Asheville’s diverse — if you’re white and cisgender. For trans people and many, many others, it’s a far harsher place
Above: the Transgender Pride Flag. It may be awhile before this one hangs on City Hall.
Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, an international day to remember those killed due to transphobia. This column last month from local trans activist and writer Basil Soper — one of the organizers of this year’s events — looks at the issues facing trans people in Asheville, how far the city has to go in ensuring basic rights for its many citizens that aren’t white and cisgender and asks Ashevillians to support this struggle.
This year’s memorial will be marked by a march and vigil beginning at 7 p.m. in front of the Civic Center.
— David Forbes, 11-20-14
A few weeks ago I was sitting on a crowded bench at the Coxe Avenue station, waiting on the S4. I’m always quiet in the morning; I keep earbuds in and find solace in isolation. The person next to me, however, felt entitled enough to tap me on the shoulder and motion for me to take my headphones out.
So, I took one out. He had tattoos on his face and was obviously hungover. He said, “Bro, what size are your plugs?” His ears were stretched twice as large as mine. This is not the first time I have come in contact with a cisgender male reading me as another cis male and trying to spark a pissing contest.
“An inch,” I said.
“I can’t even remember how that looked on me.”
“Cool”, I replied. Then he stuck his tongue out to show me that he had it surgically altered to resemble that a snake’s. As all of this was happening a few black folks on the backside of the bench behind us started listening in.
His breath smelled like stale beer and he said to me, “Asheville is the first place where I have been truly accepted for who I am. I was able to find a job here in a couple of days and I can get any type of beer I want.” I just blinked at him as the woman on the backside of the bench chimed in and said, “Mmmhm.” He looked startled and turned to her saying, “This is just such a diverse town.”
She rolled her eyes enough for the both of us.
Ashevillians talk about how diverse and accepting this city is. The fact — what isn’t talked about — is that “diverse” to most people translates to white and cisgender. Cisgender is the term for a person whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. i.e. a person who is not transgender or gender non-conforming.
There is a very diverse population of relatively well-off white and cisgender people in Asheville. As a trans* man I can only speak about my experience and I recognize how my own privilege — being white and identifying as male — has given me that capability to do so in many ways.
I’ve repeatedly wondered why coming out as trans* and then coming out as a bi-sexual man has been such a scary process in Asheville. It’s been nearly a decade since I moved here — a place where I initially, and overall, experienced community that gave me the opportunity to express the parts of ‘me’ that I had already figured out when I first moved here.
At the time I was a white cisgender butch-presenting lesbian, hated in my South Carolina hometown. But here I was beloved in that identity by the government officials, police, school instructors, feminists, organizers, doctors, 12-step programs, and business owners of Asheville. Transitioning here and facing the same people and institutions, on the other hand, has been quite a challenge for living in such a “liberal” place.
I’ve seen many of the same community members on the street everyday for years. I’ve lived downtown my entire stay in Asheville. Some of these people — a handful, presumably — are LGB-identified, and the majority not. They’re mostly transplants from various parts of the South who moved to a place that they considered a more welcoming environment. Compared to most of the places they moved from, Asheville is a very liberal place.
For me, I feel like due to that ideology people get far too comfortable, too smug, and don’t think they need to acquire any new information about marginalized groups or cultures, or even the reality of the city that’s all around them. It’s a mindset that lacks humility and reeks of privileged ignorance.
So they drink kombucha and don’t know what it is. They have a Coexist sticker on the back of their Prius. They mispronounce different types of tea and food but do it with such pretension and over-zealous confidence that I watch servers grit their teeth. These folks lose their mind on neighborhood Facebook groups over things like butter. They love Indian culture — but maybe not Indian people.
These types of people like to spend a lot of time touting the fact that “THIS IS BEER CITY”. Some of these people believe that, in a city with this much poverty, people just choose to not shop at Whole Foods or eat vegan. Many of these community members believe “we are all one” and “they don’t see color” but the city remains racially segregated as ever. I transitioned in front of these people and as I did, I became invisible to them, or I just haven’t changed — to many of them I am still my birth name and I am still a “she.”
It’s really hard to get numbers on how many transgender, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming people are living in Asheville. Frankly, this is hard to do anywhere because our census assumes two genders, assigned at birth, and compounded by the fact that there is absolutely no trans* specific legislation supporting us. It is incredibly hard and expensive for a transgender person to get their gender changed on their birth certificate. Even with that change the choices are still male or female.
This creates a binary and doesn’t categorize anyone as transgender. The options also leave out so many that don’t identify as male or female. That said, I do know that as a of a year ago, Western North Carolina Community Health Services was helping one hundred plus trans* patients with hormone replacement therapy. That number only represents people who use WNNCHS as an option and the people who choose to use hormones — it’s also likely grown in the time since that article was published. It’s pretty clear that there is a very large transgender spectrum in Asheville.
All transgender people throughout the country face violence, discrimination, terrible media portrayals, sexual assault, and homelessness.
The most visible issues facing trans* folks locally are street harassment, homelessness, and poverty. Finding work in Asheville is really hard. All Ashevillians can all attest to that.
Now, imagine going in for a job and not being able to afford electrolysis for facial hair (because you can’t get work) while identifying as a woman. This point is somewhat problematic because it suggests that people need to physically transition or “pass” when in reality nobody should have to do anything more then say they are whatever gender they perceive themselves to be. So, problematic passing pressures aside, you’re not only met with the inability to be hired there but also judgment and hostility even if you are. So, when a trans* person can’t find work they often end up homeless.
