Another of Jim Costich’s Excellent Adventures

On November 7, 2003 I attended the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley Annual Community Leadership Luncheon at the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency in Rochester, NY. I go every year. There was massive media and newspaper coverage because the GAGV was giving them awards this year. There were many other awards handed out to local & national industries for their support of the GLBTI Community. GLBT Ceo’s, Police, Business people, lawyers and judges, philanthropists and clergy we there. I got to mingle, flirt and be amazed at all the straight allies that our community has amassed this year as GAGV has moved the GLBTI into the larger community in my City. The board members and staff of GAGV all include “I” when talking about our community at large. I already had membership as Gay, but my WHOLE queer self and others like me have a place at the table set for us.

There were 2 morning workshops:
“The Business World After SONDA” presented by Ross Levi, Director of Public Policy and Education for the Empire State Pride Agenda.

“Creating a Culture of Value and Respect in the Workplace” by GAGV Executive Director Chuck Bowen.

The keynote speaker at the luncheon was Jennifer Middleton, Esq. Senior Legal Counsel for Lambda Legal (www.lambdalegal.org), the New York City-based organization that fought for the Supreme Court decision of last June, overturning sodomy laws in the U.S.A.

I didn’t imagine I would get a chance to speak to her but as the room was clearing at the end there she stood. I rushed up to ask my BIG question, the one I’ve been dying to ask someone in the GLBT Civil Rights movement but she, of all people was the top of the list!! I asked her if the people at the top knew about the intersexed and could our existence solve the civil rights problems especially marriage? After all, if you can’t draw a finite line between male and female doesn’t that just solve everything? She was ready with an answer even before I stopped talking.

The powers that be in the GLBT State and National organizations are VERY aware of the issues that do and may affect the intersexed, and are very concerned for us. She explained to me that the current court climate is to prevent same sex marriage at all costs. The resulting mess that has resulted over transsexuals has the courts in an uproar. The result has been the threat of labeling the intersexed and transsexual as a pathology that medicine has failed to cure thereby excluding us from civil rights. The intersexed have yet to hit the courts and she is very concerned about what will happen to us when we do. If we’re not very careful we stand to be legally defined as second class citizens for not fitting into the gender binary. She was aware of the progress ISNA has made on the elimination of genital mutilation and that our community MUST not rest until this has stopped, but the legal implications could be beastly for us. She explained to me that the approach to “same sex” and thereby “variant sex” marriage must be to remove sex and gender from civil marriage altogether. Get the government out of our pants and bedrooms and deal only with the Civil Contract between PEOPLE that civil marriage should be. She explained that it was the only way to keep some of us from being left out.

She didn’t have anything to say that I wasn’t expecting to hear, but it was still chilling. As a legal assistant to a lesbian lawyer I have learned a lot about how differently the law and courts are from the medical, psychological and social realm regarding GLBTI people. I know enough to be dangerous, but I’m not entirely wet behind the ears. It was an enormous relief to know that we are included despite our lack of visibility and our emerging identity as a people. We are in danger, but we are not alone. There are those who are advocating for and looking out for us.

Throughout the years I have been acutely aware of the zealots of various twisted dogmas who consider ANY variant of the evil word "sex" as "abominations of God".
While it is comforting to know that there ARE advocates for "real" democracy and human rights, it is still very scary to know that there exists the "ultimate authority" of government and religion ( I as a Buddhist respect ALL religions, it is my belief, however, that, the original intents/teachings of all of these religions has been twisted throughout the centuries by human beings who use such as a tool to "correct and control". Both governmenb and some religious "authorities" have been more arrogant in their striving to create and maintain " a new "World Order" and "Moral Amerika" ( I don't entertain the thought that Democrats are any less phobic of "sex"-variant human beings, they just wear a different mask). Adolf Hitler would be proud of the way things are going.

[quote]
The result has been the threat of labeling the intersexed and transsexual as a pathology that medicine has failed to cure thereby excluding us from civil rights.

