Hillary Clinton’s anti-feminist & anti-progressive agenda will never have my support
by Pauline Park

Hillary Clinton’s supporters depict her as a courageous feminist trying to advance a daringly progressive agenda in the face of Republican opposition; the truth is actually quite the opposite: Hillary is an anti-feminist who has always pursued an anti-progressive agenda from her earliest days as a ‘Goldwater girl.’

To begin at the beginning: Hillary grew up in the lily-white upper middle class Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. It is important to point out that Barry Goldwater was not only the Republican nominee in 1964, he was the most right-wing Republican nominee of his day, part of a conservative movement that used his candidacy to take over the party and transform it into the GOP we know today, so far right-wing that Northeastern liberals like Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javitz and Claiborne Pell could not win nomination to run for any statewide office today, even in New York or New England. In 1964, while Bernie Sanders was on the front lines of the civil rights movement, Hillary Clinton was supporting the Republican presidential nominee who was ridiculing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and calling him a ‘communist.’

Of course, the question is not where Hillary Clinton started out but where she has ended up and where she has been along the way, and her role as First Lady of Arkansas and the United States needs to be taken into account in a comprehensive assessment of her record. Hillary supporters lash out at those who would examine that record as ‘sexist,’ but as First Lady, Hillary was not a purely decorative element in her husband’s administration in Little Rock and later in Washington, D.C.; she was a very public figure and cast herself as an active policy-maker in both administrations; and in fact, the whole rationale for her campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2000 was that she had been a key decision-maker in the Clinton administration; and so what Hillary did in Little Rock and later in Washington in her husband’s administrations are very relevant.

I would just point to her crucial role in advocating for the 1994 crime law that helped accelerate the mass incarceration of people of color — especially African American and Latino men — as well as her public advocacy for the welfare reform legislation that further impoverished millions of poor women and children, disproportionately people of color. As Michelle Alexander has pointed out, the Clinton administration

capitulated entirely to the right-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced former president Ronald Reagan’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes—ultimately doing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did… Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history… He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement. Some might argue that it’s unfair to judge Hillary Clinton for the policies her husband championed years ago. But Hillary… not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures… In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals… Bill Clinton championed discriminatory laws against formerly incarcerated people that have kept millions of Americans locked in a cycle of poverty and desperation. If you listen closely here, you’ll notice that Hillary Clinton is still singing the same old tune in a slightly different key. I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself. (Michelle Alexander, “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,” the Nation, 2.10.16)

The support that many people of color have offered Hillary Clinton in the course of the 2016 presidential campaign is all the more curious when one considers her use of language that some would call racist, as Marc Charles wrote in April 2016,

Hillary Clinton is using terms like ‘off the reservation,’ and reassuring people that ‘We don’t need to make America great again. America never stopped being great.’ This type of behavior demonstrates she does not understand the systemic racism and blatant oppression that has been endured by people of color throughout the entire history of this nation,” writes Mark Charles, adding, “Unfortunately, the dialogue that is taking place this election cycle is not about broad-based equality or ending racism. The conversation we are having today is about the type of racism we want to settle for” (Mark Charles, “A Native Response to Hillary Clinton’s ‘Off the Reservation’ Comment,” Native News On-Line, 4.30.16)

Is it sheer ignorance of the history of race and ethnicity in the United States? Or was the ‘off the reservation’ comment a racist ‘dog whistle’ as when Hillary asserted that she had a broader base of support than then-Sen. Barack Obama, citing an Associated Press article

that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again,  and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There’s a pattern emerging here (Richard Prince, “Hard Working… White Americans,” Maynard Institute, 5.8.08)

The pattern that many people of color saw was that of a privileged white woman casting herself as the champion of white Democrats unwilling to vote for an African American. “Was Hillary channeling George Wallace? Hillary’s reckless exploitation of racial division could split the Democratic Party over race  — a tragic legacy for the  Clintons,” wrote Joe Conason (ibid).  Hillary also aggressively pushed the Republican ‘welfare reform’ bill that Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996 that plunged hundreds of thousands of families  — disproportionately African American women and children — from poverty into even deeper poverty as part of a cynical attempt to out maneuver Bob Dole and the Republicans in the lead up to the 1996 election, which Clinton won handily and most likely would have easily won even if Clinton had not signed the crime bill and welfare reform bill into law.

If Hillary supporters rail at those who criticize her policy-making role in the Clinton White House, they refuse to acknowledge the fact that she would never have been considered a credible candidate for the Senate seat of the retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan had she not claimed to have been a key policy-maker in the Clinton administration. Neither Clinton had ever lived in New York before, and so Hillary was rightly called a ‘carpet bagger’ for moving to Chappaqua just to be eligible to run for the Senate in 2000 with the blessing of Pat Moynihan. Whether former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani could have beaten Hillary we will never know, because he withdrew from the race after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, leaving the feckless U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio from Long Island to go down to defeat in November of that year.

My own interaction with Hillary came in the form of a request that I and a group of transgender activists made to meet with her before the election and then again after she won in November; her staff refused both requests, even declining to offer a low-level staff member to meet with us to discuss transgender discrimination issues; the second time around, of course, we were not just voters, but constituents of the newly elected Senator, whose refusal to meet with us or even explain her refusal to meet with us alienated not just me but the mostly African American transwomen who were part of our group as well. The fact that Housing Works, one of New York City’s largest social service providers to people living with HIV and AIDS, was part of the group requesting the meeting, seemed to have no impact whatsoever on the willingness of Hillary’s staff to meet with us.

Just as important in creating a lasting impression with me were Hillary Clinton’s responses to questions posed by Lesbian & Gay New York (‘LGNY,’ since renamed ‘Gay City News’) to her in an interview in 2000. Paul Schindler, the newspaper’s editor, asked me if I could suggest a transgender-specific question to pose to the Senate candidate; I suggested that he ask her if she would commit to supporting full transgender inclusion in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the federal hate crimes bill. Taking my suggestion, in an interview on Oct. 4, Schindler (Paul Schindler, “Hillary Clinton Talks to Paul Schindler, 2000“) asked the Senate candidate,

“Do you think the goal of broadening the language for ENDA or broadening language in the hate crimes protection act to include gender expression and gender identity, do you think that’s a practical goal at this point politically?”

To which Hillary responds, “I think we need to try to move ENDA forward. I think ENDA is such an important legislative goal. I think it’s within reach and I think it’s a vehicle for widening the circle of rights and freedoms and responsibilities and I would really focus on trying to get that passed.”

“In other words, no effort at this point at amending?”

“I don’t see at this point that that would be in the best interest of moving the agenda forward.”

After another go around on this question, Schindler then asks, “One of the things that the transgender community points to is that, for example, on hate crimes in New York State, the entire coalition for hate crimes held out to have gays and lesbians included in it. We would have had a hate crimes bill in New York long ago if it had only been for religion and so forth. But everyone hung tough on that. But what the transgender community is saying now is, ‘Wouldn’t that approach be appropriate for them as well?’ in other words, don’t do it piecemeal, include everybody and then move forward.”

“Well no one who’s a leader in the gay and lesbian community has asked me to do that. I think there’s an understood recognition of the political reality. So for me it’s a priority to try to get ENDA passed, which is what I will work on.”

Transgendered people suffer pervasive discrimination, transgendered people of color in particular, and it was shocking to me to see Hillary dismiss transgender discrimination altogether in her comments in her October 2000 interview with LGNY; what was especially appalling was her response to the question about supporting inclusion of gender identity and expression in ENDA and the hate crimes bill: “no one who’s a leader in the gay and lesbian community has asked me to do that.” Well, it should not be up to gay and lesbian gatekeepers to decide whether transgendered people should be protected from discrimination and all the more so given that the gay and lesbian ‘leaders’ Hillary talks to are wealthy and powerful members of the gay political establishment, many of them millionaires and almost all of them white and at least upper middle class.

Even when she caught onto the increasingly common and more inclusive usage of ‘LGBT’ community, as senator and later as secretary of state, Hillary almost never addressed transgender discrimination as a stand-alone issue apart from the broader LGBT umbrella.

It is worth pointing out that Hillary not only supported the discriminatory bill that became known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ that Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993 but also the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that Clinton signed into law in 1996 — the only legislation specifically institutionalizing discrimination against LGBT people ever signed into law by any president in US history. And Hillary not only supported that legislation but aggressively defended it for years with language that far exceeded what was necessary to justify DOMA purely in terms of political expediency.

Hillary only came out for same-sex marriage when she began her second campaign for president and after Obama himself had come out in favor of marriage equality, and he only did some when it became clear that he would have a hard time raising money in the LGBT community for his 2012 election campaign if his administration was still supporting DOMA.

And as late as May 2016, when Hillary was almost assured of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, she refused to respond to a questionnaire from a transgender advocacy organization; as Kevin Gosztola reported on May 24,

Trans United Fund received a call from a Clinton campaign representative a full two weeks after the campaign had committed to complete the survey, explaining that the survey was ‘too long’ and the campaign did not have the appropriate resources to complete it in a timely manner. The Sanders campaign completed the questionnaire completely and on time (Kevin Gosztola, “Transgender Group ‘Perplexed’ At Why Clinton Won’t Fill OutQuestionnaire,” Shadowproof, 5.24.16).

As Gosztola put it so trenchantly, “For a ‘frontrunner’ Democratic presidential candidate, who has cast herself as the inevitable nominee, it’s hard to comprehend how the campaign could not have found time to answer some questions important to trans people.” Hillary has been at best a follower, not a leader, when it comes to LGBT rights, and for most of her career, an opponent of LGBT rights.

Of course, there are those who not only insist upon but demand that women support Hillary simply because she’s a woman, though it is difficult to see why simply being female alone should compel anyone’s support; after all, Carly Fiorina ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but got no support from Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright, Joan Walsh or the legion of pseudo-feminists moving in lockstep behind the Clinton machine. The truth is that most women who come to power not only in the United States but in other countries around the world do so through a masculinist discourse of power, Margaret Thatcher being a case in point; Ronald Reagan famously called her ‘the best man in England.’ I lived in London for two years during a crucial period in Thatcher’s career; I was there when she declared war on Argentina over the Falkland Islands (‘las Malvinas’), with profound consequences for the United Kingdom as well as for Argentina, and the prime minister was compared by the British and world media to Boadicea (Boudicca) and other warrior queens of yore. But Thatcher’s direction of the war was far from heroic; in fact, her order to sink the General Belgrano was arguably a war crime. Thatcher also branded Nelson Mandela a ‘terrorist,’ despite his heroic efforts to challenge South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime.

One could mention many other women who have risen to the highest office in the land, including the first female prime ministers of Israel and India; Golda Meir denied the very existence of Palestinians, including Palestinian women, and Indira Gandhi forcibly sterilized poor men and women, hardly orthodox feminism.  There is an ironic parallel between Hilary and Park Geun-hye, who served as acting First Lady of the Republic from 1974-79 when her father was president, the dictator Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated in 1979, later going on to become the first woman elected president of the Republic of Korea in 2012. A contemporary of Hillary’s, Park alienated large sections of the Korean public with her war on labor and her authoritarian style of rule, proving through her behavior and her policies that the first woman elected president of a democracy can be both anti-feminist and profoundly anti-progressive (Hankyoreh editorial, “Democracy sorely missing from Park’s inaugural address,” 2.26.13).

Closer to home, Carly Fiorina withdrew from the Republican contest after failing to et even one percent in the New Hampshire primary in January; but before her withdrawal, neither Gloria Steinem nor any other Hillary supporter suggested that women should support Fiorina’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination despite the fact that she is just as much a woman as Hillary Clinton; Steinem’s lack of support for Fiorina speaks as much to the inconsistency and contradiction of the ‘feminists’ supporting Hillary as to the rigor of their feminism. In fact, Gloria Steinem was rebuked by feminists across the country for declaring (with no evidence whatsoever) that the only reason young women were supporting Bernie Sanders in droves was because they were looking for dates with young ‘Bernie Bros’; if Donald Trump had said that, he would have been rightly excoriating for such a deeply misogynist assertion.

The first woman elected governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin is anything but a feminist, and she became something of a national laughingstock for her bizarre pronouncements as John McCain’s Republican running mate in 2008. But Palin is a woman, and at no time has Steinem ever proposed support for Palin’s election either as vice-president or as president; it is difficult to see how either Carly Fiorina’s election as the first woman president or Sarah Palin’s would be any less ‘historic’ than Hillary Clinton’s. Nonetheless, Madeleine Albright went so far as to say that “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women,” condemning women who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries to everlasting hellfire and damnation, a curious theology to affirm; but Albright did not support Sarah Palin for vice-president in 2008 or Carly Fiorina for president in 2016, so it is difficult to see how Albright could escape eternal torment in the flames of hell any more than any other woman who supported Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton’s record on women’s issues is appalling by any standard. Hillary she supported Barack Obama’s mass deportations of Latino immigrants, deportations so enormous that La Raza dubbed him the ‘Deporter in Chief.’ Obama deported more than twice as many undocumented immigrants as George W. Bush and by some counts, more than all previous presidents combined. Hillary did not begin to distance herself from these deportations until she began her campaign for president (Betsey Woodruff, “Hillary Clinton’s Child-Deportation Flip-Flop,” Politico, 3.11.16). In a March 10 Democratic presidential debate, Hillary declared that as president she would not deport children,  prompting Betsey Woodruff to write,

Clinton struggled mightly to communicate last night that deporting children is bad… Just two months ago… Clinton defended the practice of deporting children… and less than two years before that, Clinton argued passionately that undocumented children in the United States be subject to deportation… she told Christian Amanpour that children fleeing from violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala shouldn’t be able to stay in the U.S. (Betsey Woodruff, “Hillary Clinton’s Child-Deportation Flip-Flop,” Politico, 3.11.16).

Speaking of Honduras, as secretary of state, Hillary supported the 2009 coup d’état that overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. The coup that Hillary supported brought a brutal military dictatorship to power and has made Honduras one of the most violent countries on earth, and as secretary of state, Hillary continued to support the junta despite its persecution of women, feminists, artists, LGBT people, indigenous people, environmental activists and political dissidents of all kinds, and she persuaded Barack Obama to resume US aid to Honduras despite the fact that the resumption of such aid was a violation of US law as well as a breach of international law.  In March 2016, Berta Cáceres was assassinated almost certainly on the orders of the junta (“Remembering Berta Cáceres , Assassinated Honduras Indigenous & Environmental Leader,” Democracy Now, 5.4.16). A leading environmental and indigenous rights activist, Cáceres held Hillary personally responsible for the violence and repression under the junta (“Before Her Assassination, Berta Cáceres Singled Out Hillary Clinton for Backing Honduran Coup,” Democracy Now, 5.11.16).

