In the nine years since she moved to Baltimore, Rahne Alexander has helped transform our city's LGBT scene. She's performed with the Charm City Kitty Club, screened video art at the Transmodern Festival and brought new focus to independent queer cinema at the Maryland Film Festival. In addition to her own zine, Tranzilla, she's written for both the City Paper and Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore, and her band The Degenerettes, soon to release their second album, is a smart, frenzied mix of all-girl post-punk and 50s rockabilly. I talked to Alexander via email.
SPLICE TODAY: I want to start with the socio-political landscape: You were born in 1969. I think it's obvious that things have gotten somewhat easier for homosexuals in the last 40 or so years, but what about for transsexuals? Do you think there's more understanding these days, more acceptance?
RAHNE ALEXANDER: On the one hand, there are times when it really amazes me how much the culture has changed in a relatively short amount of time. The year I was born was the same year as the Stonewall riots. I came out in the midst of AIDS hysteria; at that point there was virtually no visibility for trans people. Now there are trannies everywhere I look, and everybody's getting gay married. This past winter the Maryland State Assembly was forced to have long, bureaucratic discussions about both gay marriage and gender identity while it decided the fate of a pair of bills that are designed to provide civil rights for various queer people. Suddenly, all these people who, for all I know, have never spent a minute considering the gray areas in definitions of sex and gender are being compelled to do so in the name of civic duty. It's mind-blowing. Twenty years ago, I was still living with the daily fear that if I were to be honest and open about my transsexual experience that I would be at best ostracized and at worst killed.
On the other hand, understanding does not necessarily follow immediately on the heels of tolerance or acceptance. It's possible to get hung up in that threshold for a long while.
ST: You've been in Baltimore now for almost 10 years, can you talk about any current city or state services for homosexuals and transsexuals? Are there community-run programs you think deserve more attention?
RA: There are never enough resources for those who are in the greatest need. There still aren't many good longitudinal statistics available to describe the lives of trans and queer populations; those that are available are all pretty dire. Trans communities are at risk for violence, suicide, homelessness, and employment discrimination. There's a lot of need there. Resources wax and wane. Some are good for a while, and then sour in quality thanks to things like burn-out and bureaucracy.
(Lucilicious)
ST: I'm sure you've been asked questions like this over and over again but I want to talk about your childhood: When you first noticed you were different from other kids; When you first realized you were transsexual—maybe even when you first heard the word. I know you've talked about how there was tension with your family, what were the hardest things you had to overcome to reach some acceptance with yourself?
RA: When I was a child, all these adults around me attempted to defend ridiculous ideas, like the one where dinosaur bones were planted in the earth as a test of our religious faith. These same people would rank homosexuality as a crime akin to murder. And these were adults! The kids were worse. I didn't have very many friends, but I wasn't terribly broken up about it. I had books and music, which was more than enough to convince me that not everyone was so easily manipulated. That's where I found hope and solace.
The thing that was hardest to come to terms with after coming out to my parents was that they didn't entirely disown me the way I expected they would. My parents' religion practices excommunication of its heretics, and since I knew at an early age that I didn't buy their faith, I started getting prepared for a grand shunning—from my family as well as the rest of their church. They actually worked to understand me, which was shocking.
I came to terms with my understanding of myself pretty early on. Again, with the books: I found information in libraries. Granted it was almost all embedded in medical texts and sociological surveys, but it was all there anyway. At some point I decided to get by until I could leave for college, and although I felt like an alien in the company of other boys, I was compelled to keep up appearances as best I could. Even so, the first time I heard someone yell at me from a passing car, he was calling me a bulldyke. I've always thought that was hilarious. So I left for college, and that's where I really began to come to terms with my identity. It took a little validation from the outside world that I was making the right decision. I was already getting validated by morons in monster trucks already, it was just a matter of finding people more kindly disposed to my situation, and even in the late 80s, those people weren't so difficult to find.
Transmodern Festival 2008 (Tim Castlen)
ST: It's funny, I remember that dinosaur bones argument from when I
went to Sunday School as a kid and I guess I didn't fully realize it
then but it's really absurd. You know, to think that God would
go out of his way to cause doubt and confusion. It was that kind of
stuff that really drove me away from the Church when I was maybe 15 or
so: like, here are all these Christians who just have such ridiculous
rationalizations for stuff, or who only quote Scripture to their own
end.
RA: I've seen ways that religion sometimes helps people find comfort or
self-control. I kind of think it's all reflections of the self, and
that's been my thought since I was very little. Even though I was years
away from reading Ecce Homo I was probably the only Nietzschean iconoclast in my third grade class.
