It seems to me that we Transgendered, as a group, are not overly prosperous.   Oh, I know that some of us are, but they seem to be the exceptions.

Recently I was thinking about the financial situations of various Transgendered friends and acquaintances of mine.

Roberta works as a night shift baker’s assistant in the bakery of a big chain supermarket. What she really wants, and keeps applying for, is a cashier’s position on the day shift.   (The position pays more.)   The manager keeps saying they don’t have any openings.   The only other position they have offered her is one stocking the shelves, also at night, when the store is closed.

She’s convinced this is because she is Trans and the manager doesn’t want the customers to see her.   I think the chances are she’s right about that.

Sasha used to have a good, solid civil servant position with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The year she transitioned was also the last year she ever worked.   Once she transitioned, her supervisors started to drastically increase her workload until she had so much work no employee could realistically be expected to complete it in a timely manner.   In the end they broke her.   She had a nervous brake down and resigned.

That was 14 years ago.   She now lives on a tiny Social Security Disability income.

Jackie had a very good job with a Fortune 500 company. She had worked there for, I think, 11 or 12 years.   She transitioned on the job, seemingly with the complete and total support of the corporate Vice President of Human Resources.   On the day before she was to leave for Gender Reassignment Surgery the company eliminated her position.

Of course they said it had nothing to do with her being Trans.   If that were true then why did they dangle a cash settlement in front of her, a cash settlement they would only give her if she signed a legal release saying she wouldn’t sue the company?

Then there was Robin. I only met her once, but I’ll never forget her.

One Saturday in February 2006 she came to one of my support groups.   At first I was put off by her appearance (way too much make-up, leather micro-mini skirt, fishnet stockings and over the knee boots with five inch stiletto heels).

As she spoke, however, I came to realize that, although not well-educated at all, she was exceedingly intelligent; intelligent, insightful and full of common sense.   She was also very articulate, I would even say eloquent.

She spoke of her moment of crisis, that moment so many of us have when must face the truth and decide what to do about it.

Hers came late one night.   She was nearly penniless.   She didn’t have a job and no prospects of one in the near future.   On that night she sat at her kitchen table.   There were four things on the table in front of her: a legal pad and pen, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a loaded hand gun.

She took the pen and drew a line down the center of the paper.   At the top of the paper, on one side of the line she wrote ‘œReasons to Live.’   On the other side of the line she wrote ‘œReasons to Die.’   She had decided that when she finished these two lists, which ever was longer would decide her fate.

And so she spent that night drinking the Jack Daniels and writing her list.   In the end the list of reasons to live was one item longer than the list of reasons to die.

I am convinced that this woman was intelligent and competent and capable enough to do anything and be successful at it if only someone would give her a chance and teach her.

I never saw Robin again, but I think of her often.   Her memory haunts me.

She makes her living as a sex worker.

Does this society of ours use money as a weapon against the Transgendered?

My answer is yes.

I certainly know that Ashley the consultant doesn’t get nearly as many high profile high power clients as Craig the consultant did.

Frankly, there is a certain type of old line non-profit executive who disapprovingly and judgmentally look down their noses at me.   They would never, ever consider letting a Transsexual be their public face.

The economic consequences of this are significant.   I don’t have anywhere near the income I used to have before transition because there is a whole segment of the non-profit world that is off limits to me simply because I am Transgendered.

Think about it.   Money is the perfect weapon.   You can’t exist in this world of ours without it.   And to get it you have to work.   Deny access to work, you deny access to money.

Without money you have nothing.

No food.   No shelter.   No power.

You are immediately marginalized.   Pushed out to the fringes of society.   An inconvenient truth hidden away from the view of a disapproving society.

The fall of the Soviet Union, and with it most of the rest of the Communist world (the most spectacular crash and burn since the fall of the Roman Empire) proved that Karl Marx didn’t have a better idea about how to do things.   However, his analysis of capitalism, if you can wade through all the turgid self-indulgent verbiage, is insightful and penetrating.

His basic premise is quite simple and lucid: everything in a society is based in economics.

You have the ‘œForces of Production’ (the infrastructure of the society) and the ‘œConditions of Production’ (the knowledge of how to use the Forces of Production).   (That would be the workers.)   There needs to be some arrangement between the two that allows the system to function.   Thus are born the social and political institutions that govern the society.   Of necessity certain members of society are given power over the rest of the members of society to ensure that the system functions.

If Marx is right (and I think he is) those in control of the society would, of necessity, use money to control the others.

Let’s look at history.

In ancient Rome the Patrician class used money to control the Plebian class (which was vastly larger and potentially dangerous).   Keep them poor.   Give them the bare means for subsistence (bread) and distraction to keep them occupied (circuses).

What was the Spanish Inquisition really about?   It was about purging the wealthy Spanish Jewish class from the nation (and stripping them of their wealth to boot).

The Spanish conquest of South America?   It was about enslaving an entire people (talk about marginalizing) so they could steal their gold and silver.

The colonization of North America?   That was about stealing an entire continent from the Native Americans.   (To them, the land was the wealth.)   And then, to control them, they were herded onto barren reservations and left with no skills or opportunities to survive or prosper in this strange new world that had replaced theirs.

Every new minority immigrant group that ever came to this country?   Forced to take all the menial low-paying jobs nobody else will do.   (My God! There goes the neighborhood!)

And then there’s the most heinous, calculated, blood-chilling and cynical example of all: the Nazis and the Holocaust they perpetrated against an entire people.   They methodically passed laws denying German Jews access to work and stripping them of their financial assets.

Its ultimate goal was to push them to the edge of German society and marginalize them.   Then they could cram them into carefully controlled ghettos where they were out of sight and out of mind from the rest of the world.   From there it was a short journey to the concentration camps where they methodically exterminated them.

Is money a weapon? Most certainly yes it is, one of the most powerful ones ever invented by human beings.

Why does this society use it against the Transgendered? I can answer that question.   I just can’t do it here.

The answer has nothing to do with money.

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