In the WHO framework of social determinants, discriminat=
ion
is a subset of the social exclusion category. But the concept of discrimination =
has
both a micro and a macro level role in these stories. Discrimination itself is notable a=
s part
of social exclusion, this is the micro-level view of this phenomenon. At the macro-level, we must acknow=
ledge
that discrimination is often the causal root of the other adverse social
determinants as well. For exa=
mple,
discrimination and stigma significantly determine a participant’s
position on the social gradient in cases when employers are unwilling to em=
ploy
transgenders. When anti-transgender violence creates a backdrop as ever-pre=
sent
as the paint on the walls of a room, the adverse effects of this stress can
also be traced back to discrimination. When a participant has been =
kicked
out of their family for being transgender, this social exclusion is again
caused by discrimination.
When a participant is involved in sex work, or has =
mental
health or addiction problems, the critical reader can always make a strong =
case
that discrimination is the root of each of these issues. The experience of discrimination i=
s so
prevalent among the transgender people interviewed for this study that it w=
ould
arguably be difficult to propose alternative causal factors for the adverse
health issues affecting them.
The discrimination faced by transgender partici=
pants falls
directly into the conceptual model of stigma outlined by Link and Phelan27. In this
model they outline how stigma in many populations follows similar
processes: people are identif=
ied,
isolated from the non-stigmatized group, subjected to negative stereotyping,
then stripped of social status through discriminatory practices. This stigma profoundly affects the
distribution of life chances. Link
and Phelan caution that, due to its pervasive impact, the negative effects =
of
stigma are likely underestimated.
They also conceptualize stigma as a matter of degree, with some peop=
le
experiencing more or less depending upon their level of external identifica=
tion
as other. The findings that f=
ollow
are congruent with these claims, both showing the pervasive impacts of stig=
ma
in the lives of study participants, and demonstrating the extreme variation=
of
stigma based on external labeling as other. In this population, the labeling is
determined by a person’s ability to pass as gender normative. Those who are less able to pass as
gender normative experience the highest degree of stigmatization for their
gender variance.
The role of discrimination and stigma in the stories that
follow is not subtle, it could more accurately be described as overwhelming=
. Discrimination bounds the lives of
transgender people on every side.
For some, gender-based discrimination interacts with discrimination
based on other traits, such as race or ethnicity. There is not enough data to fully
explore how gender discrimination interacts with other types of discriminat=
ion,
but examples here show how these multiple burdens can destabilize an
individual. Early in the rese=
arch
for this project, I was struck by a comment from an African American MTF
transexual friend. She said t=
hat
among all the transgender people she knew, she was the only one who had nev=
er
done sex work. I was amazed a=
t the
time to hear this, but after the fieldwork I could understand the truth in =
that
statement easily. The gender
variance model explained in Chapter Two demonstrates that gender violence
exists on a continuum, with gender-based oppression experienced in proporti=
on
to an individual’s violation of normative gender roles and
appearances. The stories of
transgender people collected here show survival amidst the most extreme for=
m of
gender oppression. For those =
among
them who must negotiate multiple oppressions, the outcomes are even more
debilitating.
The persistent bounding of experience by discrimination
could and does result in lives that are irrefutably altered. Some people do not survive this
experience, and the high rates of suicide attempts within the transgender
population demonstrate the debilitating impact of this cumulative stress.
As discussed at the close of chapter three, all social
determinants of health affect the lives of transgender people. However, presenting a simple narra=
tive
explanation of these multiple impacts does nothing to critically analyze th=
e unique
interplay of social determinants for this population. After analyzing the data for this
project, three categories of social determinants emerged as dominant in the
equation of health impacts: social exclusion, stress, and social support.
Each of the three dominant categories actively interact =
with
each other. For example: social exclusion includes job discrimination, which
results in under or unemployment, which in turn affects stress. So, while data has been sorted into
thematic categories, these effects cannot be realistically isolated from ea=
ch
other. Understanding this rea=
lity,
the findings section is nevertheless organized around exploring these three
dominant themes. Information =
about how
the social determinants overlap, or how additional ones interplay with these
three will be woven into these dominant themes as appropriate.
A
note on pronoun usage:=
Throughout the analysis, I have
attempted to use the preferred gendered pronoun of all participants. Therefore, when I refer to the chi=
ldhood
of an MTF participant, I will use the female pronoun although at the time
recounted, that participant may have gone by “he.” I have made occasional exceptions =
to
this rule in order to follow the usage or respect the wishes of individual
participants.
From the data in this project, two themes emerg=
ed as
primary to the category of stress as a social determinant: the stress of pe=
rvasive
violence and the stress of internalized gender oppression. Violence deserves special no=
te
here since it stands out from all other social determinants. These narratives were notable both=
for
the extreme manifestations of violence and for the level to which violence
pervaded the stories. In shor=
t,
violence was the single most dramatic theme to emerge from this research.
