you posted ran on a bunch of local media (it’s an altered version of the original and I believe it was designed to highlight the hairs on my chin and make the shadows on my cheek look like they could be facial hair).

Part of me does appreciate that the comments were taken down, but I feel that the sentiment behind them will remain as long as they go unchallenged. I wrote my comment response — and I noticed a few other people did as well — as a part of challenging and discrediting their transphobic behavior. I know they would be out of context without the original comments, but I feel there should be some sort of response to challenge that behavior. I could write another response or perhaps you could.

But additionally, there seems to be a pattern of lack of attention paid to the trans issues that get reported in The Advocate. Do you remember this story from a year ago? A lot of folks in the trans community do. A trans woman and her cis male partner got a marriage license. Local media sources picked it up claiming that they were a same-sex couple that “fooled” the government — a typical transphobic sentiment. The Advocate reposted the story unquestioningly when anyone familiar with trans issues would have immediately have known that it was not a story of a same-sex couple after reading this line:

Nelson goes by the name “Kimah” and hopes to have transition surgery one day. Stenson views Nelson as a woman, and does not consider himself gay.

Nonetheless, The Advocate story used male pronouns for Kimah, identified her by her birth name instead of Kimah, put her real name in quote marks to indicate that it is not her real name, and referred to them as a same-sex couple the whole way through the article. A number of people in the trans community brought this to the attention of The Advocate, as that is below the standards we expect from mainstream straight publications, indeed it doesn’t even meet the AP guidelines. Kimah’s pronouns were changed to “she” but the other elements that invalidated her identity and her and her fiancé’s sexual orientations remained.

But even that didn’t last. I don’t know when it happened, but when I looked back at the story a few months ago I noticed her pronouns had been changed back to male pronouns.

Another small way that you could make things better is to get that year-old article changed so that it is no longer riddled with transphobic assumptions which we know to simply be untrue. I expect this mistake was not malicious, just as I know your mistake last week wasn’t, but it does seem indicative of a lack of attention paid to trans issues when they are covered.

And two years ago, The Advocate ran the “Sissy Awards” which highlighted homophobes and called them “sissies.” There’s not much anything that could be done to fix this article, but it’s worth noting that effeminate men were ridiculed just as much as homophobes were in that article and both this and the mishandling of the trans marriage story feed into a cultural perspective that makes it okay to make fun of trans women, call us “men in wig[s]” and discuss how ugly and and scary we are, and how we are dragging down the gays and lesbians.

And for one final example, two and half years ago, the Advocate published an article called Why Wasn’t This The Year of Lance Bass, which suggested that Lance Bass coming out was the most significant LGBT issue of the year and directly ridiculed anyone who thought it wasn’t. That was the year of the 2007 betrayal of ENDA and the amazing response of United ENDA. It’s pretty clearly the most historically significant issue to the trans community for the decade if not more. Having it be ignored in favor of a celebrity coming out made it seem as if The Advocate was drastically out of touch with even the most basic happenings relevant to the trans community.

With all this happening I can’t help but wonder if you have any trans people on staff or if they are in positions where they have editorial power. If you really want to make it up to me there needs to be an ongoing refutation of the transphobia that has been instilled in The Advocate readership and some basic trans representation within the magazine. Having non-trans people writing on trans issues can be useful, but is clearly not enough in this case. I can only imagine that a regular trans columnist or a trans person in an editorial position could begin to fix this long-term problem. Given the employment discrimination trans people face, there’s an abundance of well-qualified trans writers and editors looking for work and you could probably pick up a good one. I could even suggest a few if you’d like.

So to recap here’s what you can do to make it up to me:

1. Post something challenging the transphobic behavior of the commenters and calling it out as inappropriate
2. Fix the male pronouns and male references to Kimah Nelson, remove her birth name, remove references to them being a same-sex couple or having fooled the government.
3. Hire at least one if not more trans people as regular columnists, reporters, and/or editors on staff, preferably at least one editor so they can review other people’s stories on trans issues.

Please keep me up to date on progress on these points.

Thanks

–Tobi

I might have laughed it off as a stupid mistake, but glancing down at the comments I can’t help but notice that Advocate readers, being the advocates for equality that they are, took the opportunity to pick apart my appearance, judge me based on whether or not I met their definition of a real woman, and discuss how scared they would be to see me in the bathroom.

