this woman’s work

An interesting discussion on exclusionary politics can be found at Uppity-Negro, heads up courtesy of Drublood.

We had two known transgendered clients who came and stayed at shelter. We may have had more (I’ll assume we had more) but these two people were out. One was a hermaphrodite (I will call her D.) and the other was a transexual born as a man and living as a woman (I will call her K.). She had come to us from a halfway house program for people leaving prison.

D. had lived both as a man (I believe at some point she was legally a man since she said she was married at that time) and as a woman. I have no idea what her “official” identity was but when she came to shelter, she was living as a lesbian woman. I’m not sure if that was so she would be able to stay at shelter or not since she told one of the case workers that she did not identify as either gender. I am using the term “she” here since that’s what she used but my understanding is that she did this for convenience and not because her “womanhood” was more important than her “manhood.”

K. was also living as a lesbian woman and because she came out to us before entering shelter (D. came out after she was already in) and because she was most definitely legally a man, we had to have a staff meeting around it. We ultimately decided that her identity as a battered woman was more important than what she had between her legs. But it was a tough decision because we had concerns about the other client’s feelings around it.

Except for clients who entered shelter with children (who were given a room alone with their kids), all of our clients had a roommate. This included K. Because she was out as transgendered, we wrried about how other clients would feel sharing a room (or the living area or the kitchen or the bathroom) with a legal male. Also, we knew from past experience that some of our clients had issues with sharing living space with lesbians and we wondered how K’s roommate was going to feel about sharing her room with a lesbian who also had a penis. K’s room was a special federally funded room for clients leaving prison and so that was the only place these two women could be.

Anyway, K’s roommate ended up bonding with K. and K. did a lot to bring the entire shelter together. She was very inspiring to the women and was one of the most motivated clients that we ever had. Go K.!

Because of K., we decided that we needed a written policy about how we would handle transgendered people seeking shelter. We had a training with the Northwest Gender Alliance that was excellent and helped us commit to allowing those people who came to us for help to define their own gender. In other words, no panty checks in shelter.

This was a tougher decision than it might look at first because not only did we have to consider the concerns of other clients’ but there was also the possibilty that an abuser could enter shelter by saying that he was living as a woman. However, we had had lesbian abusers come to us pretending to need shelter when they were really looking for their partners and this did not dissuade us from offering lesbians shelter. Using that same thinking to turn down transgendered people was discriminatory. And yes we did allow transgendered people who were born women living as men to come to shelter, too. Complicated, eh?

As an interesting aside, our trainings were always open to all YWCA staff — not just those of us who worked in the shelter. We never had anyone come and check them out. Not the traumatic brain injury training (which was excellent), not the domestic violence and the law training (infuriating but ultimately hopeful), not the various child abuse trainings (which everyone should have). But we sold out for the transgendered training. It was standing room only. I think they were all looking for a freak show but I tell you, it was one of the most thought-provoking, eye-opening trainings and I’m really grateful for it. No Jerry Springer shit here, nope.

V. had been in the shelter before when her youngest daughter was only a baby. Back then she was still using and her stay with us was cut short when she was asked to leave for coming home wasted. This time, she was sober and because I had set up the family program, she and her daughters would be my clients.

V. was 37 but looked 52. She was missing most of her teeth and her face was heavily lined. Her intake form read like a bad B movie. She had a history of gang involvement, drug use (heroin, crystal meth, alcohol, and marijuana), childhood abuse, sexual abuse, and most recently, domestic violence. Her daughters M. and A. (now 2 and 3) had been dragged along through it. Originally, her abusive partner had gotten sober with her, but when he returned to their drug-infused lifestyle, he got abusive again, too. V. finally found the impetus to leave him when he broke 2-year old M’s nose.
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I was reading someone’s blog archives about domestic violence. Apparently, there was a woman she knew whose husband was abusing her and the blog-writer was saying how sad she felt for the children in the family and how she encouraged the mom to leave, etc. etc. It was in the archives so there was no use commenting but it was something I see come up now and then in parenting communities. I wish I could see it when it happened so I could comment on the thread while it’s “live” instead of seeing it months later when no one is checking the thread anymore. Anyway, my point in bringing this up is to say that people may not realize that domestic violence *is* child abuse.

