As coordinator of a legislative work group that includes city council members, transgender-supportive allies, and other members of  the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, Pauline Park is one of the key players in the initiative to amend New York City’s Human Rights Law to include transgendered and gender variant people. (In February 2000, city council members announced their co-sponsorship of a trans-protective bill; it has not yet passed.) Park’s participation in transgender activism began with GenderPAC’s annual national gender lobby days in Washington, D.C., in May 1997 and 1998.  She and other New York-based trans activists decided to focus their efforts at the state and local levels, and in June, 1998, they  founded the  New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), the first statewide transgender political organization in New York.

Park, who has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois, found working on this project in the highly-charged political environment of New York City to be a real education in lobbying.  Her first piece of advice: “While the support of legislative staff is important, it’s crucial to get at least a few of the members themselves actively engaged in the process. We’ve been very fortunate to have the direct and active participation of two legislators of color — Margarita Lopez, an openly lesbian Latina city council member; and Bill Perkins, a GLBT-supportive African American city council member.” The legislative work group meets in person or via a conference call every two or three weeks.

“It’s also vital to have the support of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community. We’ve formed a working partnership with Tim Sweeney and Ralph Wilson at the Empire State Pride Agenda, and we’ve been able to build on the credibility with legislators that they already enjoy,” Park said.

Park also emphasizes the importance of forming a broad coalition of allies in support of the bill. “In a city as diverse as New York, it’s important to counter the perception that transgender-based discrimination is only a white queer lower Manhattan issue.”  Park said. “With Pride Agenda staff and the six council members in our legislative work group, we’ve produced what looks to be a winning strategy, forging a broad-based coalition that includes communities of color and people in the outer boroughs.”  Members of the legislative work group have reached out to a range organizations for their support, including the Audre Lorde Project, the National Organization for Women-New York City Chapter, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund, District Council 37 (the largest union in the city),  the GLB political clubs, and people of faith.

Park has been involved with organizing in GLBT communities since 1994, when she launched Gay Asians & Pacific Islanders of Chicago, an organization for gay, bisexual, and transgendered Asian and Pacific Islanders. Since then, she has continued to be involved in Asian and Pacific Islander communities, working with the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York and co-founding Iban/Queer Koreans of New York in February 1997. The initial spark for Iban/QKNY was the Korean LGBT Forum organized by the Korean Gay Organization/ Chingusai and hosted by the Korean American Association of Greater New York on November 2, 1996.  Park was one of the four speakers in that panel discussion, the first forum on GLBT issues ever sponsored by a non-queer Korean American organization. For Park, ensuring that people of color have an equal voice in the transgender political movement is critical. “As a transgendered woman of color, I do not have the luxury of completely separating what are ostensibly ‘transgender’ issues from issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship status.”

Transgender Equality: A Handbook for Activists & Policymakers, by Paisley Currah & Shannon Minter, was published on 19 June 2000 by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

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Transgendered People of Color Take Center Stage
by Pauline Park
The Missive of the Audre Lorde Project (ALP)
winter 1998
(the following are excerpts from a longer article that appeared in LGNY’s November 19th issue)

The first conference specifically by and for transgendered people of color ever held in New York City, and to my knowledged, anywhere, was a historic moment in the life of the TG POC community. Sponsored by The Audre Lorde Project and the Gender Identity Project (GIP) of the Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center, Transworld — the Fourth Annual Transgender/Transsexual Health Empowerment Conference — took place at ALP in Brooklyn on October 24. Only a week before, ALP’s Arms Akimbo, the first confeence for lesiban, bisexual, two-spirit and transgendered women of color, featured the first workshop specifically devoted to transgendered women of color, facilitated by Carmen Vazquez and me.

Transworld was the fourth in a series of conferences that are the biggest annual event of their kind on the transgender calendar in New York City. As in past years, the conference was well attended, with over 200 people from throughout the metropolitan area and beyond in attendance. Some came from upstate locales such as Ithaca, others from as far away as Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

In addition to a focus on TG POCs, what made TransWorld distinct was the decentering of service provider as all-knowing authority figure — for the first time in the history of the annual TG/TS health empowerment conference, health professionals did not dominate the proceedings.

The all-day conference began with an opening plenary on transgender history and culture moderated by Javid Syed. I spoke on the role of the transgendered Korean shaman — the paksu mudang; Arlene Hoffman reviewed African American history; Christian O’Neill offered insights from the perspective of a transsexual black man; and Carmen Vazquez talked about her identity as a buth Puerto Rican lesbian of transgender identity. The early afternoon featured a series of workshops on transgenderphobic violence, facilitated by Victoria Cruz and Alex Gilliam; substance abuse, by Leona Williams and Caprice Carthans; transgendered youth, by Pagen and Reyana Quinones; government entitlements and immigration, by Isiris Isaac; and medical issues.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of the conference was the speak-out sensitively and expertly facilitated by Maura Bairley of Project Reach, who elicited personal experiences of discrimination and violence as well as suggestions for addressing the multiple oppressions that transgendered people of color face in this society…

Also noteworthy was the fact that medical issues of transsexual transition (especially access to hormones and SRS), the focus of one workshop, were not central to the conference, as is often the case at transgender conferences. It may be a mark of the growing maturity of the transgender community that these issues, while important, did not dominate the proceedings. Instead, the question of how to organizaed TG POC’s politically closed the conference’s formal discussion.

One would think that a conference whose aim — the health and empowerment of TG POCs — would win the embrace of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people. Remarkably, some white queers stayed away based on the misconception that the conference ‘excluded’ white people. (In fact, the conference was open to all and about a quarter of the attendees were white.) The conference even prompted one nationally prominent transgender activist to denounce it as ‘racist’ for having limited the roster of presenters to people of color, despite the fact that POC-only spaces have become increasingly commonplace in LGB communities. Perhaps it is a measure of the need of the transgender community to address issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship status more forthrightly that a conference featuring only people of color as presenters would create any controversy at all.

