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Tuesday, 13 May 2008 10:40
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 Transgender Legal Defense
Lawyer’s Cross-Dressing History
by Jacob Anderson-Minshall
“I used to dress up in my mother’s clothes every chance I got,” recalls Michael D. Silverman, executive director of Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF). “Her makeup bag was my favorite toy. I’d wear my mom’s stockings or play with her high heel shoes. I loved it.”
Silverman, the lawyer who runs TLDEF—a non-profit law office dedicated to achieving equal rights for transgender people—isn’t trans-identified himself; but, like many other gays and lesbians, Silverman shares a gender bending personal history with his trans clients.
 Later, while a Georgetown University Law Center Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow, Silverman worked with the school’s domestic violence clinic and for NARAL Pro-Choice America. He also spent four years with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s Access to Health Care Program and Disability Law Center.
TLDEF (transgenderlegal.org) utilizes a variety of methods to fight trans discrimination, including impact litigation, legal services, public policy and community organizing. The New York based law firm has been expanding its reach and now serves clients from neighboring states and takes calls from across the country.
Their caseload represents what Silverman views as an intractable level of discrimination and prejudice—even violence—that many trans people face on a daily basis. “These cases are really vile and really horrible…We have to be careful about painting a picture that isn’t too bleak.”
Discovering that many clients were experiencing discrimination because their IDs did not reflect their current (gendered) names, TLDEF launched The Name Change project, which recruits lawyers that handle all elements of the legal name change process—pro bono.
“For our clients, most of whom are poor and low income, this is a boon. The service and the fact that it’s no cost to them makes a huge difference.”
Another TLDEF program is the Transgender Health Initiative of New York, a community-organizing project meeting monthly and strategizing to improve transgender access to health care. “There’s just all sorts of things that have never been thought through by institutions,” Silverman says, citing unfriendly forms and identification requirements. “We’re helping…eliminate some of these barriers, so that trans people actually will access the care that they need. So many [trans] people are just checked out of the mainstream health care system and they’re getting hormones bought on the street, or they’re at home being pumped.”
To achieve equality, Silverman believes it’s essential for trans people “to, as much as possible…become visible and politically active in their communities. Get involved. Make sure you have rights. Don’t think that everything that matters is happening in Washington or is coming out of the Supreme Court, because it’s not. Your local community may have the authority to pass laws that can protect [you].”
It’s up to the LGBT community, Silverman maintains, to make these changes happen. “That burden is on us. We have to pass the laws, and then we have to enforce them. Ultimately it’s our job to change our world. We need to make [it] happen…by standing up and saying, ‘Enough.””
Furthermore, Silverman argues, it’s critical that gays and lesbians address the “subtle and not so subtle discrimination against transgender people,” that occurs within queer communities. “We certainly can’t expect the rest of the world to do better than we’re able to do within our LGBT community [where] we have common issues. We’re all in this together.”
Silverman sees commonality in gender expression. “Issues of gender non-conformity very much animate the gay and lesbian experience,” he contends. Sexuality and gender were so entwined in his own experiences, Silverman admits, that as a teenager, he assumed his gender bending impulses were just another expression of his newly minted gay identity.
Later, as a twenty-something rebel, Silverman discovered the joys of utilizing gender expressions as activism. “If I were to decide, ‘I’m going to wear a skirt today,’ I knew it was political. Ultimately, these are questions about freedom, which is [political]. Transgender rights and discrimination on the basis of gender expression are fundamental issues…about the freedom to be yourself. It’s going to take time, but this is a debate…and a challenge worth engaging. The benefits will be real, not just for people who call themselves transgender, but for gay people who are gender non-conforming, [and] for people who don’t even identify as LGBT, but for whom gender can be a limiting factor.”
Despite his youthful attraction to cross-dressing, Silverman believes there is something—perhaps the tenor or depth of his atypical gender impulses—that separates him from those who identify as transgender. “Its important to reserve words like transgender,” he argues, “for people who are…living full or part time in a gender other than their birth gender.”
Still, Silverman acknowledges doubts about the authenticity of his non-trans gender identity.
“In a world where there was free will, where I wasn’t told it was wrong…and made to feel ashamed of certain behaviors—what would I be saying today? What would I know about myself that I’ve just lopped off? There are things I may never know about myself. It’s one of those things about life…we learn not to know what we don’t want to know.”
Trans author Jacob Anderson-Minshall co-writes the Blind Eye mystery series with his wife.
© 2008 Jacob Anderson-Minshall
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