Every story is affected by social context, and =
the
phenomenon of violence against transgender people was very much a part of t=
he
social context of life in
The death of Amanda Milan was said to galvanize=
the
transgender and larger LGB communities to speak out against this violence.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> It sparked a forum on transgender
violence and, later, a push for inclusion of gender identity in the
For me as an investigator, the most disturbing element of
conducting the interviews was the level of violence embedded in some of the
life stories. At first,=
I did
not understand why it was so unsettling since I had certainly girded myself
against the knowledge that violence would emerge. But in retrospect, the emergence of
violence in narratives demonstrated a gap between my perceptions as a resea=
rcher
and those of the participants. I
viewed violence as more of an outstanding phenomenon, as it had been in my
life. My personal stories of =
past
threats and violence are notable, something I would naturally include in a =
life
history I would give another. But
the difference in these stories was that violence was not necessarily prese=
nted
as outstanding by the participants.
I would find that particularly violent events were not actually incl=
uded
in the primary narrative, but instead emerged like landmines in probes about
different issues. As an
interviewer, this was unsettling, because I was often unprepared for the
violence to emerge. But the
implications for the participants were even more unsettling: what type of l=
ife
experience results in major violence no longer being central to your story?=
Several factors could all intertwi=
ne to
answer this question: people could be reluctant to recall distressing past
events, they could be suppressing traumatic memories to help them cope, they
could be hiding their vulnerability in front of a relatively unknown
interviewer. But while these
factors may contribute to the phenomena, a different answer began to emerge
from the stories. Simply put,
violence is no longer central to your story when it pervades the stories of=
you
and those around you so thoroughly.
One participant interview demonstrated this phenomenon
aptly. Nirvana Rose is a tran=
sexual
woman in her early thirties. =
She is
mixed race, both Asian/Pacific Islander and
I just felt so comfortable talking to her, an= d she just like made everything so real, she just made everything so different in= the way I was being taught, and in ways, she was showing me a different side to life. And it stuck in me, everything she used to tell me. And that’s = what urged and pushed me a little bit more to get out. And I wasn’t ready = to tell my moms and my dad, so I ran away.
At the age of twelve, she ended up in downtown
And she came up to me and asked me what was I=
doing
out on the street. What are you doing out on the street, little girl. And I=
was
like, little girl? What the hell are you talking about? And then when she f=
ound
out, when she really got into me, she was like oh my God. And I was like oh,
did I do something wrong, and I looked at her and I was a little scared,
that’s my tough image. And I started explaining the situation to her a
little, and she was like oh, no problem, come on, and I was so leery, but I=
was
so fascinated because this person was like so good. She was like let’=
s go
over to my house and you can sleep on the couch, and I’ve got to go o=
ut,
but I’ll leave you in the house, just don’t touch nothing and
behave. I said okay. I was in her house, she gave me a tuna fish sandwich a=
nd
some milk, because back then I was like a fiend for milk, and she left. She
just turned around and left. She said be good. She left. Wow. I was like ok=
ay.
She came in like 4 or
This “drag queen,” Mimi, befriended
Nirvana Rose, and immediately took on a mentoring role. Slowly Mimi showed the confused yo=
uth
how she had been born a man, and explained to Nirvana that she had to make =
her
own choice about what she wanted to be.&nb=
sp;
Then, Mimi dressed Nirvana up as a girl for the first time. She showed her how to make m=
oney
and how to hide that you were male.
Mimi went with Nirvana on her first “dates,” and after s=
he
liked it, “slowed her down” and “set her up with the
equipment she needed” for this life, namely hormone shots. At this point, Nirvana’s nar=
rative
starts to speed up, quickly following her rise in social status until in her
later adolescence she was a “goddess”, with a sugar daddy who g=
ave
her $10,000 a month, a jaguar, and a brownstone overlooking
I had the money, I had unlimited, so shopping= was like, I stayed in the stores. I had everything that Mae West or Marilyn Mon= roe could have had. I had diamonds, I had opals, I had everything. Sapphires, a= ll that.
Her story could have just moved on from here, b= ut I prompted with a question about Mimi, the woman who had been so instrumental= in her early years. Nirvana says= they were still the best of friends but then the story abruptly backs up, to an event several years back that had not otherwise gotten into the narrative:<= /p>
When I was 16 years old, Mimi was found kille= d. She was found in the hotel. Back then there was a big thing on gay bashing. And= she was found in the Fulton Hotel with her throat slit, and her penis in her mo= uth, cut off. I was devastated.
Was Nirvana just selectively remembering the mo=
re
glamorous side of the story? =
Or was
the murder of her mentor, in such an aggressively brutal fashion actually
something she had forgotten to note as a milestone? The murder changed her life, the f=
ear
that it could happen to her drove Nirvana to re-approach and ultimately
reconcile with her birth family.
But she also describes a hardening inside of her. She talks about how she beca=
me a
“cold bitch” who was “mercilessly cruel,” especiall=
y to
other trannies who were not of her caliber. While she had the highest level of
social standing among sex workers, exceeding even the “G-Girls”=
or
genetically female prostitutes, this social standing was limited to the tim=
es
she passed as female. T=
his
status could disappear in an instant, putting her in immediate danger. At this point in the narrative, we=
start
to hear more about her aggression, but it is mostly portrayed as resistance=
to
an outside threat. Sometimes =
dates
do not guess she is a transexual, “and if they find out, they’re
going to act maliciously.”