But the coup in Honduras was not the only one that Hillary supported as secretary of state; she also supported the coup d’état in Egypt, which has proved to be a disaster for the country (Yahia Hamed, “Egypt’s coup has plunged the country into catastrophe,” Guardian, 3.16.14), plunging it into a miasma of corruption, brutal repression and despair. As in Honduras, Obama and Hillary resumed US aid to Egypt in direct contravention of US law, which prohibits continuing aid to a military junta brought to power in a coup.

It was in neighboring Libya that Hillary had her biggest impact as secretary of state, but it is not a legacy that she is eager to talk about. While Republican members of Congress have focused obsessively on Benghazi, which was so obviously a disaster for which Hillary was fully responsible as secretary of state, they have missed the forest for the trees. It was the Libya intervention as a whole that was the real catastrophe, and one which Hillary is primarily responsible, pushing Obama into the ill-fated war against his better judgment. The Gaddafi regime’s attacks on innocent civilians in eastern Libya certainly provided a rationale for a no-fly zone of some sort, but Hillary’s US/NATO intervention repeated the folly of Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq (which she aggressively supported), decapitating the regime and leaving a power vacuum which al-Qaeda and ISIS (‘Da’esh’) have filled.

Other than turning Libya into a failed state, it was in Bahrain that Hillary had perhaps the biggest impact. As secretary of state, Hillary approved the brutal crackdown on the popular uprising against the despotic Bahraini regime in 2011 in which the dictatorship even arrest, imprisoned, tortured and murdered doctors and nurses who tended to the wounded pro-democracy activists who participated in the uprising.

Next door, Hillary encouraged Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen in a war that continues to this day with the full support of the Obama administration, with Saudi fighter jets dropping bombs on hospitals, schools and houses and apartment buildings in Sana and elsewhere in Yemen (“As Saudis Continue Deadly Bombing of Yemen, Is Obama Trading Munitions for Riyadh’s Loyalty?,” Democracy Now, 4.21.16). An International Business Times investigation  revealed an astonishing conflict of interest on Hillary’s part:

Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IB Times analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure… represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term. The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143% increase in complete sales to those nations over the same time  frame during the Bush administration (David Sirota and Andrew Perez, “Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department,” International Business Times, 5.26.15).

Not insignificant is the fact that these regimes are all undemocratic to say the least, including Saudi Arabia, one of the most despotic regimes on earth, whose record on human rights is appalling; Saudi women cannot vote in national elections and are not even allowed to drive; and LGBT people have been executed by the regime for same-sex relations and crossdressing, according to human rights organizations. One need also note that Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights not only did not improve during Hillary’s tenure of secretary of state but actually worsened.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters claim she is the most qualified person ever to run for president, but her support for Israeli apartheid and genocide disqualifies her entirely in my view. In a letter to fellow Methodists considering support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, Hillary denounced BDS as ‘anti-Semitic’ and declared, “We must never tire in defending Israel’s legitimacy” (Maggie Habermas, “Hillary Clinton Criticizes Group Advocating Boycott Against Israel,” New York Times, 5.10.16). Michelle Goldberg aptly called Hillary’s speech at the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention on March 21 ‘a symphony of craven, delusional pandering’ (Michelle Goldberg, “Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC Speech Was a Symphony of Craven, Delusional Pandering,” Slate, 3.21.16), in which Hillary declared, “We have to be united in fighting back against BDS,” equating BDS with ‘anti-Semitism’ (Ryan Teague Beckwith, “Read Hillary Clinton’s Speech to AIPAC,” Time, 3.21.16), this, despite the fact that the governments of Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands have officially recognized BDS as legitimate and constitutionally protected speech (Kevin Squires, “Ireland latest EU state to defend BDS,” Electronic Intifada, 5.28.16).

While Donald Trump and Ted Cruz spoke at AIPAC and mouthed the usual Zionist machine talking points as Hillary, she alone among all the presidential candidates speaking at AIPAC specifically named the BDS movement as the enemy, and a candidate who specifically and explicitly slanders the movement for justice and human rights for all in Israel/Palestine with false allegations of anti-Semitism has fully disqualified herself as a candidate for any public office, let alone that of president of the United States (Steven Klein, “America Must Tell Israel: Annexing the West Bank Is Our Red Line” (Ha’aretz, 5.8.16). While Bernie Sanders’ pronouncements on Israel fall far short of what they could and should be, it is worth noting that he is the first major party presidential candidate to publicly criticize Israel at all in the course of a presidential contest (Jason Horowitz and Maggie Haberman, “A Split Over Israel Threatens the Democrats’ Hopes for Unity,” New York Times, 5.25.16); contrast that with Hillary’s shilling for apartheid Israel, her open support for the Israeli war of genocide in Gaa in 2014 and her declaration that destroying the BDS movement as a priority of her presidency, and there is simply no rational argument for any progressive to support Hillary over Bernie.

Even beyond Hillary Clinton’s colossal failure as secretary of state and her outrageous support for Israeli apartheid and genocide is the issue of her character, and her willingness to subvert the law and lie repeatedly about her many violations of it should be troubling to anyone who thinks that the character as well as the judgment of a president matters. Hillary is the only secretary of state ever to have set up a private server secretly in the basement of her house in order to evade clear State Department rules and then attempt to mislead the public about the subterfuge. On May 25, the Inspector General of the State Department issued a report, declaring,

At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act (Julian Hattem, “Watchdog: Clinton, top aides did not comply on records policy,” The Hill, 5.25.16)

Destroying government documents is a serious crime and repeatedly lying about such behavior is an indictment of Hillary Clinton’s character, even if it were the case that every single one of the 32,000 e-mail messages that she destroyed was about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding planning, which is of course a completely implausible assertion.

(A.J. Vicens, “State Department Inspector General Finds Hillary Clinton Violated Recordkeeping Rules,” Mother Jones, 5.25.16).

As Amy Chozick put it so trenchantly in her May 25 news report for the New York Times, “Voters just don’t trust her,” noting that

After months of Mrs. Clinton’s saying she used a private email for convenience, and that she was willing to cooperate fully with investigations into her handling of official business at the State Department, the report, delivered to Congress on Wednesday, undermined both claims (Amy Chozick, “Emails Add to Hillary Clinton’s Central Problem: Voters Just Don’t Trust Her,” New York Times, 5.25.16)

Far from being a partisan Republican ‘witch hunt,’ the report was issued by the inspector general of the State Department, an Obama appointee and one-time subordinate to Hillary Clinton, reporting to Congress that Hillary refused to meet with him and the State Department staff conducting the review; her campaign’s statement issued after the report was widely reported on in the media was that she was waiting to be interviewed by the FBI; but that is of course absurd on its face because the FBI has never precluded her from meeting with the inspector general’s office and one would imagine would strongly support the former secretary cooperating with it.

Hillary is now viewed rightly by an overwhelming majority of Americans as dishonest and untrustworthy (Jeff Jacoby, “In Clinton, Americans Don’t Trust,” Boston Globe, 5.31.16). Part of that perception may be because of her corruption. Since leaving office as president and secretary of state, Bill and Hillary Clinton have cashed in on public office in a way absolutely unprecedented in American history. Hillary alone has received more than $22 million in speaking fees, while Bill Clinton “has earned more than $132 million in speaking fees, in addition to book royalties and other income. The Clintons’ most recent financial-disclosure forms show that he earned nearly $2.7 million in fees for speaking to audiences that included financial-industry firms, after she announced her candidacy,” writes Amy Davidson (Amy Davidson, “Bill Problems: As Donald Trump attacks both Clintons, it’s like 1992 all over again,” New Yorker, 6.6.16). Can you imagine George Washington or Abraham Lincoln raking in $132 million in speaking fees after leaving office? Or Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson?

One of the most disturbing facts about Hillary is that she is bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry. As Charlie Cray wrote in a report for Greenpeace,

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign (‘Hillary for America’) has received $147,840 in direct contributions from 65 fossil fuel lobbyists and $2,502,740 in bundled contributions by fossil fuel lobbyists. Combined, the total direct and bundled contributions from 65 oil/coal/gas lobbyists to Clinton’s campaign is at least $2,650,580 (Charlie Cray, Fossil Fuel Lobbyists’ Contributions to the Clinton Campaign, Greenpeace.org, 4.22.16).

Despite the overwhelming evidence of Hillary’s dishonesty and corruption as well as anti-progressive politics and sheer incompetence, her supporters insist that we all have an obligation to support her for the Democratic nomination and if she wins that, vote for her in the general election. And this is one of the most curious aspects of the Hillary Clinton campaign: is the binary opposition being constructed by her supporters as well as those of Donald Trump, both of whom use the other as a bogeyman with which to frighten wavering voters. But the fact is, we do not have a national election for president but rather fifty state elections (plus the District of Columbia, etc.) in which voters elect representatives to the electoral college. Of all the states, New York is one of the ‘bluest,’ reliably Democratic in every election since the Reagan landslide of 1984; so the argument in favor of Hillary, already weak, looks even weaker when one looks at the bluest and reddest of the states. While it is true that Trump’s unusual if not to say bizarre candidacy may well scramble the red/blue picture that we have been used to for the last few decades, the fact is that no one thinks that 2016 will be a 49-state blow-out like 1984 or 1972. In such circumstances, the demand by Democratic partisans that progressives support an anti-progressive candidate such as Hillary Clinton becomes even less persuasive for those living and voting in the ‘safest’ Democratic and Republican states.

Polls show Hillary beating Trump by margins of 80%-20% or even greater, so the notion that my vote for Jill Stein on the Green Party line would throw the election to Trump is simply absurd. One could point out the illogic of that logic by arguing that a vote for Jill Stein is not only not a vote for Donald Trump but is in fact a vote against Donald Trump as well as Hillary Clinton. I intend to vote for Jill Stein in November not merely as a ‘protest’ vote but as an expression of my values, and the principles of progressive politics that are at the heart of my own activism and life’s work. A vote for Hillary Clinton would be nothing less than a betrayal of progressive principles and the social justice that I have been pursuing for over twenty years now.

Pauline Park led the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002 and participated in the first US LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine in 2012; she keynoted the Queer Korea Festival preceding the Seoul Pride Parade in 2015, the largest event in the history of the LGBT community in Korea. Park did her M.Sc. in European studies at the London School of Economics & Political Science and her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The post Hillary Clinton’s anti-feminist & anti-progressive agenda will never have my support appeared first on Pauline Park.

Hillary Clinton is not my abuela
by Pauline Park

“7 things Hillary Clinton has in common with your abuela” has provoked overwhelmingly negative reactions from Latinos and Latinos. Within hours of the posting of the absurd piece of #Hispandering on HillaryClinton.com on Dec. 21, outraged Latinas took to Twitter to denounce Hillary with the hashtags #NotMyAbuela and #NotMiAbuela, both ‘trending’ on Twitter throughout Dec. 22 and 23.

I’d like to offer my own response by talking about my own grandmother, who was a source of unconditional love throughout my childhood and youth and until her death at the age of 99. There are so many ways in which my grandmother was different from Hillary, but I’ll just cite seven, in keeping with her #Hispandering piece:

1) My grandmother grew up without a mother, having lost her mother when she was just a baby. Hillary Clinton grew up with both parents.

2) My grandmother she grew up in poverty in rural Wisconsin, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, who grew up surrounding by wealth and privilege in the all-white upper-middle-class Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. She went out into the field as a child, pitching hay and working the farm with her widower father. Hillary didn’t live on subsistence agriculture at any time in her life and never worked as a field hand on a small, struggling family farm; and she’s been a multi-millionaire for years now, controlling a foundation with assets in the billions. My grandmother died with no assets other than the radio she used to listen to Milwaukee Brewers baseball games (she was a huge fan of the great African American baseball player, Hank Aaron), her Bible, and a few pieces of costume jewelry. My grandmother never lived in the White House, though she did live in my parents’ house for many years, a small house with white aluminum siding and only one bathroom for six people.

3) My grandmother was the daughter of German immigrants from the part of Prussia that is now in Poland, unlike Hillary, who was born to an English-speaking WASP family of wealth and privilege; unlike Hillary, my grandmother did not speak English as her first language. Hillary went to Wellesley College — one of the elite Seven Sisters women’s colleges — and then Yale law school, one of the two or three top law schools in the country. My grandmother never had the opportunity to pursue formal education after high school, though she did volunteer to teach Native American schoolchildren on a nearby reservation in northern Wisconsin.

4) My grandmother never had any power over anyone other than her five children; as secretary of state, Hillary had power over the lives of many, directing US foreign policy for the first term of the Obama administration; Hillary may well be elected president of the United States, which would make her the most powerful person on earth. My grandmother died long before the Internet age, so she never had an e-mail account and unlike Hillary, never had a secret e-mail server in the basement of her mansion in Chappaqua from which she conducted State Department business in direct contravention of the rules and of all standards of ethics in government. My grandmother also did not approve the imprisonment, torture, and murder of thousands of pro-democracy activists in Bahrain and even of the doctors and nurses who attended to the wounded in hospital after the brutal crackdown by the despotic monarchical regime in Bahrain. Nor did my grandmother publicly approve of the Israeli murder of Furgan Dogan in the act of piracy committed by the Israeli military against the Mavi Marmara in international waters. Nor did my grandmother approve of the secret mass surveillance of US citizens, Europeans and others by the National Security Administration (NSA). Nor did my grandmother approve of the unprecedented deportation of undocumented immigrants by the Obama administration, or Obama’s killing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan by drone strikes — including the killing of Momina Bibi, a 67-year-old midwife and grandmother in rural Pakistan. My grandmother never approved of the murder of a grandmother.

5) My grandmother made mistakes but learned from them, unlike Hillary; my aunt once made a comment to me (I was an adult by this point) to that effect, saying that my grandmother had really mellowed and was quite a different grandmother than she was a mother; whether or not she ever acknowledged the mistakes she’d made with her children, my grandmother dropped the stern German matriarch role to become a loving, nurturing grandmother to all of her grandchildren; given her Christian fundamentalist background, she became quite astonishingly non-judgmental in her old age.

6) My grandmother died in poverty, being consigned by my aunts to a nursing home in the last decade of her life, having spent down all of her limited assets, living on Social Security and Medicaid. Hillary is a multimillionaire and she continues to control a foundation with billions of dollars in assets.

7) Most important of all, my grandmother was not a self-interested, grasping, power-hungry politician like Hillary who selfishly pursues power at all costs and routinely  lies about her misdeeds. Unlike Hillary, my grandmother was not a war criminal. Though Hillary does have one thing in common with my grandmother — like her, Hillary is a Republican~!

