The following is the Keynote Address that Jamison Green Delivered at the 2005 Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta.  I post it here for a couple of reasons: 

First, I couldn't agree more with what Jamison is saying in this piece.  It's all about community.  It's about the difficulties we face in our world - difficulties that impact each and every one of us.  I couldn't have said it any better than James does here.  James rocks!

Secondly, more people need to hear this than the 400+ people in the room that day.  This theme is central to who we are and where we're going as a community.  As a key leader in that effort, James's call needs to be heard by anyone and everyone who will listen.  Unfortunately, those who read it here won't have the benefit of his powerful, riveting delivery.  There wasn't a peep in the room as he talked, and the standing ovation at the end was a fitting tribute both to his message and his passion. 

That being said, I'm happy to provide whatever additional visibility I can by posting it  here on my website.  Many thanks to James for making it available.

Southern Comfort Conference 2005 Keynote Speech
Sept. 24, 2005
© 2005 by Jamison Green

Thank you, Holly. Thank you, Cat, and the Southern Comfort Conference steering committee for making it possible for me to be here this year. I want to thank all y’all for coming to this conference. Some of the people I often look forward to seeing here are not here this year because of the ravages of Katrina. I’m not the praying type in general, but when I think of the devastation and the challenges ahead for the people who are now enduring that storm’s aftermath, and the further torment of hurricane Rita, my heart goes out to them, and I do pray for them. Perhaps you heard about the trans woman Arpollo Vicks, a New Orleans evacuee, who was jailed in Bryan, Texas, for taking a shower at the evacuation shelter. There’s no hope of privacy under these circumstances. Perhaps you’ve thought about the situation that faces many flood victims who have no identification papers, and who will have to prove their identity somehow in order to get support for rebuilding their lives. If they ever hoped for secrecy, it is a luxury now. Perhaps you’ve thought about the displaced transsexual people who now have the challenge of getting new prescriptions for hormones or other necessary medical treatment. I wanted to speak with you today about the concept of privacy versus secrecy, and the need for us to be engaged in a visible transgender movement.

We do have a movement, you know. And no successful political movement has ever been invisible. Visibility is absolutely necessary if we are to succeed in obtaining the health, dignity, and social safety we need and deserve as human beings. Further, for better or for worse, our movement is inextricably linked to the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual movement. I don’t think this is a bad thing. I know, it can complicate things for some people, and our differences and similarities can be difficult to explain to someone who is completely unfamiliar with sexual variance and gender variance and the difference between sex and gender. But if we continue to explain, eventually we won’t have to do that anymore. Eventually our truth will become common knowledge, and we won’t be so frightening anymore. It is a fact that it is not just certain types of sexual expression that are despised by certain conformist zealots, but it is also variance in gender expression. It is that “incorrect” gender expression that most commonly gets people into trouble with those who believe that our bodies are fixed symbols of the prescribed social roles we supposedly absolutely must play, who believe that the dichotomy between the sexes must be maintained at all costs, else the very foundation of society will crumble.

When facing those who object to transsexual treatments or oppose our efforts to achieve equal access to the benefits of society, we are frequently reminded of society’s view of us as somehow morally unfit for human consideration. We are reminded of every hurtful thing that has ever been said to or about us as we are called again and again to justify ourselves as worthy. The issue comes down to our feelings about being equal human beings even though we are different, versus our opposition’s feelings that we are unworthy, and that’s putting it mildly. Thus, as columnist Wendy Kaminer once noted the salient question becomes: How do we argue with a feeling? I think we must start with the feelings inside ourselves.

Self-disparagement is common among transgendered and transsexual people. Granted, there is a certain strength that minorities achieve in creating their own language and a provocative humor that creates an insider mentality from outsider status. Acerbic drag queen humor is a clear example. But in the transsexual world, too often the humor is missing. I’ll never forget being on a panel speaking to healthcare outreach workers in 1993 with several transsexual women, and the first woman introduced herself by saying, “Good morning, my name is ‘Maria,’ and I’m a sex change.” Her words were like shattering glass. It stunned me that she would speak of herself, and by extension the rest of us, in that dehumanized way. I don’t think she was aware of it in that way, though: she was very beautiful, and the statement may have been intended to shock our audience, but for me it wasn’t an effective bridge to our common humanity. In a workshop on relationships at the 1997 FTM conference held in Boston, it pained me greatly to hear man after man from across the U.S. confess his sense of inadequacy and his fear of being compared with “genetic men” or the shorthand “genetics.” Hearing those phrases over and over, I was compelled to stop the discussion and ask them to listen to their words and realize how much they were taking away from themselves by denying their own reality, their own humanness, and their right to exist with difference from other men. I encouraged them to stop belittling themselves by using this language, and suggested they use non-transsexual as the comparative term, placing the lack in the camp of the other, not ourselves. Because we are real, we are genetic, even though we don’t know what causes transsexualism, and even though our bodies are different from those of non-transsexual men. Transmen and transwomen are still human beings with needs in relation to other human beings. If we are concerned that others will perceive our physical differences as laughable deficiencies the answer is not to dehumanize and desensitize ourselves so we can manage rejection, but to sensitize others to appreciate us, to learn to manage our own self-doubts so that others will be able to see worthy partners in us. It is not that we shouldn’t face our differences or pretend we don’t have fears or doubts, but that we must not accept the mythology or the rumors that others circulate about us: that we are not real, that we are less than real, that we are imitation people, trying to be something we are not.

