Since I have become a member of this wonderful little online community I have become increasingly aware of the differences in culture that exist between those of us in the UK Europe and Australia on the one hand, and those of you in America on the other hand. (Canada seems to be in a class of its own somewhere in between the two)

For some while now I have been pondering how it has come about that in much of the UK, although being trans is noteworthy, it is not regarded as anything much more major than perhaps being divorced or having a disability. Meanwhile in parts of America I read your accounts of being fired, and indeed all but run out of town when you come out.

This came as a bit of a shock, because back in the late 70's and early 80's when I was going through transition and SRS we used to look across the pond to our relatively invisible American cousins with envy. At that time in the wake of the famous Ormrod legal precedent the UK law more of less mandated the outing at every possible occasion of trans folks, and post SRS all but denied us any meaningful legals rights or protections.

At that point those of you in the US who were often being allowed to quietly marry and go about your business by flying under the radar seemed, to us, to have it pretty good.

In meantime the situation has now reversed and thinking about how this has come about has led me to some interesting conclusions. I think what happened in the UK was that because we were all forced out into the open lots of people in the general population got to know us and started to realise that far from having two heads and being horrible perverts, most of us were pretty decent people who were being given a hard time by a few religious and political extremists. As a result, gradually, the mass population started to feel sympathy for us, to the point where eventually things started to change.

In short it was a case of us having the good luck to be clearly seen as the oppressed under-dog, which eventually engaged the wider population's sense of fair play and led to our oppressors being reigned in. This got me thinking about the law of unintended consequences, the principle whereby in solving one problem or winning a battle you actually create another unintended one which you then lose.

It seems to me that those of you in America are at present fighting with one hand tied behind your backs because as things stand the patchwork nature of your state and federal laws encourage too many to adopt a stealthy position after treatment, and thus although many people in the USA probably do know a perfectly ordinary trans person they probably don't realise it. That then leaves the field open to the lies and distortions put about by your political and religious opponents. Then of course those in stealth look at the horrible image of trans folk in the public imagination and say to themselves "I am NEVER going to come out and risk being treated like that" So they understandably remain stealthy, but thereby unintentionally help prolong the current distortions.

I'm not quite sure where I am going with this, but I suppose what I wanted to offer up is the idea that in the UK we won our civil rights battle precisely because the law pretty well forced so many of us into the open. So paradoxically it was ultimately by losing that we finally won, perhaps a thought to comfort you as you contemplate the seeming collapse of your long hoped for ENDA and DADT legislation and the possible advent of ridiculous bathroom restrictions and other privacy invading repressions.

Meanwhile in parts of America I read your accounts of being fired, and indeed all but run out of town when you come out.

Depends on which town your in, one will run you out, the other will elect you a judge.  Since you are free to choose which one your living in, the end results are pretty much the result of your own choice.  Live it, or live with it.

And the differences in culture are huge, but so too are the basic governance problems, which in the US are an order of magnitude larger than Brittan.  You have some 62 million people, the US is 309 million, about four times as large.  And while Brittan is a cozy 4.2 thousand square KM, the US is 95 million sq.KM.  That's a huge difference.

People talk about the Left/West Coast almost like it's a different America, and it is.  You have a thin band of population from Seattle to San Diego along the coast, then about 1,000 miles of the most desolate desert/mountain/wilderness before the country really starts up again on the east side of the Rockies.  As the Chinese would say "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away."  Yeah I guess I should be concerned, living here in the Bay Area which is basically inventing the future as we speak, about the fact that most of Mississippi has yet to really enter the 20th Century, but...  Really, I don't care.  Mississippi is as far away from me as Moscow is from you, and that kind of distance makes their problems a lot less important to me.  Particularly when anyone in Mississippi can get the hell out of there if they wish.  And if you don't like the 'liberal' SF (or NYC) values, you can move to Mississippi or Oklahoma. 

It's also the least homogeneous population in world.  At least in some easy to grasp ways.  However people are bonded by something different from race, or culture, or class, or origin, or religion.  I always like what a French friend of mine once said: Everywhere else in the world people work to live, only in the US do people live to work.  And where many nations and cultures find unity in law, or religion we're pretty much unified in money.  Most of this country, in one way or the other, has a pretty healthy disrespect for the law, and an even larger dislike for government in general.  We like outlaws, not underdogs, so I think we're less likely to look to legal means of redress so long as there are other options.

You're basically right Tekla, but...

Quote from: tekla on December 04, 2010, 10:18:25 AM
I always like what a French friend of mine once said: Everywhere else in the world people work to live, only in the US do people live to work.

that quip wasn't intended to be complimentary

The major issue is that people don't choose where in the country they're raised. There's no real difference between a baby born in rural Tennessee and one born in the Bay Area, but by the time they're adults, they'll have gone through a whole lot of different crap, and if the one in Tennessee happens to be gay or trans, the crap may be so unbearable as to be unlivable. I value young Tennesseeans just as much as young Californians (and, for that matter, young Iranians and Somalians and Irish), and so I think that a certain basic respect for human rights needs to be uniform. First nationally, and then globally.

The "you choose where you live" argument only holds water when we're talking about tolerance of things that adults choose, like kinky sexuality, poly marriage, or taxes. Things that affect people before they have the opportunity to choose where they live and with whom they associate, like physical and mental disabilities, transsexuality, homosexuality, race, gender, and physical appearance, need to be uniformly accepted and equally protected.