First, they used a photo of the original photo on display, which was zoomed, cropped, and focused specifically to highlight some peach fuzz chin hairs that I had, so it’s not surprising that some Advocate readers who scrutinized the picture noticed and started calling it a “beard.” It seems that 99% of the people who look at the original don’t notice any facial hair, but that once people are told that it’s a picture of a trans woman they are more likely to pick it out.

He looks like a guy wearing a wig. Of course a straight woman is going to freak out when she sees that in the bathroom!

–Mike Scott

I keep telling people that the gay community needs to establish some sort of certificate issuing authority to certify real trans girls because transsexualism is WIDE OPEN TO FRAUD. It won’t take long for creeps, such as the lightly bearded fellow pictured here, to take advantage of these people. It’ll cost money to issue certificates but post-op girls must be able to get these certificate for free for all of the troubles they went through (and also ’cause they’re so cute, hehehe)

–”Me”

I see the beard and no make up and I immediately think this is a guy… she needs to get rid of that beard if she wants to enter the ladies restroom.

–Ozzy

Of course they feel entitled to judge my entire life from one closely cropped picture taken over a year ago. They assume that it is somehow obvious to everyone that I’m really a guy, but they don’t account for the bias that they were told it was a trans woman who’s picture they were looking at. Plenty of people have looked at that photo and assumed I was a cis woman. Not to mention there are plenty of cis women out there who would elicit similar responses if their picture was posted online along with a statement that they are trans woman who’s getting too uppity.

In reality, I passed just fine even when I let the hairs on my chin grow out a little. They were thin, with little pigment, and took up less than a square inch on my face – most people never noticed them. I never had any problems using public bathrooms. And the only time anyone mentioned my chin hairs was after they found out that I was trans.

And while so many of the commenters were picking apart my appearance, I find it telling that many of them commented on my attractiveness (or lack thereof). “Me,” the commenter who wants a regulatory agency to determine who is and isn’t a real trans woman specifically to have an official statement that I don’t qualify also mentions that he finds trans women – excuse me, trans girls – to be “so cute, hehehe.” Ozzy says “And my biggest issue is that she is not ugly, I’ve seen people in transition that struggle and would love to have her looks.” Even one commenter who takes others to task for saying that women with facial hair should not be allowed to use the restroom feels the need to comment “my only objection to her being transgendered is she looks like she was probably a really cute guy ”

What does my or other trans women’s attractiveness have to do with the ability to file a non-discrimination suit? Unfortunately, more than it should. These commenters parrot the larger discriminatory messages that women’s only value is in their looks, and that rights should only be extended to trans women based on their ability to look like a cis woman.

I wish I could say that I’m surprised to see this coming from an LGBT publication, but this is The Advocate we’re talking about here. They’ve stepped on their feet so many times in the past few years, whether they are comparing effeminate men to bigots, using the wrong pronouns for trans women (even after being told to correct them), or making racist statements, they just seem incredibly sloppy and unaware of basic anti-oppression issues.

Their blog simply regurgitates news briefs from elsewhere and apparently they can’t even do that right. Unless they are willing to clean house and get a few editors who actually know what they are doing, it’s beyond time for them to close their doors. Much more of this and their legacy as a beacon of activism and advocacy will be nothing more than a joke.

Update: For everyone else confused as to how this happened, I think I figured it out. There is a blog which posts trans related news items and a brief about me and the multiracial photo exhibit this picture of me comes from is right next to brief about Brianna Freeman. Anyone paying attention would notice that the news brief about me says “(photo)” at the end and the one about Brianna does not. But apparently The Advocate does the bare minimum of work when the news they are reporting on is about a trans woman.

Further Update: The Advocate has now taken down the picture and put up the statement: “Editor’s note: The photo that previously accompanied this article was mistakenly identified as Brianna Freeman. We wish to express our apologies and regret the error.” They also deleted any comments referencing the picture itself, whether they were criticisms of my appearance, refutations of the other transphobic comments, or requests to take the picture down.

On one hand, I’m appreciative that such hateful comments were taken down, but on the other hand I do not think they were taken down because they were hateful. If they had been commenting on an actual picture of Brianna Freeman, I doubt the Advocate would have deleted the comments. Instead I can only conclude that they were only taken down because they make the Advocate look bad. And while there is an apology, the advocate doesn’t mention what they are apologizing for. They don’t say that they are apologizing for exposing a random woman to bigoted and hurtful remarks. They don’t chastize their commenters or even state whether or not they disagree. And they even removed my comment and others calling out and explaining why that behavior is inappropriate. Not to mention, I personally called and emailed – leaving my home phone number – to ask for a personal apology and explanation and haven’t received anything yet. I’ll update further if I do receive any direct communication, but for now this seems more like damage control and/or a cover up rather than a sincere attempt to make the situation right.

http://www.handbasketproductions.com/video.htm

Sometimes it’s been hard to sift out the real comments from the dozen or two fake ones I get each week. But I’m trying to be more vigilant these days.

