Thursday, February 28, 2008

Pride Parenting: Good Queer



Photo Credit: Photo by Jacob Anderson-Minshall, http://www.prideparenting.com
Lisa/Lee in front of the shelter where s/he currently resides.

Portland’s Not So Good Queer
TransNation
By Jacob Anderson-Minshall

It would be easy to dismiss Lisa/Lee Iacuzzi as a troublemaker. Pulling out a chair at the teriyaki house where we’re meeting, the Portland, Oregon activist nervously eyes the two police officers sitting next to us. Iacuzzi—who uses the names Lisa and Lee interchangeably, identifies as bi-gendered and prefers the pronoun s/he—has developed quite a reputation.
Iacuzzi has been arrested four times for petty crimes like jaywalking and says s/he once spent 6 hours in jail after calling 911 when a police officer videotaped her/him. One summer, while driving a Volvo on which she’d written “Legalize marijuana,” s/he reportedly was pulled over two dozen times by local police.

It’s these kind of stories that occasionally lead Iacuzzi to sound downright paranoid, as when s/he remarks, “I stopped driving, because that was one way of them getting me.”

Iacuzzi is the blogger behind “Not A Good Queer” at notagoodqueer.blogspot.com—not to be confused with notagoodqueer-oae.blogspot.com, which seems dedicated to undermine Iacuzzi and “her fantasy that, contrary to physiological evidence, she is a) a male; or b) a transgendered female.” S/he draws Venn diagrams illustrating overlapping elements in divergent terms like Muslim/Christian and hopes to sell the artwork via the Internet. Iacuzzi says her/his “pipe dream” is to garner corporate sponsorship for the site.

“I’m going after big corporations because it seems like in the gay community we’re supposed to work for free. My activism has gotten lots of changes but hasn’t financially supported me.”

Currently unemployed, Iacuzzi was once a special education schoolteacher before, s/he alleges, gender discrimination cost her/him the position. After losing the job four years ago, Iacuzzi accused the school of mishandling asbestos removal, and s/he’s currently attempting to organize former students in a class action suit against the school for denying them their educational rights.

S/he’s also threatening to sue Portland State University, where s/he received teaching credentials, for failing to warn future LGBT teachers about the discrimination they would face in schools due to their sexual orientation and/or gender presentation.

S/he says she has filed a gender discrimination suit against the university, and has Oregon state Bureau of Labor and Industry complaints pending against two Portland social service agencies.

According to Iacuzzi, s/he’s spent more than one afternoon shouting into a microphone on a busy Portland street corner: “I’m not leaving here unless I get my gay rights. Come on. It’s ‘We the People,’ not ‘We the Straight People.’ If civil rights were a popularity vote, then people in Alabama would still have Jim Crow.”
Whether or not Portland’s social services are conspiring to keep Iacuzzi from revealing their allegedly discriminatory, illegal or immoral practices, the activist’s experiences do illuminate problems in the shelter system when it comes to providing services for gender variant clients.

It was after losing both her/his job and house and becoming a victim of domestic violence that Iacuzzi ended up at the Bradley-Angle house, a Portland-based shelter for battered women s/he contends discriminated against his/her gender identity. In addition to being housed in a former utility room and required to use a dedicated bathroom “because of my trans-ness,” Iacuzzi says the agency accused him/her of lying about her/his identity and forced her/him to leave without receiving transitional housing.

“They were like, ‘You lied to us about your identity. Here’s a list of men’s shelters. But we will not give you the 9 months of transitional housing.’ I kept asking them, ‘Why can’t trans people stay here?’ I just didn’t get it. It took me a long time and a lot of reading to understand the politics.”

Iacuzzi says the organization was worried they could lose their funding by allowing him/her to stay in the house.

“In one respect, they can say to trans people, ‘We respect your gender.’ They can argue that, but I don’t have any [male] hormones, I don’t have any surgery, so what’s the problem? I’m male and female.”

Because s/he doesn’t identify as male and has a female body, Iacuzzi contends, s/he would not feel safe in a men’s shelter. S/he argues that the system does not provide housing for those who can’t fit into a binary world—except the YWCA, where Iacuzzi admits, “they don’t care if you’re trans. They’re like the only shelter agency in town that did not care if I was trans or not and embraced me. To be homeless and to have the women’s community turn it’s back on me after all the years I’ve fought for the women’s community was devastating.”

Iacuzzi says s/he prefers the term bi-gendered to genderqueer. “Bi-gendered makes more sense for someone like me who doesn’t want surgery—people like me who don’t go through hormones or full legal name changes and who stay in this third sex. Bi-gendered makes sense to straight people. It fits in their mind. It doesn’t fit in their mind to call me a ‘he.’ I have a female voice and I have noticeable breasts. I don’t wear a bra and I don’t bind. I don’t blame them for not wanting to call me a ‘he.’ Bi-gendered fits me more because I’m not transitioning.”

“I think genderqueer is a very good word,” Iacuzzi acknowledges. “But it doesn’t do anything to improve understanding, and that’s what we need… so that we do get employment. So we’re seen as really intelligent human beings that have both male and female perspectives on things, which is invaluable. And that needs to be stressed.”

For now, Iacuzzi is living at another Portland shelter, where s/he’s fighting frequent eviction notices s/he traces to conflict with other residents, who s/he claims harass her/him constantly, saying, “This is an all woman’s building, you don’t belong here. We don’t need anyone packing a penis.”

