Ira Bohm-Sanchez discussestrans* community issues, challenges and personal milestones.Photo by Noemi Gonzalez
SPM: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you are related to the trans community?
Ira Bohm-Sanchez: My name’s Ira, I’m a student at Phoenix College and I run a support group for young transgender and gender non-conforming people. I am also transgender myself. So I don’t know if that gives me like a gold star in terms of community membership, it doesn’t really come with a badge, but that’s how I’m involved.
SPM: Can you define “transgender” for me?
Ira: This is so cheesy, this is something people post on Facebook a lot. But basically, Albert Einstein said that if you can’t make something simple then you don’t know it well enough. That being said, I think that a lot of the time when people talk about transgender issues they oversimplify it to the point where it’s wrong because they hope that other people will be able to grasp it. So I try to make it simple and inclusive to the best of my ability. The way that I explain it personally is, when we’re born we’re put into all sorts of types of boxes. It’s a metaphorical box. What most people think of is infants being gendered as male or female. And some people like being in that box and some people don’t. And the people who do are cisgender, which is a fancy way to say “not trans.” And the people who don’t like the box that they’re put in, are trans.
SPM: And it’s just the idea of crossing over?
Ira: “Trans” comes from Latin, it means “across.” “Cis” comes from Latin as well, it means “on the same side.” A lot of transgender people feel that it is offensive to see it that way because most transgender people, definitely not all, but most transgender people identify with their autonomous genders their entire lives. So there really isn’t a crossing in terms of their own personal identities. There is a crossing in terms of boundaries. There are all kinds of gender boundaries that we have, social norms and things like that. If you have this type of body then you obviously have to do these things and feel this way. We see that all the time. And so the way that I see it, is we’re crossing those expectations, not so much our gender is inherently crossing from one to another.
SPM: Can you define the difference between sex and gender? Is that something that’s relevant within the trans* community in terms of education?
Ira: Yeah, I guess, a Women’s Studies 101 class would say sex is biological and gender is a social construction. Meaning that sex is objective and gender is subjective, in a sense. I personally disagree. So, I think that they’re both subjective. Bodies objectively exist and we subjectively define them with words that we’ve created, which are inherently subjective because they’re part of the human experience. That being said, sex is the way in which we define bodies. Just bodies. When we think of sex it’s usually in reference to people’s hormones, their chromosomes, their genitalia, secondary sex characteristics like puberty, things like that. So it’s all about bodies, is sex. Some people say that sex is at your groin and gender is at your brain. I also think it’s at your heart, gender is at your heart and it’s more of a feeling.
SPM: And then can you dive in to your experience as someone who is transgender and what that means to you?
Ira: It’s sort of a long story. What I can say is that when I was first doing research in a way that I thought that I could actually do something about it, because my parents were very, very religious and very anti-LGBTQ anything, I remember I watched YouTube videos like non-stop. It’s sort of a joke, it’s a stereotype and it’s a joke, but I jokingly say that transgender people love YouTube. That’s not true, because there are different generations of people who are trans*, and so not all trans* people even know how to use YouTube. But I’m finding that a lot of younger trans* people really love YouTube and that’s seems to be where their main resources are, that’s how they learn about other trans people in many ways, in depth.
So that’s where I started and I watched a bunch of videos of these trans guys recording their faces and being like, “I’ve been on testosterone for a month, I think I have a mustache hair.” And it doesn’t go that fast, but at first I was under the impression that there was only one right way to be trans. The reason why I say this is because there’s this stereotype that A: Trans* people always feel like their body is the wrong body, and B: That gender is stagnant, including for trans* people. That’s not really my experience at all, that hasn’t been my experience one bit. And so what happened for me was I found a YouTube video of someone who had stopped taking testosterone. Which, for some people is like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe that that person would stop taking testosterone. That means that their not trans anymore.” That’s not true. He explained that it wasn’t really for him at that time, and that he might go back to it. But just that he wanted to take a break from it. And I didn’t even know that that was an option. Like I didn’t know that I had that much power over my own body and it was really empowering for me. And so that’s when I decided to make the appointment. Because I had these feelings, and these feelings weren’t going away, they were very intense. It wasn’t very relieving, it was almost tormenting. But it was relieving to first go to that appointment.
I waited six months. I got started on testosterone June 17, 2010 at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles. So I’ve been on testosterone for about three and a half years. Then after that, I moved to Phoenix and I continued taking testosterone. And there’s this like stereotype that Arizona is really bigoted and really not open-minded. And what I will say is that including in the outskirts of Phoenix, I have never experienced workplace discrimination here. Where as with jobs in California, which is stereotypically very liberal, they struggled with using my name, the right name. And they struggled with using the pronouns that I used and kept referring to me as she. So it was sort of shocking, I was expecting it to be a lot harder here and it hasn’t been.
I made some friends and my friends were really wonderful and really great. And we were part of this feminist activist group, and we would meet every month and I asked them if they would be interested in helping me to fundraise for my top surgery. Top surgery is a pretty gender-neutral term, anyone can have a top surgery. It’s most often seen in masculine communities where breasts are being removed. Basically it just means surgery above the waist, below the neck. I had parties to fundraise for my surgery. I pretty much paid for my entire surgery through people’s donations, including my testosterone. I had started binding when I first came out as trans*. Binding is when you use whatever means to flatten the chest.