I am very curious as to how IS and/or TS are treated in countries other than the USA, especially Europe. The reason for this is that I have at times had serious notions that life is getting worse for IS/TS here in this country and (even though 53 yrs old now) have thought of moving back to Europe (again). I went back after high school to the country of my birth (Germany) and was quite happy there until I got a letter from "Uncle Sam" ordering me back to US for pre-induction into US Army (Vietnam era) then 1969 wherein I lasted 9 months and and was released from the Army with a General Discharge (Incompatible with Army). I didn't go back because I got seriously involved with "radical" groups after the Army, even got arrested, but released of guilt in "conspiracy" charges (the charges were so ludicrous the judge dismissed the case.) I'm thinking that, here in the US, too many bad memories and the "paper trail" of Male will forever haunt me, especially with Congress serious consideration of Identity Cards linked to FBI database....I don't EVEN look male! I might as well then wear a sandwich board: Hi, I'm your friendly neighborhood intersexed transsexual!
Am I being paranoid?? (Yes,I admit that I have anxiety/panic condition) Do others feel that soon we will be like the Jews in Nazi Germany? Seriously.

Data wrote: "Do others feel that soon we will be like the Jews in Nazi Germany?"

Dana, the wholesale gassing of TS and IS people might come but it isn't likely in the near future. However, if you are really concerned about it, I would suggest that you raise your voice in protest over the humans in this country who are routinely being killed. Millions of unborn babies are killed each year in this country, some in the middle of an otherwise normal delivery. Others are labeled as being in a "persistent vegitative state" and then starved.

Dana, all that it takes is for you to be deemed sub-human or non-human. "Baby" was redefined as "Fetus" and then as "Product of Conception" to dehumanize them enough to make it easier to kill them. If we allow any human life to be degraded then all human life is at least potentially degradable.

Parents of IS children are often pressured by their doctors to abort. And I know of cases where the parents were told lies about the IS condition to strengthen their argument. Do we protest that no one should take an IS condition into account when thinking about abortion?

I would say that the reason that all human life has value is that we are all created in God's image. That is what the Bible says. Dana, how can we ask others to value the life of an IS or TS person if we, ourselves, are unwilling to do the same for those who are weaker? How can we demand rights for ourselves that we refuse these little humans? Or do you believe that they magically become human on passing completely through their mother's birth canal?

Kind regards,
cjs

Your pointing out the abuse of babies is only one of the reasons I have volunteered to help with being a virtual volunteer for BLO. I am presently awaiting word from Betsy, who is currently very busy. I do however shun from being an active demonstrator in public, being arrested they would put me in with the males, who would have their way with me, as well as have a good laugh when they look between my legs (I have not yet had "the surgery" since mine would have to be a special one due to lack of "viable tissue" for it) I have been tormented, beaten and sexually abused during my puberty and young adult years, and was rejected by my father and mother (mother came back at age 7.....my grandparents raised me in a cloistered existence from baby.... I know very well the meaning of abuse AND that is my concern...Abuse of ANY kind. I will do what I can and have also volunteered for activites here at the University as part of rights/issues here on campus. I am also active in my religious group. Peace to you and all human beings, especially to those yet "clinically unborn"...birth, to me, occurs at moment of conception.

Dana

Data wrote: "Do others feel that soon we will be like the Jews in Nazi Germany?"


Sometimes I still do feel like the character Data on the TV show Star Trek, "he" was in the external mold of male, but actually neither male or female....fashioned/programmed to be so. With me I've hated being and living male, hated having been forcibly raised such, hated been given male hormones (and God only knows what else) and hated myself for believing "them" and then trying to be "normal" As I stated before , I'm not the typical/classical TS...not even the typical alien either I suppose.. but today is sort of one of my "alien" days, so please excuse my rhetoric., but that's the way I feel.

Dear Dana,

No Xenophobia here. Although I do admit that my battle strategy is similar to Ender Wiggins. Sorry about the typo.

Part of what helped me survive it all was believing that it was happening to someone else and not really me. Putting the past behind is still the toughest problem to deal with but life really is worth the living.