#NotMyAbuela #NotMiAbuela #NotMyGrandmother

The post Hillary Clinton is not my abuela appeared first on Pauline Park.

Korea 2015: return to the motherland
by Pauline Park

In June 2015, I returned to Korea for the first time since I left at the age of seven and-a-half months old; it was a momentous trip. 나는 한국에서 입양되었다 These are some photos from the month I spent in the Land of the Morning Calm. #입양 #입양인 #한국 #조선 #대한민국 #남한 #남조선 #한국말 #입양홍보

Sunday, June 14

On the eve of my flight to Korea, I visited my friend Mohammad in Brooklyn.

Mohammad made a splendid Palestinian dinner for me and for our mutual friend Ang and I played a little piano for them on the grand piano in Mohammad’s house.

Monday, June 15

I flew out of La Guardia the next morning to Dallas/Fort Worth.

I spent the night in a mini hotel at DFW — my first experience of a Japanese-style mini hotel; it was clean and comfortable and it was convenient, as I didn’t have to go out of the security perimeter of the airport; in the morning, I was ready for my flight to Korea.

Tuesday, June 16

An ill omen for the country — though fortunately not for my flight or my trip — was Donald Trump’s announcement of his presidential candidacy, which I watched on CNN while waiting for my flight to Incheon. But a good omen was something S-shaped that I will leave to the imagination of readers that I produced on the morning of my flight to Korea.

I flew out of DFW to Incheon, Korea’s largest airport; it was impossible for me to get more than just a few restless hours of sleep on the 13-hour flight, cramped as I was in coach; the saving grace was that — though I was up against the emergency exit — I didn’t have anyone in front of me on the flight.

At least I got a decent dinner on the AA flight from DFW; we were given a choice of an American-style dinner and a Korean one and I opted for the Korean.

Wednesday, June 17

Incheon’s new-ish airport impressed me with its cleanliness and efficiency.

I arrived at Incheon international airport, only to be confronted with bilingual posters in English and Korean warning of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) ‘epidemic,’ which turned out to be a hyped non-epidemic.

My first view of the city of my birth upon my return after 54 years from the patio outside Seoul Station. 서울

I took the AREX train into Seoul, arriving at Seoul Station around dusk.

I took a taxicab to the Ramada Hotel Namdaemun.

Thursday, June 18

I awoke the next morning to a spectacular panorama of Seoul as seen through the window of my room at the Ramada Hotel Namdaemun, with Seoul Station on the left.

The breakfast room at the hotel was large and airy and very woodsy.

I met two other participants in the Mosaic 2015 adult tour organized by Me & Korea which ran from June 17-28; we went out to lunch at Seoul Station and on the way back passed Namdaemun, the Great South Gate.

Namdaemun 남대문 has always held a special place in my heart: it is the only landmark in Seoul or Korea that I can distinctly remember from reading about the country of my birth in encyclopedias we had at home.

I was delighted to see Namdaemun for the first time.

I was delighted to meet Marie Frenette, a Canadian from Nova Scotia who had seen my post on Facebook about coming to Korea and was interested to meet me; after living in Korea for 9 years, she had become fluent in Korean — quite a feat for any North American with no familial connection with Korea. I remarked on the irony that I spoke the language of Marie’s ancestors (French) while she spoke that of mine…

Friday, June 19

I visited Soedaemun Prison Museum with my friend Kris; Korean nationalists were held here during the Japanese occupation and tortured and murdered. But the postwar Korean dictatorship continued to use Soedaemun to detain, torture and murder political dissidents for decades after the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945.

Saturday, June 20

Me & Korea’s Mosaic Tour began in earnest on Saturday.

After breakfast, we piled into a bus and drove to Gwanghwamun 광화문, the huge square in the center of Seoul that is where countless protests and demonstrations have taken place; there, we were greeted by an enormous statue of Sejong the Great 세종 대왕, the king who commissioned the creation of hangul 한글, the alphabet still in use today that is considered by many linguists to be among the most ingenious alphabets ever created.

I got to pretend that I was president of the Republic of Korea 대한민국 at the Cheongwadae Sarangchae 청와대사랑채 museum in Seoul 서울 한국 조선

I visited Gyeongbokgung 경복궁 — the largest of the five royal palaces in Seoul 서울 — at the beginning of my month in Korea.

It was raining so hard, the royal guard took cover under the great gate of Gwanghwamun 광화문 한국 조선 대한민국 남한 남조선

Gyeongbokgung houses a good part of the collection of the National Museum of Korea and I saw this magnificent dragon in the palace.

I saw many other fascinating works of art in the museum; perhaps the most unusual was a car once used by the royal family.

Sunday, June 21

On Sunday morning, Mosaic tour participants gathered in the lobby of the Ramadan Namdaemun.

We attended a service at the Jesus’ Love Church, featuring a rather extraordinary sermon by the Elder Pastor Kim, who told us that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as Korean adoptees but rather as warriors for Christ whose mission is to take over the United States so that it can convert the entire world to Christianity. I seriously doubt anyone in the group took the Elder Pastor Kim’s nonsense seriously either, but since the church was one of the co-sponsors of the tour, we all listened politely to his sermon. One of the two interpreters on the tour — a young progressive feminist who grew up in Korea but was by this point studying in the United States — was seriously offended by the sermon. But as for me, having been raised in a Christian fundamentalist household, I was in effect ‘inoculated’ against such nonsense and the sermon did not bother me; fortunately, the Elder Pastor Kim did not get into homophobic or transphobic discourse.

And thankfully,  the sermon was only half an hour long (even if it seemed much longer), and after the service, some of us were paired with ‘host families,’ others with ‘host buddies.’ I met my two host buddies, the wonderful Tae-kyung and Sinhae, and we saw much of Seoul together, including Changyecheon stream, one of the most delightful places in the city. The original plan for the members of the tour was to stay overnight with a host family from the church, but apparently after some internal discussion, the organizers quite prudently decided that pairing me with host buddies not associated with the fundamentalist Jesus Love church would make sense for the only openly transgendered or queer member of the motherland tour group.

Tae-kyung and Sinhae introduced me to the delights of Cheonggyecheon #청계천; the stream flows once again through the heart of Seoul as it did before being covered in concrete for 45 years; it’s a rare bit of nature in Korea’s capital 서울

We also visited Deoksugung Palace 덕수궁, one of the five royal palaces in Seoul 서울. I had been there the day before, but it was pouring rain on Saturday; on Sunday, it was gloriously sunny and the light brought out the wonderful yellow color on the side of the throne room building.

I was enchanted by the Joseon dynasty era architecture of the palace.

And it was sweet of Taekyung and Sinhae to be so patient with my touristy curiosity, Taekyung taking a number of shots of me in front of one of the pavilions.

Deoksugung 덕수궁 is the second largest of the five royal palaces but isn’t so much a single building as with most European palaces but rather a series of pavilions, this one being one of the largest and most prominent.

 

 

Monday, June 22

In the morning, I went with two other adoptees from the Mosaic tour and one of the interpreters to meet with staff at Social Welfare Services. Afterwards, we went out for lunch and I really loved the bibimbap that I had along with many other dishes I shared.

In the evening, participants in the Mosaic tour took a cruise on the Han River.

One part of a bridge on the river was spouting water from colored lights, which looked like the colors of the rainbow flag. It was a hot and humid evening, but the breeze on the river was wonderfully cooling.

And the nighttime views of Seoul were dazzling.

Tuesday, June 23

Around midday, Mosaic tour participants served lunch to elderly Koreans at a soup kitchen near Seoul station, which is the area where many of the city’s homeless congregate.

천 사 가 되 어 주 서ㅣ 요

Afterwards, we took a bus down to Gyeongju (Kyongju) in the southeast.

Cheomseongdae Observatory 첨성대 (瞻星臺) is one of the oldest surviving structures in Korea. Built in 647 during the reign of Queen Seondeok of the Silla kingdom, Cheomseongdae  was used as an astronomical observatory.

Gyeongju (Kyongju)경주 was the capital of the ancient Silla kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period and it was fascinating to visit.

Mosaic participants took a group shot at Cheomseongdae Observatory.

Dongung Palace 동궁과 & Anapji Pond 안압지.

Hanhwa Resort in Gyeongju was a nice place to stay overnight, but surprisingly lacked wi-fi in the rooms and non-Korean TV stations.

Wednesday, June 24

National Museum

The Mosaic tour wended its way to Pohang 포항 in North Gyeongsang 경상북도 where we dipped our feet into the waters of the East Sea (Dong Hae) — Koreans don’t call it the ‘Sea of Japan’~!

The waters off Pohang are so clear you can see the sea floor and all of the flora and fauna in the ocean.

I dipped my feet in the Donhae.

The pier at Pohang

Jukdo market in Pohang was huge and fascinating.

Jukdo market in Pohang had live octopus and fish of every kind.

Live octopus on display in Judo market made for a visual feast.

Thursday, June 25

In the morning, Mosaic tour participants visited the Gyeongju National Museum, which has an enormous collection of Korean art and artifacts.

The most impressive artifact was a crown from the Silla kingdom.

We then lunched at Choi’s Bobsang before visiting the Gyochon Traditional Village (경주 교촌마을) on the southern edge of Gyeongju.

Three ‘ajumma’ taught us traditional Korean tea service

The biggest challenge was actually sitting on the floor cross legged.

Mosaic tour participants were instructed in traditional tea service and taught how to sing “Arirang,” the most famous of all Korean folk songs — though I had already learned the song before going to Korea.

We had Korean archery lessons as well.

On the way back to Seoul, we stopped at a rest stop for dinner and I had ttangcho ramyeon, a wonderfully hot and spicy noodle dish.

Friday, June 26

On the morning of the last full day of the Mosaic tour, participants scaled Naksan fortress wall.

In the afternoon, I took the Seoul subway with Sina Lee and Jacob Bowman to Insadong, a popular shopping area that is known for offering more traditional items than Myeongdong.

Insadong is a popular shopping district in Seoul.

Mosaic tour dinner

Sunday, June 28

I had a small but perfectly serviceable room at the Itaewon Inn for 10 days and nights.

The Queer Korea Festival drew a crowd estimated at 35,000, making it the largest event in the history of the LGBT community of Korea.

Christian fundamentalists tried to block the event from going forward and then tried to drown it out with loud noise but abjectly failed in that goal.

This was the first Queer Korea festival in Seoul City Hall Plaza  in the heart of the city.

At the festival, a young man confronted a Christian fundamentalist — though they were speaking in Korean, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying; but I guessed that the young man was gay and was challenging the minister’s homophobia.

Christian fundamentalists had tried to stop the Queer Korea Festival, but organizers were successful in challenging them in court.

I was surprised and delighted to see a big banner declaring “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid — Free Palestine.” 

I was invited to keynote the Queer Korea Festival (퀴어문화축제 & 퍼레이드).

Chogakbo is a new transgender advocacy project and had a float in the Seoul Pride Parade.

Seoul Pride 2015 was the most exciting pride parade I’ve ever been in; there were no pandering politicians and no corporate sponsorship, just ordinary LGBT people marching for their rights.

The mayor of Seoul put 3,000 police officers on the ground to guard participants in the Queer Korea Festival and Seoul Pride Parade.

Seoul Pride drew thousands of LGBT Koreans and allies to march for LGBT rights.

Monday, June 29

On Monday, June 29, Larry Tung and I met with Bong Youngshik and Kim Jiyoon at the Asan Institute to discuss their report, “Over the Rainbow: Public Attitude Toward LGBT in South Korea,” on LGBT rights and discrimination in Korea. In the afternoon, we met with a Korean transgender activist.

I saw Pororo the Little Penguin 뽀롱뽀롱 뽀로로 & his friends in the Seoul 서울 subway; my favorite is Eddy 에디 the fox 여우

Tuesday, June 30

Larry Tung and I explored the popular shopping district of Myeongdong on June 30 and I commented on how very ‘metrosexual’ young Korean men were, especially in the promotional posters in Myeongdong, in which the young men are very boyish, some even quite girlish to an American eye.

Larry and I were amused by the cute products on the shelves in stores in  Myeongdong.

Myeongdong cut-outs of a Korean boy band with a K-Pop look, which seems to be a dominant influence among young Koreans in Seoul.

At Daeksugong palace, Larry and I watched the changing of the guard; I was absolutely enchanted by the bright yellow garb of some of the guardsmen, with the feathers on their Joseon (Choson) dynasty era style hats and their traditional Korean flute playing.

In the evening, we passed by Gwanghwamun, the great entrance gate to Gyeongbokkung, the main royal palace and the largest of the five royal palaces in Seoul.

King Sejong commissioned the creation of the Korean alphabet and is the most revered of all Korea’s kings.

July 1

I was invited to speak at a press conference at the Turkish consulate in Seoul protesting the Istanbul police violence against participants in the Istanbul Pride Parade.

July 3

In the morning, Larry Tung and I went to the Social Welfare Services office to film in front of the rock outside the SWS office. 입양인 입양인의 입양인이 입양정보 입양기록 입양기록을

In the afternoon, I went with Minyoung Kim to a local police precinct to register as an adoptee; though nothing came of it, I appreciated her going out of her way to make me accessible to any birth family who could be searching for me.

I had some noodles before my speaking engagement in the evening.

In the evening, I was invited to speak at a meeting of  Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea (Haeng Seong In) (행동하는성소수자인권연대) about my LGBT activism.

I talked about what might be helpful for queer activists in Korea as they advocate for equality for LGBT Koreans. I was delighted to speak to a full room of community members and I was told that a turnout of more than 50 people was a large turnout for the 행동하는성소수자인권연대는.

The organization had created a poster to announce my speaking engagement:

July 4

I spent the Fourth of July in the land of my birth, traveling from the city of my birth to Busan, the second largest city in Korea, with Larry Tung 부산

On the way, we passed through Namdaemun, the Great South Gate, which has always been for me the iconic image of the city of my birth.

In the arch of the great gate there’s a wonderful dragon painted on the wood frame of the inside of the arch (7.4.15) 남대문

Larry and I bought tickets for Busan at Seoul Station.

We visited Daegaksa 대각사 Temple (Nampo-dong) near Busan Tower.

The reclining Buddha was striking.

Larry and I went up Busan Tower and took in the spectacular view of the harbor and the city.

Afterwards, we went to Lotte Mall, where we saw everything on sale from pianos to Japanese-style toilet seats.

July 5

We visited the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple 해동 용궁사 outside of Busan 부산, one of the most famous Buddhist temples in Korea.

I found some lucky pigs on the grounds of the temple.

I love pigs and the fact that they are considered symbols of good fortune in traditional Korean mythology.

