Dear Kevin, 20 years ago today the Goddess gave you a cat for your 30th birthday. Unusually for a cat, she has stuck around, though she has wandered a long way from home. Thank goodness the Internet is the natural habitat of felines.
I’m very sorry I am not there to look cute and cuddly for you. However, I can at least assure you that there is life after 50.
Feed me tuna now?
I did warn you that there were a lot of anniversaries coming up. Here’s today’s.
Saturday August 26th, 1995. By this time I was living and working in Melbourne, but I had gone back to the UK to do some project work there and pick up some more of my belongings. The project work took me to Edinburgh. My friend Anabelle suggested that I attend the World Science Fiction Convention, which was taking place in Glasgow around the same time. I would know several people there, including Martin Hoare and Dave Langford, and Teddy whom I expected to be in the masquerade, so I figured I might as well give it a go.
One of the things I wanted to do there was see if I could find some Australian fans. At this time I was living as a woman at all times except for work, but the only people I knew in Melbourne were my work colleagues. I wanted some people I could hang out with socially as me. To my surprise and delight I discovered that Melbourne was fandom central in Australia, and that Melbourne fans were bidding to hold Worldcon there in 1999. I offered to help. They explained to me how Worldcon site selection works, and sent me off to vote on that year’s race to see the system in action. (Martin was supporting one of the two rival Boston bids, so he was keen for me to vote as well.)
Instant runoff voting wasn’t new to me — I’d seen it used a lot in student politics — but my diary tells me that I had a few questions and a very helpful American guy behind the desk answered them all for me. I thought nothing more of this, and enjoyed my day at the con, including watching Teddy and his colleagues take the masquerade by storm. Afterwards I had agreed to help my new Aussie friends run a bid party. Who should turn up, but the American guy from the site selection desk. And apparently he was there to see me.
I should note that at this time in history the standard advice to trans women was never to get involved with a man prior to surgery, because he will only be interested in you as a “shemale” and will drop you like a stone once you no longer qualify as such. I was mindful of that, but probably a bit giddy too. I had, after all, never been chatted up by a bloke before, let alone kissed one. I rather liked this Kevin fellow.
The following day he asked me for a date (dinner, the Hugo ceremony, and the firework display). I said yes. It is the best decision I have ever made in my life.
This is a week of massive anniversaries. Here is today’s.
On August 25th 1975 Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released an album called Born to Run. I can’t remember when I first heard any of it, but I do knew that I have loved Bruce’s music from that moment on. 40 years. That’s some relationship.
To mark the occasion, here is my all time favorite rock song, which also happens to be the opening track of the album.
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty but, hey, you’re alright
Oh, and that’s alright with me
Story of my life. I’m still waiting, Bruce. If I hear your Chevy pull up outside, I’ll be straight out.
Well, there’s exciting.
One of my cousins was trading up her car and, for reasons that I will get to shortly, the old one had no resale value. So she offered it to me for free. Obviously I had to pay to tax and insure it, and I had to go up to London to collect it, but aside from that no cost.
So this is Effie. She’s a Fiat Punto, and she’s 12 years old, which is almost as old in car years as I am in human years, so I guess we go well together.
Effie has some rather unpleasant scratches down her left-hand side. They are not my fault. They are, however, the reason I got her for free. She’s perfectly OK on the road, but she’s not saleable without a lot of expensive touch-up work. I got lucky.
Of course she’s Italian, which means we have disagreements about motorsport. I have promised not to mention Lewis Hamilton if she promises not to mention Sebastien Vettel. We are happy to support Kimi Raikkonen together. And of course Susie Wolff.
The other notable thing about her is that she has manual transmission. I had not driven a manual in almost 20 years. (I still had my Polo when I was at Worldcon in Glasgow in 1995). I was very out of practice. Thankfully I managed to get her safely home, despite having to spend a ridiculous amount of time on London’s infamous orbital parking lot, the M25.
I wish I had stopped for lunch at London Gateway services on the M1. Twenty-odd miles to the next services doesn’t seem too far when you are barreling along at 70mph, but it is an awful long way when you are crawling in first gear and thinking that it might have been quicker to walk.
On the subject of lunch journeys, I put the radio on, because Effie has… wait for it… a tape deck!
