Co-Opting the Transgender Community

     Transgender Education Network of Texas mission is to educate the public in interpersonal and infrastructural settings on gender diversity. It is a job I love, it is a job I wish someone would pay me to do full time. To reach that goal, I have to raise money, we have to generate program income from living out our mission.
     Two incidents this week have frustrated me and caused my feminist brain to lock into analysis of the "helping" of the transgender community and what that means.
     Let's start with a disclaimer and with the professionals. I have had the pleasure to meet honest, good, and sincere professionals doing work lately in the field of trans realities and how to train other professionals in appropriate professional care. I respect and treasure these people, what follows is a general trend argument not directed at their work....

     I have been teaching about trans realities and how to interact with trans people for about 10+ years in a variety of settings, from "in the classroom as a teacher (in 2003 my first roundtable)", to direct service agency providers, to the healthcare setting. Guess what? One of three things usually happened.
1. Individuals listened and participated, but no movement took place on action plans made or training put in place.
2. Individuals took the information and then presented it as though they were the pioneers in the effort (there are exceptions).
3. Individuals thought I was unqualified despite my science background, my stellar mind.....and oh, that thing called lived experience and intense study of a community.
4. I was someone's project for a graduate class and then they just moved on to their own thing....forgetting "us trans people".

     However, NOW....... HHS, the CDC and others have lain out the directive that transgender people will be counted and have attached monetary award to the effort.  Seems now that people are literally crawling out of the woodwork to "offer our community help", "want to meet with us", and "create curriculum for other professionals like them".

    I feel some kinship with my native american neighbors at the stealing of my culture for white profit.

    You, whomever you are, may mean well. It is admirable when you meet with us and try to base your teaching on real lived experience...make sure you take a wide and thorough sample of our community.....oh, you might want to actually hire some of us to "guide you" through the trans jungle too. Ultimately though:
1. There are already best practice methods you need to be researching
2. You need to show realness and investment in the community FIRST
3. You are, in reality, taking our culture to make personal profit.

I am not opposed to professionals developing decent curriculum (well, ok I am)....but be serious about this work, you are playing with people's lives.

Flip side is the second incident of the week. Requesting trans related materials printed (but not owned by) our organization without context, followup, or real investment in our organization, by trans people that may feel they can just "whip a program together". It requires people skilled in doing these kinds of programs to do it well.

We exist to serve these materials....

It costs money to do this work....

Good, quality diversity training, should be paid well and does cost money.

Don't just ask for some brochures and pass them out and expect people to "get it". We are professionals, hire us to come and give a program. Pay for our gas, and donate to our organization.

Gender is not a transgender owned concept, we share it with everyone....try hiring us to create understanding and establish a safe space environment instead of just giving "transgender" lip service.

I guess I have exhausted my fire....let me end with the caveat.

During the 80's our gay men, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities were left with no one to help with the AIDS epidemic. Let me reiterate....NO ONE wanted to touch us. What did we do? We friggin took care of each other. My forefathers and foremothers pioneered safer sex advertising, found ways to get each other through the plague and perservered. AIDS agencies were GLBT agencies because those are the only people that were invested.

As HIV/AIDS care became an industry it become professionalized and the GLBT individuals who once were serving in soup kitchens, bandaging cuts, and doing the work were replaced with nurses and others who found this as an occupation.....with only varying degrees of connection to the culture and history...and we lost something in that change.

I fear the same for the transgender community. That does not mean I don't treasure, uplift, and welcome our allies with open arms....We as a community need to be kinder to our allies....it does mean that I need to know you are indeed part of our family and not just someone trying to make a quick buck.