ST: As a writer I have a keen interest in the language that's used here: I know with gender studies programs and queer theory there's a very academic way to talk about transsexualism; psychologists and doctors, of course, have another way to talk about it. I would think that in every day situations, when someone finds out you're a transsexual, the language you're most often confronted with is probably either a kind of blatant (or maybe not so blatant) anger or hatred, or a very sort of careful PC talk. I even noticed this with myself, you know, in thinking about questions to ask, in writing these questions, I was sort of extra careful not to say anything that might be taken as offensive or hurtful, and then I got kind of angry cause I thought, well, how patronizing of me, you know?
RA: I'm glad you asked this, because I'm really fascinated by the importance of language in sexual and gender identity, and the academy has had a very interesting role in the proliferation of trans and queer identities.
I think it does a disservice to anyone seeking more freedom to police the language of others. If I'm answering questions about how I experience the world as a queer transsexual woman, I'd rather respond to a clumsy-but-honest question than one which is tempered and guarded. Of course, there were times when I was not nearly so thick-skinned about such things.
A year or so ago, I wrote a little essay on the use of the word “tranny,” which has come under considerable fire from some quarters of the trans community. But it's a word I love. It's the word I prefer to use for myself. I understand why one might not like it to be used so glibly as it is so often, and I always do my level best to respect the wishes of those who don't like the word used against them.
I remember one time, back when I was working at the local gay community center, this guy asked me about how he should ask someone if they are transsexual. I said, “Ask, 'Are you a transsexual?'” He reacted uncomfortably, and I asked him to consider why he would need to know that information. Ultimately, if you don't ask like it's a bad thing, I'm happy to get any question. I like discourse. I like making connections between unlikely subjects. I love ideas. I love language, particularly the problematic words.
ST: It strikes me that for you—and this comes across really well in your essay about the word "tranny"—it's anything but silence. I can take the anger, the hatred, as much as that hurts, but just, please, not silence: don't ignore me and say I'm not here. And I think that's key; the first step is always recognition. You know, network sitcoms aren't the ideal forum for complicated discussions of gender and sexuality, but every time I see a LGBT TV character—as crude or stereotypical as they're sometimes depicted—I think, yes, at least you're putting it out there, at least you're confronting people with it, and that's what needs to happen.
RA: When I was young, I spent a lot of time scoping television for trans people, and most of the portrayals were steeped in tragedy and pathos—all scenes with these improbable middle-aged actors weeping to their doctors. As if I wasn't suicidal enough, there was the chief physician on St. Elsewhere being revolted by his old college buddy's revelations.
One day I caught the very end of an episode of The Jeffersons which featured a trans character. I spent the next couple years obsessively watching The Jeffersons in syndicated reruns in hopes that the episode would come on. Fortunately, it's a great sitcom, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. It took so long for that episode to come around, and when it finally did it kind of cracked my world open. The trans character was one of George's old Navy friends who had transitioned. The character was played by a female actor. It was years before I'd see another character played by someone who actually lived her life as a woman.
This old friend looks George up, and surprises him with her transition. I expected George, being the wealthy buffoon, to react with the rage of his old counterpart Archie Bunker. I was really caught up in the suspense of how things were going to play out, and I was equally on the edge of my seat hoping that someone in my family wouldn't intervene and set me back another couple of years. And while George initially didn't take the news particularly well, he wound up coming to an acceptance of her by the end of the episode. Totally humanizing, and totally revolutionary. Even in scripted shows today, trans characters—and trans women in particular—remain pretty broadly drawn. What if we lived in a world where that character could have had her own spin-off show, like Laverne and Shirley?
I actually think that sitcoms, and comedies in general, have a better track record for making progressive cultural changes than dramas do.
ST: You know, The Love Boat did almost the same episode a few years later. Now that I think about it all the more recent sitcom episodes with transsexual characters have made them much more sexualized. It's not just the shock of an old friend who's now a woman, it's Mac on It's Always Sunny having an on-off relationship with a tranny, or, you know, all these other sexual mishap plots.