Anyway, since it’s a speech and not a performance or a reading, it’s not nearly as tight as the video I like to upload. I’m self conscious about my pacing and all the “ums.” But if I think of it in comparison to a podcast instead of a recorded performance, it seems much more fitting.

I covered some interesting ground, gave some insight on J Michael Bailey and what that says about our diagnostic medical models around trans stuff, chasers, trans inclusion in LGb(t) spaces, internalized sex-negative transphobia, community infighting, and more. You can download or stream the 92 min file from http://www.handbasketproductions.com/video.htm.

Knowing that her presence would prevent a significant portion of our community from participating in and enjoying this event, there was no option except to ask Bitch not to perform.

This is not the first time Bitch has faced this problem. In 2007 she was uninvited to the Boston Dyke March, and protests have followed her to several of her performances. Including her performance at Queer Up North in Manchester (detailed by one activist here). In this case, however, it’s worth noting that OUT/LOUD felt this was a significant enough issue to cancel their headliner three days before the performance. They knew they would lose the money they had agreed to pay her, but they decided they had much more to lose by allowing her to perform.

Protesters began to be a problem for Bitch after she crossed picket lines to play at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival despite a boycott that was in effect at the time and voiced her support for Michigan’s policy of excluding trans women. Later, an interview in which she discussed her disdain for the concerns of the activists protesting her became online documentation for people to point out her transphobic attitudes.

If someone tries to tell me [Michigan] is transphobic, I tell them to stuff it. There’s so many trannies there. And it’s not trans people being marginalized. It’s people who were born as men.

Not only does she refuse to acknowledge that trans women as women and purposefully group trans women with cis men in the phrase “people who were born as men,” but she also defends the Michigan’ women only policy as not transphobic because they allow trans masculine people and trans men to attend. Of course the only reason trans men are allowed to attend is because their genders are not respected and they are seen as an extension of butch women.

She frequently points to her friends who are trans and talks about how she dated a trans man as proof that she can’t be transphobic. However, in her online journal she discusses her apprehension about seeing her trans friends take testosterone — comparing it to drinking and smoking and spreading misinformation that “the life expectancy of someone on T dramatically drops.”

Also, in speaking to the fear of invisibility that a lot of queer women face when dating men (trans or cis), she makes a distinction between her support of using male pronouns when with her partner but expresses her discomfort doing so publicly, preferring mispronoun him by using gender neutral pronouns to make her own queerness regardless of if that’s an accurate representation of his gender.

But regardless of the difficulties she has with her friends, she doesn’t acknowledge that all of her trans friends are trans masculine, and the anti-trans attitudes most people are criticizing are about her misogynist disdain and disrespect specifically for trans women. In fact, she dismisses her protestors as ignorant and entitled specifically because they are women and/or fem. “When I see protesters at my shows, generally the majority is not trans people. The majority of the protesters are fem girls, usually white students, and there’s usually one M to F – it’s all about them. So I can’t ignore that dynamic [of entitlement]”

Not only does she think that she can immediately tell if someone is trans just by looking at them, but she continues her dismissal of trans women as entitled men.

I can’t ignore the politics of entitlement around it, you know, how a lot of the issue, and I have noticed this in talking with my friends out at Camp Trans, a lot of the issues are around people born males. So, I find in this patriarchal system that so much of women’s energy goes towards making men feel comfortable and satisfying men.

While many of these interviews are from several years ago, it is clear that she hasn’t responded to the concerns of her protesters or refined her perspective at all. In an interview last month, she explains

I’d like to clarify that I am in support of that festival and it’s totally changed my life and it’s such a radical action that our elders have taken to make that space for us and, yes, I get incredible amounts of flack for it still, mainly from things I’ve said in the press that people kind of construe and like to pick apart and interpret all the ways that I’m some tranny-hater. It’s intense. It’s been undermining of our whole community and what we’re all trying to do cause ultimately you know, genderqueers and trans folk have always been my allies and I’ve been singing about all of our rights for years. So it’s intense… It’s a huge misinterpretation.

Interestingly, the interview also mentions that while she is on this tour she is being followed by a documentary crew for SheWired. It will be interesting to see how and if they cover OUT/LOUD cancelling her performance.