She does not work with a pimp for protection, she provides her own,
“I was already vicious verbally, but I became vicious manually. I lea=
rned
how to shoot a gun, I learned how to carry it.” Her world evolved into a dangerous=
mix
of prostitution, drug dealing, and using.&=
nbsp;
A stint in jail was easy, in part because of her well-known willingn=
ess
to cut anyone who offended her. She
learned to move to aggression quickly, and talks about how these skills were
used to reinforce her social status among the top tier of trannies, “I
was a really nasty person. I was really conniving, I was really malicious. I
threw drinks in people’s faces just for looking at me wrong.”
Now in her early 30s, Nirvana views herself as a “wise old owl” in the transgender communities. While this age would hardly confer= elder status in many communities, she understands her survival to this age is an oddity, or in her words “a blessing.” Almost all of her early showgirl f= riends are already dead. She has mov= ed through many of the perils that befall community members, from elitist isolation, to addictions, prostitution, jail, and HIV. Now, from her position of advanced wisdom, she fights to try to create more opportunities for the next generation. She is a strict “gay mother” to several young girls, and wants to open a nonpro= fit to help provide more jobs and housing for transgender people.
Towards the end of the interview, a question ab=
out
survival prompts another demonstration of the violence that again did not
emerge in the chronological narrative:&nbs=
p;
“I was stabbed in my neck, it was by a trick…. with a
switchblade, and it missed my jugular vein by one tenth of an inch.”<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Only this time, the unexpected vio=
lence
has been contextualized by a level of constant threat and resistance Nirvana
lived within. Violence was
normalized in her life, and her aggression was in part a survival skill.
The reason why I’m doing this interview= is because I want people to understand that you can make it if you want toR= 30;. Because I know how the old me was. I know how cruel and malicious and vindictive and chaotic I was. Today, I’m content. I can look in the mirror and be happy with the reflection that I see. I can smile. A lot of t= hese trannies, they think they’re really smiling at the way they look, a l= ot of them were crying out. They just don’t have no place to go to let it out. And that’s [why I want to start a social service agency for them= ].
Again and again, this level of high normalizati= on of violence was repeated by the interviewees.= For example, I conducted an interview with key informant Barbara Cas= sis, an African American MTF woman who now works as a case manager for a transge= nder support agency, Housing Works. When I asked her about community members’ adverse experiences with emergen= cy rooms, she described her clients’ experiences as “horrible̶= 1; in this area. She presented t= he common scenario of a sex worker being beaten up first by a john who “spooks” her as transgender, then being emotionally “beat= en up” by the medical professionals who are trying to treat the physical wounds. To demonstrate the pr= oblem she moved to personal experience, “I was raped, I was brutally raped,= by thirteen people, and kidnapped. But anyway… “ and she moved on = to the real point, her added brutalization at the hands of the medical professionals. In this instance the participant’s storytelling emphasizes the omnipresence of violence in some transgenders’ lives. An episode of remarkable personal violence is transformed in the telling from an event in itself to the conte= xt for an explication of more violence still.=
Like Nirvana Rose’s description of hersel= f as “cold inside,” others directly cited the exposure to violence a= nd assault as formative in their emotional makeup. The complexities of early trauma, emotional “hardening” and its impact on the personal relationsh= ips in ones life is revealed in another story that first skips over then backs = up to reveal a particularly dramatic incident. R. Francine Bailey describes what happened when she was an eleven year old boy, recovering from a surgery to = fix congenital arm problems:
I came out with this horrible cast, to the wa= ist. Horribly cast, they called me frankenstein everyday, pushed down in the snow and fucked by the same boys when I was 11. In the snow in my driveway. I’ll never forget it, twelve years old. Right in the driveway. All my mother had to do was look downstairs in the driveway, or my father drive up with the damn car.
Again, the incident alone stands as horrific, b= ut what are the contextual factors that surround it, and how did they all affe= ct emotional development?
At the time of the interview, Ronelle Francine =
Bailey
was 47 years old. Earlier kno=
wn as
Ronelle, she now goes by the name Francine. She is of mixed African American a=
nd
Native American descent and identifies herself as a person of transgender
experience. She embraces her =
unique
status as between two genders, and bridles at transexuals who think they are
“real women.” Fra=
ncine
grew up amongst working class African Americans in an admittedly tough small
town in
At age six, just days before he was to start sc= hool, Ronelle was publicly sexually molested by older boys. He was confused about what was occurring, but remembers the feeling of shame as the other kids laughed and pointed at him. Over the ensu= ing years, a boy left to babysit him continued this pattern of molestation. The trauma of this experience is vivid:
Every weekend. I used to always beg my mother crying, holding onto her screaming, I can see it now, mom, don’t leav= e me mommy, and she would leave me to go out drinking, she was a terminal alcoho= lic. She was going to follow the bottle. And my father was going to follow the d= ice and the cards. That left me with the baby sitter.