After touring the temple site, Larry and I visited Haeundae 해운대해수욕장 

Haeundae 해운대해수욕장 outside of Busan 부산, one of South Korea’s most famous beaches One of South Korea’s most famous beaches

After getting back into Busan, we visited Shinsegae, which claims to be the largest department store in the world.

Zooraji is a children’s playground on the top floor complete with a carousel and dinosaurs.

July 6

I joined friends in strolling through Naru Park in Songpa-gu 송파구 in Seoul 서울 on a hot and humid day.

And we

I walked through the neighborhood of Mapo-gu, parts of which looked like what Seoul was before Park Chung-hee’s crash industrialization.

July 7

I gave a presentation on the first US LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine (Jan. 2012) at a meeting of Palestine Peace & Solidarity in South Korea 팔레스타인평화연대

After which they wrote:

오늘 폴린 박 토크 굉장했습니다. 팔레스타인연대운동과 성소수자 운동의 접점을 찾은 이 기분…! 앞으로 만들어나갈 연대가 기대됩니다. 오늘 후기와 녹화 영상도 곧 공유하겠습니다. 온오프로 함께 해 주신 분들 정말 고맙습니다! (7.6.15)The

The

The

The

July 7

I had breakfast with Sina in Itaewon.

It was wonderful to see Sina and to reflect on the Mosaic Tour that we’d participated in together.

July 8

I was delighted to have Marie’s companionship as we took the train to the end of the #1 line where we crossed a busy intersection in downtown Uijeongbu 의정부시 to get to the 무당 house 巫堂

Uijeongbu 의정부시 — like the rest of Gyeonggi Province 경기도 — is now part of the Seoul metropolitan area.

Uijeongbu 의정부시: the 신 altar in the 무당 house 巫堂

Uijeongbu 의정부시: inside the 무당 house 巫堂

Uijeongbu 의정부시: Marie and me outside the 무당 house 巫堂

Uijeongbu 의정부시

Uijeongbu 의정부시

July 9

I I had lunch with Hyong-Jin, Myunghwa & 나 양 in Itaewon #이태원 #서울

July 10

I visited Changdeokgung 창덕궁 with my friend Kris.

One of the five royal palaces in Seoul, Changdeokgung is a UNESCO World Heritage site and famous for its celebrated Biwon 비원 — the ‘Secret Garden’ that was intended for sole use of the king and the royal family.

Seoul: a small gate in the Piwon — the Secret Garden of the Changdeokgung (7.10.15)

July 11

Korean celadon 청자 in the National Museum of Korea 한국 조선 in Seoul 서울.

I came across this boddhisattva.

July 5

July 6

I met up with two Korean friends in Seoul and we strolled around Seokchon Lake Park 석촌호수공원 coming across a World Wildlife Fund promo with plastic pandas.

Strolling around Seokchon Lake Park 석촌호수공원 we came across this Korean flag made out of chrysanthemum flowers.

In the evening, I went to Mapo-gu Café for a meeting of Palestine Peace & Solidarity in South Korea Palestine Peace & Solidarity in South Korea 팔레스타인평화연대 where I gave a presentation on my participation in the first US LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine in Jan. 2012 to members of the group.

Afterwards, I went out to dinner with members of Palestine Peace & Solidarity in South Korea 팔레스타인평화연대.

The poster for my presentation to members of Palestine Peace & Solidarity in South Korea 팔레스타인평화연대 on my participation in the first US LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine at their July 7 meeting (7.9.15)

July 8

I met up with Hyong-jin, Myunghwa & Kim Na-young in Itaewon for lunch.

I had had haemul pajeon (seafood scallion pancake) for dinner in Seoul.

I was amused by the fact that the Seoul Metro calls its subway currency ‘T money.’

I took 6,686 photos during 30 days in Korea — 2,658 with my iPad & 4,028 with my digital camera —  including 625 on the first memory card, 2,430 on the second card & 973 on the third. That compares with 1,996 photos that I took in 7 days in Paris in May, which averaged 287 photos per day, vs. 222.9 photos per day on average in Korea. So the Paris trip exceeded Korea for the most photos taken per day on average in any given trip, but the Korea trip topped the charts for the total number of photos taken on any trip until my five weeks in Europe in 2017, during which I took over 30,000 photos.

I arrived safely home after an uneventful three-hour flight from Dallas, following a more than 12-hour flight from Incheon, less than 12 hours short of 30 full days since leaving home on the biggest trip of my life (so far, at least). My month in Korea was the longest, most exhausting but most productive & most fun trip of my life and the most important since the trip that brought me to the land of my youth from the land of my birth so many years ago.

바울인 박
박 바울인

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QAIA & the pinkwashing of the NYC Council trip to apartheid Israel
speech at New York City Hall
Pauline Park
22 January 2015

I’m a member of New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC QAIA) and I’m hear to talk briefly about the pernicious influence of the ‘pinkwashing‘ of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. ‘Pinkwashing’ is the attempt to use Israel’s supposedly superior record on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues to attempt to justify the illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967. In fact, Israel is far less of a gay paradise than the picture painted by Zionist apologists for its apartheid regime.

One would get a very different impression speaking primarily or exclusively with wealthy gay Jewish Israeli men in North Tel Aviv than if one spoke with LGBT Israelis from more marginalized communities, including lesbians and bisexuals, who often feel marginalized by gay men in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel, or transgendered women, who face police harassment and brutality in Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel just as they do in New York and other U.S. cities.

Nor do queer Palestinians have any ability to seek refuge in Israel, as Zionist apologists for Israeli occupation suggest; they have no right to remain in Israel, because the state of Israel does not recognize non-Jewish economic refugees or those fleeing political persecution — regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. So Israel’s record on LGBT issues is far more mixed than Zionist apologists for Israeli apartheid suggest, but even if it were a perfect one, it’s impossible to see how such a record could possibly justify the denial of basic human rights to millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories, some of whom are in fact LGBT and are subjected to the same brutal repression and daily humiliations as their non-LGBT Palestinian brothers and sisters living under occupation.

I participated in the first U.S. LGBTQ delegation to Palestine in January 2012 and I saw for myself the abysmal conditions to which Palestinians are subjected there. We met with many Palestinians — both LGBT and non-LGBT — throughout the West Bank, from Nablus in the north to Hebron in the south and Ramallah in between. Staying two nights with a Palestinian family in Dheishe in Bethelem, one of the largest refugee camps in the West Bank, I had the opportunity to speak at length with Palestinians about conditions in the occupied territories. We also met with members of alQaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (PQBDS) in Ramallah and Aswat (the organization for queer Palestinian women) in Haifa, and if members of the US LGBT community really want to help queer Palestinians, they should be working with LGBT Palestinian groups rather than helping to pinkwash the occupation.

One last important note: for those who think that the Israeli occupation and the apartheid regime constructed to enforce it is a purely foreign policy issue, they need only look to Roosevelt Island, where Technion University — which is deeply implicated in the occupation — is collaborating with Cornell University. And members of the LGBT community here in New York who think that the pinkwashing of Israeli occupation and apartheid have nothing to do with their lives should consider the two-year-long ban on all Palestine solidarity organizing — including the Siege Busters Working Group and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid — at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan, which was in place from February 2011-February 2013.

The ‘pinkwashing’ of the Israeli occupation has implications for the ability of LGBT people of conscience to speak out and organize here in this country and in this city, which is why we must all become invested in challenging both pinkwashing as a discourse and the apartheid regime that such discourse would defend. Corey Johnson, Ritchie Torress and Jimmy Van Bramer are members of the LGBT Caucus who are going on this junket, but they cannot claim to be representing the LGBT community in expressing their support for apartheid Israel. Thank you.

Pauline Park is a co-founding member of New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, founded in 2011. She was a member of the first U.S. LGBTQ delegation to Palestine in January 2012.

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Jackson Heights is the most diverse neighborhood in Queens, the most diverse county in the United States. But what precisely does ‘diversity’ really mean and how does it actually play out in this neighborhood that I’ve called home for nearly two decades now? In this photo essay, I hope to answer those questions.

I’d like to begin with this photo, which I took just outside the entrance to Queens Pride House on 37th Ave. during the World Cup finals this summer:

According to the last US Census, Jackson Heights is about half Latino, with immigrants coming from every country in Latin America; but the largest populations are from Ecuador and Colombia in South America. When the World Cup frenzy reached fever pitch, someone mounted these flags from various Latin American countries, which made a colorful addition to 37th Ave. This is the conventional notion of diversity: local color with a hint of the exotic; but the notion of a ‘melting pot’ is problematic because it is based on a discourse of assimilationism into a white US-born majority. Even ‘multiculturalism’ is a problematic model, with its advocates often using the metaphor of a salad bowl full of ingredients from different countries, because it is a relatively superficial and static notion that does not get at the dynamics of diversity and the difficult tensions that diversity can pose.

The next photos raise an important issue that needs to be addressed in any discussion of diversity in Jackson Heights, and that is class.

These are photos of two of my favorite buildings in Jackson Heights. Both are in the historic district, the Italian Renaissance building on the north side of 37th Ave. and the French Renaissance building with the Mansard roof on the south side of 37th Ave. While I don’t know what the price of an apartment in either of these buildings would be, it couldn’t be cheap, whether a studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom or larger. And so the issue of affordable housing is a crucial one for maintaining the diversity of the neighborhood, both racial and ethnic as well as in terms of class, income and wealth. These buildings, like so many in the historic district are a wonderful part of our architectural heritage, but we can’t refrain from engaging in a searching analysis of the problematic class issues that the cost of housing raises.

One particular aspect of Jackson Heights is worth mentioning: its role as the origin of the cooperative housing movement in the United States. Co-ops have a different ownership structure than condominium apartments, and in many ways, co-ops are ideal in that they are owned by their residents; but they also have the legal right to deny entry to anyone for any reason except those explicitly prohibited by the human rights law of the City of New York — including, e.g., race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation and gender, defined to include gender identity and gender expression. Given the closed-door nature of many of the deliberations of co-op boards, there is always the possibility that  something can be used as a proxy for prohibited discrimination to deny rental or ownership of a co-op apartment. And as noted above, the rising cost of apartments and houses — especially in the historic district — can act as a barrier to many who would otherwise like to live in the nicest areas of Jackson Heights.

Not far from the leafy gardens of the historic district are the main shopping streets of Jackson Heights, which together form a rectangle: 74th St. on the west, 82nd St. on the east, 37th Ave. on the north and Roosevelt Ave. on the south. Below is the store owned and operated by a Korean greengrocer on 37th Ave. Like so many Korean-owned shops in the city, this is a family-owned and family-run market, with the husband, wife and daughters working what appear to be long hours. Class, race and immigration come together in the peculiar economy of such operations, which are not without problematic aspects.

The cheerful neon sign at New Peking on 37th Ave. between 77th and 78th Streets beckons passersby to enjoy cheap Chinese, with most of its business being take-out. One problematic aspect of such take-out restaurants is the proliferation of their menus in apartment buildings in the neighborhood, causing litter and often even the danger of accidents caused by residents slipping on the menus that are often dumped in the lobbies and vestibules of buildings in Jackson Heights.

But a potentially far more serious problem is the way in which some immigrant families, in order to provide for future generations, often rely on family labor that can enormously stress parents as well as children. And the expectations of such parents, especially East Asian and South Asian parents, can sometimes push Asian immigrant youth to the breaking point.

Another aspect of ‘diversity’ that requires interrogation is the question of food sources and the treatment of those animals that we consume (at least those who aren’t vegetarian).

I love the diversity of offerings at the Pacific Supermarket on 75th St. between Roosevelt Ave. and Broadway, which is pan-Asian but seems to cater to a primarily Chinese immigrant customer base, but I’m somewhat troubled by the way the management keep the fish and the lobsters especially, crowded into overcrowded small tanks. I took an acquaintance into the supermarket not too long ago, and while she was delighted by the many choices and their Asian origins, she was shocked by the way in which the management kept frogs in an extremely overcrowded tank, lying one on top of the other. I’m happy to say that I haven’t seen any frogs in the store when I’ve gone in recently, so perhaps someone spoke to the management about that horrendous treatment of those poor amphibians.

Jackson Heights also has its choice of street food, and food trucks are now beginning to proliferate just as they are in Manhattan and the other boroughs.

This late-night taco stand is often parked on the northeast corner of 75th St. and Roosevelt Ave., kitty corner from the subway station. One serious concern that I have is about the hygiene of such operations, the lack of which has been reported on in the media in recent years.

Jackson Heights is a wonderful neighborhood, but like every neighborhood in this city, it has its share of problems, many related to crime, many of which in turn relate to substance abuse. And that leads me to the next photo, which may be the most shocking I’ve included here to illustrate life in the neighborhood. I suppose I should put up a ‘trigger alert’ here, because some will find disturbing; but the purpose of this photographic essay is to talk about diversity in the neighborhood, and there’s a dark underbelly to that diversity that I think needs to be discussed and addressed.

The year before last, I was on a #7 train coming back from Manhattan. Around midnight, the train stopped at the 69th St. station, and when the doors to the train cars opened, a young man came running through the train car I was in, acting very erratic, either chasing or being chased by another man. This young man appeared to be Latino and was speaking in Spanish in a very strange fashion. After a few minutes an announcement over the loudspeaker informed us that the train was being stopped temporarily because of police activity, and very shortly, a couple of police officers arrived on the scene, apparently in pursuit of this young man.

The incident ended bizarrely and tragically when the young man leapt to his death, and I saw his body on the ground when I descended to the street level to walk home down Roosevelt Ave. I had only recently read about the ‘bath salts’ craze sweeping the country and I had to wonder if either substance abuse and/or mental illness had anything to do with this young man’s erratic and ultimately fatal behavior. The point to be made here is that substance abuse, mental illness, poverty and crime are issues that have to be raised in a discussion of Jackson Heights or just about any neighborhood in this city; and those phenomena intersect with oppression based on race, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, class, income, wealth and disability as well as sexuality and gender. Even in a neighborhood as wonderful as Jackson Heights, there are many who live lives of quiet desperation.

And speaking of issues of class, income and wealth, in a slightly different context than the one raised above by the reference to the high cost of co-op apartments in the historic district, is the issue of the high cost of commercial real estate in the neighborhood. This is an issue that affects non-profit organizations such as Queens Pride House. While rents in Jackson Heights are nowhere near as high as those in Manhattan or in the most expensive parts of Brooklyn, they have nonetheless been rising here year after year, making it difficult for both commercial enterprises and non-profits located in the neighborhood.

There is also a shortage of non-residential rental space in Jackson Heights, with the Bruson Building on 37th Ave. between 74th and 75th Streets one of the few buildings offering commercial space in the neighborhood. But on April 20, a huge five-alarm fire destroyed much of the Bruson Building and it is not clear if the building will be rebuilt or not. Regardless, the incident points to the danger of fire that a densely populated neighborhood like Jackson Heights is vulnerable to.