I don’t think I have used a cassette tape this century. I certainly don’t have the means to make tapes. I rather suspect that if charity shops get them donated they just throw them out. I shall have to investigate alternatives.
Anyway, now I need to get some driving practice. I don’t think that will include braving the Bristol traffic for quite a while, though. I might be daft, but I’m not completely stupid.
So yeah, I figured that a serious professional photographer like Lou would manage to produce something I’d be OK with. It is her job to work miracles. I didn’t expect to be really pleased with some of the results.
Here’s a very different one that makes me look a bit more serious and professional.
There are others I like too.
If you need a professional photo shoot done, get Lou to do it, she’s great.
I spent the morning in Bath pretending to be a fashion model.
Of course I’m not one. What was actually going on is that I have discovered that I need a professionally done head shot for publicity purposes. This is what happens when you do radio, public speaking and so on. Doing this is beyond scary, because cameras hate me. I have a couple of pictures that I can just about tolerate, but mostly seeing photos of me makes me want to curl up and die. (Please remember this, especially if you are about to post photos of me to Facebook.)
Thankfully I happen to know a very good photographer who lives nearby. Joe Abercrombie’s wife, Lou, has done publicity shots for many of my author friends, including Paul Cornell, Gareth Powell, Emma Newman and Sarah Pinborough; not to mention Joe himself, of course. I really like her work, so I arranged to go and get snapped.
I found the process of being photographed both fun and educational. As long as I could forget the fact that there will be actual photographs at the end of the process I could just enjoy the process and learn how to pose for a camera. It isn’t easy to do well, and I have a great deal of respect for professional models who manage to look happy and sexy to order for hours on end. Striking a pose is also a skill that I probably don’t have, but enjoyed trying to learn.
Eventually I will have to choose a picture or two to use, and I’ll put them up here for you to laugh at. Please don’t judge Lou’s work by this. Check out her website instead. She’s really great at putting her subjects at ease too.
Yeah, I know, I have been a Very Bad Blogger recently. That’s partly because I have been traveling a lot, and partly due to what appears to have been a particularly bad allergic reaction to something that flowers in Finland in June (I’ve not had a problem in May or July). Those of you wondering what Zombie Cheryl looks like should have been at the Helsinki Mafia meeting in St. Urho’s (it’s a pub) on Thursday night. For those of you with an interest in Caribbean folklore, the way to making a living person seem like one of the walking dead is to feed them anti-histamines. Or at least it is in my case.
I am now in London, despite the best efforts of Frankfurt airport to do impressions of Chicago O’Hare. Today I will be doing a presentation skills training course at the Central School of Speech & Drama. Because it is all very well being confident enough to stand up and blather on in front of a few hundred friendly fannish folks at a convention, but if you want to keep the attention of a very large and potentially hostile audience then you need to learn about things like posture, intonation, pacing and so on. Thanks to the good folks at Gendered Intelligence I am getting this course for free, for which I am duly grateful.
Of course it is not exactly ideal to turn up at such a event with a head and throat full of phlegm. Thankfully I no longer sound like a bullfrog talking from the bottom of a pool of sludge. I kid you not. On Thursday I was actually gurgling when I tried to talk.
Then tonight I get to go home. I plan to spend tomorrow horizontal, and paying no more attention to the world than is necessary to cheer on Lewis and write a report on the race for Kevin who will still be asleep when it happens.
For those of you not on Twitter (or not plugged into the trans subset of tweets), this hashtag is a response to the Caitlyn Jenner cover. The idea is that all trans people deserve a shot on the cover of Vanity Fair. I figured that if they were going to put me on the cover then they’d do so for a reason. My thanks for Tom Becker for the photo, and to Crystal Fraiser and Jenn Dolari for starting the hashtag and making the template.
Nice wheels, love!
Well, thank goodness that’s over.
I’m not a big fan of celebrity culture. I’m not entirely sure what a Kardashian is. But, as a trans woman, I have found the Jenner saga all over my social media feeds for months. Now at last we seem to have some clarity.
Caitlyn Jenner arrived in the world through a cover and big photo spread in Vanity Fair. She looks great, and very content. She can, we hope, look forward to being happy ever after, just like the best fairy tale princesses. I’m really pleased for her.