But in time and without other influences, this = small child starts to normalize this experience, eventually becoming an active participant in the previously forced sexual contact. Ronelle talks about his abuser:
I didn’t even know he done nothing wrong after all these years it seemed like the normal thing to do, after that, ca= use I went from him to his brother to the younger brother.
By age ten, Ronelle learned how to use Vaseline= to help avoid rectal bleeding. B= y age eleven Ronelle and one other boy would head over to a vacant house in town every day after school to “take” seven or eight of the neighbor boys. The sex was tinge= d with negative and positive elements: it brought both opprobrium and a type of status. The boys routinely denigrated Ronelle for his passive role in their sex. Conversely, Ronelle gained a type = of pride from claimed ownership over the boys in the house. He would tell his sister, “You’re getting my leftovers, don’t forget it.” By the time of the incident in the driveway, Ronelle had fallen in love with one of the boys.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Perpetuating the contradiction of responding to their abuse he loved him particularly “because he punch= ed me in the chest and told me you shouldn’t be doing this.” It was this boy, his boyfriend at = the time, who initiated the incident in the driveway.
Now, as it is contextualized, the dramatic rape= of the young boy in that driveway starts to shed light on the contradictions in normalizing personal violence, and the formative impact it can have on relationship development. For= young Ronelle, he learned early to identify his value as a sexual object for othe= rs, and this was one of the few positive imprints in a life otherwise troubled = with neglect, ostracization, and harassment. But his value to others was = itself often the source of more brutality and harassment. This created an illogical situatio= n that was difficult for the youth to navigate, and ultimately he closed off his emotions in response: &nb= sp;
See that little boy right there, don’t = mess with the urchin, he’s a known urchin. I didn’t play with nobody. Did not play. Dodge ball, nobody hit me with a dodge ball, I’ll kill = you. There’s an evil in me all my life that’s horrible. And like I s= aid I didn’t do a whole lot of playing. For one thing, I’ve seen a = lot of people get hurt, and I feel no harm, I was born hurt. There’s no r= oom in my life to be hurt again. =
For the older Ronelle, now known as Francine, t=
his
emotional hardening and learned aggression served her well throughout her
life. She learned to be a fig=
hter
early, and her willingness to fight came through in many later
experiences. In
Like Nirvana, Francine understands that she is a long-term survivor. Most of t= he people in her stories have now died. Her own health is precarious, as neuropathy, asthma, and additional = HIV complications remind her that she is living on “borrowed time.” Like Nirvana, sh= e also wants to start a non-profit to help the younger generation get opportunities she never had. For Francine, = it is important to tell her story on the record, she asks that no pseudonyms be u= sed because she is proud of what she has survived.
But while acknowledging her incredible will in
staying a survivor in a litany of difficult situations, it is clear parts of
the story are a testimony to how close she came to not surviving. At=
age
19, torn by conflict with a boyfriend who rejected her for “girls,=
221;
Francine desperately tried to get “all that loving and affection and
attention” back by threatening to drink bleach and ammonia in front of
him. Echoing the continued th=
emes
of earlier transphobic partners, the boyfriend responded, “Oh, you dr=
ank
it you stupid fuck. Here take a whole fucking bottle and drink it all. I
don’t care. I still don’t want you. Stupid ass. Think that would
make me want you? Faggot.R=
21; And Francine did drink it, a half a
bottle of bleach and about a quart of ammonia. This was the first of two times she
would attempt suicide by drinking bleach with ammonia that year. In the second attempt, Francine ra=
n down
This and other stories of transgender survival = reveal exactly how precarious that survival is.&n= bsp; The fact that living to the age of thirty of forty is a relatively r= are survivorship within this community, obviously points to a high level of ear= ly death among that community. S= ome of the participants demonstrate amazing skills at survival. But their stories highlight how ma= ny did not survive to that point. Th= e high mortality rate also truncates the study sample. Among populations that face = less violence, one might expect to find a normal distribution of survival skills, some people would have more, some less. For a population such as transgenders, where fatal violence is all too common, the study sample is skewed because so many community members have died young. It is likely that study participan= ts, especially the eldest among them, represent transgender people with higher-than-average survival skills.
All of the violent incidents examined so far sh= are a common theme: the perpetrators are male and the victims are MTF transgenders involved with men in a sexual capacity.&nb= sp; This echoes the literature review, it is clear that sexual partners = are a great risk to MTF transgenders. For the natal male sexual partners of MTF transgenders, the contradictions inherent in desiring a socially-disdained person can cause a high level of internal conflict. These men too often externalize this conflict onto the transgender person in the form of emotional or physical violence. This violence is covertly sanction= ed by a society that holds the transgender person in disdain. This violence becomes even more problematic when it is recognized that a social role as sexual object for m= en is one of the rare places where MTF transgender people find acceptance and value, albeit in a compromised fashion.&nb= sp; Both Ronelle and Nirvana achieved status through this social role, as did Amanda Milan. When combin= ed with the socioeconomic forces that will be explored later, it becomes clear that many MTF transgender people are not realistically able to shield themselves from the high level of violence that accompanies this social position.