When there’s a fire, the people to call are obviously the Fire Department (FDNY). But what if you’re the victim of a crime? One would hope that the New York Police Department would be the agency of city government that all New Yorkers could turn to, but unfortunately, the NYPD has a long and sordid history of police harassment and brutality, directed especially towards people of color and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people. And in fact, we held a forum on the NYPD’s notorious ‘stop-and-frisk’ policy on September 11 of last year, with representatives from various community-based organizations to discuss police-community relations.

Everyone on the panel agreed that people of color and LGBT/queer people had legitimate reasons to mistrust and even fear the police, especially transgendered women of color who have been subjected to a campaign of harassment and brutality for a very long time now. Transgendered Latinas in particular are assumed to be engaging in prostitution regardless of whether they’re actually sex workers. And of course, there have been a host of high-profile police brutality cases in other areas of the city over the years, involving Abner Louima, Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and most recently, Eric Garner on Staten Island only in April.

New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio defeated New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and a number of other challengers in the Democratic mayoral primary in good part because he was able to make stop-and-frisk and police reform a signature issue of his campaign. We will now see whether Mayor de Blasio can bring about meaningful reform that will enhance the quality of life for residents of Jackson Heights, including its transgendered residents, Muslims, and others who are all too often victims of overly aggressive policing and even harassment and brutality.

It is important in any discussion of diversity in this neighborhood to raise the issue of the unconstitutional NYPD surveillance of Muslims in this city, given the burgeoning Muslim population in Jackson Heights.

On the corner of 74th St. and 37th Ave. at the head of ‘Little India’ (which stretches two blocks south to Roosevelt Ave.), you will find vendors selling religious items to fellow Muslims. In this neighborhood, the Muslim population is predominantly South Asian — mostly Pakistani and Bangladeshi. The NYPD’s unconstitutional surveillance of the city’s Muslim community directed by Commissioner Raymond Kelly at the behest of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of policing in this city, and there has yet to be any accountability for it. I have been informed by police watch groups that the NYPD have used traffic stops on Roosevelt Ave. to attempt to track down law-abiding Muslims and blackmail them into collaborating in illegal surveillance on other members of the Muslim community.

It is in such circumstances that the NYPD’s superficial appeals to ‘diversity’ make a mockery of the concept, and of all our city agencies, it is the NYPD whose use or misuse of the concept of diversity that is most ripe for interrogation.

Speaking of both religion and Little India, I have to mention my love of the delights of 74th St. On a hot summer afternoon, walking down 74th St. between 37th Ave. and Roosevelt Ave., one can imagine that one is walking down a street in Delhi, Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata) or Madras (Chennai), with restaurants serving tandoori chicken and lamb vindaloo and shops full of glittering jewelry and saris.

Ganesha is the happiest of the Hindu gods, representing good luck, and sits contentedly here in a window on 74th St., surrounded by gold jewelry that is worn primarily at weddings. But there is a darker reality behind the colorful façade of sari shops on 74th St., and that is the persistence of poverty, labor abuses, domestic violence, and other ills that plague immigrant communities as well as mainstream society in Jackson Heights. Last year, we held a forum on the human trafficking of Asian women in Queens, which experts on our panel informed us in this borough was actually primarily labor trafficking rather than the more sensational but somewhat less common phenomenon of sex trafficking.

One particularly problematic aspect of the thriving Indian community in Queens is the persistence of caste distinctions, which becomes readily apparent when one reads any of the classifieds in any of the ethnic press in the South Asian community here, where such personal ads focus almost obsessively on caste origins in determining the suitability of marriage matches — this, despite the fact that the newly independent India abolished caste in 1947 after the end of the British Raj.

One aspect of ‘diversity’ that doesn’t get enough attention in the focus on race, ethnicity, religion and to a lesser extent, sexual orientation, is that of access for people with disabilities. The renovation of the Roosevelt Ave. subway station that was completed back in 2005 cost $87 million and was long overdue. As part of the renovation, elevators were installed in the station, but oddly, enough, the elevator from the #7 train platform of the 74th St./Broadway station descends to a mezzanine, and anyone then wishing to go down to the platform on the lower level to catch the E, F, M or R train must cross an often busy mezzanine to a separate elevator to make that leg of the trip. And of course, even if this station is (just barely) wheelchair-accessible many other stations in Queens are not, which limits the mobility of wheelchair-bound passengers and their ability to use the subway system in the borough.

And of course, wheelchair accessibility is only one issue when discussing access for people with disabilities, given that there are innumerable disabilities of various kinds. At Queens Pride House, we are limited by extreme budget constraints from addressing many issues that we would like to address, wheelchair access being one; it is simply beyond our current budget to consider elevator installation in this building.

But for the able-bodied at least, Jackson Heights is a convenient location for access to the New York City subway system, and those who live near the Roosevelt Ave. subway station enjoy perhaps the best location in Queens for access to public transit.

One aspect of diversity that is of particular importance for our discussion is the role that our educational system plays in accommodating diversity and ideally fostering an appreciation of it. There are a number of public as well as private schools in the neighborhood, with PS 69 being an elementary school on the southeast corner of 76th St. and 37th Ave.

PS 69 is said to have the most diverse student body of any public school in the city and possibly in the country, with one estimate counting 84 different native languages spoken at home by the students at the school. But while we ought to celebrate this diversity, we also need to address issues that it may raise. To what extent is bullying and bias-based harassment in our schools a problem? The New York City Department of Education won’t tell us and may not know themselves, given that they do not keep adequate statistics on bullying and bias-based harassment; nor do they have any real accountability system for holding those guilty of bullying and bias-based harassment accountable for the actions — whether students, faculty or non-teaching staff. Fortress Tweed will not tell us the extent of the problem, nor do the powers that be at NYC DoE have any systematic program for sensitivity training, with their current sensitivity training program ineffective at best and at worst, a mechanism for channeling tax dollars to fund problematic organizations which themselves are guilty of gross bias, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in particular.

One aspect of diversity that is of course central to the mission of Queens Pride House is the inclusion of LGBT people in the life of the neighborhood and the borough. We have hosted events for LGBT parents and their children, including Claudia Narvaez-Meza, Krystal Banzon and their son, Malaya.

Claudia and Krystal were hoping to join us, but Krystal’s pregnancy and impending delivery made that impossible. But they are one of a growing number of same-sex couples who are raising children such as Malaya in Jackson Heights, and like all LGBT people, they have legitimate concerns about discrimination and harassment, something that, as I have already noted, the NYC DoE was simply not interested in addressing under the Bloomberg administration; we shall see whether there is any change under Mayor de Blasio and his new chancellor, Carmen Fariña.

Public schools are actually polling sites in our elections, as this sign indicates. The sign is in Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Bengali as well as in English, but some advocacy organizations have deplored the lack of Asian-language speakers at polling places in the neighborhood and the borough. While Queens now has two openly gay Council members, a Latino Assembly member and a Latino member of the state Senate, as well as its third woman in a row serving as borough president, the mere inclusion of members of historically underrepresented communities does not necessarily result in the automatic empowerment of those communities, despite the symbolic victory of their election, and it is important not to be taken in by a superficial discourse of identity politics; it is the impact on the real lives of real people that must be the measure of the efficacy elected officials as well as of the political empowerment of the communities that they claim to represent.

We at Queens Pride House take seriously our mission to serve the LGBT community of Queens, not only through our participation in the Queens Pride Parade every first Sunday in June, but every day of the year.

Located on 37th Ave. in Jackson Heights, Queens Pride House is the only LGBT community center in the borough and we serve an exceptionally diverse group of members and clients. I might add parenthetically that I am the only openly transgendered executive director of an LGBT community center in the city or the state and one of the only two in the country; I am also the only Asian American executive director of an LGBT community center in the city or the state and one of the only two in the country; and perhaps not surprisingly, I’m the only openly transgendered Asian American executive director of an LGBT community center in the country.

* * * * *

This was the text of the presentation that Pauline Park gave at “Beyond ‘Diversity'” at Queens Pride House on 25 October 2014.

Pauline Park, Ph.D., is president and acting executive director of Queens Pride House as well as a long-time resident of Jackson Heights.

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10 books that helped shape my life

I’ve had two different friends ask me to post to Facebook a list of 10 books that have ‘stayed with me over the years.’ So for those friends, here’s my list:

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The unprecedented assault on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military this week brought to mind a hymn whose text was written by Johann Heermann in 1636, “Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen” (Zion mourns with anxiety and pain); all one needs to do is substitute ‘Gaza’ for ‘Zion’ and the hymn could be sung today in mourning for the more than 300 (and counting) victims of Israeli bombardment in Gaza…

Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen,
Zion, Gottes werte Stadt,
Die er trägt in seinem Herzen,
Die er sich erwählet hat.
Ach, spricht sie, wie hat mein Gott
Mich verlaßen in der Not
Und läßt mich so harte preßen!
Meiner hat er ganz vergeßen.

Der Gott, der mir hat versprochen
Seinen Beistand jederzeit,
Der läßt sich vergebens suchen
Jetzt in meiner Traurigkeit.
Ach, will er denn für und für
Grausam zürnen über mir?
Kann und will er sich der Armen
Jetzt nicht wie vorhin erbarmen?

Zion, o du Vielgeliebte!
Sprach zu ihr des Herren Mund,
Zwar du bist jetzt die Betrübte,
Seel’ und Geist ist dir verwund’t;
Doch stell alles Trauern ein!
Wo mag eine Mutter sein,
Die ihr eigen Kind kann haßen
Und aus ihrer Sorge laßen?

Ja, wenn du gleich möchtest finden
Einen solchen Muttersinn,
Da die Liebe kann verschwinden,
So bleib ich doch, der ich bin.
Meine Treu bleibt gegen dir,
Zion, o du meine Zier;
Mein Herz hast du mir besessen,
Deiner kann ich nicht vergessen.

Laß dich nicht den Satan blenden,
Der sonst nichts als schrecken kann!
Siehe, hier in meinen Händen
Hab’ ich dich geschrieben an.
Wie mag es denn anders sein?
Ich muß ja gedenken dein;
Deine Mauern will ich bauen
Und dich fort und fort anschauen.

Du bist mir stets vor den Augen,
Du liegst mir in meinem Schoß
Wie die Kindlein,
die noch saugen,
Meine Treu’ zu dir ist groß;
Dich und mich kann keine Zeit,
Keine Not, Gefahr und Streit,
Ja der Satan selbst nicht scheiden.
Bleib getreu in allem Leiden.

Zion mourns with anxiety and pain,
Zion, God’s dear city,
which he carries in his heart,
which he has chosen for himself.
Ah, says Zion, why has my God
abandoned me in my distress
and allows me to be so hard pressed!
He has completely forgotten me.

God, who promised me
his helping presence at all times
is sought in vain
now in my sadness.
Ah, will he forever
rage fiercely against me?
Can he and will he not
as before pity me in my wretchedness?
Zion, you who are greatly beloved,
says the mouth of the Lord,
you are indeed now distressed,
Your soul and spirit are wounded;
yet put aside all your mourning!
Where could there be a mother
who can hate or have no care
for her own child?

Indeed if you could find
a mother so minded
whose love could disappear,
yet I will stay as I am.
My faithfulness abides for you,
Zion,you who are my adornment;
You have taken hold of my heart,
I cannot forget you.

Don’t let Satan hoodwink you,
all he can do is just frighten you!
See, here on my hands
I have written it down.
How then could it possibly be otherwise
I must think of you;
I shall build your walls
And always watch over you.

You are continuously before my eyes,
You lie on my bosom
like a little child who still sucks.
My faithfulness to you is great;
there is no time,no distress,
danger and strife that can separate you and me,
Not even Satan himself.
Remain faithful in all your sufferings.

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There is on the one hand the exoticization & objectification of Tahitian women, which is objectionable particularly in relation to the relationships he had with them; but on the other hand, there is also his primitivism, which is not simply an exoticization of a foreign culture by a colonial tourist, but is in fact the expression of a longing for & even reconstruction of a lost pagan culture that had already nearly disappeared when Gauguin arrived in Tahiti. In his rejection of what he saw as the hypocrisy & culturally destructive colonialism of French Catholicism in Tahiti, Gauguin was very much on target, and a balanced assessment of his art — as this exhibition gave us — needs to take that into account as well as the objectionable aspects of it as well. I will never look on Gauguin’s languorous Tahitian women again without also thinking of his invocations of Oviri~!

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ISSUES OF TRANSGENDERED ASIAN AMERICANS AND PACIFIC ISLANDERS
By Pauline Park, co-founder, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and John Manzon-Santos, Executive Director, Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center

Testimony submitted to the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

Transgendered and gender-variant people are among the most invisible and marginalized of all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and it is important that our issues be addressed in any attempt to discuss the needs and concerns of the larger lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) Asian Pacific Islander community.

What we today would call ‘homosexuality’ and ‘transgender’ have existed throughout human history, present in some form in every pre-modern society, though they have been socially constructed in very different ways across different cultures and time periods. Most often, the two phenomena have been conflated and have been constituted through notions of a ‘third sex’ or ‘third gender’ role. In fact, in pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander cultures, individuals whom today we would identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersexual, might have identified themselves as bakla (in Tagalog), shamakhami (in Bengali), waria (in Javanese), paksu mudang (in Korean), or mahu (in Hawaiian).

Mythological narratives involving sexual transformation appear throughout the oral storytelling tradition and written literature of Asian and Pacific Islander cultures, as for example, with the Chinese story of the male deity Kuan-yin, who changed sex to become the goddess of mercy. There are many popular tales of Kuan-yin’s adventures, and traditionally, she is the most popular deity in the Taoist pantheon. It is fitting that mercy should be the province of transgendered people, because the power of the transformation teaches compassion to the transformed.

Unfortunately, European colonialism had a deleterious effect on many traditions of transgender in Asia and the Pacific. For example, the Hijra of India, male temple priestesses of the mother goddess Bahuchara Mata, were turned into social pariahs during the British occupation. And the Babain culture of transgendered priests and priestesses that was revered in traditional Filipino society was destroyed by Catholic missionaries in the nineteenth century.

