It's Not Always Perfect For Transgenders

By Tanya Pampalone; San Francisco Examiner
November 14, 2001

There is no one more qualified for her job than Susan Stryker. The executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society of Northern California holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Berkeley, a postdoctoral research fellowship in sexual studies from Stanford and she fits into two of the four GLBT categories: she is a transsexual lesbian.

Yet Stryker, like many transgender people, is not wholly embraced by the very community she represents. While some find shelter in the GLBT community, many transgenders, which includes transsexuals, drag kings and queens and cross-dressers, have been attacked and protested from within the very place they seek refuge. Transsexuals have been ridiculed by some gays and lesbians for being confused about their own sexuality, much in the same way that gays and lesbians have been criticized for their sexual preference. But the condemnation goes further. Transsexuals have been ostracized for mutilating their bodies, with one writer recently recommending that they skip hormone treatment and medical procedures and "live androgynously," a suggestion, transgender activists say, that is the same as trying to convince gays to live as straight.

In many ways, the GLBT acronym is a utopian quest that attempts to lump together a very diverse community. "Just because someone is gay, lesbian or bisexual doesn't mean that they understand transgender issues," Stryker said, sitting in her Market Street office wearing baggy jeans and black Doc Martens.

Stryker is one of more than 15,000 transgendered people living in The City, which includes 5,000 transsexuals, who have undergone hormonal, medical, cosmetic and legal procedures to switch their biological genders. The local number mirrors national statistics, with between 1 percent and 2 percent of the population being transgender.

The umbrella term reaches further to include female and male impersonators and intersexed people, also known as hermaphrodites or people born with both sets of genitalia. But, as genders cross into unknown regions and sexual preferences blur along with it, the most basic understanding of gender is being challenged, and nowhere is that being felt more than in the transgender community, a culture fighting for recognition from within a subculture.

Tranny city Of course, if you are going to be transgendered, San Francisco is the place to be. But it wasn't always that way. In the early '70s, there were witch hunts, where lesbian and gay groups openly discriminated against transsexuals, throwing them out of prominent organizations. As the gay rights movement gained momentum throughout the '70s and '80s, transgendered people were left out of the gay parade. That started to change in the '90s when a younger generation of gays and lesbians claimed "queer" as their own and transgendered people began to make strides nationally as well as locally.

Earlier this year, The City approved a plan to provide sex-change benefits for qualified city workers. There is a Transgender Civil Rights Implementation Task Force, and the Police Department is planning to implement officer sensitivity training for transsexuals, drawing up specific guidelines for the use of appropriate pronouns when talking with transgendered people.

When Theresa Sparks was appointed to The City's Human Rights Commission in February this year, she was the first transsexual to join the powerful city agency. Still, Sparks said, there is a long way to go. "The transgender struggle is now where the gay rights movement was 20 years ago," she said.

Growing up boy Stryker is a 40- year-old blonde with wavy shoulder- length hair and bright blue eyes. She grew up as a boy in Oklahoma and came out as a woman in the spring of 1991, changing her name, taking hormones and undergoing electrolysis. In 1998, she completed the transformation by undergoing surgery.

The body she left behind had been married to a woman who identified as a lesbian. They had a child together, who is now 18, and Stryker continues to parent. Until recently, she was in a relationship with another lesbian that began after she first transitioned. They also have a child.

The complexities of gender and sexual preference criss-cross and blur in the transgender community, confusing straights and gays to equally incomprehensible degrees.

For Stryker, it is lesbians over 40 who vehemently oppose the choices she has made. "Their understanding of me is that I am a really f---- - up person who can't accept my own homosexuality, so I mutilated my body to maintain relationships with men," she said. "But my self perception is as a woman, and I have always been attracted to women."

Stryker says while there is discrimination within the GLBT community, it doesn't mean that transgendered people are completely shunned. The fact that she is the executive director of the group assigned to collect and preserve the community's artifacts speaks for itself. "Many recognize transgender issues as a civil rights issue," she said.. "But would you want your sister to marry one? Would you date a transsexual lesbian? If your partner transitioned, would you stay with them?"

Ironically, Stryker said, it is in the straight community where she feels the most accepted. Gender Wars Riki Wilchins, executive director of Gender PAC, a national gender rights advocacy group, says gender rights is the next civil rights battlefield. Gender PAC has supported people like Brandon Teena, the female-to-male teenage transgender whose life was portrayed in the movie "Boys Don't Cry," and Dawn Dawson, a lesbian who recently was fired by the hair salon where she worked because she was seen as being too butch.

"There is a generalized discomfort about gender issues that extends past transgender people into all those that transcend gender norms," Wilchins said. The GLBT community is facing an era where people don't want to identify as merely male or female, inciting a struggle from within, said queer activist Sini Anderson.

Stryker welcomes the change. "I am an immigrant," she said of her immergence as a transsexual lesbian in the GLBT community. "Maybe I'll always speak with an accent, but this is where I work and this is where I pay my taxes."