Rebecca Ruhlman Designs Welcome to the drafting table of RARDesigns. A full-service media design firm.
Okay, I’ve been milling over this thing for more than a week now. I was going to make this post about the crazy behind-closed-doors fights occurring between Apple and Adobe since the release of Creative Suite 5, but apparently I’m still coming up on internet posts and people keep asking me if I’m the person in the recent CNN piece “I’m transgender and I want my voice to be heard”.
So yes, it’s me and I think it’s an okay article even though some facts are a bit off. Let me just say Jordan Sarver did a good job with his internship at CNN iReport, and I wish him good luck in pursuing his goals of becoming a medical and science reporter. It’s a highly technical and precisely worded field. Good luck. I’ll also point out that I sent along a three-page e-mail response and participated in a one-hour interview so even with my part alone the article doesn’t even cover a fraction of our discussion. That’s the way journalism works. You cull hundreds of in depth sources over a series of weeks and months and you are given 800 words to cram in all you’ve learned. BTW, you don’t get paid by research. You get paid by the word. Reporting truly is a thankless job, so when I see people trying to do it right, I’m glad to help out.
I’m also not a very good interview. It doesn’t help that I was loopy on benedryl at the time either. The example cited as my reason for responding really wasn’t my impetous for responding. I posted my initial picture because, I and so many of my friends in the community have to constantly face discrimination on a daily basis. The example used was actually one of the less blatant instances. It just happened to be the most recent.
Since the story, I received a sideways sort of promotion. I am doing the exact same work, with the exact same title, at the pay level I had before transition (I went from slightly below $30,000 chicago dollars to slightly above $30,000 for ten years work experience). The only difference is that I’m officially in e-media now, so I can put that on my resume. I’m counting it as a win. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. I am exceedingly lucky compared to much of the rest of our community. I do get frustrated that the hard fought success that we fight for in our community is considered free or just a given for everyone else. And, they really don’t care to think about it.
The fight is tiring. I’ve since given up looking for avenues for advancement. Creating custom portfolios and presentations is expensive, time consuming and fruitless. I much rather focus on things that I can control and can make me happier like art and hanging out with friends in the city. When it comes to money, I’m pretty much resigned to never being able to built up any savings or equity. I will have to declare bankruptcy in the next six months if left in this current condition.
But, I refuse to let it hurt me or get me down. As I said in the interview, that’s just the way it is for us. The discrimination goes beyond that of just regular gender inequity. It is am extra thing added on top of all the crap people have to put up with everyday. We have to play games, break laws, and hide in shadows just to do the things that cis-gender society never has to think about and explaining that, in a rational manner, is just so tiring. The majority don’t learn and don’t care. In short – I am tired, I am cold and I want to disappear. As that seems to be less and less possible, make me your Tom Joad. I’m a big girl. I can take it.
Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled…
Ma Joad: Oh, Tommy, they’d drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casy.
Tom Joad: They’d drag me anyways. Sooner or later they’d get me for one thing if not for another. Until then…
Ma Joad: Tommy, you’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.
Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. It’s just, well as long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.
Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.
Ma Joad: I don’t understand it, Tom.
Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.
Tags: cnn, discrimination, interview, jobs, Personal, tom joad, transgender