If I offend people at times I usually don't mean to. Hope that you're getting at least some support here. Betsy's a good kid but, as you say, she's kinda busy.

cjs
Intellectus merces est fide

No offense taken, claraJane,

I get into these moods occasionally, and it is my personal battle to live life and put the past behind me, but , living female has been my normalcy, quite natural to me...I have finally after decades integrated myself, just to find out that now I get degraded and/or not taken seriously for being TS (mostly from the medical/psychological sh*ts, and some from ignorant normals), these are the triggers for past abuses, which is why I have thoughts of going somewhere (Europoe) that noone knows I'm IS, TS or any other S's or labels, or my past
for that matter ( I "transitioned" in the community/job where everybody knew me as male before.)...just another face in the crowd.....a human face, not TS, IS, queer alien, etc face.

Dana,
With the exception of my birth certificate all my legal documents read, James D. Costich male. Everything. I was legally married to a woman (I thought it would prove I was a man. No one ever believed I was straight - certainly not my "wife" who fag hagged around all the gay bars with me. God I was an idiot.) I am an adoptive father to a son. In the 1970's and 80's I could do all that without a birth certificate. All my other documents were obtained without a birth certificate. NONE OF THAT WOULD BE POSSIBLE NOW BECAUSE A BIRTH CERTIFICATE IS REQUIRED FOR ALL OF IT as part of the post 911 security insanity. All it would take for me to loose my legal status as a male would be for someone to contest it in court. I would not, however gain legal status as a female.

Despite an entire life as a man the court is refusing to give me a birth certificate change because I have no more anatomical claim to being male than female and they want to treat me like a transsexual because they have ways of dealing with that - which of course would be to tell me "no" because I have not , can not and will not follow the Harry Benjamin Standards for Care because I"M NOT A TRANSSEXUAL and I haven't changed from something to something. I'm just the same hermaphroditic me I've always been. My lawyer is looking for ways to fight this. My doctors are behind me. Maybe I'll end up as Lambda Legal's next case. I can't even go to Canada anymore. I can not get a passport. If I were young and intersexed OR transsexual I would not even be able to get a social security card without a birth certificate anymore which means every employer I have would have to wrestle through the inconsistency of the sex on record with social security and the sex I live. Yes, this is all getting worse.

England is moving toward a central registry of transsexuals, (and one would assume that will eventually include intersexed people), - like the sex offender's registry we have in the states.

Australia and New Zealand are totally different in their approach to us.

What is Germany up to? If you can still get a passport to go there it might be a good idea to check it out. If not you could probably find out info on the web. Tim (my partner) has a cousin and his partner who emigrated from East Berlin about 6 years ago. They might be able to find out - they're still very connected to the GLBT community back home.

I love BLO. I want to do more with BLO.

Like you, I have absolutely no intention of getting arrested for anything. An MtF and I just gave a seminar to the social workers at Action for a Better Community. They said that intersexed people and transsexuals have to be "seperated out" for their own protection in prison in NY. I asked if "seperated out" meant solitary confinement and wasn't that considered the most severe punishment a prisoner could suffer, so weren't they being given cruel and unusual punishment seeing as they were being given the worst they could get based on what they are and not their behavior? The social workers sheepishly agreed but our prison system has nothing else to offer. My volunteering will stop shy of arrest, but most of what I do doesn't include the risk of that.

Keep the faith. Despite the crap we go through it could be worse. We could be males or females. If I'm never more than a second class citizen at least I won't live someone else's life under a borrowed identity any more.

As a father I want to see to it that Queer kids, including my own have it better than I had. My gay son brought a 15yr old MtF transitioning (lives full time and is on hormones) transsexual as his date to Tim's and my Holy Union last month. I'm so happy for this generation I would cry. A lesbian friend of mine is a high school teacher who has a student who is intersexed, has partial AIS and was assigned female. She identifies with and is readily identified as a teenage girl. She's lesbian. No one banked on that. She didn't realize she has one functioning testicle in her labia and ended up impregnating her girlfriend. Her family and doctors imediately started pressuring her to have an orchiectomy bacuase she shouldn't have male fertility if she's a woman. Her teacher blew the whistle and called foul, helped her get REAL help and the result was she refused to be defined by the gender police and is keeping her fertility because she wants it. If I can do ANYTHING to help this stuff in any way it's worth all my past and present suffering.

Keep the faith. When everything seems like it's ending it usually means something is about to begin.

Jim Costich