‘Blues’ perfect listening for ‘bathroom’ drama
Laura Jane Grace lives on the other side of the country, making a life for herself in Florida as a working punk rock musician in the fairly well-known band Against Me!
Her other claim to fame is, that up until two years ago, Grace lived and performed as Thomas James Gabel, the male-born singer, guitarist and songwriter for a band that had been building a consistent punk following for more than a decade.
Earlier this week, Against Me! released its sixth studio album and the first with a fully realized and transitioned Grace as the front woman. Titled, aptly, “Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” it’s almost entirely a document of Gabel coming to terms with his inner turmoil as he allowed Grace to show her true self, now his true self.
The Gabel/Grace story is not a new one. It made for some shocking reading when he sprung it on his fans three years ago in Rolling Stone. The orbit of the story even passed through our local atmosphere in May 2012 when the singer made her debut as Grace during a show in San Diego.
Yet to mainstream America, Grace’s journey doesn’t hold water in the collective consciousness the way a Chastity Bono has. But maybe it should, at least for educational purposes, maybe even for acceptance. At the very least, it could aid in understanding what transgender people go through, and a little bit of understanding could help in California right now as the political machinery behind Proposition 8 moves toward qualifying a ballot initiative meant to overturn Gov. Jerry Brown’s “transgender bathroom” law.
Early next month we’ll hear whether the disingenuously named Privacy for All Students has been successful in qualifying for the November ballot a referendum that could strike down the Legislature’s School Success and Opportunity Act.
For someone who wants to read the bones and find meaning in the tea leaves in every situation, it’s fortuitous timing to see “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” released at such an important time in California, when the topic is part of the public conversation like never before.
Those with gender identity questions have been cast as freaks by large segments of society. Indifference even seems to exist within the gay community, from some appearences, where transgenders are anomalies, a very small subset of a subset of a subset that some lines of thought would say doesn’t deserve protection, understanding or accommodation at the expense of larger society; a margin that deserves marginalization.
Yet even if that’s the way one looks at it, wouldn’t that be all the more reason for some understanding? I doubt seriously that any transgender teen is looking to crash open the doors of the bathroom, and by extension his community, to announce his or her presence. It’s just a boy or a girl coming to terms, looking for understanding and trying to make sense of something going on in their heart and head, the lay definition of gender dysphoria.
“Transgender Dysphoria Blues” should be some sort of required listening in California; I don’t know to whom, but someone. When Grace sings “All of my life, all of my life/wishing I was one of them/there will always be a difference between you and me” in his ode to putting up a front, “Drinking with the Jocks,” you can hear his confusion and pain. In songs like “True Trans,” you feel that pain and where it’s about to go: “Yet to be born, you were already dead/Sleep with a gun beside you in bed/follow it through to the obvious end:/see your veins wide open you bleed it out.”
It’s no wonder that nearly every comprehensive survey and study of transgender people has shown incidences of depression and drug and alcohol abuse at rates far greater than the general population, even higher than non-transgender gay and lesbian populations. For suicide attempts, transgenders are 25 times more likely to try.
Just like a true punk rock heart, Grace and Against Me! are looking to make sense of it all in the rawest way possible. Good timing for us Golden Staters.
This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Jan. 24, 2014.