RA: The confusion and panic that is being both lampooned and reified in It's Always Sunny has been with us a very long time. Both Buster Keaton and Ernst Lubitsch made silent films that depict characters negotiating attractions to people who are performing "opposite" genders. A couple of years ago I made this video collage called “Equal+Opposite” which traces a century of filmmaking about trans and gender-variant characters, taking both audio and video clips from dozens of films to really hammer home the fact that in spite of the longevity of this particular cultural obsession, the reactions don't seem to have become much more nuanced. My collage attempts to turn the gaze around a little bit, to push it away from the trans bodies and scrutinize the reactions of the characters who are confronting gender variance. Growing up, I learned a lot from those filmed reactions. I learned that it was commonplace—reasonable, even—to treat transsexuals with derision, merciless humor, rage and violence. It's easy to laugh along at Ace Ventura in the midst of his ridiculous trans panic (which is itself a lampoon of Stephen Rea's panic in The Crying Game), but the trans character is still being othered, dehumanized and objectified.
I've seen a couple of the episodes of It's Always Sunny with the transwoman, and I'm really interested in the way that whole thing is playing out. I'm not entirely sure that they set out to create a revolutionary character out of her, but the fact is that she's a recurring character in multiple seasons of the show, which puts her in very exclusive group. She's not retiring, she's not awkwardly mannish, and Mac certainly doesn't seem to have let his interest in her wane. And I think that's true. I don't think that straight men are as grossed out by trans women as Hollywood would have us believe. I think that perpetuation of that myth is the most harmful thing of all. I'd love to see the It's Always Sunny character have her own show. She could be the tranny Mary Tyler Moore.
ST: You said that when you were younger—and I imagine this is still true to some extent—that books and music were your solace: Can you talk about some artists or some works that were particularly influential?
RA: I read all the classics when I was a kid. In my early teens I discovered Dorothy Parker and Kurt Vonnegut and they've remained staples. I went through this phase of reading horror fiction. I was always drawn to short stories, so I ended up reading a lot of Poe and Twain and whatever else. They tried to get me to read The Lord of the Rings, and I read The Hobbit which was fun but when it got to the part with the walking, talking trees, I set that aside and tried to get into One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest instead. That didn't really take either; I was about 10, and it was still just a little bit beyond my reach. In high school I really delved into Jazz Age literature and Vonnegut. Then I discovered all the existentialists and the Dadaists and I was pretty much ready to absorb everything that followed—Nietzsche, Kathy Acker, Diane Wakoski.
I grew up with questionable musical taste just like everyone does. There was a time when I could sing the entirety of Foreigner 4 in order. But then I stumbled across the Cocteau Twins and The Cure and The English Beat, which led to all this 60s mod soul stuff and The Damned and The Sugarcubes. At the same time, I was growing up in a very agricultural landscape, and country music was inescapable. They'd run Hee Haw all the time on weekends, but they'd also run The Porter Wagoner Show and all these other country music shows which were more focused on musical performances. So I'd get to see Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris and Tammy Wynette on TV all the time. Dolly Parton has always been enormously important to me, too.
The Furry Triplets (rootball)
ST: Now that you're in a band what kind of stuff are you listening to? Do you find yourself thinking a lot about your image, your message, etc?
RA: When we started the Degenerettes, I just wanted a fun band—catchy songs with a political facet. I wanted to start writing more optimistic and hopeful songs. I had never really written songs about being happy or in love, and as I started writing I kept thinking about what Buddy Holly might have sung about if he were a lesbian. Nowadays Buddy Holly comes off as fairly innocuous, but there was a time when for some people he was the devil incarnate. What if he'd been queer too? So our first album, Bad Girls Go To Hell, is full of good old rock & roll tropes: monsters and spies; driving around and falling for the wrong dyke.
I go back and forth about my "image" and "message." I'm pretty clear on why I do what I do, but I don't lose a lot of sleep over whether it's received "correctly." Ultimately, I've wanted to prove to myself that I can write songs that I love to perform, and to use that platform to start to talk about the frustrations and the joys I actually feel. So the second record, which is almost done, is a little darker in tone and is more political and pointed. The songs are more rooted in reality and history.
One of the songs is about the first lesbian rock band in Baltimore, The Roc-a-Jets. They started in the late-50s, which was not a particularly kind time to working class queers. Aaron Henkin did this great story about the Roc-a-Jets on The Signal, and I immediately wanted to do a song to celebrate the band, but I didn't want it to come off as just some list song which proved I'd listened to the podcast a few times. It took a while, but I finally came up with a character to give voice to this song, a Saturday night butch who was really thrilled to get out on the town and look for love and trouble—which, of course, are things we can all relate to. So the song traces this dyke's anticipation of a thrill ride. It's not about the band; it's about the audience. The Roc-a-Jets make this woman feel good, and that's all that the song needs to be about.
"Truck Driving Girlfriend" (Bad Girls Go To Hell)
ST: Who are some of the Baltimore bands you're really drawn to? You're on Creative Capitalism, which is a fantastic label, but I don't think there're a lot of other bands around here with your kind of sound, who are doing what you're doing, so I'm curious who excites you.