In Korea, there are three distinct transgenderal traditions. Under the Silla dynasty, which unified the peninsula in the 7th century, the Hwarang warrior elite included many boys who dressed as women, wearing long gowns and make-up when they were not practicing archery or preparing for battle. In addition to the Flower Boys of Silla, there were the boy actors who played women’s roles in the Namsadang theatrical troupes that toured the villages of Korea until the end of the 19th century, often taken as lovers by the older males who played the men’s roles in those same companies. Finally, there was the tradition of the mudang, always a woman, but not always female. The paksu mudang was a male shaman who performed sacred rituals as a woman (and may have lived as a woman as well), and who was not only respected but also revered. However, the mudang culture has slowly died out, under the impact of Communism in the North (where the paksu mudang were particularly popular before World War II) and capitalism and conservative Christianity in the South. Ironically enough, the mudang tradition is in fact rooted in the Altaic origins of Korean culture having its origins in the Siberian homeland from which the Korean people migrated, and it long predates the introduction of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism to the peninsula under Chinese influence after the unification of Korea under the Silla.

The term ‘transgender’ is of relatively recent origin, having come into general use only in the last ten years or so; it is an ‘umbrella’ term used to identify a diverse community of individuals who are similar only in transgressing conventional gender norms. The term is usually meant to include everyone from casual crossdressers and transvestites to post-operative transsexuals, as well as many individuals who are not consciously transgender-identified. There has been no comprehensive study of the transgender community, and so an estimate of the population is speculative at best. While Kinsey estimated the lesbian and gay proportion of the general population to be approximately ten percent, the percentage of Americans – and by extension, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders – who are transgendered in some sense depends to a large extent on how one defines that population.

The smallest proportion of the transgender population may well be those who are transsexual-identified – both male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) – ‘transsexual’ traditionally being used to describe someone seeking or having undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRS). But in addition to pre-operative and post-operative transsexuals, a growing number of individuals identify as non-operative transsexuals, those who do not seek SRS; some ‘non-op’ transsexuals may undergo hormone therapy, while others do not.

A much larger category, in which would be included transsexuals, would be those whom we could term ‘transgendered,’ whether they use that term as a self-descriptor or not. This category includes transvestites and crossdressers, the former term now considered by many to be somewhat old-fashioned or overly clinical and giving way to the latter term as a self-identifier. In that category, one could also include those who identify as or who are labeled by others as drag queens and drag kings, stone butches, etc. Non-transsexual transgendered people are those who choose to spend a significant portion of their lives in the gender opposite their sex assigned at birth without SRS.

A still larger category would be the gender-variant: individuals who transgress conventional gender norms but who do not (for the most part) ‘crossdress’; this category would include feminine men (some gay, others bisexual or heterosexual-identified) and masculine women (some lesbians, others bisexual or heterosexual-identified), as well as transgendered and transsexual people. In contrast to the gender-variant are the conventionally gendered – masculine males and feminine females who at most times and in most places conform to societal standards of gender. One important point must be made here: the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population and the transgender population are not mutually exclusive, nor are they coterminous. At some point in their lives, many transgendered people identify as LGB: e.g., an individual may ‘come out first as a gay male and then later come to identify as a transgendered woman; or a heterosexual-identified male may, as a post-operative transsexual woman, identify as a transsexual lesbian.

It is widely assumed that there are only two sexes – male and female – and that these form the basis of masculinity and femininity; this is what social theorists call the ‘sex/gender binary.’ Even many of those who recognize gender as being ‘socially constructed’ – i.e., in a very profound sense, ‘invented’ by human beings, just as we invent different styles of clothing – do not fully realize the extent to which sex is also socially constructed. Pioneering work by Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a leading biologist, is leading to a re-evaluation of our notions of sex as well as of gender. The phenomenon of intersexuality represents one of the most significant challenges to the sex/gender binary. Intersexuals (traditionally known as ‘hermaphrodites’) are those whose genitalia are neither entirely male nor female. Because of the ‘ambiguity’ of their genitals at birth, intersexed people are subject to intersex genital mutilation (IGM), usually performed between birth and age six, in which their genitals are surgically altered to conform to socially sanctioned notions of maleness or femaleness. Many intersexuals suffer lifelong sexual dysfunction and physiological problems as a result of the brutal physical mutilation to which they are subjected, almost always in infancy or childhood, when they have neither the legal standing nor the cognitive maturity to give informed consent, much less to object, to IGM.

Intersexed people have existed in all societies and epochs, and were thought in many Asian and Pacific Islander cultures to have special spiritual powers. Therefore, a renewed respect for intersexuals would represent a rearticulation of traditional Asian and Pacific Islander cultural values as well as empowering those intersexed Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who suffer so much shame and stigmatization. We therefore urge the Commission to make a public statement in support of an amendment to the recently passed federal law banning female genital mutilation (FGM) that would explicitly include intersex genital mutilation in its provisions. It is striking the extent to which Americans, outraged by the practice of FGM in the Middle East and Africa, are largely unaware of the equally disfiguring practice of IGM that the medical establishment condones here in the United States.

Ironically enough, while transsexuals often lack the means to obtain sex reassignment surgery, intersexuals have their sex involuntarily reassigned in a way that deprives them of autonomy in sexuality and gender expression. Sex reassignment surgery (SRS) can cost anywhere from $5,000-150,000, depending on whether the individual is MTF or FTM and the skill and reputation of the surgeon. Added to the cost of SRS itself is the cost of hormones (a lifetime expense, from the start of hormone replacement therapy), of psychotherapy, and related expenses. But the price that transsexuals pay for sex reassignment goes well beyond the costs of SRS and hormones: included in that price is lifelong stigmatization.

In order to obtain SRS, a transsexual woman or man must first undergo psychotherapy and obtain a diagnosis of ‘gender identity disorder’ (GID), a mental illness listed in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), compiled by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The process of transsexual transition – including psychotherapy, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and SRS is ostensibly governed by the Standards of Care (SOC) published by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA). Together, the GID and the SOC constitute a regime for the regulation of gender, and one constructed and maintained largely by white, upper middle class, US-born, heterosexual-identified, and conventionally gendered men. One of the aims of the GID regime is to help transgendered women ¾ whom many such mental health professionals assume incorrectly to be mostly attracted to men ¾ become conventionally gendered heterosexual women, just the expectations are that transgendered men (who are incorrectly assumed to be mostly attracted to women) will become conventionally gendered heterosexual men. The fear of ‘transhomosexuality’ among such practitioners is high: they do not want to ‘create’ homosexuals (i.e., transsexual lesbians and transsexual gay men), but rather to ‘cure’ those they perceive to be homosexuals of their homosexuality.

The practical consequence of a diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’ or GID is that the transsexual man or woman so diagnosed is labeled mentally ill, even in those cases where he or she is perfectly mentally healthy. While there certainly are a number of transsexuals who have real mental illnesses (such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.), most are no more mentally ill than non-transsexuals are. But the struggle to find or keep a job becomes a daunting one when, in order to obtain SRS, the otherwise mentally healthy transsexual has to accept a diagnosis of mental illness that could prompt discrimination based on prejudice against the mentally ill in addition to that against the transgendered. The logical solution is for the APA to remove GID entirely from the DSM. What further complicates the situation, however, is that SRS is still considered an ‘experimental’ practice (despite surgery for MTF transsexuals having been brought to a high level of sophistication), and so the diagnosis of GID is used to enable psychiatrists to ‘prescribe’ SRS as the ‘cure’ for a ‘mental illness’ that simply does not exist. It is important to realize that GID affects not only those who seek SRS: its presence in the DSM pathologizes not only transsexuals, but all transgendered people more and even more generally, all who are gender-variant. In fact, GID is diagnosed most often in gender-variant children and youth whose parents – once again, conflating homosexuality and transgender – are concerned that their children may grow up to be gay. Ironically, three quarters of the children and youth who are diagnosed with GID do in fact come to identify as LGB as adults, while only a quarter come to identify as transsexual or transgendered.

There is a growing consensus within the transgender community in favor of a ‘reform’ of GID to eliminate the designation of transsexuality as a mental illness but to retain some reference in the DSM to transsexuality as medical condition justifying HRT and SRS. We therefore call on the Commission to make a strong statement in favor of the GID reform to eliminate the designation of transsexuality as a mental illness.

The American Psychological Association has already taken a stand in favor of GID reform, stating quite clearly its belief that transgender is simply a naturally occurring variance in gender identity and expression. Just as the removal of homosexuality from the DSM 25 years ago helped significantly alter society’s view of lesbian and gay people as well as giving renewed impetus to their struggle for civil rights, so too, the removal of GID from the DSM will help remove the stigma of mental illness from transgender.

Given the profound transgenderphobia – reinforced by the GID diagnosis – it is not surprising that transgendered people constitute one of the most marginalized populations in American society, facing pervasive discrimination, harassment, abuse, and violence. The violence that is so commonplace in the lives of the transgendered was no more dramatically illustrated than in the case of Brandon Teena, a young female-bodied transman who was brutally raped and murdered in Nebraska several years ago, and whose story was told in the 1999 Academy Award-winning film, “Boys Don’t Cry.” Transgendered men and women face discrimination and violence not only in the United States, but in countries throughout the world, as documented by the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) based in San Francisco and by the Amnesty International OutFront Program based in New York. Unfortunately, many such human rights abuses take place in Asian countries.

In the face of such pervasive discrimination and violence, transgendered people, are beginning to organize its own civil rights movement, both here and abroad. Much of that political work is being done in alliance with LGB people. Hence, while there are distinct differences between homosexuality and transgender, the overlap in LGB and transgender populations and the common cause that these diverse communities have made justify the term ‘LGBT’ to describe a political community and movement.

In the last few years, the concerns of transgender communities have increasingly become integral to the lesbian, gay, and bisexual movement. Similarly, AAPI initiatives that include sexual orientation should also include the language of gender identity and expression. For example, the fear of persecution based on sexual orientation is now recognized as cause for political asylum; however, the term ‘sexual orientation’ does not necessarily include transgendered or gender-variant people. A statement from the Commission in favor of the addition of “gender identity or expression” to political asylum law would therefore help address the problem of pervasive discrimination and violence that our transgendered brothers and sisters face in many Asian and Pacific Islander countries.

It is a cruel irony indeed that transgendered people – who helped lead the Stonewall uprising that catalyzed the modern lesbian and gay movement – were marginalized in that movement after June 1969. Only in the last five years has a real transgender political movement emerged in the United States. In the 1990s, transgender political organizations formed at the local, state, and national level to press for transgender-inclusive and transgender-specific anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation. Anti-discrimination laws that include transgender-specific language (such as gender identity and expression) have been adopted in 30 jurisdictions across the country, including one state (Minnesota), three counties, and 26 municipalities. Those cities range from the large and cosmopolitan (San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, Atlanta) to the small and unexpected (Ypsilanti, Michigan; York, Pennsylvania).

A campaign is now underway in New York City to amend that city’s human rights ordinance which, if successful, would make New York City the largest jurisdiction in the country to protect transgendered people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. The campaign is being led by a transgendered Asian woman and has elicited the support of leading Asian American organizations, such as the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund (AALDEF) and the Filipino Civil Rights Advocates (FilCRA). There is also a campaign to get the California state legislature to adopt similar legislation, and one of the key organizations involved in that campaign (California Alliance for Pride & Equality – CAPE) includes a number of LGB Asian Americans in its leadership. If successful, that campaign would make California – the largest state by population and one that includes a huge API community – a leader in transgender anti-discrimination law.

Little specific information exists on transgendered communities as a whole. To date there has been no community assessment of Asian American and Pacific Islander transgendered population in the U.S. From a behavioral health perspective, transgendered people are often subsumed under the larger category of gay, bisexual, and other Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). Few tracking systems allow for gender identification beyond male and female. One watershed effort was mounted in 1997 by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The Transgender Community Health Project (TCHP) became the first study (qualitative focus groups and quantitative surveys) designed to assess HIV risk among male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) transgendered individuals. 505 anonymous surveys and HIV tests were administered, and risk behaviors inclusive of and beyond HIV were reported. Forty-nine, or 13%, were completed by AAPI participants.

Although TCHP data is limited in that its cohort resides in the City and County of San Francisco and its purpose was to assess HIV risk specifically, transgendered AAPIs are everywhere, often building visible communities in metropolitan areas across the U.S. More comprehensive studies on a national scope are urgently needed for transgendered people across races, including AAPIs. To the extent that findings from the TCHP study can be extrapolated as one example of an urban area where transgendered AAPIs live, work, and socialize, consider the alarming statistics below. Of the total sample of transgendered respondents (MTF% / FTM %):

52% / 41% had no health insurance
53% / 21% had unstable housing
65% / 29% had a history of incarceration
23% / 20% had been hospitalized for mental health
32% / 32% have attempted suicide
53% / 31% had been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease
35% / 2% tested HIV-positive
80% / 31% had a history of sex work
59% / 59% had a history of forced sex
91% / 57% use hormones
65% / 54% inject hormones
34% / 18% inject street drugs
63% / 91% report sharing syringes
According to the Comprehensive HIV Prevention Plan for San Francisco, transgendered respondents persons are at increased risk for HIV infection due to a combination of biological, economic, psychological, behavioral, social/situational and access-related cofactors. Primary among these are a much higher incidence of commercial sex work, substance abuse, poverty, lack of access to HIV/AIDS and medical services, and discrimination by AIDS service organizations as well as employers. In particular, commercial sex work, largely a result of employment discrimination and poverty is closely associated with: increased rates of injection drug use as well as substance abuse, increased STD rates, increased rates of rape and coerced unprotected sex, increased trauma to tissues during sex, history of child sexual abuse and abusive relationships, as well as dramatically increased numbers of sexual encounters and numbers of sexual partners of higher risk.

The Plan also suggests that a transgendered sex worker’s risk for HIV infection may be different from other groups. One study reports that transgendered sex workers are more likely to have receptive anal sex with their paying partners than their primary partners, a behavior with direct consequences for HIV and STD infection if protection is foregone. Preoperative transgendered sex workers who are trying to earn money for gender confirmation surgery or sexual reassignment may perceive a monetary incentive for unprotected sex as beneficial in the moment, despite the associated health risks. Feminization through hormone therapy, hair removal, plastic surgery, breast implants, and sexual reassignment surgery, although costly, is often a transgendered individual’s first priority.

Sharing unsterilized needles and syringes during injection drug use or hormone use is also common within the MTF transgendered community. Injection drug use, and in particular injected speed or crystal methamphetamine use in combination with commercial sex work is a common practice. Injection hormone therapy is seen as a positive component of the gender confirmation process, and therefore safe, though it poses many of the same HIV transmission risks as injection drug use.

Rejection and isolation are integral aspects of a transgendered sex worker’s life. Transgendered individuals are often marginalized from the mainstream gay and lesbian communities and many are ostracized by their families of origin. As a result, they have low self-esteem, neglect their own health, and are fatalistic about the future. Discrimination creates significant barriers for transgendered persons who want to maintain or seek regular employment. Eliminating discrimination during access to services is particularly important for disenfranchised groups such as transgendered individuals and sex workers. The provider of services is seen initially as a representative of a larger social system which is perceived as antagonistic to their well being. Based upon direct experience, many transgendered people distrust service providers, feel misunderstood by them, and believe that providers regard them as expendable, which further prevents access of services.