According to the National Center For Transgender Equality, “Homelessness is also a critical issue for transgender people, with one in five having experienced homelessness at some time in their lives because of discrimination and family rejection. As a result, an estimated 20 to 40 percent of the more than 1.6 million homeless youth in the United States are LGBTQ.
Unfortunately, transgender people facing homelessness also face discrimination from agencies that should be helping them, with nearly one in three (29 percent) reporting being turned away from a shelter due to their transgender status. While leading experts on homelessness recommend providing emergency housing consistent with a person’s gender identity, 42 percent of trans people facing homelessness have been forced to stay in a shelter living as the wrong gender.”
People want to believe that Asheville is somehow immune from these statistics, but the same discrimination happens here. In the past six months my friend circle has sheltered two trans* women. The reason we did is because some of the Christian-based homeless shelters exclude transgender people.
Mind you, my transgender friends and myself are low income. We tend to exhaust our own resources caring for one another. On top of already having to pay for our own transitions (hormones, name changes, surgeries, gender marker changes, and therapy), this leaves us with little. Due to all the oppressions mentioned above, we have no resources other than our own and we are also constantly trying to convince people that we need help while simultaneously fighting dismissal just for being transgender.
This cycle deters us from being able to move forward in a big way; financially we’re screwed, we’re denied the opportunities to get a job to break the cycle and we face violence and exclusion just for trying to live our lives.
Things can change. I can not stress how much we really need a transgender-inclusive shelter. We need a transgender-specific health clinic. We need some sort of queer halfway house. We need understanding therapists. We need our own healing spaces. We need cisgender people to understand the daily struggle that it is to be transgender, but especially in the Southeast with few resources. The things I’ve mentioned are only a small fraction of what’s needed to improve our situations. We experience discrimination everywhere we go, all day, everyday.
A few years ago, I approached Asheville City Council members with the proposition to make government bathroom facilities gender-neutral. I was hoping that if this passed it would start to normalize the concept and create dialogue around the bathroom safety needs that trans* people experience.
It is incredibly dangerous for a trans* person to enter sex or gender-specific spaces — it can out them and expose them to the very real threat of violence — and creating change around something as simple as a bathroom seemed like it a viable option for legislation and visibility. I was hoping it would be visible enough to get more people to think about our community and the transgender female population specifically. I was hoping it would at least start a dialogue
I was told by a Council member and other LGBTQ groups that it wasn’t the right time. The concept was “pushing it too much” according to other LGBT groups who were asked to co-sign the initiative. I and a local LGBTQ group, Just Us For All, then set out on our own to talk with local businesses with gendered single-stall restrooms and ask them to change the restroom to gender neutral or “family” stall. We were, not surprisingly, met with fervent opposition. We were told repeatedly that the signs cost too much money for something that doesn’t impact that many people. To me, this says that business owners don’t care if transgender people eat in their restaurant or the dangers we face.
Recently, Council hung up a gay pride flag on City Hall in honor the federal ruling striking down the state’s same-sex marriage ban. I was incredibly moved by this and thought a similar sign of solidarity would also be very appreciated by transgender folks on Transgender Day of Remembrance in November. Held on Nov. 20, it’s a national day that recognizes the murders of transgender people not only in America, but throughout the world. Many of the people murdered are transgender women of color and almost all of the murders are extremely brutal.
Transgender people not only face daily discrimination but they are killed for being who they are regularly. I approached Council member Gordon Smith about hanging a trans* flag on the day of remembrance and he responded, “This is a one-off, Basil, to recognize an historic moment in our state’s history.”
To me that response sounds like “Nah, supporting gay marriage is way more palatable and important than the lives of all of transgender people who live in the city.” This type of response worries me because it’s coming from a cis man in power. I’m hoping the gay marriage fight is instead seen as one singular victory in an ongoing struggle for many other kinds of LGBTQ people.
Let’s face it: we live in a city that aims to please rich white folks from outlying conservative areas and states, even if it means that advancing the rights of the people living here takes a backseat. I’d love to be proven wrong and I challenge our Council to consider doing something trans* specific here to address the many problems we face. Asheville has a tendency to lump the LGBT acronym together on all resolutions and conversations, when there are separate issues many of us in the acronym and Queer community face that others do not.
Regardless of the passing of gay marriage transgender folks are still going to get murdered. Locally, finding work will still be a struggle, homeless shelters will still exclude transgender people, and people will still choose to remain ignorant to our lives and existences. This has to change because not only is it shameful to the city but it really doesn’t align with many of the principles supposedly embedded into the fabric of Asheville.
The resources and education are available. We are doing the work and make our needs, issues, and ideas accessible to the general population. Now, it’s time for the Asheville cisgender population to start engaging and giving us the respect and support we deserve. When you see us on the street or in the coffee shop don’t advert your eyes. Just a heads-up: “what are your preferred pronouns?” is a totally acceptable thing to ask a person when you’re not sure. Get educated on the gender binary and don’t tell someone “they/them” isn’t a singular pronoun. Don’t sit by idly when you witness a trans person, quite often a trans woman(or any woman really) experience street harassment. Come to our events and support our struggles. Get to know us.
In order to create change and act as an ally one has to be aware. Being a true ally can be really uncomfortable at first. But until many Ashevillians let go of their prejudices around race and gender, they’re no better than all the conservative outsiders they so often judge.
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Basil Soper is a transgender organizer, writer, and one of the founders of Just Us For All
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