This is the essence of the debate over our right to autonomy: who gets to decide who or what anyone is? In modern, Western society, medicine and the law cooperate to validate or invalidate the worth of human beings. Doctors have a lot of authority over gender-variant lives; our identities are subject to their scrutiny, and we are shamed and ridiculed by violations of our confidentiality, and if we need to transition, to change our sex medically, we must submit to their decisions about us even as we try to educate them about ourselves. Now rescue workers have the capacity to intrude upon our personhood in circumstances that render us completely vulnerable and at their mercy. Until we are faced with these kinds of challenges, we don’t often think how important legal procedures and judgments are in confirming identities, trans or non-trans. It seems that whenever a transsexual person is party to a lawsuit brought to decide whether that transsexual person has legal standing or entitlement (for instance, the right to inherit property from a spouse, or parental rights, or the right to use a public restroom), the opposing attorney cannot resist using anti-transsexual bias as leverage to discredit them. Cases that are heard in higher courts in Western countries often revolve around the notion that transsexual people, because of their gender variance, are not entitled to equal treatment under the law. Such cases frequently concern employment discrimination, but transsexual and transgendered people also turn up in immigration cases and family law cases. Many disputes turn on the validity of a contracted marriage, and thus lead to the question of who is entitled to enter into marriage contracts. There are many cases on either side of the Atlantic, as well as in Australia, where transsexual people have lost, and even some where we have prevailed.

The concerted effort of a handful of attorneys, legal scholars, politicians, administrators and social scientists, transsexual and transgender activists, and medical professionals to develop and advocate the lines of reasoning and to provide substantiating evidence have led to some favorable rulings, and the establishment of favorable administrative policies in businesses, schools, and governmental institutions, and these victories matter greatly in the long-range effort to establish the validity of transsexual lives in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and in the U.K., and are also aiding efforts in many other countries. My own efforts have affected legal and medical policy in these four English-speaking countries, and also in Japan, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Columbia. And through films and books I know that my own words and image are being used in Turkey, Israel, Mexico, Argentina, India, and South Africa to help local LGBT activists move their issues forward.

Transsexual people are everywhere: in corporate board rooms, in prisons, in academe, on HIV wards in hospitals, on factory floors, preaching from pulpits, litigating in courtrooms, working as nurses, as artists, as managers, as research scientists, sex workers, software engineers, architects, sitting near you on an airplane or in a movie theater, riding the subway. We are in schools as students and as teachers or administrators. We are victims of natural disasters and we can be relief workers, too. Some of us are very old, some are very young, most are everywhere in between. We are all human beings.

But this is the crux of the matter: even if we have all the outward trappings of privilege: gender-normative appearance, a good job, a family that accepts or even loves us, a partner, economic stability, an ordinary life, even though we may rarely think about our transsexual status, it never goes away. It is always with us. As long as the legal system debates our status while relying on the medical system to define us, we do not have the same autonomy as non-transsexual people. In the U.S., once our transsexual status is known, our health or life insurance or pension may be revoked, our jobs may be terminated, our families may be left without the benefit of our support, we may lose custody of or contact with our children, we may be subjected to embarrassment, public humiliation, or physical harm. It’s no wonder that many transsexual people want to believe that once they’ve gone through their transition and gotten their paperwork changed it is all over and done with, that they are now “really” the man or woman they feel they are. And so they are! But only until someone with greater social authority or brute strength takes away their ability to self-define.

If you think that once your transition is all over you will never have to make reference to your past, to the change in your physical status, you are deluding yourself. If you think that just because you keep your cross-dressing confined to the occasional hotel, you are deluding yourself about the nature of the oppression that all trans people – including you – are coping with. How do we argue with our own internalized shame and weariness of being different? As with any aspect of life that requires change or adjustment, we weigh the alternatives. We think as logically as we can about what is good for us as individuals and as contributors to our immediate social group, family or extended family, and to our larger social groups such as employers or student bodies. Like athletes visualizing a winning performance, we visualize scenarios in which we have one kind of persona, or wardrobe, or image, or body, or another, one gender presentation or another, or several as the case may be. We agonize over consequences, and eventually we make a decision that we are willing to live with. Over our lifetime, we may make many of these kinds of decisions, whether they are about our career, our relationships, or our gender presentation. We study ourselves in the mirror, and whether we are elated, disappointed, or just introspective we cannot deny that at some fundamental level we also stare directly into the face of fear, loneliness, and economic or emotional disaster as we debate the potential consequences of our actions.