“If I did this to someone, to another resident, I would be out the door,” Iacuzzi complains. “But nothing is going to happen to them. From their point of view I’m the problem. Gender discrimination is difficult to prove.”

One summer, while driving a Volvo on which she’d written “Legalize marijuana,” s/he reportedly was pulled over two dozen times by local police.

It’s these kind of stories that occasionally lead Iacuzzi to sound downright paranoid, as when s/he remarks, “I stopped driving, because that was one way of them getting me.”

Iacuzzi is the blogger behind “Not A Good Queer” at notagoodqueer.blogspot.com—not to be confused with notagoodqueer-oae.blogspot.com, which seems dedicated to undermine Iacuzzi and “her fantasy that, contrary to physiological evidence, she is a) a male; or b) a transgendered female.” S/he draws Venn diagrams illustrating overlapping elements in divergent terms like Muslim/Christian and hopes to sell the artwork via the Internet. Iacuzzi says her/his “pipe dream” is to garner corporate sponsorship for the site.

“I’m going after big corporations because it seems like in the gay community we’re supposed to work for free. My activism has gotten lots of changes but hasn’t financially supported me.”

Currently unemployed, Iacuzzi was once a special education schoolteacher before, s/he alleges, gender discrimination cost her/him the position. After losing the job four years ago, Iacuzzi accused the school of mishandling asbestos removal, and s/he’s currently attempting to organize former students in a class action suit against the school for denying them their educational rights.

S/he’s also threatening to sue Portland State University, where s/he received teaching credentials, for failing to warn future LGBT teachers about the discrimination they would face in schools due to their sexual orientation and/or gender presentation.

S/he says she has filed a gender discrimination suit against the university, and has Oregon state Bureau of Labor and Industry complaints pending against two Portland social service agencies.

According to Iacuzzi, s/he’s spent more than one afternoon shouting into a microphone on a busy Portland street corner: “I’m not leaving here unless I get my gay rights. Come on. It’s ‘We the People,’ not ‘We the Straight People.’ If civil rights were a popularity vote, then people in Alabama would still have Jim Crow.”

Whether or not Portland’s social services are conspiring to keep Iacuzzi from revealing their allegedly discriminatory, illegal or immoral practices, the activist’s experiences do illuminate problems in the shelter system when it comes to providing services for gender variant clients.

It was after losing both her/his job and house and becoming a victim of domestic violence that Iacuzzi ended up at the Bradley-Angle house, a Portland-based shelter for battered women s/he contends discriminated against his/her gender identity. In addition to being housed in a former utility room and required to use a dedicated bathroom “because of my trans-ness,” Iacuzzi says the agency accused him/her of lying about her/his identity and forced her/him to leave without receiving transitional housing.

“They were like, ‘You lied to us about your identity. Here’s a list of men’s shelters. But we will not give you the 9 months of transitional housing.’ I kept asking them, ‘Why can’t trans people stay here?’ I just didn’t get it. It took me a long time and a lot of reading to understand the politics.”

Iacuzzi says the organization was worried they could lose their funding by allowing him/her to stay in the house.

“In one respect, they can say to trans people, ‘We respect your gender.’ They can argue that, but I don’t have any [male] hormones, I don’t have any surgery, so what’s the problem? I’m male and female.”


Because s/he doesn’t identify as male and has a female body, Iacuzzi contends, s/he would not feel safe in a men’s shelter. S/he argues that the system does not provide housing for those who can’t fit into a binary world—except the YWCA, where Iacuzzi admits, “they don’t care if you’re trans. They’re like the only shelter agency in town that did not care if I was trans or not and embraced me. To be homeless and to have the women’s community turn it’s back on me after all the years I’ve fought for the women’s community was devastating.”

Iacuzzi says s/he prefers the term bi-gendered to genderqueer. “Bi-gendered makes more sense for someone like me who doesn’t want surgery—people like me who don’t go through hormones or full legal name changes and who stay in this third sex. Bi-gendered makes sense to straight people. It fits in their mind. It doesn’t fit in their mind to call me a ‘he.’ I have a female voice and I have noticeable breasts. I don’t wear a bra and I don’t bind. I don’t blame them for not wanting to call me a ‘he.’ Bi-gendered fits me more because I’m not transitioning.”

“I think genderqueer is a very good word,” Iacuzzi acknowledges. “But it doesn’t do anything to improve understanding, and that’s what we need… so that we do get employment. So we’re seen as really intelligent human beings that have both male and female perspectives on things, which is invaluable. And that needs to be stressed.”

For now, Iacuzzi is living at another Portland shelter, where s/he’s fighting frequent eviction notices s/he traces to conflict with other residents, who s/he claims harass her/him constantly, saying, “This is an all woman’s building, you don’t belong here. We don’t need anyone packing a penis.”

“If I did this to someone, to another resident, I would be out the door,” Iacuzzi complains. “But nothing is going to happen to them. From their point of view I’m the problem. Gender discrimination is difficult to prove.”

This is written by trans writer Jacob Anderson-Minshall co-authored Blind Leap, the second installment of the Blind Eye mystery series available now. For more information visit anderson-minshall.com or email jake@trans-nation.org.

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