From the TCHP study, some AAPI-specific data can be gleaned. Consistent with a high HIV-seroprevalence among transgendered AAPI participants (27%), they reported high levels of HIV risk behavior, including unprotected anal intercourse and other sexual activities, as well as other co-factors such as sharing needles for the injection of hormones and street drugs. Among transgendered AAPI sex workers, the drugs of choice are injected and non-injected speed, such as crystal methamphetamine, which helps them to work late into the night. These individuals are often isolated from traditional support networks available in AAPI families and communities while language and cultural differences often limit access to health and human services. Finally, transgendered AAPIs engage in high-risk behavior but their perception of susceptibility is low, a reality consistent with gay, bisexual, and other MSM AAPIs. The transgendered AAPI population in San Francisco is estimated to number 2,500, or 40% of the local transgender population, and tend to be immigrants and refugees from Asian countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China where transgendered individuals have a distinct social role.

Some nonprofit organizations report anecdotal evidence that confirm the TCHP findings. Specifically, highest among the needs of transgendered AAPIs are immigrant and refugee-competent, multi-lingual programs that broker housing, employment, and health care.

Given the complex factors which place transgendered AAPIs at high risk of disease and discrimination, targeted programs and interventions should address the following barriers:

Linguistic and cultural barriers: Asian immigrants and refugees face linguistic and cultural barriers to accessing services. Since most outreach is conducted in English, limited English individuals are not reached through mainstream channels of outreach and promotion. In addition, when health services are located, limited English proficient individuals often are unable to describe their health problems to primarily English-speaking service providers. Furthermore, providers are often unaware and even insensitive to the nuances of AAPI cultures and the needs of these individuals. For example, AAPI cultures discourage the open discussion of life-threatening illnesses for fear of inviting the disease into one’s life; thus, the superstition and fatalism attached to disease undercuts the value AAPI peoples place on prevention. The fear of stigmatization is particularly important in AAPI communities. There is fear “that any disclosure will result in community-wide disclosure of a person’s most intimate, personal life. Hence many AAPIs will not disclose outwardly nor acknowledge internally behaviors that put them at risk. Out of denial, many high-risk individuals will neither acknowledge that they are at risk nor identify with a service which targets risk behavior; consequently utilization of education prevention services is low and perpetuation of risk behavior remains high.”

Lack of health providers trained in cross-cultural delivery of services: Health care systems lack culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate services. Given the diversity of AAPIs, the health service system is simply unable to reach out to many populations, especially as AAPI populations continue to grow exponentially. In addition, effective partnerships between mainstream health organizations and community-based agencies working with limited English proficient individuals are lacking. Few AAPI language interpreters are competent in sensitive issues related to work in the sex industry, gender identity among transgendered individuals, and HIV/STD services. Many lack self-advocacy skills to effectively access health services on their own.

Socioeconomic conditions which impede access to health care system: Transgendered AAPIs who engage in sex work and exchange sex for money or drugs face immediate needs which are prioritized over seeking health services. Many sex workers are immigrants and are fearful of arrest and prostitution convictions, which could hurt their chances for naturalization. Many of the transgendered MTF AAPI sex workers, being born male, often send money home to provide for their parents in fulfillment of their filial duties.

The pervasive discrimination, harassment, abuse, and violence that transgendered people face has led to the marginalization of transgendered people, and have led transgendered AAPIs in particular into sex work and other dangerous occupations.

A strong statement from the Commission on the need to accept and appreciate the fullness of the diversity of AAPI communities would do much to help ameliorate the marginalization and the stigmatization of transgendered and gender-variant AAPIs. We would also appreciate a strong statement in favor of fully inclusive hate crimes and anti-discrimination laws at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as a statement in favor of the reform of GID. And we would view as a special priority a statement from the Commission in favor of the addition of the phrase ‘gender identity or expression’ to federal asylum law and administrative guidelines.

Transgendered, intersexual, and gender-variant people were respected and even revered in many Asian and Pacific Island cultures, from the hijra in India to the paksu mudang in Korea to the mahu in Hawai’i. Contemporary AAPIs of transgender experience have much to contribute to their AAPI communities of origin, if given the chance.

By Pauline Park & John Manzon-Santos, October 2000

Additional References / Sources
Clements, Kristen, et al; HIV Prevention & Health Service Needs of the Transgender Community in San Francisco: Results from Eleven Focus Groups; San Francisco Department of Public Health; 1997.
Clements, Kristen, et al; The Transgender Community Health Project: Descriptive Results; San Francisco Department of Public Health; 1999.
Consensus Report; San Francisco Department of Public Health; 1997.

http://www.apiwellness.org/article_tg_issues.html

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Israel, Hobby Lobby, transgender & the Family Research Council 

I was fascinated to see the most recent ‘prayer targets’ message from the Family Research Council. FRC “bills itself as ‘the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,’ but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science,” the Southern Poverty Law Center says of the religious right group founded in 1993 and run since 2003 by the abrasively bigoted Tony Perkins.

On March 20, FRC posted on the home page of its website a set of ‘prayer targets’ that included “Hobby Lobby; Israel; Transgender; Mississippi; Military Religious Liberty; SPLC; UN” (see full text below). FRC’s support for Hobby Lobby is hardly surprising, since this case currently being heard by the US Supreme Court is arguably the most important case to come before the court in terms of its implications for fundamentalist Christians to use the notion of religious freedom to exempt themselves from non-discrimination law. Also in the message is an attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center, also not surprising, given SPLC’s attempts to inform the public about FRC’s activities. FRC uses its March 20 message to attack the Maryland transgender rights bill, which it mischaracterizes as the ‘Maryland Bathroom Bill.’ FRC further informs its members that “a panel led by former President Clinton’s Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders has recommended that the Department of Defense allow transgendered persons to serve in the military.” And FRC calls on its members to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem,’ declaring, “Palestinian terrorists have demonstrated no inclination toward peace. Past presidents have used diplomatic pressure, but many say President Obama has bullied Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by behaving rudely and demonstrating a sometimes thinly veiled, sometimes open hostility. Just over a week ago, President Obama told Prime Minister Netanyahu that if he did not move quickly to comply (with Secretary of State John Kerry’s artificial “April deadline” for an agreement), that the U.S. might not be able to protect Israel from the consequences.”

So there we have it – support for Netanyahu’s Israel, Hobby Lobby, and laws giving Christian fundamentalists the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation as well as gender identity and expression go hand in hand with opposition to human rights for transgendered people and Palestinians. For Tony Perkins and his ilk, all Palestinians are terrorists conspiring to destroy the Biblically instituted state of Israel, while all transgendered women are nothing but rapists in drag lurking in ladies’ rooms. The bizarre lumping of all of these bigotries into one long rant is instructive about the world view behind these ‘prayer targets’ messages.

Of course, liberal Zionists will no doubt protest that one can support transgender rights and the Israeli government at the same time, as many do; but I think that Tony Perkins is actually onto something in his own crazy bigoted way, because the cause of justice for transgendered people both in the United States and in Israel/Palestine and everywhere else in the world is in fact part and parcel of the fight for human rights for all people everywhere, including Palestinians in occupied Palestine. So thank you, Tony Perkins, for connecting the dots for us so seamlessly~!

__________________________

Prayer Targets: Hobby Lobby; Israel; Transgender; Mississippi; Military Religious Liberty; SPLC; UN

March 20, 2014

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 2 Cor 3:17

Dear Praying Friends,

Dr. Erwin Lutzer has served as Senior Pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church since 1980. His three radio programs are broadcast across America and around the world. Author of 30 books, Lutzer, in his When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany, documents shocking parallels between German society in pre-WWII Germany and America today:

In the People’s Republic of China in 1985, we asked a tour guide about freedom of religion. She replied, “The people in China have freedom of religion … they can be as free as they wish within their own minds!” Freedom of religion, then, has a new definition: we are free to practice our religion with our thoughts and perhaps in private conversation. In our own country one of our chief justices lamented that the court would have religion be like “pornography,” indulged only in private. When God is ousted from government, transcendent values are replaced by: 1) the raw use of power; 2) eroticism 3) arbitrary judicial rulings; and 4) the morality of personal pragmatism. Without overarching absolutes, the unity of society is threatened in the face of fragmentation and the quest for personal “rights.” Civility, long a characteristic of American life, has degenerated into name-calling and a desire to destroy the opposition… Political correctness has now affected the general culture and created an aura of censorship and a climate of fear…Malcolm Muggeridge said, “The whole structure is now tumbling down, dethroning its God, undermining all its certainties. All this, wonderfully enough, is being done in the name of the health, wealth, and happiness of all mankind.” [Under current federal] hate crimes [laws] certain classes of people receive special treatment…

From “Hate Crimes” the next step is for the courts to prosecute those who are deemed guilty of “Hate Speech” … stating an opinion that the government thinks should not be expressed… Europe has already lost the freedom to criticize Islam… As the state encroaches on our liberties, the spiritual “sphere” will continue to shrink, and our freedoms will be slowly curtailed. Statism, the notion that there is no power above the state to which it must be subject, will always work toward the diminishing of individual freedoms. No one is able to run and hide… Today our government has tools of manipulation that the world has never known before, from mass communication resources to faceless computerized bureaucracies to the ability to nationalize banks and companies… C. S. Lewis was a prophet when he wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive… We must face the possibility of bad rulers armed with a Humanitarian theory of punishment…. One school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to “cure” it? Such a “cure” will, of course, be compulsory; but … it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution” (Erwin W. Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn From Nazi Germany (2009); Ch. 1).

If you missed it last week see the brief video about Arlene’s Flowers. See also “Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America” and “Clear and Present Danger.”

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem – Despite America’s many problems at home and abroad, Bible-believing Christians understand the importance of God’s covenant with Abraham to bless those who bless Israel and to curse those who curse her. Many believe America’s firm friendship and support for God’s covenant land have brought immeasurable benefit to our own nation. The Scripture repeatedly promises that when God regathered the Jewish people to the Promised Land, they would never be removed again. He warned hostile nations that harm would come to all who harm Israel or seek to divide their land (Joel 3:2; Zech 12:3). Yet, presidents, Republican and Democrat, have pursued a “two-state solution,” and have pressured Israel, together with the international community, to embrace a “land for peace” strategy… Meanwhile, Palestinian terrorists have demonstrated no inclination toward peace. Past presidents have used diplomatic pressure, but many say President Obama has bullied Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by behaving rudely and demonstrating a sometimes thinly veiled, sometimes open hostility. Just over a week ago, President Obama told Prime Minister Netanyahu that if he did not move quickly to comply (with Secretary of State John Kerry’s artificial “April deadline” for an agreement), that the U.S. might not be able to protect Israel from the consequences. Some interpret that to mean the U.S. could no longer be counted on to use its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to support Israel. Even more troubling, a growing number of American evangelicals are pulling back from supporting Israel, some openly and others unwittingly joining with the terrorist-led Palestinian Cause. Israelis are no longer confident that they can count on the U.S., under Obama. The only certain supporters the Jewish people have had have been evangelical Christians. Now, some say, that support is eroding (see Obama Warns Netanyahu; Anti-Israel Evangelicals?; Where do Americans Stand?; U.S., Israel, Iran).

Lord, Your people perish for lack of knowledge! Please rule in the hearts of our leaders to support Israel and to cease from threats and pressure to force Israel to do what Your Word says they must not. May the American people, especially Christian leaders, preach and proclaim the Word of God regarding Israel. May we be true to God’s Word, our relationship and commitments to Israel! Grant peace, Prince of Peace, to the Holy Land! (Gen 13:15; Ex 14:8; 32:13; 2 Chr 20:7; Is 48:20-22; Jer 6:14; Hos 4:6; Pr 21:1; Mt 5:37)

Transgender Bathroom Bills & Military Policy – The Maryland Senate has already passed and it is predicted that the Maryland House will pass what has come to be called the “Maryland Bathroom Bill,” HB1265. The bill, like many around the country, is supposedly intended to prevent discrimination against people who identify as transgendered and transvestite, but would extend a “right” to some biological males to appear nude before females (and vice versa) in bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers — invading privacy rights and unnecessarily exposing businesses to lawsuits. But this would do far more. It would mandate the employment of people who identify as transgendered in inappropriate occupations and disregard the fact that sexual conduct may in fact be relevant to employment. Under such legislation, employers in the area of education and childcare would be denied the right to refuse to hire transgendered individuals or persons undergoing gender reassignment treatment, even if they consider such persons to be inappropriate role models for children and youth. Meanwhile, a panel led by former President Clinton’s Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders has recommended that the Department of Defense allow transgendered persons to serve in the military. Reports are that President Obama may use his “pen and phone” to implement this change (see MD Bathroom Bill; Military Transgender Ban Faces Scrutiny).

Intervene, Lord, for your Law is being broken! We have defied your created order replacing your laws with confusion. Cause, we pray, legislators in Maryland and other states, and the Obama administration not to add confusion to confusion as they could do. Cause your people, led by their pastors, to say, “Enough is enough!” and to exercise their voices and authority as citizens and voters to stop these and similar lawless actions (Ex 23:2; 2Ki 17:17; Ezra 9:6-7; Ps 119:126; Jer 23:4; Jas 4:7; Jude 7).

Finally, more prayer issues: In last week’s Prayer Targets, I warned that activists would continue to use the tactics of misinformation and disinformation used to bully Arizona’s Governor into vetoing a bill passed to strengthen Arizona’s Religious Liberty Reformation Act. They are doing so, now, in Mississippi (MS was not on my list of vulnerable states). The news media, predictably, has entered the fray in favor of the anti-religious freedom activists. Pastors and Christian leaders from Mississippi and other states are signing a letter urging Mississippi legislators not to be fooled by these tactics. Urge your pastor to add his name. Pray, too, over religious liberty challenges in the Air Force (Fight & Flight); the DOD decision to continue consulting with the SPLC despite a new study showing that their “hate group” designations are political, not scientific (see also Hate Smears; Paid pro-homosexuality teacher training program); videos: United Nations v. the Vatican; Changing Faces of Persecution; Hobby Lobby-Conestoga Wood oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, March 25; Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day, March 29. Thank you for joining us in crying out to God in prayer for our nation!