Yet not all of the stories of violence emerged = from the MTF transgender interviews; one of the most notably violent histories c= omes from an FTM person. This time= , the violence is more often of aggression, not victimization. Despite the differences, similar t= hemes persist: early conflict leads to survival aggression, social location gives rise to later violence, and the participant outlives their early peer group. In this instance, the = social location was as a male drug dealer.
Jenna is a Black lesbian in her fifties, she currently works as an educator, trying to help younger people make better choices than she did. She doe= s not identify as transgender or even dyke, neither word represents her understan= ding of herself. Her upbringing is= in a poverty-class African American inner-city community. Her early life had little stability. Her parents divorc= ed early and her mother caught tuberculosis after struggling with two jobs in = an effort to support the family. The family first moved into the sanitarium with the mother, then bounced between different relatives. Jenna remembers her first abuse at the sanitarium, where the mostly-white staff h= ad already isolated her from her siblings, and would punish her for misbehavio= r by locking her in a dark closet for hours on end. In the years following, her mother partially recovered, but continued to have babies and was less able to care= for the growing brood. One of the babies was abandoned at the hospital until the grandmother intervened, pick= ing him up and raising him herself. At age 12, her mother re-entered the sanatorium and the family moved in with an alcoholic aunt. The aunt phys= ically abused all the kids, but here Jenna got exceptional notice for her gender variance. This led to additio= nal beatings, but also gender-based psychological abuse. Jenna remembers with distress her aunts’ game of dressing her up in highly feminine clothing and forcing her out of the house, which would invariably lead the little tomboy to hour= s of tears.
Jenna describes herself at this point as reluctant to move= to physical violence, “I wasn’t one of them young tomboys that lik= ed to fight, I could fight, but you had to really, really push me to really pu= sh my buttons in order for me, I would defend myself, I wasn’t one of th= em bully type of ones.” Sh= e also talks about the effects of being a tomboy, and how in her opinion it caused people to avoid her. This soc= ial isolation echoes throughout her adolescence, when she found herself in cons= tant conflict with the gender role she was expected to play, and not supported by any group who would accept her male role.&= nbsp; Despite her reluctance to fight, Jenna found herself in an increasing number of situations where she had to defend herself or her younger siblings. Similar to Nirvana = Rose and Francine, she quickly learned to be aggressive, “I used to fight a lot… I would fight if I had to fight. If you hit me, we’d fight= and that’s all.” By mid-adolescence she was in jail for assaulting a teacher at school, and by later adolescence she had already been shot once.
As Jenna steps through the different phases of = her life, she talks with pride about one time.= In her early 20s, she used her skills at talking to help deal drugs, ultimately becoming known as “John” and gaining acceptance in a group of male drug-dealers. <= /p>
You know, I wanted to be like them. Because t= hey were fucking gangsters, and I loved it. I did, I loved it. I carried a .357 Magnum. That thing was so big that I used to have to keep it in a bag in my car, close to me. And I loved these gangsters, and I wanted to be one…= ; I used to wear a 3-piece suit and the whole shit. I didn’t have no men&= #8217;s underwear on, but I had a 3-piece suit on. It was for a guy. Shoes and everything. And they always used to say Who is that? And they’d say O= h, that’s my girl. That ain’t no girl. And you couldn’t conv= ince them that I was a girl at that time. Because I used to wear a hat all pulled down and shit. Oh man, I loved it.
At this point, Jenna recalls, she was the riche= st she had ever been. She had three = cars, a house, and a woman at home she “threw money at.” Like the other gangsters, she love= d to go out and trick with girls. = These girls accepted John easily despite the fact that she was female-bodied. But she frankly admits that despit= e her past immersion in a world where all her contacts were male, she cannot stand men. She cites two reasons for this, both of which hinge on her gender identity: men have always tried to = tell her a lesbian was not as good as a man, and men have claimed that they could make her straight. In her “gangster” days, Jenna would not tolerate competition from men. She warned her woman at = home that she would need to leave if she ever wanted to sleep with a man. Later, when the woman flouted this warning, Jenna resorted to the most dramatic example of the violence she has always used to defend her position.
So I hear her up in the room with this guy. They’re in the back room. Our bedroom’s here, my daughter’= ;s bedroom here, and we had a back room. But I had put chicken wire on the win= dow, and then nailed the window shut from the outside and the inside. Paranoid, that’s what I was. And so I know the only way out of that room that they’re in is through that door. And there’s a lock on it. There’s a latch going across. I went up there and latched it. I went = down to the corner. I bought some gasoline. I came back to the house, I set there just as nice. I listened to what they did until I heard them snore. I poured the gasoline, I went up to the door and lifted the latch, I put gasoline all around the door, I came down the steps, threw the can, light the match, and went back to my mom’s house to go to bed.
