Asian American transgender activist Pauline Park considers the push for gender-neutral pronouns in the U.S. “profoundly ahistorical.”
“Gender-neutral pronouns are not native to the English language,” she argues. “And—unlike in Chinese, for example—[they] feel extremely artificial to speakers of English.”
Park says she’s come to understand that the historical roots of transgenderism differ in various cultures. For instance, she contends, “There was a pre-modern trans identity in virtually every Asian society, and I think it’s important for transgendered Asians to envision themselves in light of their precursors.”
Co-founder of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in New York, Park is best known for spearheading the successful campaign to pass the New York City transgender rights law enacted in 2002. After leading that campaign, she (www.paulinepark.com) helped draft guidelines—adopted by the Commission on Human Rights two years later—for implementation of the statute.
NYAGRA (www.nyagra.com) is a founding member of a coalition that secured enactment of the New York City’s Dignity in All Schools Act, a law making schools safe for gender-variant children. Likewise, the organization supports the statewide version of the Dignity Act—currently pending in the New York state legislature—which would prohibit discrimination and harassment in public schools throughout the state.
Park argues the law is essential because transgendered and gender-variant students face “pervasive discrimination and bullying and bias harassment in schools…throughout the state.” Unfortunately, she says, “[The Dignity Act] has passed the [New York State] Assembly several times but never the Senate, whose Republican majority refuses to consider any bill with gender identity and expression in it.”
At least 10 states (including California) and dozens of New York localities have passed comprehensive anti-harassment measures for their public schools.
Park also serves as vice-president of the board of directors of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF). Last December, the TLDEF (www.transgenderlegal.org) honored her work by establishing the Pauline Park Fellowship. And in 2005, Park was chosen as the first openly transgendered grand marshal of New York City’s LGBT Pride march.
The inexhaustible transgender activist also authors a regular blog on BigQueer.com, and has a piece in the upcoming anthology Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time.
In her essay, “Homeward Bound: The Journey of a Transgendered Korean Adoptee,” Parks writes of coming to terms with her gender identity as well as her identity as a Korean adoptee. White fundamentalist Christian adoptive parents in Milwaukee raised her and her non-transgender twin brother.
“Being born in Asia and adopted and raised in the United States,” Park says, “enabled me to understand that all identities are social constructions. Just as I have come to realize that I have a distinct identity as a Korean adoptee, I have come to understand that I have a distinct identity as a transgendered woman that is different from that of a non-transgendered woman.”
Although her identity may be a social construct, Park admits she can’t step away from it. “It’s not as if I’m Asian American one day and transgendered the next. When people meet me for the first time or see me on the street, they may or may not read me as transgendered, but the first thing they see is my Asian face and features, and they often make assumptions based on that Asian physiognomy.”
Park says that transgendered white people need to understand that discrimination and harassment based on gender identity or expression differs in important ways from that based on race or ethnicity. “There are so many challenges facing transgendered people of color both within the transgender community and in their own communities of color. And non-transgendered people of color need to understand that there are important parallels and similarities between those two different types of experiences despite significant differences.”
Trans writer, Jacob Anderson-Minshall, co-authored Blind Curves, the first in the Blind Eye Mystery series, available now. Contact jake@trans-nation.org or visit Anderson-minshall.com for more information.