What her sudden transformation means for the rest of the trans community is less certain. On the one hand, all publicity is good publicity. Jenner is keeping trans issues in the news, and forcing people to confront their thoughts, prejudices and misconceptions about us. If Jenner’s million-plus followers on Twitter translates into more public sympathy for trans people, I’m all for it.
It is important to remember, however, that Jenner’s story is by no means typical. Little more than a month has passed since the confessional ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, in which Jenner was still presenting as male. Now we see her in glamour shots looking a damn sight better than the average 65-year-old woman. This sort of transformation does not, and cannot, happen for everyone.
Jenner’s transition appears to have been very carefully stage-managed, probably with the help of talented PR people. She will also have had access to the best surgery money can buy, and to expert stylists. There may even have been a bit of photoshop involved. I mean, what glamour shoot in magazines isn’t touched up these days?
In reality, gender transition is a long and drawn out process. Even Lana Wachowski, with all of her money, spent a long time out of the public eye while going through it. From start of hormone therapy to final surgery took me five years. That was actually quite quick, because like Jenner I was able to afford private treatment. Those stuck on NHS waiting lists don’t get the same privileged access.
So if you happen to know someone who announces that they will be undergoing gender transition, please don’t expect an overnight transformation. It will take a long time, and they’ll need a lot of support along the way.
They almost certainly won’t come out of it looking like Jenner either. I mean, how many 65-year-old women do you know who look that good? Would I love to be that glamorous? You bet I would! Is it likely to happen without a massive lottery win that I can spend on cosmetic surgery (and an end to my chocolate habit)? Not a hope in hell.
Trans girls who access treatment before puberty stand a very good chance of looking beautiful, and there will always be a few like April Ashley for whom glamour seems effortless. For most of us who have been through the horror of male puberty, however, beauty is seriously hard work.
Nor should it be a requirement. Firstly, no matter what the advertising business tells us, being beautiful is not a pre-requisite of being female. Most of us can and do get on with our lives perfectly well without film star looks. There’s no more reason to require a trans woman to be beautiful than any other woman. Nor does everyone care. Being glamorous clearly appeals to Jenner, and it does to me as well, but I know plenty of women — trans and otherwise — who are perfectly happy with short hair, no makeup, jeans and a t-shirt.
The point about beauty is that it is an optional extra. Some women are lucky enough to get it for free, some are able to buy it, and some don’t particularly want it. Lack of it, however, does not make you any less of a woman. So while I would like to be more beautiful, lack of beauty is a minor issue compared to where I have come from. Being able to live my life as a woman is such an enormous step forward from where I was before that it seems a bit churlish to ask for anything more. Of course I’d take it if I had the opportunity, but I already have something far more valuable, the ability to be me. I suspect that if you asked Caitlyn Jenner she’d say that was more important to her as well.
This summer the track work upgrading the Great Western Main Line reaches Bath. This is essential work and should result in a much better train service in years to come. However, there will be disruption. Specifically I will be unable to get to Bath or Bristol by train for the whole of the month of August.
Of course there are the notorious replacement bus services. However, it will take an hour longer each way to get to Bristol. Also, if you want me to arrive at an event in a good mood, and unlikely to throw up on you when I get there, I advise against suggesting that I use them. Short of hiring a car for the month, which I certainly can’t afford, I think it is unlikely that I’ll be attending any events in Bristol or Bath in August. You can all go on vacation, right?
80 years old today and still as glamorous as ever. Thank you so much for everything you have done for us, and congratulations on being made a Citizen of Honour of Liverpool.
As those of you who are on social media will have noticed, yesterday was my birthday. It always weirds me out the way such things work these days. Facebook, in particular, sends me a couple of hundred birthday wishes, many of them from people I don’t know and have probably never even met. I was intending to go through them all today, but I’ve discovered that FB only lets you see the few dozen most recent posts. All very strange. Thanks very much, everyone, and my apologies for not responding personally.
Other than that, it was just another day. I had a meeting in Bristol that I had to go to. A coordination group for local trans communities and service providers. However, I did manage to call into the fine fellows at Independent Spirit and pick up a little something. It was rather nice, though I could probably have done with someone to share it with.
Meanwhile, back to work.