RA: Do you want the list alphabetically? I like loud, passionate, and witty music. I like almost anything in which it's clear that the musician has established her or his own voice—which means that I get as excited about a Lurch and Holler show as I do about a Celebration show. I'm really excited to see what happens with the new Saddle of Centaur record. It's the new band with Andrea from Pariah Piranha and Kathy from the Headwounds and Mongoloidian Glow, and their record is hilarious and loud and dirty.
I love this music scene in Baltimore so much. There's so much music here and I've always been really interested in how a place, a community helps to shape the music that comes from it. Like I've always loved the country-punk hybrid music which came from LA as much as that which came from Athens, but those hybrids are literally miles apart from each other. I can't believe that I get to live in a town which not only has this incredibly rich cultural history but which seems to be flourishing in all sorts of mediums and genres. It seems like there are amazing shows here at least three and four times a week. I just wish I had more free time to absorb it all. It feels like a renaissance here, and I feel super lucky to be here now.
Transmodern Festival 2009 (TmF)
ST: The eighth annual Transmodern Festival was this past Spring: How long have you been involved with organizing TmF and what do you think sets it apart from other art and music festivals in Baltimore?
RA: I was a stagehand in the very first Transmodern Festival, and in the ensuing years I did a little of everything from performance and curation to publicity and grant writing. I was sad to have to scale back significantly once I started to work with the Maryland Film Festival full time earlier this year, but I had to make that difficult choice.
I think that Transmodern is unique in that despite its popularity and longevity, it continues to be progressive and inclusive and avant-garde and it continues to grow. I think it sustains such momentum because as a festival it was pretty dynamic and collaborative since its inception. It seems to draw new energy every year, and it's sort of become this annual celebration of the amazing work that we're all doing here in this town.
ST: How about the Charm City Kitty Club. It's been around for at least as long as TmF, I know that you've been involved for at least the past five years, right? Can you talk about the CCKC for those who don't know about it, and then maybe about a couple of projects you've personally been involved in, that have meant a lot to you?
RA: The Kitty Club was founded in 2002, while the first Transmodern Festival was at the Chela Gallery in 2004. It was called Transmodern Age in those days, and notably, the amazing Catherine Pancake was on the ground floor of both organizations. She's in Chicago, and both of these shows are still going strong.
I had just arrived in town when the Charm City Kitty Club was founded, and joined the organizing committee right after I attended the first show; I remained directly involved with the collective for eight years. There is a whole new generation of Kitties running things there now, which is amazing to me. Most of the collectives I've ever been involved with didn't last nearly as long, but then again most of them were never intended to last that long either. Towards the end of my direct involvement, I had helped produce more than twenty Kitty Club shows, which had showcased about 150 acts—only a handful more than once. That's a lot of queer talent.
(izik)
One of the original organizing principles of the Kitty Club was to provide a queer social space which was defined more around art and performance than around bar tabs, and I think that's what's led to its longevity. You could fill a book with all the relationships that the Kitty Club has spawned—from both sides of the stage. I can't count the number of times I heard that a couple's first date was at a Kitty Club, or immediately following.
The Degenerettes certainly started as a result of connections made because of the Kitty Club, and I think this band is pretty emblematic of the kind of work that I'm most interested in doing—work that's undeniably queer in its origins but is accessible to anyone who wants to participate.
A few years ago I created a little comic book series called Tranzilla, which was pretty much an expression of my rage and frustration at the time. I had this horrible public transit commute and it was my first winter on the east coast so I was trying to adapt to the cold; on top of it I was full of vinegar about remaining on the periphery of the queer community despite my best efforts to make it a more inclusive and interesting place. So I started drawing this comic book—something I'd never really been interested in doing, particularly since I'm a writer and a comedian well before I'm a visual artist. It's the story of a disaffected transwoman who gets a tainted batch of hormones, which results in her becoming a fire-breathing dragon when she gets angry. It's a total mash-up of Hothead Paisan and the Hulk and Godzilla. I'm very proud of that project, and you can still find it at Atomic Books. I've got one more grand finale issue that I'm working on, and what I realize as I'm doing this issue is that all the other issues were done on fly, so they're kind of performance art. I didn't really storyboard anything, and the print size you see is the size that I drew, and the order in which you read the story is the order in which I wrote it. It's hard for me to do that now. My commute is much better, my clothes are warmer, and I've somewhat reconciled my relationship to some of my queer comrades. Even the ones that’re wrong.
