Yes I am a male bodied individual with large breasts. Please fucking get over it. Being stared at, laughed at, snickered at, and called "faggot" "fag" "fairy" "queer" or having something obscene yelled at me have gotten severely old by now.
I am not naïve enough to think that I am going to be accepted by everyone under the sun. I am a fairly logical person. I completely understand that, logically speaking, there are going to be people who will have something to say to me, stare at me, laugh at me, so on and so forth. So, please don’t point this fact out to me. That doesn’t mean it is a fact I find comfort in. A fact I can easily swallow and move on from. Don’t think pointing this out to me brings me some semblance of solace. It doesn’t.
This is probably stating the obvious to those of you who know me, but here it goes. My name is Alexandra Traci Nicole Stevens. I was born Kristofer Tracey Stevens. I am transsexual. Born sexually a male, identifying with the female gender, working to become sexually female.
There, that was my grand outing paragraph. There is no special story. No shocking revelation. Nothing worth a Lifetime special. No, it is pretty simple. I came out at my first college, New York Institute of Technology, hoping that it wouldn’t be too much of a hurrah. Instead, I lost most of my friends. Friends who called me “fag” to my face. I was pretty miserable there and fled. Came out to my parents and was not accepted in the least. See? Nothing all that amazing.
And in saying that, why am I stating it then? Background. Background makes any story understandable. Background gives insight into the mindset of the writer and makes the seething song that I sing sound less like rage and more like anger. After all who wants to listen to a rage filled rant? So, I am crafting this for you, the masses.
I have to say that by and large I have felt relatively safe here at SUNY Albany compared to my time at NYIT. But that is almost like saying would I rather be stabbed then shot. It holds very little relevance. They both suck greatly. I have found support here at UA that I never thought I’d get. I have amazing friends. Up until this rant, not many people could say they knew what my name of birth is. As far as all that goes, I am dearly grateful to UA. But the gratitude ends there.
Since being out, I have had to put up with a few indignities that makes me want to scratch my head. I will preface this with my own admittance that I do not fit societal norms of a what a female should look like. I will say it flat out. I barely look like a girl. No need for delusions of grandeur. And now that we’ve gotten that out the way, lets move on the meat of the situation.
UA’s track record with me and my trans identity are not what you would call award winning. It all started during orientation. If any of you remember, there was that of orientation where they separate the boys and the girls. Or, as it was phrased, males and male identified people went to one LC and females and female identified people went to another LC. At the very beginning of the talk about sexual assault and how to avoid it, I was asked if I was in the right room. Some context, I am sitting fairly in the back as to draw attention to myself. I said I was and then was again asked if I was certain. I then stood up and old her I was indeed in the right place since the said female identified people were to go here and I am a male to female transsexual. Hurray!! I just outed myself to maybe 70 incoming freshmen. Totally what I wanted to do.
Orientation continued to be a nightmare of being outed when I was informed by my RA that an RA was telling other ResLife staff and students that I was trans. I was never told how that situation was handled. I settled for an informal apology but was disheartened that this RA, as far as I knew, was not noticeably reprimanded. Not that I liked the way ResLife handled another situation concerning another RA telling me, when I requested him to stop using male pronouns in reference to me, why I was not a girl. His cop out excuse? He was tired. I got another informal apology from ResLife, being completely assured that the situation was not tolerated. Or when I confronted my RA about a fellow resident calling me a fag. I was not allowed to be present at the meeting she had with him and was told, that while not getting to know the contents of the meeting, the situation was resolved.
I get it. There is a semblance of confidentiality in situations with ResLife. I get procedure. Trust me, I get it. But to completely honest, its all bullocks. In these situations, my safety was endangered. Not in a vague semblance. What if someone was highly transphobic? It isn’t like there were so many people in the tower during orientation. What if the resident I reported on retaliated? In a way, the veil of confidentiality made me feel even more uneasy.
The problem doesn’t stop just with my living situation. It flows into my academia and in the work place. Just being a student is a constant reminder of my otherness, of the fact I am a transsexual student. And while I am not ashamed of my identity there is an issue in the fact that I live in duality. Between my identity of Alexandra and my origin as Kristofer. That I am stuck with viewing my identity is an alias.
Starting off in its most basic form, my SUNY ID says Kristofer Stevens. And while I know it is a semi form of official ID, but let’s be honest. You can’t use your SUNY ID when you get pulled over by the cops, you can’t use it as a form of identification to get a passport, the list goes on in on. As far as forms of identification goes, your SUNY ID is the low man on the totem pole. In that regards, the reasoning that my name of preference can’t be used on it eludes me. I know the counter argument. The argument of allowing that leads to allowing students to say their name of preference is “Juggernaut” or what have you. In response I have one thing to say. That is, like Facebook, it should be very easy to deem which are valid and appropriate and which are juvenile and inappropriate.
In continuing in the form of identification debate I have one major complaint. I am a employee of Chartwells. I formally worked on Dutch Quad. At the time that I worked on Dutch Quad I also lived on said quad. As I have already stated, very few people know my name of birth. So here I am, a trans individual who goes by the name Alexandra, being made to wear a name tag bearing the name Kristofer. It was explained to me that my name tag must have my legal name. Which, to me, was illogical. There were employees with abbreviated versions of their name. An abbreviated version of a name is the same thing of a nickname. So, what’s to say Alex is not my nickname. I was told to take it up with ________ at Human Resources. I left various notes for ___ on ___ desk. These note contained my name of birth, the issue, and my phone number. To this date, I have yet to received an e-mail.
There are further issues for myself. Continuously having to out myself at the start of every semester to my professors. Feeling unsafe going into a men’s bathroom since it is deemed unacceptable for me to use a women’s bathroom. The list is long.
Why did I feel that this needed to be put onto on paper? Why should you care? I have heard the argument that since that the trans population on campus is small to non existent how is this the campus’s problem. And yet, if this campus had a small African American population and this was about racism on campus no one would make that argument. Because we all know racism is wrong. We all know discrimination is wrong. Right? So why is this taken so lightly? Why isn’t this talked about? Because no one knows it is a problem.
The reason I put this onto paper for you to read is so you know. Understanding can not be reached without confrontation. I want you to confront this. I want you to know it is wrong. I want there to be discourse. Because this is not okay and I or any other trans student or any student in general shouldn’t have to put up with. And nor should you.
Sincerely,
Alexandra Stevens
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