Mon mémoire en français! A sweet and wonderful man named Edouard has translated the first few pages of my
memoir “
Mark 947” into French for a class project. I am very flattered! Check it out, if you read French. If you prefer English, there’s always my
original version.
1. Au commencement.
J’avais pour habitude de rêver d’un navire noir, échoué au milieu de débris rejetés par la mer déchainée. La pluie, atteignant le sol, m’humidifiait les pieds et les instables surfaces des eaux noires s’ouvraient pour engloutir le reflet d’une lune dégagée. Alors que d’épais nuages fondaient dans les airs et glissaient rapidement vers des fissures rougeâtres situées entre ciel et mer, les ondulations s’incorporaient aux flaques couleur acier qui se rétrécissaient à mes pieds, déformant les créatures du dessous, isolées et contorsionnées par la mort. J’avais été laissé en retrait, avec ce navire. Il était sombre et l’eau de mer infiltrée l’avait fait pourrir. « Je ne suis pas censé être ici, » dis-je au ciel, mais je n’eus aucune réponse. Il était facile de s’allonger, érodé par l’exhalaison des vagues et les doigts du vent à la fois doux et déchirants sur mon dos. Il n’y avait personne ici. Aucune volonté. Aucun mal
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autobiography, français, French, Mark 947, memoir, Tennessee, translation
Well, if I had any illusions that most of the same people who supported Obama also viewed gay and lesbian people as equal human beings, those illusions are very much dead now. As I mentioned in the Psychology Today piece I wrote on trans people and politics the day before the election, it has become more and more of a struggle for me to avoid bitterness when I look at the strangers around me who prove again and again that most of them are at best apathetic to GLBT issues. And many of them are outright hostile and hypocritically judgmental.
Certainly not all… my life is full of good friends who are heterosexual and gender normative. The ”No on Prop 8” events I worked introduced me to tons of really cool, supportive people like Laura Silverman and others.
But numbers don’t lie, and our supporters were drowned out by the slim majority of fear mongering, falsehood promoting, religiously hypocritical average Joes and Janes. Most of the people who voted yes on Proposition 8 (yes to discrimination) were influenced by the millions of dollars funneled against us by religious institutions like the Mormon church (2) (3) (4), and many cited religious reasons when asked why they were voting to exclude same sex marriages.
Why do I care? After all, I am attracted to men and I can legally marry any man I choose. I care because outsiders see all GLBT people as “the same”, and their vote against same sex marriage was a vote against ALL our humanity. A vote against ALL of our participation in the human family. You can bet your britches that the people who voted “Yes on Prop 8 (YES to discrimination)” are the same people who will vote away my rights to legal womanhood if and when they try to cram that onto their Frankenstein monster of a Constitution, too. Attacking gays and lesbians is just the precursor to coming back and sweeping out the even-more-minor minorities like transsexual people.
So yes, I see how it is, and I won’t forgive this blatant slap in the face of the community that has been my only source of nurture and comfort through my difficult transition. Religious bigotry, hate, intolerance and hypocrisy has resonated throughout my entire life. I hope that now, more people in the community and our supporters will see exactly what’s going on here and start actively working to dismantle the influence that religious and fundamentalist nuts have established on OUR lives.
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Hey kids, I wrote a nice piece on my views concerning transsexual people (and all GLBT people, really) and politics for Psychology Today magazine’s blog. Please click on the link, even if you don’t have time to read it, so that I can get some page views! Thank you!
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/transposition/200811/we-come-from-you-transsexual-people-and-politics
For most of my life, when I looked at the people passing by in my daily activities, on some subconcious level I felt like I was one of them. Beneath whatever surface tensions, we were all part of the human family, and aside from my transition I wasn’t terribly unlike most of them when it came to the basics. But even more so than a lifetime of almost numbingly commonplace rejection, the heartbreaking contempt toward transsexual people (as part of the GLBT community) exposed by the heightened politics around the 2008 Presidential election has left me feeling like I need to examine closely who and what I am a part of. For trans people, gender is forced into being a social, political and legal issue as a matter of simple survival.
**** Read More ****
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Psychology Today
Hey kids, I don’t send out bulletins like this often, but things are tight these days and so I decided to start putting my autobiography out there in downloadable PDF format. You can read about it on my site HERE or even download a copy for five smackers here.
In any case, all my best and thank you for all the support! =)
Calpernia
Mark 947 chronicles one woman’s progress from spirit to flesh, a literal transubstantiation by force of will. Raised as a boy by loving but religious parents in the rural heartland of Tennessee, Calpernia Addams found her way on an unlighted path from forbidden dreams to fulfillment as a scholar, showgirl and eventually, as a woman.
Sultry stage siren by night, intellectual chameleon by day, she worked her way to the top of Nashville’s underground entertainment scene without ever succumbing to drugs, alcohol or bitterness, and through it all never lost her heart. When love walked into her new life in the form of a handsome young Army private, it seemed everything had at last come together. Then at the pinnacle of her career, as she was crowned Tennessee Entertainer of the Year in front of hundreds of adoring fans, her love was murdered in his sleep sixty miles away by bigoted fellow soldiers, sparking a national controversy that resonates still.