From the present vantage point, Jenna describes herself as “blessed”. She feels blessed in part because the fire department ended up rescu= ing the two people in the house she had set alight. She is later blessed because her e= fforts to shoot the offending man also failed.&nb= sp;
Jenna’s early life was rife with instabil= ity and violence, which could suggest that the later violence was simply be an outgrowth of this socialization. However, Jenna’s narrative suggests another source for the vio= lence. Throughout her story, she maintain= s a consistent theme: that she was constantly defending her gender-variant soci= al location, as a tomboy, as protector for her siblings, as a butch dyke, or a= s a male-passing gangster. She characterizes herself as always being a rebel and resistant to initiating violence, but explains how, over time, violence became a learned response to the persistent assaults on her relatively isolated positioning. Even the coldly deliberate a= ct of trying to burn down the house with her lover in it hinges on an act of gend= er defiance; the woman has slept with the one type of person who Jenna will not tolerate, a man.
Like the earlier examples, Jenna’s story = is also one of survival:
All my friends are dead, they either took a d= rug overdose, HIV got ‘em, or that fucking crack got ‘em now…= I was going home for funerals so much, I had to tell my daughter don’t = call me anymore. I was going home once a month. People was just dropping dead. A= lot of them, I couldn’t even make it down there for their funerals.
This is the final way in which she describes he= rself as being blessed, for surviving. Not long after the house-burning incident she became the target of an FBI sting operation. With painstaking effort, they collected enough evidence to confiscate all of her goods and send her to the penitentiary.&nb= sp; She describes this incarceration as providential, saying it motivated her to get clean, and ultimately saved her from the AIDS epidemic. Again, while Jenna’s story s= tarts from a very different position from that of Nirvana Rose or Francine, three themes echo through it: early survival aggression, social role giving rise = to later violence, and a survival beyond the peer group.
The three stories of Nirvana Rose, Francine, and
Jenna are remarkable for including the greatest level of violence among all=
the
life histories. Nirvana Rose,
Francine and Jenna shared commonalities in that all three are people of col=
or
who were encultured in a lower SES environment. People in low socio-economic class=
es
share a much greater exposure to violence.=
Both being low SES and living in a low SES neighborhood constitute r=
isk
factors for increased violence.
Research has shown this is a result of a complicated host of factors,
including: stress, addictions, community structural disorganization, and
violent modes of governing illicit industries (such as drug sales)205, 206. Being of a non-dominant race or
ethnicity also correlates with a higher level of exposure to violence. For many African Americans in
particular, historical structural isolation in higher crime communities is a
major exposure pathway to violence207, 208. Discrimination also engenders viol=
ence
on many levels, ranging from the extreme violence of the hate crime, to the
more quotidian aggressions of a racism that assumes people of color to be l=
ess
valuable than whites. However, the stories here demonstrate the level to wh=
ich
this violence is clearly correlated with people’s gender variance.
To explore these questions, I examined the role= of violence in several of the other narratives. Several trends emerged. First, violence remained thematic = in the lives of MTF participants. St= ories of abusive partners, routine street hostility, and extreme aggression abounded. Second, while viole= nce was often less present in the lives of FTM participants, it was not absent. Third, while exposure= to violence could be exacerbated by race, ethnicity or, class, it was primarily linked to public gender variance. A short analysis of several participants’ stories will be presented her= e to demonstrate these points.
Three of the MTF life history interviews were w= ith people of similar backgrounds: all were white, over 40, and from middle cla= ss or professional class families. The stories shared common themes. People relayed some form of extreme distress and personal destabilization leading up to the point of awareness and acceptance of the gender variant identity. Unif= ormly, this resulted in extreme isolation as well as poverty. In one case, the act of transition= ing dramatically sheared off all social and financial supports. In two others, longer history with addictions and social isolation had already served to move the participant = into the lowest SES category. The personal ability of each of these three participants to pass as gender normative is very different: Marnie is a crossdresser, so controls her gend= er variant presentation by choosing whether or not to dress in public; Anna is rather short for a natal male, and knows she has always been able to pass easily; Darlene is almost 6’2” tall and this height makes it a constant struggle to pass. Th= eir experiences with violence differ widely, ultimately correlating most highly with their ability to pass as gender normative.
Anna, the one of the three who is most able to =
pass,
has the least violence in her narrative.&n=
bsp;
She even describes being in and near the dangerous drug and sex work
scene without noting violent events.
She also does not bring up early school-based violence. However, she was not publicly gend=
er
variant in those early years but rather presented as a typical male jock.
Marnie also has little violence in her narrativ= e. She does mention some early family abuse, which may be linked to suspicions about her gender variance. Violence emerges as a persistent t= hreat only recently, where it haunts her every public act of crossdressing. For years she feared dressing in p= ublic, and only recently has her affiliation with a group of crossdressers allowed= her to challenge this long-held boundary. Interestingly, after doing it the first time, her predominant memory= is not one of relief, but of concern for her safety:
I could feel the threat. I wouldn’t let= it penetrate, but I could feel it. Because we were walking, and it was a matte= r of just going past one thing after another. So we realized that whatever people thought, however long they hold it, that’s not up to you. So once they’re past, that experience is gone and its irrelevant. But to have= to go through it during that long duration with that amount of intensity was something to deal with.