As most of you will know, I am quite old. One of the difficulties of advanced age is that you forget things that you did in your mis-spent youth. So I was quite surprised this morning when my Greek friend, Sissy Pantelis, found an old portrait of me from the days when I had a pirate ship in the Caribbean. (Sissy’s memory is better than mine. She was made immortal by Aphrodite some time around the days of the Trojan War and seems to have got the hang of this extended lifetime thing.)
Anyway, here it is. I’ve clearly put on a lot of weight since those days, though the artist might have flattered me a bit for fear of having to feed the sharks, personally. The hat still fits, though. I can’t for the life of me remember who the artist was, but maybe Sissy will help out.
Update: The art is by Sabine Rich. She has an Etsy shop, but it is currently closed, I suspect due to the VATMOSS nonsense (she’s French).
A few weeks ago I was contacted by Mike Dariano who runs a blog called 27 Good Things, via which he gets various people to recommend things that they like. Apparently he found me because I have a lot of Twitter followers, which is what passes for celebrity status these days. Anyway, I was asked to recommend three good things to read, three to watch, and three to use. You can find out what I wrote about here. My thanks to Mike for giving me space on his blog.
My friend Lee Harris, formerly of Angry Robot and now starting a line of novellas for Tor, was in Bath on business yesterday. As he had some free time I offered to show him around. Naturally we ended up at a few bookshops, and a beer shop, but I had been told that the Victoria Art Gallery had a big Beryl Cook exhibition on, and I guessed (correctly) that this would appeal to Lee.
I heard about the exhibition from by friend Robert Howes, who has (literally) written the book on LGBT history in Bath. He’d been to see it and noticed something of interest. Cook was catapulted to fame in 1976 when Hunter Davies did a major feature on her in the Sunday Times Magazine (which he then edited). The picture that Davies chose to feature on the cover of the magazine showed a scene in a pub. All fairly normal, most people would have thought. However, the painting was actually of the Lockyer in Plymouth, which at the time was gay-friendly (and may still be for all I know). There were women in the foreground, but that’s because Beryl and her friends enjoyed the company of the gay boys, especially the drag queens.
Anyway, it is a great exhibition, with over 50 Beryl Cook originals. We also ended up having a fun evening out with Emma & Pete Newman, and Joe Abercrombie, amongst others. Emma is due for more surgery any time now. I do hope she’s OK. Sending hugs, love.
Last week I should have been officially launching the new US-based publishing company. This involved me committing to several hundred dollars of expenditure, which is always good for focusing the mind on what one is doing. At the same time, yet another online spat in the SF&F community was brewing. So I asked myself, seriously, what the heck was I doing?
The whole point of the US company was to allow me to use services like Kickstarter and Patreon to fund new projects. To make a success of these things, you have to be popular and respected. That’s really not me any more. I don’t even really feel part of the community these days. So if I did try to do crowdfunding, I would probably suck at it.
Now I still want to make good things happen. But the point is that it doesn’t have to be about me, about my publishing company. In fact it is probably better that it isn’t. Then, whatever messes I manage to get myself into online, at least it is only me being on the receiving end, not people that I publish as well.
So I have taken the decision not to start a US company. Instead I will be slowly winding down Wizard’s Tower. Nothing will happen immediately, because we still have books to get out and I want to make sure that every one of the books I do have out eventually goes to a very good home. (If you happen to be a publisher, and are interested in any of the books, please do get in touch.) However, I won’t be doing anything much new. I am sure that I will find other ways to fill up my time.
Well that was interesting. Normally this blog averages around 200 visits per day. For the first five days of 2015 it averaged over 1500 visits.
It is obvious why this happened. The story of Leelah Alcorn has struck a nerve with the general public. I very much wish that it wasn’t necessary to write about a tragedy like this before people will pay attention to trans issues, but at the same time I need to take advantage of the opportunity while it lasts, because Leelah is the tip of a very big iceberg and we need to stop tragedies like hers from happening again. While I do talk a bit about trans issues here, I’m much more likely to be talking about books, so many of the people who have discovered me over the past few days will soon get bored and stop reading. I’m going to do what I hope is one last post while there is still interest in the subject.
Today I received email from the organization promoting the petition to outlaw conversion therapies in the USA. It asked me to imagine myself in Leelah’s place: alone, cold and seeking solace in death. That wasn’t hard. I’ve been there. Most trans people I know have.