Quote from: rejennyrated on December 04, 2010, 08:25:05 AM(Canada seems to be in a class of its own somewhere in between the two)

I wonder if you could expand on this a bit, Jenny?  I'd be interested in your thoughts.  Sadly, our Conservative government (by which I mean our Prime Minister) is hell-bent on making us more and more like the Americans every day, especially in terms of the treatment of the LGBT (well, T anyway) community.  Recently there's debate about a proposed bill (Bill C-398) that would give recognition of human rights specifically to transgendered people in Canada - it's at the Federal level.  Sadly, it looks like it will be shot down, and it is being ridiculed by Religious Conservatives as "The bathroom bill".  So I'm afraid we may not be as unique as you think we are...

Well, I don't think progress in Britain has been quite that good... I mean legislation has been introduced, can finally get birth certs changed, but some of the implementation has been woeful, like with the GRC.
Is it better than it was? Yeah seems so. Have public attitudes changed to the point where its not as nasty as it was? Yeah I guess that too for the most part, but once you hit trouble it's as bad as it ever was. Plus there is also the pressure from the ECHR pushing things along.

To add something constructive, I think the amount of information out there available has helped a lot too with public perception - it's a lot harder to sway people with bigoted opinion or slurs when enough of the audience either knows better or has heard enough other stuff to question what is said.

Quote from: tekla on December 04, 2010, 10:18:25 AM
Depends on which town your in, one will run you out, the other will elect you a judge.  Since you are free to choose which one your living in, the end results are pretty much the result of your own choice.  Live it, or live with it.

I'm with Kryll on this one....thats nice if you've got the option. Don't pretend for one second that everyone does, whether due to age or circumstance.
If you're a kid and stuck somewhere that won't accept who you really are or let you be that person, there really aren't a lot of options. I mean yeah, you can run away to SF or NY at 12 or 16 and go somewhere with no chance at getting a real job or finishing school, and no food, safety, shelter, friends or support. Thats some choice.
Or lets say you're older and caring for/supporting a sick or dying parent or relative that really needs you. They know and accept you but other than that you're in a really unfriendly place that wouldn't. You do, I suppose, have the choice to throw them under a bus and leave them to it alone. Is that what you mean by live it or live with it?

Yeah, I know, I picked a couple examples on the extreme edge, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people in those situations. It's great if you've got the resources, freedom, lack of responsibility, ability etc to pick up and move wherever you want without having to stress on being able to find a job or finding a house or a million other things. Thats how many percent of LGBTQ people in the U.S. exactly? And yes, people DO do that all the time, and struggle through for a while, but it'd be a lot nicer if they didn't have to struggle so hard, or were able to plan it out rather than hitting 'away' in desperation and hoping 'to' takes care of itself. But really, you don't care, and thats your right I suppose.

QuoteI always like what a French friend of mine once said: Everywhere else in the world people work to live, only in the US do people live to work.

It is a rather good insult, isn't it?

I don't take tekla's friends words as an  insult. How is it an insult? I have been called a workaholic but I'm not, its just the best part of life atm, it is social life for the most part, funding for everything, a reason to get up in the mor...afternoon. What more do you need?

Well, it's a pretty well known saying...and come to think about it the French tend to accuse people of it a lot. It's premised on the idea of the more you put into something the more you get out of it.. in that context 'live to work' means you're focused on getting more out of work.. money, privelige, sense of achievement etc. but 'work to live' implies you just work for the necessity and get satisfaction and happiness from experiencing the joys of life.

In reality, its all a balancing act and plenty of people do enjoy work where they get to do what they want, or a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment just as much as from other things...
but whenever I've heard the phrase used it's in the sense of someone living to work to the detriment of the rest of life - ignoring family, deserting friends, no fun etc and working to live as a more relaxed lifestyle.

Fascinating post.  Looks like Susan's Place's best and brightest are crossing sabres on this issue.  Although I'm staying out of this particular fray, I'm loving all of your posts. 

@ Rejennyrated:

EXCELLENT post, My Sister!   

@ Tekla:

Love it, rocker girl!  You're spot-on the matter.  What you say resonates with me, but plenty of folks really cannot move away from sorry circumstances very easily ... if at all. 

@ Kyril:

As ever, you "nailed it to the wall," bro!  You could take on a seasoned trial lawyer and be their worthy match.  Well said.

@ ColleenIreland:

Understood.  Very informative posts.  I learned interesting things from them.  Thank you.

Really, I believe properly educating the general populaces of our respective countries about our issues certainly helps our cause, but actually doing that is very different even in various regions of each country as you describe above.  Fact is, lots of folks just don't want to know about it anyway.  Personally, I believe having a hit television show with a transsexual main character who is perfectly decent, intelligent, professional and respectable as perceived by "normal" mainstream people would do more to open people's minds about us than anything else. 

Didactic entertainment has great power.  Just a thought.  Thanks for this awesome thread.  Enjoyin' it lots.   
_______________________

Tekla, think Robert Hunter's esoteric and arcane lyrics in this tune could in any way pertain to this issue in this thread, allegorically?

Grateful Dead - Franklin's Tower

Saw The Dead do this live in the mid-1970s.  God, it was SOOO amazing!!!   Then, they segued into "Bertha" with Jerry and Bob front and center just like this.  God, Donna was SOOO hot ... lucky Keith.  The place was levitating in the air half-way through this ... another dimension.  We were all SOOO high! 


There was NOTHING like a Grateful Dead concert!  Oops, sorry ... off topic ... again.   Imagine if Jerry was a transman!  Dead Heads wouldn't give a damn ... not one bit ... wahoo!

   Lacey