In contrast to these two stories, the narrative=
of
the 6’ 1-1/2” tall transexual is saturated with violence. Darlene’s experience with vi=
olence
diverged from those participants with a similar background, instead falling
closer to that of Nirvana Rose, Francine, or Jenna. Darlene remembers being “pre=
yed
upon” and beat up frequently as a child, specifically for appearing
effeminate. Unlike some other
participants, she does not describe becoming aggressive as a result. The violence then recedes during h=
er
most gender normative years, only to reappear strongly during transition.
Now, despite being able to pass more easily, she identifies her history of violence as a major life issue and talks about be= ing unable to control its impact on her mental health:
I think you accumulate a lot of scar tissue, = and a lot of those wounds are covering up unhealed wounds, and I feel like I̵= 7;m really covering a lot of wounds. Little things happen that aren’t so little. Like you get followed home, I got followed home by somebody the oth= er day. Its really scary… I am going through a period right now where I’m having a lot of nightmares, a lot of early sleeping problems wher= e I wake up hysterical after 15 or 20 minutes of sleep. That happens for a few hours. Even though I’m taking medication, its hard to get back. So I really am not in a good place right now. I just want to isolate, and not be around friends. So it’s probably not good. If I had a plan, I would feel bett= er. I wouldn’t feel quite so depressed.
Darlene’s race and early SES do impact her experience with violence. Unl= ike the low SES people of color, Darlene did not stay in the higher-risk sex industry or at poverty level after transitioning. While she is still burdened by deb= ts related to that process, she is very aware that her high level of education= and privilege of race helped her bounce back from the destabilization of transition.
I had a very large group of friends in the tr= ans community.. I was a popular girl. And I was probably one of the weird people because I was between two worlds. I was very into the strip community, but I was also someone that could talk about owning a professional business. So I= had these two things going on. Clearly I was very privileged. I was white.
These privileges provided her with many of the resources required to escape the dangerous, low-SES world of many of the ot= her participants. After transitio= n, she capitalized on opportunities that allowed her to leave sex work behind: a r= ich mentor was able to pay for many of her surgeries, she was offered a rewardi= ng job, and she now is pursing a second graduate degree. The opportunities of which Darlene= was able to take advantage are most likely related to her privileged position a= s a white person.
The narratives of MTF and FTM participants dive= rge around the issue of violence. Jenna’s experience stands out as much more violent than those = of the other FTMs interviewed. Violence does emerge in each interview, but in a role less central t= han in many of the other narratives. Individuals FTM narratives will be treated in more detail later, but here I will briefly review their various depictions of violence. Derek’s father would beat hi= m in an attempt to force a traditional gender identity on him. Later he chose to pass as male and= date females, always knowing that in his restrictive cultural environment discov= ery would equal death. Chris grew physically rebellious in school early as she flailed against a female social role, her later acceptance as one of a gang of disruptive boys then led her into a pattern of drunken physical fighting with others. Carrington grew up in a family wit= hout physical violence, but his extreme addiction problems exposed him to violen= ce from strangers and partners. = Craig was mentored into the Black butch community by elder dykes who spoke of long experience with violence, emphasizing the coping strategies they had learne= d. In perhaps the best encapsulation o= f how violence pervades these communities, Craig says he actually feels left out during discussions on the subject, because he sees it as odd that he has not experienced any transphobic violence. While the levels of exposure to violence are different between the F= TM and MTF respondents, the issue of vulnerability is always present, which it= self is a cause of stress. Violenc= e was discussed in each of the two focus groups.= In the MTF group, people easily relayed direct experiences of abuse,= one had even survived being thrown out of a fourth floor window. In the FTM group the stories were = not as dramatic, but the theme of vulnerability and fear was just as present. Stories of challenge and threat em= erge, but here they are tinged with a sense of physical vulnerability. This group has been socialized as female. As such, individuals = often believe that they are physically weaker than—and therefore at risk of attack from—predatory males. Most FTMs try to escape or defuse potentially violent situations rat= her than challenge agressors:
I’ve had people not know, and then chal= lenge me. That’s always interesting. Its’ like what am I going to do? Usually, my number one consideration is don’t oen your mouth. Whatever you do, do not respond, because I’m like one way or another, if they = are going to kick my ass because they think I’m a guy that’s like pissed off because they’re staring at me, then that might happen. But= if they’re going to kick my ass because they think I’m guy that’s sick of them staring at me who happens to actually be a woman, then I’m really fucked.