Also today I saw this NPR interview with Greta Martela, the founder of a national (US) suicide helpline for trans people. She says she started it because she could have done with one herself. When she tried calling one of the big suicide prevention hotlines it was less than helpful.
“the operator didn’t know what ‘transgender’ meant, and so I had to explain that to him,†she says. “And once he did understand what I was talking about he got really uncomfortable.â€
Elsewhere in the interview, Greta says about Leelah, “I think every trans person I know was crying about it the day that it came out.†I’m pretty sure that was the same for me.
Why? I refer you to this 2012 survey (PDF) of British trans people conducted by Scottish Trans. It reported that 84% of the respondents had considered suicide at one point during their lives. Eighty-four percent.
And yes, those numbers do include me, as I participated in the survey. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, suicide isn’t just something I considered in the past, it is something I know I need to plan for in the future as I get older.
When people say that Leelah’s suicide note struck a chord, we mean it. We have pretty much all been there. We know how she felt, because most of us have had those feelings, and nearly all of us know someone who has. Many of us have lost friends to suicide.
Why? How does this happen?
Well to start with it was the timing. Leelah died just after Christmas. That’s a time of year when many people are talking happily about shared family experiences, about spending time with their loved ones. By no means all trans people are openly rejected and abused by their families, as Leelah was, though many are.
I was talking last year about a charity trying to raise money to buy a house where homeless trans kids in Jamaica can shelter, because right now they are living in a sewer, having been kicked out of their homes by their parents. For some it really does get that bad. And I see from their Facebook page that over Christmas the police raided the place where the kids were sheltering and beat them up.
For many trans people Christmas is a time for gritting teeth as elderly relatives constantly mis-gender us and call us by the wrong name. Others are simply not welcome at family gatherings because of the friction it would cause, or get asked when they are going to “get over†the “phase they are going throughâ€. It’s no fun. It is often easier to stay away. So Leelah died at exactly the right time of year to trigger memories of family issues.
You might think that your family is the one group that ought to support you. Again, not everyone is like Leelah’s parents. The trouble is, however, that the better someone knows you, the harder they find it to come to terms with a gender change. The way we humans interact with each other is so heavily influenced by gender that we find it very difficult to change how we see someone if their gender changes. Also parents tend to imagine futures for their children the minute that the midwife has pronounced the gender of the baby. If they are not sufficiently clued up to look for signs of gender discomfort, they will have nurtured those hopes for years before they find out there is a problem. Truly, families are a minefield for trans folk.
Something else that will have struck a chord with almost all trans people is the part where Leelah talks in her note about feeling that she is running out of time. Puberty is a shit time for an awful lot of people, but for trans folk the problems are multiplied many times over, because we find ourselves turning into monsters.
When you are a kid it is possible to hold on to crazy dreams about how the whole gender thing is a dreadful mistake, and when puberty hits it will all come right. Maybe you have some intersex condition that no one knows about, but will manifest itself when you need it. When puberty hits, these dreams come crashing down in ruins. Trans teenagers find their bodies changing in ways that horrify them; ways that they know can only be fixed by painful and expensive surgery. No wonder they think that their lives are over.
In some ways it was easier for me, because I didn’t know that anything could be done. Sure people like April Ashley had got hormones and surgery when they were older, but teenagers had no access to that. Modern teens like Leelah know that isn’t true. Treatments do exist, and you can get them if only your parents and doctors will let you. There must be a very real sense of seeing an opportunity pass you by.
I’ve seen some very passionate posts about how it is wrong that trans women should feel it so important to conform to classic standards of beauty, and I can see the point. The trouble is that from a very early age we are bombarded with messages telling is that being pretty is the most important attribute a girl can have. It takes considerable strength of will to resist that sort of conditioning.
There is also the matter of personal safety. Trans people — trans women in particular — do suffer from a much higher level of violence than non-trans people. If, as a trans woman, your looks are somewhere in the average range for non-trans women, then you will be much safer from such attacks than if they are not. That might be a dreadful state of affairs, but it is a simple fact of life.
So the process of going through puberty, the process of acquiring an adult body of the wrong type, is a deeply traumatic thing for trans teenagers. Every trans person who has known about their condition from childhood (and not all of us do) will have gone through that. Most of us have also wrestled with the knowledge that our families don’t fully support us, or the fear that they won’t if we tell them. The feelings that drove Leelah to take her own life are common to the vast majority of trans people.