The presence of domestic violence in the home is the number one predictor for there being child abuse in the home. Why is this? Generally because violence begets violence. Someone who is hitting his partner is more likely to hit his kids. Also, women who are being abused by their partners are more likely to abuse their children than are women who are *not* being abused by their partners. Now I don’t mean that every domestic violence survivor is also a child abuser — not by a long shot. These are statistics; bear that in mind while reading. OK, that said, back to the stats. Women who are being abused sometimes hurt their kids because violence trickles down. Dad hits mom. Mom hits Junior. Junior kicks the dog. Another reason (and this one makes me so miserably sad) is that sometimes the mother will hurt her kids to — ironically — try to protect them. She may beat her kids to try to keep them in line so that Dad doesn’t have an excuse to rage (not that abusers need an excuse, they’re very creative with excuses) or she may beat them first before Dad gets to them knowing that her spankings aren’t as severe as Dad’s.

But let’s say there is no child abuse present. Just good old fashioned wife-beating (and yes, I’m being sarcastic). In that case, the presence of domestic violence itself is considered child abuse in Oregon. Let’s go back to the stats, shall we? Kids who grow up in homes where domestic violence is present behave in the same way (meaning the same rate and type of fucked-up’ness) as children who are themselves abused. Domestic violence *is* child abuse. And you can’t say (as some of our clients in shelter used to say), “But not if he only beats her when the kids are sleeping or when they’re not around” because the kids know. Kids are smart and the dynamic that is present in abusive relationships is present even when he’s not hitting her. Also, kids aren’t always sleeping when the parents think they are. The children I worked with in shelter all knew when mom was getting beat up even when mom swore they couldn’t know. And the little tiny kids? The babies and toddlers that the moms thought were “too little” to know? They knew, too. They presented just like bigger abuse survivors. Finally, sometimes parents “forget” that their kids were there during an abusive episode. At shelter, the mom would swear that the kids were never around and then one of the children would describe an incident to me and the mom would realize she’d blocked it out. Listen, I can see how that would happen. Who wants to confront the fact that they are raising their children in a dangerous, harmful environment?

The reason I want to post this in a forum when the topic comes up (and I don’t hang around forums enough to catch it when it does) is that I want people to know about this. It’s not enough to encourage the mom to leave and then heave a sorry sigh when she doesn’t. If you are the kind of person who wouldn’t hesitate to call Child Protective Services if you knew a child was being hurt, please realize that domestic violence *is* child abuse. I imagine that not every CPS is as up on this as they are in Oregon (we — the shelter community — were doing trainings with police and CPS workers.) but don’t let that stop you from making a call. You could save a child’s life. Maybe it would have saved this child’s life. I know Lisa Boss had a lot of friends who were worried about her and they may not have realized that the domestic violence was enough to take action to help her kids. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE *IS* CHILD ABUSE.

p.s. Unfortunately, many of us know moms who are in verbally/emotionally abusive relationships. I imagine that the situation is the same, i.e., that children who witness their moms being verbally/emotionally abused display the characteristics of children who are themselves being verbally/emotionally abused. I don’t think there have been studies about it but it stands to reason. Sadly, CPS won’t take action against such abuse even when it *is* being perpetuated against a child let alone against his/her mom. But I wish this was common knowledge. I can think of one person in my life who is very much in denial about how these things affect the kid(s) in a family.

For those of you in Portland, the woman who strangled her toddler with a shoelace is an ex-client of ours at the shelter. I remember her pretty well. She was in once with her kids and once without but I can’t remember which came first. Maybe she was in three times which was our limit for clients. I think that I case managed her at one point because I can remember dealing with her a lot and her kids, not so much. Since I was the family program coordinator, it was usually the other way around. I do remember that the last time she was in, her mental instability was really manifesting (I don’t remember much sign of that before) and her face was strangely red and angry all of the time.