Transcript of Loree Cook-Daniels

From the Long View: LGBT Elders and Experts Speak, Episode One

You’re listening to the first in a five-part series of interviews conducted by Amber Hollibaugh at the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Aging Roundtable in February 2007. Amber Hollibaugh is the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s senior strategist and LGBT aging expert.

For transcripts, photos and more, check out www.theTaskForce.org.

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LOREE COOK-DANIELS
I am the founding executive director of the Transgender Aging Network, um, and I work with FORGE, which is a transgender organization that’s 13 years old based in Milwaukee. I am from Milwaukee.

Loree Cook-Daniels. (laughs)

AMBER HOLLIBAUGH
All right. Where do you see yourself in 15 years?

LOREE
I am still gonna be working in 15 years. I will be 64 at that point. And I think that we — we really need to rethink our retirement thing, because I think a lot of us should be working, whether it’s paid or unpaid. I think our ideas of retiring at 65 is — overdone. We’re past that now.

AMBER
It may also be true that we can’t retire.

LOREE
Right. Well, that’s the other thing. (laughs) Because of the work that I have been doing and the underfunding, I will be dependent on Social Security and I have very few credits under Social Security. So yeah, there is a very good chance that I will be unable to retire for financial reasons.

AMBER
So let me ask you, then, this particular perspective. In an ideal world, what would you want things to look like in 15 years around LGBT aging?

LOREE
Oh, my image is not just LGBT aging. My image is, is mainstream. That we’re all together and that we’ve really reshaped our society so that we are using everybody’s skills all the time and not letting people go to their homes and watch TV all day or get isolated.

In terms of LGBT . . . fifteen years is too fast, but eventually I want us to, it not to be an issue. The diversity of human beings being so accepted that we don’t even really need to say, “This one’s black, this one’s lesbian.” It’s all, “This is Mrs. Smith, this is Mr. Jones.”

AMBER
In that context, then, what do you think is the most necessary policy change needed in the next 10 or 15 years in regard to aging?

LOREE
My concern is that the way we’re thinking of aging now is that we’re going to have this huge burden of older people, that the whole society is scared that we’re gonna have all of these useless people that we’ve got to support. We’re missing the opportunity of: we have all of these skilled people and we have technology now where even if you’re homebound you can be active, um, you can be connected.

And we really need to rethink how we use people and, and the idea that people “retire” meaning they quit contributing. (laughs) And they go off and play. We need a more integrated lifestyle across the genders, across the generations in terms of mixing up work, uh, family life, all of those things so that we’re more balanced all the way through the end of life.

AMBER
So then how should we understand family, including constructed family, when we’re thinking about aging in this new demographic where so many people are getting older?

LOREE
Well, one of the things that I was thinking about in, in terms of this interview was about Social Security. Social Security was set up on the model of members of Congress at the time. And the model of members of Congress at the time were fairly well-employed males with wives that tended not to work. And so the way they took care of the wives that tended not to work is they gave them better benefits based on the husband’s income.

Well, that model never fit a lot of us, and it really doesn’t fit even more of us now. I mean, at this point in time we’ve got, I think I recently saw that we had more single women than married women. So one of the things that we’ve got to look at is how our systems are working for everybody and changing the whole model. And that’s one of the things that I think is interesting about the LGBT issues is, uh, at FORGE and the Transgender Aging Network we talk about universal design. That’s a concept from the disability movement of, if you design buildings, access to different things, in a way that can accommodate even those that are least mobile, like people in a wheelchair, what you actually end up with is buildings and systems that are more accessible to everybody of all abilities. And that’s one of the things we look at with our LGBT work.

If, for instance with transgender people, when — if we can set up health care systems that can handle bodies that have breasts and prostates, or beards and vaginas, then we have created a system that can deal with everyone based more on individual needs. And that’s one of the things that I think is so critical about the LGBT aging work, is that if we focus on the ones that are not fitting the existing models — which is our LGBT — if we focus on them and on us and set up our systems so [they] meet those needs that are the most unusual, what we will end up having is a system that meets everybody’s needs better.

And that’s what’s kind of exciting about the LGBT thing and what — the opportunity that we have is that if we can create a system that meets our needs, we’re actually gonna be creating a system that better meets the mainstream’s needs as well.

AMBER
As an LGBT person, what are you most concerned about in terms of your own aging issues?

LOREE
I am currently on my second marriage. My first marriage, uh, lasted 17 years and ended up — my lesbian partner transitioned female-to-male and we ended up doing what we called our “homophobes marriage,” which was our legal one. Because we now could present the identification that had one female and one male.