Eighty-four percent.
Truly, there but for the grace of the Goddess, go I.
And one final thing. One more reason why, despite the awfulness of Leelah’s story, people are so keen to share it. The media has finally taken notice. With a few dishonourable exceptions, it is covering the story sympathetically. This is rare and unusual. We’ve got lucky, and we need to exploit the moment for all it is worth while that luck lasts.
We know, for example, that around the world a couple of hundred trans girls like Leelah are murdered each year. Mostly these killings are not reported outside of local media, or at all. If Leelah had not been white, her story would probably have got much less media attention, and would have been spun very differently.
If you are sensing an air of desperation, of a feeling that this too is an opportunity that could easily slip away, and we have to make the most of it while we can, well you’d be spot on.
Fix society. Please.
Yesterday was interesting from a trans activism point of view. Leelah Alcorn’s story hit a number of mainstream media outlets. Here’s The Independent, for example. It also prompted an outpouring of support on Twitter.
The most obvious result was the hashtag, #RealLiveTransAdult, which was an attempt by adult trans folk to give hope to young people like Leelah who may be despairing of ever having a good life. I say attempt because one of the more obvious results was a lot of cis people congratulating those of us who have survived on how well we have done. That wasn’t the point, folks. We didn’t do this for bragging rights, and my apologies if my own tweet made it sound like I was doing so. Surviving as trans is by no means only down to personal effort. One of the more interesting tweets of the evening was this one by Sarah Brown.
https://twitter.com/auntysarah/status/550026336203714560
That was certainly the case for me, though as far as I’m concerned there’s a good case for replacing “fortunate enough” with “smart enough” or “too cowardly”, because I was shit scared of what would happen if I told anyone, and I was right to be scared. I should also add that I was fortunate enough to have been born white, to have had a good education, and to have been smart enough to get a good job.
One of the things that worries me about the current situation as far as trans folk goes is that kids like Leelah have access to plenty of information about being trans, and what to do about it, but will be coming out into a society that still isn’t ready to accept them. Even with all of the advantages I had, if it had not been for Kevin and my mum I would probably not be here now.
Something else I noticed was at least two separate announcements of people starting new trans support groups. Folks, I know you mean well, but lack of support groups was not Leelah’s problem. There are plenty of them. If you want to help families with trans kids, please check out Mermaids in the UK, and TYFA in the USA. In the UK kids of Leelah’s age can find support through Gendered Intelligence, and in the USA through Trans Student.
What is actually needed, as Leelah noted, is education. And on that front I was delighted with this tweet from the new head of Stonewall.
https://twitter.com/ruth_hunt/status/550226729495973889
Education for parents is particularly important, as this infographic from Trans Student shows:
There’s still a long, hard road ahead. However, little by little we are making change happen. I just wish I was in a position to make it happen faster.
This morning I woke up to the news of yet another trans person who had taken her own life. Leelah Alcorn was just 17. I never met her, had never even heard of her until today. There are, after all, millions of trans people in the world. But she’s another hole in my life, and in the lives of every other trans person out there who knows that, save for a bit of good luck, and some very good friends, they could have gone the same way.
What I can say for Leelah, though, is that she could write. She left a suicide note on her Tumblr account. You can find it here. It goes into some detail about how badly her family treated her, but the note ends with a stirring call to action:
The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say “that’s fucked up†and fix it. Fix society. Please.
We don’t count suicides in the number of trans people murdered each year, because people would nit-pick that and use it against us. Nevertheless, killing themselves is often something trans people are told it is their duty to do, so as to avoid bringing shame upon their families. And sometimes it is just necessary because there is no hope, and death seems preferable to putting up with how other people treat you.
I’m not in that place yet, though I am often amazed that I have survived as long as I have. One of the things that helps is having something to live for. It being the time of year when we are supposed to make resolutions, here’s one from me.
I can’t make your death mean something by myself, Leelah. Few people have much influence in this world. But what I can do is keep working hard for trans rights, to try to create the sort of world you have dreamed of. I have to believe that one day we will get there. I wish you could have believed that too.
From my all-time favorite Christmas album, the very wonderful Ramsey Lewis Trio.