Queercents

About a year and a half ago I unexpectedly lost my health insurance coverage.

As you may have read in my posts about transitioning on the job, the client I was working with when I transitioned initially told me they could accept the revelation that I was a transitioning Transsexual.  Then after two months they found an excuse to cancel our contract.

Obviously, I was concerned about the sudden loss of income, but I was more concerned about having lost my health insurance.  (As part of the contract, my client covered my health insurance and in return I gave them a steep discount on my fee.)

As we all know, healthcare in this country is insanely expensive if you aren’t insured.  (It can even be expensive if you have health insurance, as anyone out there who pays for their own will tell you.)

I had, of course read of the difficulty we Transgendered have in obtaining health insurance.  I had most certainly heard the stories first-hand in various support groups I attended.

All of a sudden I was uninsurable, simply by virtue of being a transitioning Transsexual. Read the rest of this entry »

For many trans folks and butch women, binding is an every day process, one that can be expensive and sometimes painful.  Many folks start out binding and later have chest surgery, while others may bind for their entire lives or just for one evening.  Any way you go about it, though, binders are quite an investment.  I’m going to explore several different ways of binding, looking at the safety, efficiency, and price of each.

The Ace Bandage Method
Thanks to movies like Boys Don’t Cry where binding is equated to wrapping your chest in an Ace bandage, this is often the first method that many folks use when they decide that they want to bind.  It’s less expensive than buying a binder and it’s definitely more comfortable than duct tape. Using a Ace bandage to bind can be extremely dangerous—since it is meant to compress, an Ace bandage will get tighter rather than work with your body to smooth down your chest.  When I’ve used an Ace bandage to bind before, I’ve felt uncomfortably short of breath.  The multiple edges created by wrapping the bandage around your chest can cut into your skin and leave more edges to rub sore spots onto your chest.

However, Ace bandage binding is where many folks start off and is a lot less expensive than buying a chest binder made specifically for FTMs or compression shirts/vests made for males.  The most effective way to bind with an Ace bandage is to use as wide a bandage that you can find, wrap it somewhat loosely around your chest, and secure it well with safety pins, not those claw clips that come with it.  If binding it loosely doesn’t help achieve a desired effect, layering shirts can help create a flatter appearance (which actually helps with all of these different methods). Read the rest of this entry »

Redemption came to me on the evening of Monday, November 7th, 2005 between the hours of 6:30 and 7:30.  It was a long time in coming, 47 years.

As I sat, waiting to meet the woman who would become my therapist, I thought about all that had happened during those years; all that had happened on the journey that had brought me to this time and place.

It was a long, dark and lonely journey.

It began on a bright, sunlit afternoon as a little girl who looked like a boy sat on her mother’s bed playing and watching her as she did the day’s ironing.  I couldn’t have been very old, perhaps three.  My mother said something to me, I can’t remember what, but I do remember my response.  I remember hesitating for an instant and then saying: “I’m not a boy.  I’m a girl.”  My mother was startled beyond words.  She stopped, put down the iron and swept me up in her arms, saying over and over: “No, no, you’re my beautiful baby boy!”

My revelation set off a firestorm in my house.  And thus I began to learn that the world wouldn’t let me be me; that it did not want to accept that such as this was possible.  I learned that I could never talk about what really goes on inside of me.  I learned I must live a lie so that those around me could feel comfortable and secure with society’s faulty assumptions about gender identity. Read the rest of this entry »

Our very own Ashley Wilson was recently interviewed by Jacob Anderson-Minshall of TransNation. We’ve reprinted the interview here:

“Unfortunately, transgender people end up at the very bottom of the financial totem pole, simply because we are who we are,” contends Queercents’ new financial consultant, Ashley A. Wilson. “We get discriminated against employment wise, we get discriminated against when we go as consumers to buy things. The challenges are huge.”

Born in a small Philadelphia suburb to “your classic old fashioned, mainline, blue-blood family that’s been here since 1632,” Wilson still lives in the house she grew up in.

Although she identifies as a transsexual female, Wilson maintains she’s “not going to shy away from the fact that I spent the first 47 years of my life pretending to be a man. That experience in part made Ashley Wilson the woman she is right now. I like to think God gave us the global view, to sort of see both sides of the fence.”

In her male guise, Wilson parlayed a BS in Journalism from Temple University and an MS in Library and Information Science from Drexel University into a 25-year career as a “very successful” fundraising specialist serving nationally recognized nonprofit organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

Ashley recently discussed the implications of name changes on the job. She brought up some of the most crucial issues for transfolks who haven’t (or don’t want to) legally changed their name.

I really wanted to explore this further, particularly after one of my favorite personal finance blogs (Don’t Mess with Taxes) recommended this post for women who change their name after getting married.  There was a nice, pink checklist for newly-married women who change their name—but I’ve never seen something similar for trans folks who change their name!

I wanted to take it a step farther and describe the entire name change process. I myself haven’t changed my name, but one of my friends has and I asked him to walk me through the process.