I had surgery Feb. 9, 2012. I went to a very, very well-known surgeon, Dr. Garramone in Florida. A lot of people ask me how I feel about my scars. I think there’s a lot of negative attention that people get about their scars, I actually love my scars, they look like a smiley face. And if I put my arms up they look really happy and if I put my arms down they just sort of look ambivalent. And I really enjoy that a lot. And I like having that. I teach workshops to young people, so if I’m teaching a workshop to junior highers about cultural competency, I can show them that and they laugh, and there’s less shame put on bodies.
On November 13, I have my name-change court date. Everyone has to go to court if they want to legally change their name, not just trans people. And that was also paid for by someone else who is really kind and caring and just awesome because name changes are over $300. So that’s where I am right now. And people ask me if I think I’m done. I don’t know if transitioning ever really has an end, I think it depends on the individual person.
SPM: But again is transitioning just applied to the anatomy or is there a mental component?
Ira: The reason why we use the term transition is because most people outside of the trans* community think of sex changes when they think of trans* people. Sex change makes it sounds like it’s a work of magic, like you just twitch your nose and it’s done and that’s how easy it is. And that would be really nice, but that’s not how it works. One, every part of the medical process, if you feel that that is what is right for you, takes time, every part of it. It takes time to get the money for it, it takes time to see the changes, it takes time to recover from surgery. Recovering from surgery is very intense, even if you’re excited for it, it’s still very intense. But there is also emotional changes that come with it as well. You’re going through puberty again. And then there’s also how people see you, that also transitions. For example, I’m pretty petite, being perceived as a small woman is very different than being perceived as a small man. People treat you very differently. I was pretty aware of sexism before medically transitioning, but I think that I’m a lot more aware of it now because that’s something I’ve paid attention to.
SPM: Thank you for sharing. So, within the trans* community, what are the different identifications people should be aware of?
Ira: Well, the first thing I want to say is that there are all kinds identities that you can have. So there’s gender identity, everyone has a gender identity, literally everyone, not just trans* people. It’s not like I just navigate the world as a Latino person, I also navigate it with all these other things that are part of who I am.
If I were to ask you what it means to be a woman, and then ask another woman what it means to be a woman, you two would probably have two different answers because you’re two different people, gender is very personal.
There’s gender-queer, there is gender fluid, there is bi-gender, etc. etc. I cannot define every single gender that exists because I cannot define every single piece of mass that there is in the universe. It’s an impossibility. I can, however, explain that gender-queer is someone that does not define as a man or a woman. Gender fluid is a little more complicated because people don’t like fluidity. They expect people to commit to something for the rest of their lives. We see this all the time with jobs, careers, education, partners, genders, sexual orientations, etc. Someone who is gender fluid is not stagnant in their identity. How you identify has nothing to do with how you look. Bi-gender is like bi-sexual, someone who is bi-gender is someone who identifies with two genders. Someone who is agender, whenever you add the word a in front of something means without or not, so if you think of someone who is agender, think of the void or the space between planets. It’s just someone who doesn’t identify with any gender.
The one thing I get asked a lot is on the topic of identities, is how do gay transgender people exist? And this may not make sense to everyone, but it seems to work when I explain it to people. Who you are, is different than who you like. I once had a friend ask me, “If you like boys and girls why would you get a “sex change”? And I remember thinking to myself – because the person who asked me is a gay man who is not transgender – based on that logic, in order to meet his own expectations of gender and sexuality, he would have to get a sex change in order to like men. It’s just who you are, is different than who you like.
SPM: If there is one thing that you think the general public should be aware of in regard to trans* issues or the culture, what would you say that is?
Ira: I think that it’s just a matter of being considerate. For example, sometimes people ask me what’s in my pants… if you wouldn’t go up to a random person and ask that, you shouldn’t ask me that. But I will say, in terms of what I think is the most important thing – and I also think this is the reason people ask these questions – is that when we interact with minority groups we forget the age old, piece of information that everyone is different. Everyone is different, including all transgender people, everybody is different. It doesn’t matter what type of minority group that you belong to, any stereotype that is a blanket over that community is going to leave you wrong, because everybody is different all of the time. And I can’t stress that enough.
SPM: On a more personal level, while conversing with that age group 14 to 24, what is something that you have learned when becoming part of the trans* community?
Ira: This has nothing to do with gender, but if I’ve learned about anything it is advocating for yourself. It was very hard for me to stand up for myself before I came out as trans*. I always was nervous about being embarrassed or being seen as ridiculous or unreasonable. And being trans* sometimes puts you in the place where you have to stand up for yourself, for example, if someone doesn’t use the right pronouns for you ever. Not everyone is able to do that, but I have come to the point where it is a really valuable skill of mine, not that everyone will see it as valuable, I don’t know and I really don’t care, but I have personally found it valuable. It has taken me a lot of places and has enhanced a lot of the conversations that I would have never had if I didn’t have that skill.