In celebration I’ve decided to share some of the stills from one of the scenes. Totally NSFW, if you go under the jump you have no one to blame but yourself. Also crossposted on Bilerico.

This scene is between Drew Deveaux (on left) and Daisy Loveless (on right). If you want to follow the film, there are screenings being planned for Eugene (this weekend!), Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis/St Paul, Madison, Chicago, and Paris. Join the facebook page to be notified when there are more details or visit the webpage.

Also, Drew Deveaux is trying to get folks to vote for her for the AfterEllen Hot 100, if you give her your vote we might actually have a trans woman represented this year.

There are limitations of course. Just as same-sex couples can only be reported if they are living together, the same is true for polyamorous families. This is likely a very very small fraction of non-monogamous people in general. Nonetheless, the census records the relationship between all household members and the head of household. If more than one household member has a romantic/sexual relationship with “Person #1,” then they can each be listed as a married or unmarried partner. And that’s exactly what I did for my household.

Normally, I like to know more about a subject like this before writing about it. Admittedly, this is the first census form I filled out, as I was still living with my parents the last time around. I don’t even know if the questions were framed this way in the 2000 census. All I can say is that I hope this data gets used.

Plenty of organizations have made the point that the information about our families in the census can be a valuable tool in our fight for equality. This is no less true for families like mine. It’s rather unfortunate that in the runnup to the census that our families were left out of the push to be counted and could not even get a solid answer as to whether or not we could be counted. When the data is released and it’s time for the number crunchers to do their thing, I hope we don’t get left out yet again.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/05/a_trans_persons_photo_in_the_hall.php

I’ve heard of administrators or parents complaining when a trans speaker talks to a class, when a teacher comes out as trans, or even when a student does – but I never expected that the mere presence of a photograph would cause a similar reaction.

The photo exhibit, “Shared Community, Mixed Identities,” was not even about trans people, but about representing the diversity of backgrounds that multiracial people come from. My photo was among them, along with a small bio which mentions that I am trans. It was designed as a part of a community project and made available to whatever spaces wish to display it. And when a local elementary school requested to display it, it suddenly became a significant controversy. Yesterday, multiple local news outlets decided to pick it up as a story.

I want to be careful not to overstate the complaints. It’s only a very small number of parents that complained about my photo. Many parents have come out in support of the exhibit, including my photo. The publicity generated from this controversy has led other parents to request the exhibit in their children’s school. But the minority who have a problem with it have been very vocal and very persistent. When the issue arose, staff voiced their own complaint – not so much about the exhibit as much as their lack of preparation and concern that in discussing trans issues they might mistakenly say something inappropriate.

I’ve actually been quite impressed with the school administrations response, and in particular with Meadowlark principal BJ Blake. In a letter inviting parents to a meeting on the issue she wrote:

I do not ask that anyone change their personal opinions or feelings about LGBT issues. I do ask that we allow children to be who they are without the risk of abuse from fellow students. I believe that having the photo array will help the ML/BV student body understand the need to respect all people in a deeper way. A safe environment creates an atmosphere that is conducive to and supports learning.

They decided to take down the photo exhibit – temporarily. Then they provided training for staff on trans issues. Now the school district is creating a new copy of the exhibit which will permanently be held in the county’s Education Service District library and be available to any school that whishes to check it out. This new copy will contain new age-appropriate bios. To be clear, it will have the same content, but be specifically written for a younger audience. Here is the current draft of my new bio:

Kids bullied me at school and that was really hard, but I had friends to help support me. I loved math and the chess team, even though sometimes I was picked on for it. I loved going to the Gay Pride parades with my two moms when I was little. I still do. I love being a part of the queer community. I’m trans. That means that even though others told me I was a boy I knew they were wrong and one day I decided I was going to be a girl. Sometimes it’s hard having light skin because people don’t notice I’m multi-racial and I wish they would. In the same way, sometimes people notice I’m trans because I don’t fit their idea of what a girl looks like and other times people wouldn’t know unless I told them. If people are nice about it, I like it when they notice I’m multi-racial and trans, but it’s good that not everyone notices because some people are mean about it and I like to have the choice to tell them or not.