First, the actual name changing process cost him about $125 in the state of Georgia. He then got three copies of the name change order at $3 a piece (though you do get one for free).

What he first did was change the name on his license. As he moved here from another state, he needed to renew his license and get one in Georgia anyway.  He went to the DMV, showed them his name change form, and they provided him with a new license. Read the rest of this entry »

How many transgendered persons are there in this country?  I don’t remember ever seeing any real research on that.  I keep reading and being told that there aren’t very many of us at all.  I keep reading and being told that Gender Identity Dysphoria is a rare and exotic condition.

What I do know is that in the years since my transition I have met, at most, several hundred transgendered people, and this only because I was on the Planning Committee of the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference this year.  (The attendance was approximately 1,200, but that included family, friends, health care workers and vendors.)

I would venture to guess there are, at most, one or two million of us in the general population.  (And if anyone out there has more definite data on this, please speak up.)  One to two million is a big number.  Numbers, however, are relative.  When you match that number up against the general population of the United States, it’s not that big at all.

Now, how many of us are post-operative?  On this one I have heard a number.  I have heard this number: 40,000.  At any one time there are approximately 40,000 post-operative transsexuals in the general population. Read the rest of this entry »

Representative Barney Frank had a busy week last week – what with listening to the auto executives begging for a hand out. That didn’t stop him from delivering an address to the Victory Fund and the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute on Saturday December 6th at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. Although no press was allowed at the event, several gay bloggers, including myself, were in attendance to listen to Representative Frank’s speech.

Frank spent a good deal of time talking about the many advances our community has made, Proposition 8 notwithstanding. He expressed confidence that the new Congress and the new Administration will press for a fully inclusive hate crimes bill. But when the topic gravitated towards the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Representative Frank made it very clear that he would not be pushing for gender identity to be covered under the bill.

“I think we can be idealists, but we still need to be pragmatic,” Frank said. He claimed, “There is still a lot of ignorance about transgender in society.” Taken together, these two statements give Frank a lot of wiggle room to weasel out of pressing for transgender inclusion when a new version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is introduced in the next Congress. Read the rest of this entry »

Currently, as an undergraduate college student of middle-class upbringing, I have a sort of hybrid financial situation: my parents pay the difference between my tuition and my scholarships, and I’m on theirs and the college’s health and dental insurance.  On the other hand, all other financial goals and needs are in my own hands.  I have not lived with them the past two summers, so I’ve gotten a taste of living on my own.  This has been really amazing—I have a lot of class and race privilege, and this allows me to essentially attend school where I please—a small private college in the South.

On the other hand though, I am considering coming out to them.  This is going to be a scary process.  The most frightening aspect is that they will probably cut me off.  As I’ve been looking for resources to know what to do if this happened, I have found that there is a surprising lack of advice for queer youth who may find themselves cut off from their parents.  So for my first post, I thought I would share with you my last chance financial plan.  Clearly, these are colored by my class identity and how I live in the world—but I think that they’ll be a good starting place for us to discuss what it is you really need when you are young and considering coming out.

1. Money to get me where I need to be
My partner lives in Austin, and I would need to be able to afford to get to Austin in some way.  Luckily, I already have plane tickets for Christmas, but if this were earlier in the year I would need to make sure I have enough to get there somehow. Read the rest of this entry »

Back when I actually had health insurance I used to get these elaborate monthly account statements from my endocrinologist.  I could never figure them out.  They were page after page of debits, credits and adjustments.  I just used to go to the last page and write a check for whatever it said next to “Pay This Amount.”

What I did understand was that my doctor’s staff was playing an elaborate cat and mouse game with my insurance provider to get as much of my expenses covered as possible.  (It’s amusing: the first page of my chart lists my diagnosis as “M to F TS.”  The monthly statements always listed my diagnosis as “hormonal imbalance.”)

But there was one thing they couldn’t get my insurer to pay for: estrogen.  (And that’s the most expensive part of Hormone Replacement Therapy.) My particular regimen (before surgery) consisted of an anti-androgen (Spironolactone) and an estrogen (Estradiol Valerate Injectable). Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I visited my endocrinologist he took what seemed to be a gallon of blood. He ordered more kinds of blood test than I ever imagined existed. About a week later I got a call from one of his nurses. They wanted me to see my internalist. They were worried about two of the test results. My cholesterol level was slightly high and the results of the test for prostate cancer were troubling.

I called my doctor and made an appointment. I had yet to tell him what was going on in my life. (I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I only saw him once a year. He would give me the once over and write a prescription for a year’s worth of my hypertension medicine.)

Let me tell you a little about Dr. H. He had been both my personal doctor and my family’s doctor for 20 years. He knew me when I was a graduate student. He knew me when I was starting my career. He knew me when I got married. He knew me when I got divorced and moved back in with my parents. He was there with me through both of my parents’ final illnesses and subsequent deaths. Read the rest of this entry »