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Völuspá

Given the geologically active terrain of Iceland, it’s probably no surprise that the Vikings who settled there would produce such vivid creation myths and other legends. Who could forget the eruption of Eyafjallajökull in 2010? “Völuspá” is the first and most celebrated of all the poems in what has come to be known as the ‘Poetic Edda,’ and tells the story of the creation of the world out of nothingness. “Völuspá” undoubtedly influenced J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation story in “The Silmarillion.” To get the full flavor of the Old Norse and in order to get a sense of the rhythm of the poem it really has to be read in the original. Here’s the second of 66 stanzas in all its Old Norse Viking magnificence (along with an English translation for those of you who don’t read Old Norse):

Ár var alda,
þar er ekki var,
var-a sandr né sær
né svalar unnir;
jörð fannsk æva
né upphiminn,
gap var ginnunga
en gras hvergi.

It was early in the ages,
when nothing was,
there was neither sand nor sea
nor cool waves;
Earth was nowhere to be found,
nor sky above,
a gap there was of yawning spaces
and nowhere grass.

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Transgender Identities & Spiritual Traditions
in Asia & the Pacific: Lessons for LGBT/Queer APIs
by Pauline Park
presentation at the Pacific School of Religion Chapel
Berkeley
2 April 2013

 I’d like to begin by thanking Jess Delegencia of the API Roundtable for inviting me to speak here at the Pacific School of Religion; I am honored by the invitation and delighted to have the opportunity to speak at such a distinguished institution. And this chapel seems an especially appropriate setting to be discussing about the relationship between transgender identity and spirituality. I would like to focus specifically on the question of the relationship between transgender identity and religious and spiritual traditions in pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander societies.

There is a very wide misconception that ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender’ (LGBT) constitutes a purely modern phenomenon created by late nineteenth and early twentieth century sexologists and activists. In fact, every pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander society had what could be termed ‘proto-transgenderal’ and homoerotic traditions which anticipate these contemporary LGBT identities, even if there are significant differences between the pre-modern and the contemporary identity formations.

I would like to suggest that it is important for us as LGBT/queer APIs to address the biggest misconception in API communities — namely, that we are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered because we’ve been hanging around white people too much. The implicit assumption behind that misconception is one of a viral model of gender identity and sexual orientation. The slogan of Queer Nation was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” When it comes to homosexuality and transgender, the truth is that we have been here — in every Asian or Pacific Island society — since time immemorial.

And third, I would like to address the misconception that transgender identity is at odds with religion and spirituality and that gender variance is and can only be an expression of the profane.

To begin with, while it is true that contemporary LGBT identities are of recent vintage, it is equally true that there were people in every pre-modern Asian or Pacific Islander society who were like us in important respects and whom we would call lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. The last are what I would call ‘proto-transgenderal’ — a term I coined to describe those whom we might consider transgendered in centuries long before the term ‘transgender’ came into common usage.

China has homoerotic and proto-transgenderal traditions going back centuries. The ‘passion of the cut sleeve‘ (duànxiù 断袖) — the love of the Han dynasty Emperor Ai (27 BC-1 AD) — for his male favorite, Dong Xian — is the source of the Chinese euphemism for homosexuality (‘cut sleeve’). The other popular Chinese euphemism for homosexuality – the ‘half-eaten peach‘ (yútáo 余桃) – goes back even further, to the Zhou dynasty Duke Ling of Wei (衛靈公) (534-403 BC) and his male lover, Mixi Zia(彌子瑕). Ever since Mizi Xia and Dong Xian (董賢), the half-eaten peach and the cut sleeve — yútáo duànxiù (余桃断袖) — have been euphemisms for male homosexuality in China. As in many societies, homosexuality and transgender were not always distinct and were often conflated, so that examining the one requires examining the other, and vice-versa. Relations between males in ancient China and other pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander societies were often highly gendered, with the younger partner often the more feminine in gender expression, even if he did not necessarily ‘present’ as a woman.

But in theater, women’s roles were in fact usually played by the younger male actors in the company. So, for example, there is the tradition of the Beijing opera dan, as dramatized in “Farewell My Concubine,” the 1993 film by Chen Kaige starring Leslie Cheung as the male actor and singer who plays women’s roles on stage.  And of course there is the Japanese tradition of kabuki, though the onnagata — the male who plays women’s roles in the kabuki theater — at least in contemporary Japan is not necessarily gay or transgendered.

There is also an interesting connection between religious and spiritual traditions and lesbianism and bisexuality in traditional China. For example, the Golden Orchid Association was a Chinese women’s organization that celebrated ‘passionate friendships’ and embraced same-sex intimacy. The origins of the Jin Lan Qi (Jinglanhui) have been traced as far back as the Qing dynasty. Members of the group participated in ceremonies of same-sex unions, complete with wedding feasts and exchange of ritual gifts (see Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol & Spirit, 1997, p. 161). Women of the Golden Orchid Association engaged in sexual practices described as ‘grinding tofu.’

The ‘Rubbing Mirror Society’ was founded in Guandong province in the seventeenth century by a Buddhist nun and its members participated in same-sex unions (see Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol & Spirit, 1997, p. 237). Originally known as the ‘Ten Sisters’ by the nineteenth century, the society was called the Mojing Dang. The interesting question — for which one finds little if any documentation — is whether such female relationships were as highly gendered as male homoerotic relationships so often were in ancient China, with one member of the pair playing the ‘butch’ role and the other the ‘fem.’

In the mid-nineteenth century, the philosophy of Chai T’ang (Jaitang) became popular (see Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol & Spirit, 1997, p. 108). Emerging out of a syncretic Taoist/Buddhist milieu, the philosophy of Chai T’ang found expressing in communal living in ‘vegetarian halls’ or ‘spinsters’ houses’ which emphasized gender equality among members who revered Guanyin (Kwan Yin), a Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion.

Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion

Called the ‘goddess of mercy,’ Guanyin — “She who hears the cries of the world” — is sometimes portrayed as Avalokiteshvara, the male Buddha of the Pure Land who transforms into a female one (Vern L. Bullough, cited in Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol & Spirit, 1997).

Guanyin statue in a Chinese temple in Thailand

Revered by Chinese Buddhists and Daoists alike, Guanyin has a special place in the hearts of transgendered Chinese and Asians who know of the transgenderal version of the story of the deity of compassion.

In Tibet, the Gelug (or ‘Gelugpa’ – ’Yellow Hat’) strain of Buddhism has long been associated with same-sex relations between monks in its monasteries, especially in the Gelug monastery at Sera (see Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol & Spirit, 1997, p. 10).

There is a long tradition of homosexuality in Japan, prominently featuring Buddhist monks (see Gary Leupp, ”Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan,” University of California, 1997). “The Great Mirror of Male Love” (Nanshoku Okagami), is a collection of 40 homoerotic stories from 1687 by Ihara Saikaku (1642-93) that depicts the nanshoku tradition of male love in all its variety, including some involving monks in Buddhist monasteries.

A samurai kisses a kabuki actor in a shunga hand scroll
(Miyagawa Issho, c. 1750).

Korea has at least four distinct traditions that anticipate contemporary LGBT identities. First, there is the hwarang warrior elite — sometimes referred to as the ‘flower boys of Silla’ (the dynasty that united the Korean peninsula in the seventh century) — an elite corps of archers who dressed in long flowing gowns and wore make-up. Second, there are the namsadang, the troupes of actors who went from village to village. Among the namsadang, the youths played women’s roles, as in Elizabethan theater. It is said that the youths were often lovers of the older men in the corps. Third, there is the tradition of ‘boy-wives,’ in which youths would wed older men and be recognizes as wives of the men.

And finally, there is the the paksu mudang — the male shaman who performed what was a woman’s role in the ancient shamanic spiritual tradition that Koreans brought into the Korean peninsula from eastern Siberia in pre-historic times.

Korean mudang

The mudang was the priest-like figure in Altaic shamanism. In that culture — the oldest level of Korean society, which predates the introduction of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism into the peninula by the Chinese — the mudang was always a woman, but not necessarily female. A significant number of mudang were male, and some of these paksu mudang (male mudang) may have lived as women as well as performing the sacred rites and rituals of the mudang spiritual tradition, though there is not enough documentary evidence to come to any definite conclusions as to whether many or most them lived as women and were recognized as such outside the context of the sacred rites and rituals tnat they performed.

Korean mudang

In South Asia and Southeast Asia, there are many examples of homoerotic and proto-transgenderal traditions, including that of the hijra of India, the eunuchs who undergo ritual castration in order to serve as temple priestesses in a tradition that has survived in India to the present day. The lives of the hijra are documented in “Harsh Beauty,” a 2005 film by Alessandra Zeka. The hijra undergo ritual castration and devote themselves to the hindu goddess Bahucharamata, living in group houses known as jemadh, as described in Serena Nanda’s classic work, “Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India” (1990).

a hijra in the film “Harsh Beauty”

Vietnam also has a shamanic tradition, known as dao mau, also presided over by shamans, many of whom are transgendered. The filmmaker Nguyen Trinh documented this tradition in “Love Man Love Woman,” his 2007 documentary about Master Luu Ngoc Duc, one of the most prominent spirit mediums in Hanoi. In the dao mau tradition, it is usually feminine males (referred to as ‘dong co’) such as Master Luu Ngoc Duc who preside over the country’s popular mother goddess religion.

Master Luu Ngoc Doc

Master Luu Ngoc Duc is but one of many examples of proto-transgenderal shamanic traditions that have survived into the twenty-first century. Another such tradition is that of the bissu, documented in the 2005 film, “The Last Bissu: Sacred Transvestites of South Sulawesi, Indonesia” by Rhoda Grauer.

Sulawesi bissu

The Long Island University professor’s documentary focuses on Puang Matoa Saidi, a contemporary bissu priest who is attempting to keep the bissu tradition alive.

In Thailand, there are the kathooey (often translated as ‘ladyboys’) of Thailand (see, for example, Michael G. Peletz, ”Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times,” in Current Anthropology, Volume 47, Number 2, April 2006,) though I have not come across any evidence that they traditionally played a shamanic role in Thai Buddhism or any other spiritual tradition indigenous to Thai culture.

The Pacific Islands have many homoerotic and proto-transgenderal traditions, including those of themahu in Hawai’i, the fa’afafine in Samoa (see “The Transgender Taboo“), the fakaleiti in Tonga, thevaka sa lewa lewa in Fiji, the rae rae in Tahiti, the fafafine in Niue, and the akava’ine in the Cook Islands (New Zealand AIDS Foundation, cited in “To Be Who I Am: Kia noho au ki toku ano ao,” a report by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, 2007, p. 25), and . The Maori of New Zealand have several different terms for those whose gender identity is different from their sex assigned at birth, includingwhakawahine, whakaaehinekiri, tangata ira wahine, hinehi, and hineua (for transgendered women) andtangata ira tane (for trans men) (op cit.).

transman (tangata ira tane) & transwoman (hineua)
(Rebecca Swan photos for the New Zealand Human Rights Commission report on transgender discrimination, “To Be Who I Am”)

There is evidence that some of these proto-transgenderal figures in Pacific Islander societies played shamanic roles in their cultures’ spiritual traditions.

In examining the entire history of homoerotic and proto-transgenderal traditions in pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander societies, we must not make the mistake of romanticizing such traditions or failing to recognize the significant differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’ — meaning contemporary queer LGBT/queer APIs, especially those of us in the diaspora. Those ancient traditions are embedded in societies which were not characterized by equality of age, gender or class relations, and many of the forms that homoeroticism and transgenderal identity took would offend our egalitarian sensibilities.

The important point is that we as LGBT/queer APIs must known the history of our predecessors in order to counter the narrative of LGBT and queer as foreign, white, Western, and even specifically North American; only in doing so can we reinsert ourselves in the governing narratives of our countries, cultures and communities of origin. That is an imporant lesson for queer APIs; as I say, it is not that we should necessarily identify with the paksu mudang or the bissu or the hijra; rather, that examining such figures, we as queer APIs can re-envision ourselves in the light of such figures as both API and LGBT/queer. In other words, examining such proto-transgenderal shamanic figures from pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander cultures can help those of us who are queer APIs to engage in identity formation in a way that avoids the binary opposition of LGBT = white/API = non-LGBT; it enables us to re-envision ourselves as queer and API by pointing to predecessors in our cultures of origin.

But the implications are not merely for individual identity formation but also for community construction; pointing to proto-transgenderal figures and images can enhance the sense of community among contemporary queer APIs and especially transgendered APIs; examination of such figures and images can even have implications for political action by challenging and disarming the false discourse of reactionary elements in the Asia/Pacific region today and in API immigrant communities that attempt to label LGBT identities as false and foreign, the fabrication of white, Western and even specifically American influence.

The Taliban represent an extreme example of a profoundly homophobic and transgenderphobic as well as misogynistic phenomenon that attempts to link homosexuality and transgender (which they invariably conflate) with Western influence and counterpose LGBT identities with adherence to religious faith, but there are examples to be found throughout the Asia/Pacific region of reactionary religious and political forces that reify this binary opposition and use it to oppress LGBT people. Images of proto-transgenderal figures can be deployed strategically to counter this false narrative by pointing to the important and in some cases even central role that these shamanic figures played in the spiritual traditions of pre-modern Asian and Pacific Islander societies.

Finally, and not least of all, examination of these proto-transgenderal figures can help queer APIs of all faith traditions to connect with a deeper level of spirituality by integrating their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression with their religious faith and/or spirituality. The binary opposition of the sacred and the profane which runs as a theme throughout the histories of many cultures has set up a false dichotomy that many LGBT people, including queer APIs, have deeply internalized. In examining the shamanic roles played by these proto-transgenderal figures, we as contemporary queer APIs can understand ourselves and our sexuality and gender identity and expression as something not intrinsically opposed to the religious or the spiritual, but instead as a very expression of the divine within; that can be true regardless of our religious affiliation or spiritual tradition, whether that be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, pagan, animist, or other.

The important truth is that the queer self can be the sacred self just as sacred texts can be queer and queered; so let us reclaim the sacred space which is our birthright as queer APIs; let the goddess within come out~!

Pauline Park is chair of NYAGRA, the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (nyagra.com), a statewide transgender advocacy organization that she co-founded in 1998. She also co-founded Queens Pride House (the LGBT community center of Queens) in 1997 and currently serves as president of the board of directors and acting executive director. Park co-founded Iban/Queer Koreans of New York in 1997 and served as its coordinator from 1997 to 1999. Park led the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002. In 2005, she became the first openly transgendered grand marshal of the New York City Pride March. She did her B.A. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her M.Sc. at the London School of Economics and her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Park has written widely on LGBT issues and has conducted transgender sensitivity training sessions for a wide range of organizations. She was the subject of “Envisioning Justice: The Journey of a Transgendered Woman,” a 32-minute documentary that premiered in 2008.

  한국

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