The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [7]
A vigil for Thomas and Davis was held a few days after their deaths, ironically at the very same intersection where, in 1995, Tyra Hunter, a transgendered hairdresser, had lain bleeding to death after an automobile accident. Paramedics arrived on the scene immediately after the accident, but while stripping Hunter to assess her condition, they discovered her male genitalia, jumped back in shock, and began to ridicule her. As Hunter lay dying (but still conscious), the EMT team continued to mock her; she died shortly afterward in the ER from blood loss. In 1998, her mother was awarded $2.8 million in damages in a wrongful death lawsuit, based on negligence by the D.C. Fire Department and malpractice by an ER physician. “Tyra’s story is surprisingly commonplace and speaks to the fears of most transsexuals [sic] who sometimes feel pressured to undergo expensive sexual reassignment surgery and to alter their legal documents specifically to avoid such nightmares,” wrote Sarah D. Fox, Ph.D., a neurobiologist and communications director of It’s Time, Ohio!, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) lobby organization, after the verdict was announced. The drive to express an inborn gender identity must be strong indeed to compel individuals such as Teena, Araujo, Thomas, Davis, and Hunter to face the kind of hatred that led to their deaths. Milton Diamond, professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii, explains the violence and incomprehension suffered by transgendered people simply: “Nature loves variety. Society hates it.”
The transgendered and transsexual people whom I interviewed for this book were kind enough, and courageous enough, to share their stories with me. Most of the individuals whose stories are contained in these pages are “success stories”—they are primarily well-educated, middle-class white Americans whose privileged socioeconomic status contributed to their positive outcomes. In this arena, as in so many others, race, class, and economics play a huge role. Yet even with all their advantages, the individuals profiled in this book grappled with an enigma that might have consumed them, had they not found the courage and strength to endure the struggle, and the support and assistance they required. Each narrative chapter of the book is followed by the edited transcript of an interview, which provides commentary on the chapter preceding it and context for the chapter that follows. This structure will, I hope, reflect something of my own journey as I undertook my research and will enable the reader to recognize what I soon recognized myself—that the larger historical narrative is in fact composed of many individual narratives, each worthy of the telling. I am only sorry that I wasn’t able to include all of the stories I heard over the past few years, or the full text of every interview.
Like politics and religion, the issue of nature versus nurture with respect to gender is one that invariably gives rise to passionate debate. I do not expect that this book will convert people who believe that gender differences are grounded entirely in social conditioning; nor do I believe that the book will eradicate the bigotry, discrimination, and violence suffered by transgendered, transsexual, and intersexual people. But I do hope that the narrative history and dialogues within its pages will promote greater understanding and acceptance of a group (or groups) of people who typically want nothing more than to live their lives in peace and be able to enjoy the same civil status and protections granted to others.
I also hope to show that the history contained in these pages is, in a very real sense, a shared history. The growing visibility of transsexual, transgendered, and intersexual people