We are allowed, even encouraged, to improve ourselves in so many ways, I wonder, why should a quest to be ourselves in our own bodies be any less serious or meaningful than an educational or a spiritual quest? Is it because cross-dressing and transsexualism are presumed to be connected with genitals and sexuality and therefore assumed to be base or superficial? Is that why it looks so self-indulgent, like a kind of masturbation? Speaking for myself, I feel that changing sexes is, in fact, a kind of spiritual quest. It is our willful destiny to find our balance, that strength, that peace and logic of the soul that underlies the agony, the frustration, the desperation and anxiety of living on this earthly plane. Our brothers and sisters who have lost everything in Katrina may have lost the trail of breadcrumbs that validated their pasts. Who are they? Who will they be forced to become?

We are living in an era of rapid, astounding change. It is no wonder that some people should cling to belief structures and concepts that comfort them: for example, the belief that there are only two sexes; or that marriage should only be between a man and a woman; or that sexual activity should only occur in a reproductive context, i.e., between a male and a female; that gender identity and expression should align with genital configuration; that we should be able to tell what sex someone is; or that transsexualism is never a medical condition but always a psychotic delusion; or that transgender or transsexual identity is nothing more than a sense of cosmetic discomfort equivalent to unhappiness with an ugly nose, or a twisted form of sexual attraction that requires the self to become the other, or some such convoluted theory that may indeed fit some unfortunate individuals but does severe injustice to the majority of transpeople. These presumptions are as offensive and ridiculous as beliefs that women are less intelligent or capable than men, that people of color are less intelligent or capable than whites.

Change is inevitable. All people have visible and invisible aspects: we will never see all of a person or know everything he or she has to offer. We project, we imagine, we suspect, we judge constantly. In spite of this, and precisely because of my history of physical change, I hold a vision of community that inclines toward a world without shame or fear of difference, a world in which people are not afraid of other people’s identities or beliefs. That vision of community calls us to be conscious about the way we value human beings. If we walk away from the reality of our transsexual pasts, our transsexual bodies will suffer. We still must reveal our physical past and present to our physicians, and in some circumstances to our employers, and certainly to our family members and partners, and if we do not continue to inform these people and others—in fact, the rest of the world—of our existence, then we will continue to endure the shock, ridicule, and abuse of the ignorant and the vicious who masquerade as the righteous. Our transsexual and cross-dressing youth, our gender-queer youth, will suffer if all we do is get our papers changed and close our doors to the world. Who will hold up the beacon in the darkness for those who follow us? Will we have struggled all these years to make this progress only to leave a vacuum in our wake? How are we leaving the world a better place if we think all we are doing is looking for our separate, ordinary lives? When I reflect on the events of my transition, on the long and mostly isolated journey toward my ever-changing self, I am deeply grateful for the particles of trans history that were available to me that enabled me to chart my course. What our activists and scholars and martyrs have done over the past decade in particular is illuminate that history and reveal the present, very real, unique lives that are transgender lives. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are providing yet another opportunity to open millions of eyes to the real world, our unique and vibrant world. The difference between privacy and secrecy is one of self-awareness, dignity, and self-esteem. Confidentiality should be possible without imposing a heavy burden of secrecy that weighs us all down in self-denial and shame. The dignity of privacy should be available to everyone.

Yes, we are living in unprecedented times, times of great upheaval and change, when a multiplicity of issues tug at our sleeves. There is a tendency in times of stress to withdraw, to circle the wagons and make sure one is among one’s own kind. And how we judge now who is “our kind” will have a profound effect on the future – on our own individual futures, to be sure, but very possibly on the future of civilization.

Some people would tell you that sexual expression and gender identity are trivial matters and not worthy of consideration equal to that which we give race, class, or religious beliefs. Some people would tell you that being different from their established norms of heterosexuality, gender role conformance, and gender identity stability, as interpreted by them, are not worthy of equal consideration in society or under the law. But I say all human beings are entitled to the dignity of their person and to the opportunity to know and define themselves. Any basic human characteristic for which a person can be persecuted is worthy of protection under civil law, and we should stand up for the right of each person to live their full self so long as they harm no other person.

I urge you now to cultivate a new level of awareness of difference that is not fearful, but is instead clear and fearless in its acceptance. I urge you now, in this age of more global communication, more instant communication, to avoid leaping to conclusions about people or things you do not understand. Reserve your anger for those who would cause deliberate harm, for those who judge harshly the difference of others.

Bring your energy and drive toward activism to the cause of strengthening the connective tissue between the peoples of the world who seek peace and prosperity, who are the undeserving victims of terror, deprivation, hatred and fear. Tell the people you know about your own experience – or, if it is not safe for you to be out as trans, tell about people you have met, tell other people’s stories, and join the fight against fear; join the fight against racism and sexism, fight against poverty and ignorance. No matter who you are—fight against beliefs that say it is acceptable to deny civil rights to some people because they are different in a way that causes no harm. Think clearly and speak out firmly about who benefits from the oppression of others, who benefits when civil rights are denied, when a deaf ear and a blind eye are turned toward marginalized people, when our backs are turned on the equal application of principles we claim to hold dear: justice, fairness, equal opportunity, our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Measure your privacy against the ramifications of secrecy, and while you ensure your own safety, find a way not to do so at the expense of a visible movement for the freedom for all of us to safely be ourselves.

Thank you very much.