Whether ablaze in the dazzle of the spotlight or haunting the woods of Tennessee in flannel and pigtails, Calpernia lives her life with the humor and spirit of a woman who can face anything and still move forward with hope intact.
Mark 9:47
43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
48 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
- The Bible, King James Version
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Hey kids, my latest blog is up at Psychology Today. I kinda tear into the whole debate stirred up by my “Bad Questions” video, but this time a mostly hetero audience will be reading it, so make sure you pop over and support me in the comments thread. You know how brutal they can be! =)
Thank you!
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/transposition/200807/let-them-eat-cake
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I’ve received emails from a very small handful of transsexual women over the years, dispatched from the deep closeted secrecy of whatever their version of stealth is, telling me that it would be better for “all of us” if I would just “keep quiet”. This isn’t the very widespread and debatable feeling of embarrassment over people identifying themselves as trans who relish being spectacles of trash television and outrageousness. With me, it’s usually more of a “sister to sister” chiding, like one old conservative church lady telling another one that she “really should reconsider that gaudy lawn ornament of the lady bending over and showing her bloomers… what will the other parishioners think?!” You know… kind of polite and sweet, yet still sticking their nose in where it doesn’t belong?
But I don’t think we’re in need of being shushed like Anne Frank about to play a game of Jenga while the Nazi’s are downstairs anymore. And I’m not even talking about being “loud and proud” in a gay pride parade. It’s the quieter daily-life things that a basically assimilated trans woman encounters all the time. For example, I refuse to make up lies about my first Sunday dress and my years as a Girl Scout when a stranger asks me about my past in order to spare them any discomfort with the facts of my history. I hate the fact that I had to transition, and would rather have been born with a female body. I don’t plan to bring it up as a conversational topic with every stranger I meet. But I will not be pressured to make up stories and lies by the Shush Brigade. I personally and internally claim my full history, including the torturous years of growing up forced into the male social role and having to transition my body to match my soul. And I still claim unqualified womanhood. How’s that for a brain twister? Trust me, in twenty years it won’t cause anyone to bat an eye.
I wrote a very short essay containing my feelings toward the Shush Brigade, which I’ve edited a little and posted below. I know that everyone will have their own feelings on this topic. Just remember, this is a response to being told how to live. I’m not telling you how to live. I’m telling you how I try to live. There’s a difference.
To Transsexuals Who Are Ashamed of Transsexuals
Living in stealth can be comfortable, and I can’t deny that I would have tried if I hadn’t been outed so publicly in 1999. But ultimately the facts still exist that most trans women were assigned the male gender at birth, grew up being pushed toward the male social role, and had to undertake a colossally difficult transition to align their bodies and social roles with their hearts. You, Andrea, I and every other trans woman has been through some version of that process.
(Click READ MORE to read the rest of the essay… it’s not too long!)
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http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/transposition/200806/transsexual-author-calpernia-addams-gender-and-sexuality
Hi kids! Psychology Today has asked me to join their list of bloggers, which will be a big responsibility, but one that I welcome. I’ve made my introductory post, aimed at the much broader audience of PT, but look for upcoming posts written in a more “magazine-y” format on topics of interest to me. The REALLY interesting part of this will be reading the comments left by PT readers. Yikes… I’ll keep a Cosmo handy, ha ha!
I’m going to try to have a post up every Wednesday to start with. We’ll see how it goes, and I hope you’ll check them out along with me!
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I was flattered to be asked to write a little about “Transamerican Love Story” for “The Advocate”. Check it out! =)
http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid53707.asp
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Are you a “Professional Transsexual” cashing in on the trans community?
When people ask this question about me or my business, it generally makes me mad, because the term “cashing in” directly implies a cold, mercenary grab for money at the expense of higher values. It’s never used in a nice or appreciative sense outside of discussing literal bank transactions. But I suppose it’s good to respond if people are really asking this question out of legitimate curiosity. Here’s my general response to people who might feel like I am personally cashing in on being trans, cashing in on the community, or cashing in on being a trans activist.
There’s very little “cash” involved in being out as trans. If anything, I feel that I’ve succeeded in making a (modest) living in spite of being open about my transition, rather than my success being enhanced by being out. I taste the bitter fruits of being out with disheartening regularity each time I lose another job or boyfriend. I’ve worked hard under unsympathetic circumstances, I’m proud of the work I’ve done, and I think it stands up admirably next to most anything anyone I know has ever done.
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Yes, despite what you’ve been told, there is such a thing as a bad question! I’ve been in the public eye for more than a decade, and get asked shockingly inappropriate personal questions all the time. Most of them could be answered easily in the questioner’s own mind by thinking about it for around one second. What they’re usually really asking is, Do you know that I am judging you? And the answer to that is yes. This list may seem a little… angry, perhaps. But after so very many years, I would gamble to say that few people would handle these things as diplomatically as I try to do. If you’ve never asked me (or another person who has gone through transition) these questions, sit back and enjoy the list. If you have, don’t worry about it too much now, just think about it more next time. I am a Southerner through-and-through, so if you query me in person as to whether I minded that time you asked one of these questions, I will probably say, “No! Of course not!”, but I really did. I really, really did. Here are the ones I hate being asked the most, and in the spirit of the old MAD Magazine “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”, here are some responses to them:
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