This seems like a great solution, indeed an excellent example of gaining the most from a teachable moment. There’s a meeting tonight with parents from the school. With luck things will move forward smoothly and the controversy will die down.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/05/tobi_then_and_now.php

THEN

1. I was getting involved in my second relationship ever after my partner and I decided to be poly.
2. I identified as bisexual even though all my partners had been women – I knew identity and behavior don’t always have to match up.
3. I was flirting with the photographer but didn’t think they’d actually get involved with me
4. I had just resigned from my job in student government after 7 months of persistent anti-trans/genderqueer harassment.
5. I had recently moved into a house owned by one of my favorite authors
6. I identified as genderqueer, specifically not as a woman or man, and had been fighting my doctor to get access to hormones for 8 months
7. I was so focused on gender and queerness it had been years since I hung out with my straight gaming friends from high school.
8. I had recently completed banking sperm in preparation for starting hormones.
9. I had never drank alcohol
10. This photo was from the first set of nude pictures I posted online.

NOW

1. I’ve had a bit over a dozen partners, and that first relationship is still going and stronger than ever.
2. I identify as a dyke even though I date men – I still know that identity and behavior don’t have to match up.
3. Having spent a couple years healing from my abusive relationship with the first photographer, I plan to get handfasted with the wonderful genderqueer who took this picture.
4. I don’t have any problems with my current job, probably in part because I’m stealth there.
5. I’m still in the same house and will be here for another year or two.
6. I’ve been on hormones for over 4 years and identify as a woman and as genderqueer.
7. I’ve got new gaming friends in my life and I’m sure to devote regular time to gaming.
8. I’m now a donor for friends who are inseminating right now. If everything works out alright, my partner and I will be god parents.
9. I’ve had alcohol now, but still less than a dozen drinks in total.
10. I’ve had many nude photos online, both for fun and for pay. Overall, it has really improved my body image.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/06/the_advocate_joins_in_transphobic_media.php

It was bad enough when the New York Post ran the transphobic article “Wedding Crashers” which erroneously describes a trans woman and her cis male partner, Kimah Nelson and Jason Stenson, as a gay couple and how they “duped” the government into giving them a same-sex marriage.

But then the Advocate repeated the story uncritically parroting the same anti-trans message. After some complaints, they’ve removed the male pronouns referring to Kimah but rather than replacing them with female pronouns they opted for no pronouns.

However, the article still uses Kimah’s birth name rather than her preferred name, still describes them as a same-sex couple, still dehumanizingly describes the status of her genitals, and still claims that the couple “fooled” the officials, perpetuating the transphobic fear that trans people are “fooling” people when we say we are the genders we identify as — the very same fear that gives rise to the trans-panic defense for hate crimes and murders. The effect is clearly visible just by reading the comments this story is generating. Do we seriously need a GLAAD action alert before the Advocate will retract this anti-trans framing of the story or even just follow Associated Press guidelines for reporting on trans people?

The Advocate goes on to admonish the couple with the odd statement that “Regardless of gender identity, same-sex marriage is illegal in New York,” which seems to forget that there is no separate legal status of sex and gender and that opposite-gender marriage has the same legal meaning as opposite-sex marriage.

The truth is, governmental agencies never have found a consensus about how to define sex. Kimah represented herself, truthfully, as a woman. She showed an adequate form of identification, which listed her as female. The bureaucrats had no policies demanding further identification. She did everything she was supposed to. When some of your ID marks you as male and some marks you as female what else is someone supposed to do?

While the couple’s critics — both in the Advocate and the more traditionally anti-trans press — condemn the couple for their so-called deception, I’m left wondering how they would react if she had presented ID marking herself as male and married a woman then announced herself as a part of a same-sex marriage. Presumably, they would be equally upset about the “deceptive” and “fraudulent” marriage.

I’d love to say that the critics can’t have things both ways, that trans people have to be allowed to marry people of at least one gender, but that’s often not the case. Immigration officials have gone back and forth, but often refuse to acknowledge marriages involving trans people regardless of their partner’s gender. And opposite-gender/sex couples involving trans people may receive marriage licenses, but always have to be concerned about a transphobic legal attack to annul them.

It’s true that legalizing same-sex marriage will benefit trans people by removing these barriers. However, such a simple perspective doesn’t address a major issue. The public attention on same-sex marriage over the past several years is what led to the denial of this couple’s marriage rights. A decade ago, this never would have made the news and their marriage would likely have remained unquestioned.

Now, it’d be selfish to suggest that would be reason in itself to abandon the marriage fight (there are much better reasons out there). But when it comes to the fight for same-sex marriage, it’s important to remember that trans people have much to lose and not much to gain. You could say that we’re taking one for the team here — except some might question if we’re on the team, have decision making influence, or have the choice not to. Incidentally, when was the last time you saw a political fight that benefits trans people at the risk of hurting cis queers and not the other way around?