Pauline Park is coordinator of Iban/Queer Koreans of New York, policy coordinator of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy; she also served on the Transworld organizing committee.  The views expressed here are not necessarily those of these organizations.

This article originally appeared in the winter 1998 issue of The Missive (Vol. 2, Issue 4) of the Audre Lorde Project (ALP), and before that, in the 19 November 1998 issue of Lesbian & Gay New York (LGNY).

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Spotlight on Incubator Projects
Iban/QKNY: Building Queer Korean Community
by Pauline Park
The Missive:
News from the board, staff & volunteers of the Audre Lorde Project
spring 1999

Iban/Queer Koreans of New York is a social, discussion, and support group and political advocacy organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Koreans, Korean Americans, and Korean adoptees. The group emerged in the wake of the November 2, 1996 Korean LGBT Forum co-sponsored by the Korean Gay Organization/Chinkusai, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence and The Audre Lorde Project and hosted by the Korean American Association fo Greater New York. Iban/QKNY, which began as a small group of friends, is actively engaged in the process of constructing a queer Korean community here in New York City.

Since its founding, the organization has sent a contingent of seven members to KASCON, a national Korean American student conference held at Yale in March 1998; produced a 12-page bilingual newsletter in June 1998; and held a Pride Month reception, which attracted over 120 people, including some non-Koreans. In November, the organization co-hosted a party with Chingusai-NY, a group of Korean speaking gay men. Iban/QKNY is also a co-sponsor of the new and popular Asian women’s gatherings organizaed by Persimmon Space. As a participant in ALP’s Incubator program, Iban/QKNY held a strategic planning retreat at ALP at the end of January, facilitated by Veronica Flores.

This article first appeared in the spring 1999 issue of The Missive (the newsletter of the Audre Lorde Project).

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Finding the Authentic Self: Coming Out as a Transgendered Korean Adoptee
By Pauline Park

Being a transgendered Korean adoptee has meant a life-long process of coming to terms with identity issues related to gender identity and sexuality as well as to racial, ethnic and national identity. Just as I have always known that I was an adoptee, I have always known that I was transgendered; but precisely what that meant to me and to the larger world would take me decades to understand and articulate.

While there are obvious differences between the experiences of those lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people who grow up in Korean American families and my adoptive family – my Norwegian American father and my German American mother and grandmother, all devout Lutherans – the patriarchal heteronormativity of Korean and Korean American families finds a striking parallel in that of the German American culture of Milwaukee in the 1960s.

The regular church attendance as well as the piano and violin lessons and practice that are expected of so many Korean American children were dominant elements in my childhood and adolescence as well. And my parents were not merely ‘Sunday Christians’; they were as devout and committed Christian fundamentalists as are to be found in most any Korean American church in Koreantown in Los Angeles or in Flushing or Skokie.

Around the time of my confirmation, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was taken over by its fundamentalist wing, coinciding with a change in minister at our home church. The likeable and theologically moderate pastor I had grown up with and who had confirmed me left us to lead an LCMS congregation in Iowa and was replaced by a fundamentalist minister who preached fire-and-brimstone homophobic sermons from the pulpit just as I was trying to come to terms with same-sex attractions that began with puberty. These developments hastened my exit from the mother church when I moved away to go to college.

I came out as gay in my first semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but I understood even then that my first coming out was incomplete one, as it addressed my sexuality but not my gender identity. I spent my fourth year at the UW in a study abroad program in London and stayed for a second year to do my master’s degree at the London School of Economics. In that second year in London, I began going out regularly in public dressed as a woman for the first time, and it was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. But when I returned to the United States after my two years abroad, I also went into a period of denial about my gender identity. However, my mother did come to accept my sexuality just before her death only a few months after my return from London, though she never knew about my transgender identity. (My father died just before I turned 13, and so he and I never had the opportunity to discuss – or argue about – sexuality and gender issues.)

After a career in public relations and another one in academia, I came out as an openly transgendered woman when I moved to Queens in 1997. And while my first coming out was a huge step for me, my second coming out was bigger still in its implications for my life and work. It is not an exaggeration to say that I came out as transgendered through my activism and advocacy work, co-founding a number of organizations, including Queens Pride House (a center for the LGBT communities of Queens) and Iban/Queer Koreans of New York (Iban/QKNY) in 1997 and the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) in 1998.

I also came to see a parallel between my identity as a transgendered woman and my identity as a Korean adoptee: just as I came to realize that the sex/gender binary constructed an artificial and ultimately false dichotomy between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (heteronormatively defined), I came to understand that I had a set of experiences and a life history as a Korean adoptee that was distinct from that of Koreans or Korean Americans just as it was different from European Americans, despite my having grown up in a white household and in an all-white neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee. What had impeded the resolution of both identity complexes had been a false discourse of authenticity; the authentic identity was to be found only through an articulation of the true self and its ultimate expression through advocacy on behalf of those communities of which I was a member.

It was on 29 February 2000 that I found myself suddenly transformed into a public figure as we launched the campaign for the transgender rights law ultimately enacted by the New York City Council in April 2002. Leading that legislative campaign was the honor of a lifetime, and since its successful culmination, I have found countless opportunities to speak out on behalf of queer Koreans and other Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) and the LGBT community at the local, state, and national levels. As the Mahatma Gandhi so rightly put it, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” And so I have.

This essay was published in June 2010 in “Resist & Exist,” a ‘zine edited by Sam Jung & Sarah Shim.

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