Miranda Writes... by Miranda Stevens-Miller It's Time Television

I've been having a difficult time writing lately. It's not that I don't have anything to say… that will never happen. The problem is that I just can't stop thinking about the difficulties we are having in passing the Chicago Gender Identity Amendment. It pervades my thoughts, and it colors everything I do. So I haven't written lately because I just don't want to start sounding like a broken record.

I had an interesting experience last week with our first monthly television show, "It's Time TV," on Chicago Access Network Television. It's Time, Illinois is part of a consortium of LGBT organizations, including CABN, PFLAG and the Rogers Park Gay and Lesbian Association, that shares a call-in talk show. We rotate weeks, so each of us is on once every four weeks. The show airs on Channel 21 in Chicago every Friday at 6:30 p.m.

Beth Plotner and I co-hosted the first of our series last week. We planned to spend the time discussing the origins of transgender political activism in Illinois, and we started out the show by discussing the history of It's Time, Illinois, and the discrimination documentation project. After about 30 seconds on the air, the phones started ringing off the hook. (I did mention that it is a call-in show that encourages viewer participation, didn't I?)

"Wow! Great!" I thought, "The viewers are really interested in human rights. They probably want to express concern about the epidemic of employment discrimination against transgenders. They probably want to comment on the brutal hate crimes that have left hundreds of transgender people dead over the past decade. They probably want to talk about the need to protect the civil rights of transgender people in Chicago."

Boy… Was I ever wrong! "Why would you want to change sex?" "Don't you believe in God." "I thought you were women. You really fooled me." "Don't you ever regret what you did?" "What's it feel like to be… " The last question we caught in time before the sexual innuendo was broadcast over the airwaves. There is a little red button that we can push in case the question is off the subject, or way, way off base.

After a while, Beth and I just relaxed and started answering the personal questions that the viewers were calling in to the station. After all, these were things that they really wanted to know about. They didn't care about human rights issues, they didn't care about the Gender Identity Amendments and they didn't care about hate crimes. What they cared about was that for the first time in their lives, they had two GENUINE TRANSSEXUALS to interact with, talk to, and ask personal embarrassing questions in a totally anonymous way.

This was not necessarily a bad thing. We just had to adjust our expectations. Here we were expecting to carry out an intelligent discussion about human rights issues with reasonable, educated adult-type people… and what we found was that Archie Bunker is alive and well and living in Chicago. We found a world full of people who are not ill intentioned, but are naïve and for the most part innocent. They had just never been exposed to a real transgender person. They never thought about gender, or identities, or trans-anything.

Oh sure they'd seen the Jerry Springer show, they'd seen the caricature of transgenders that are portrayed in the media… but they never saw the likes of us. "But we thought that all transsexuals looked like, you know, looked like MEN IN DRESSES. You look so normal." Surprise! Kind of makes you reevaluate your definition of normal, doesn't it?

I have to tell you, I am actually thrilled that we are able to reach this type of audience. If there is ever an opportunity to normalize the situation, to put a human face on the transgender community, to debunk stereotypes, this is it. We can talk about specific issues, we can bring in guests to interview, and we can promote our causes. But for the time being, I am just glad to be able to talk to the people of Chicago about who we really are, and to give them the chance to interact with us.

But this brings us back to the Gender Identity Amendment. (I did tell you that I couldn't think about anything else these days, didn't I?) If our television viewing audience is at all representative of the general population of Chicago, it is no wonder that the aldermen, their representatives in City Council, are having a difficult time relating to the Gender Identity Amendment. Why should we expect the aldermen to know any more about transgender people than the average man on the street? Why should we expect them to know that there are thousands of us in Chicago, or that we live all over the city? Why should we expect them to know that we live and work right in their own Wards, and shop in their stores, and drive down their streets?

Many of the aldermen don't even know that we exist. And it will stay that way until you decide to do something about it. Please, please, speak to your alderman about the Gender Identity Amendment. Let them see the beautiful and intelligent faces of proud transgender men and women. Let them see the love and support of friends and family. Let them see a united LGBT community calling for them to take action on the Gender Identity Amendment.