This physical vulnerability stemming from birth gender is a stressor. In other situations, the effect of being born female may offer a protective effect f= rom violence. “I feel too someone’s not going to really beat me up if they think I’m a wo= man, they’re not going to hit me, they’ll just throw words at you.” But in some participant’s minds, this protective effect is related to their would= -be attacker’s perception of females as occupying a low social location.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> For these FTMs, being = spared violence because of their natal gender merely reinforces the negative messa= ge that one cannot deviate from the gender strata. In general, transgenders on the MTF spectrum are targeted more often than those on the FTM spectrum. This is a complicated phenomenon, related to the social power of natal males, and perhaps due to outrage than anyone would reject that privileged role for the role of the less-valuable woman or the troubling between-gender person.
A theme of extreme aggression towards a gender variant person resonates throughout the literature review and in the stories here. Transgender murde= rs are marked by overkill: multiple stabbings, multiple gunshots. Exploring these stories in t= he context of past literature starts to crystallize another facet of violence = as it relates to transgender people: a phenomenon I have termed “hair-trigger violence.” Gender transgression evokes extreme emotional response in some peopl= e, so much so that the possibility of violence can be quickly introduced to an otherwise benign social situation. Importantly, the extreme nature of this response is not reliant on an adverse interaction or in fact any interaction at all, so there is no warni= ng that it is coming. This makes= the emergence of violence that much more unpredictable, and underscores the difficulties in shielding oneself from it.= In essence, gender variance is so distressing to some people that th= ere is not a standard trigger before violent response. Instead the infinitely more sensit= ive hair trigger is all that stands between socially acceptable behavior and aggression. This leaves trans= gender people permanently vulnerable to hair trigger violence whenever gender vari= ance is exposed.
Examples from Darlene’s story underscore = this phenomenon. She talks about h= er experiences walking down the streets: the man washing the car turns and hoses her down, the youths on the other side of the street start yelling at her, people inside apartments thr= ow things at her. For her, it is routine that people will go out of their way to become aggressive towards h= er. No precipitating interaction is ne= eded to catalyze this response. Her presence alone is enough to move them to act, almost as if they were trying= to fight so not much against her= , but against her existence. In ano= ther example, Darlene talks about how an otherwise non-aggressive person was mov= ed to violence simply by being confronted with the smallest of tokens of her gender variance, a “fleck” of mascara. Dressed as a male, Darlene s= howed up to her ex-wife’s house in an agreed-upon arrangement to see their children. As they spoke, the = wife spotted the offending fleck of mascara and in response she punched Darlene = in the face. This person h= ad never before been physically aggressive in all of Darlene’s history w= ith her.
Hair trigger violence emerges again and again in these interviews. Sometimes disaster seems only to be averted by fate, as in this story told by a participant of the MTF focus group:
I’m walking and this young man…sa= ys ‘come to my house.’ We didn’t have any sexual intercourse, we went to sleep and I took a sho= wer and my girlfriend called me and said you gotta get out of there. And I turned my back, and the man started choking me. He was trying to kill me. Then he tried to smother me w= ith a pillow… And while I w= as struggling, I couldn’t really struggle too hard, my girlfriend came up and knocked on the door and he got scared, and I got up and walked away lik= e it was nothing. And then the cops came and they said being who I am I had no business being in that house.
Sometimes the hair trigger of violent response = stops just short of physical assault, as in this story by an FTM focus group participant:
On my ride home on the train, this guy was sitting… and then he started in with this like homophobic shit about = me, like about how the Gay people are just awful and how they should get out of= the streets, and blah, blah, blah, looking straight me, and he hates fags, and these fucking fags have got to get out of the city. Nobody is speaking up, nobody is d= oing anything… finally he got up and he left… showing me his knife, which was clipped onto the belt of his pants. Like he made a point of it, l= ike of scratching his shirt, and then walked off the train, looking at me the w= hole time… I could have been just like Shut the fuck up, or something like that, and all of a sudden I could have had a knife on me. So it’s sca= ry, totally scary.
The constant risk of hair trigger violence clea= rly shows how violence is not an isolated traumatic event in the lives of transgender people. It is more aptly described as a specter, a type of mental haunting that creates prolon= ged stress.
The knowledge that visibility equals risk resul= ts in another dynamic within the transgender community: hiding gender variance to survive. This survival strate= gy is powerful, and is effective not only in shielding one from violence but from many other adverse social determinants related to gender identity as well.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> But while hiding gender variance is protective, it also takes a toll on stress. Some people hide as their birth ge= nder, either in reluctance to risk shearing off the supports in their lives by exposing their gender variance, or because physical constraints make it unlikely they could ever pass as the opposite sex. Katie Douglass, a trans-identified= mental health provider talks about the stress that results:
This being visible is to put yourself at risk= , you know. That is there’s an automatic incentive to be closeted, just not being who you are, which creates so many mental health issues. In some resp= ects it can be mentally tortuous to know you can have control over how you look = and then you would have some control as to how you would be treated, but then y= ou wouldn’t have any control over how you feel about yourself. All those mental gymnastics can drive somebody nuts.
On the other hand, some people can pass as the opposite of their birth gender, and use this ability to blend into a new ge= nder normative community. Katie se= es this happen a lot in the FTM co