And I actually got lucky and when my partner died Social Security ruled that marriage valid, so my son and I were able to get Social Security benefits based on that. But that was in my 40s. I’ve got a long period of time. I am — been partnered for seven years, and — we, um, don’t . . . we still have female identification, which means that we cannot get married, so I’m looking at again not having benefits even though I’m in a long-term relationship that looks like what the members of Congress saw . . .

AMBER
Yeah.

LOREE
. . .however many years ago when they set up Social Security. So one of my big concerns is, what am I going to do should I get too disabled to keep working?

AMBER
In that context, then, what are you most concerned about in terms of the broader issues in your community?

LOREE
The thing that I am most concerned about, working with transgender elders, is that — because so many transgender elders don’t pass as their chosen gender when they’re naked, because our surgeries aren’t paid for and because a lot of people don’t want surgeries, so we have what we call noncongruent bodies, which is not what the trans person thinks but what the observer thinks looking at a body that has both breasts and a penis.

The problem for trans elders is that in order to avoid transphobia, they often avoid health care. So we have a problem of not being able to keep our people as healthy as non-LGBT or certainly non-T people because of the fear of transphobia in the health care system. And this also goes into home care.

We have a theory — we haven’t been able to document it yet, but we have a theory that self-neglect may be higher among LGBT people but particularly T because of the fear that if I let somebody into my home, if I let somebody see me naked because I need help bathing or whatever, I will be at their mercy should they be homophobic or transphobic or biphobic and be either verbally abusive or even worse.

And so we’ve got a big problem of our people not even getting normal routine health care and the problems that follow from — I mean, you look at any medical advice now and it’s, “Get your annual checks! Get this check, get that check, do it every year!” And our people will not do that.

AMBER
It makes me again think of the earlier comment that you made: If, if we structure our systems to work for people who are most at the edges, most often marginalized because they’re considered different, we would then set up a system for everyone. ’Cause I think about all the work in lesbian health around butch women not wanting to have mammographies because if you bind your breasts, if you present in a masculine way with a lesbian identity, you also don’t want to walk into an office where you’re being tested for your breasts.

And those are the kinds of contradictions between genders, orientations and medical care that, if the provider doesn’t take seriously, means that it’s on the patient to have to resolve.

LOREE
We, ah, we’ve just had an experience . . . In Milwaukee we have physicians that are treating female-to-male transgender people. And one of them that treats most people will not do a gynecological exam. He just can’t do it on an F-to-M even though he’s treating a lot of F-to-Ms. And we’ve recently located another physician, an OB/GYN, who has treated several F-to-Ms. And I went in with an FTM for a pap smear, exam, the first one he’d had in — I think six or seven years.

And this was a woman, this doctor, who had a lot of FTM experience. Who actually knew the patient from other contexts. And she shook — she shook so much, she was so nervous about doing this exam that we actually joked that maybe she ought to go get a drink before, um, she did the exam.

And this was a woman that was ready, prepared, had experience and was an ally and was an OB/GYN that does gynecological exams all day long every day for years and years, and faced with a patient with a beard she was a little freaked out.

And this is where the SOFFA issue comes in — of the significant others, friends, family and allies — is it’s not even just the LGBT people that are affected. It’s the whole network, and we need to bring the whole network along. We need to support our providers as well as our LGBT people. Because, just like this physician that I’m talking about, this was an ally. This was somebody who wanted to do things right. And we’re thinking now, how are we going to support her? Because she was scared. And that’s — that doesn’t serve anybody.

So how are we going to bring even our straight ally mainstream people that have really good intentions — how do we even support them? We’ve really not gone there very far at all.

AMBER
Tell me one story that illustrates to you something important around LGBT aging.

LOREE
Well, yesterday at the roundtable I talked to another participant in the roundtable who said that she knew a trans woman that had actually transitioned back to being male because she was so afraid of what would happen if she ended up in a nursing home. That she would rather live her life in a gender that she’s not comfortable in than live with just the fear that she might end up in a nursing home with a noncongruent body at the mercy of people that weren’t trained, weren’t comfortable, weren’t able to deal with diversity.

And I think that it’s really incredible that just the fear of a nursing home can so radically change a person’s life. This is an extreme, but it is, it is an example of the level at which lives get twisted and perverted because of fear — and legitimate fear — of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

The whole community — and I’m talking the broader community — loses so much energy and so much expertise when this sort of thing happens. And this is a non-aging piece, but it’s the, it’s the military where people — “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and they’re throwing out some of our linguists because they’re lesbian or gay. It’s like, we’re supposed fighting this war on terrorism. Supposedly the biggest threat we have is terrorism. And we’re getting rid of the people that are most qualified to tell us what’s going on.

I mean, there is a craziness involved with discrimination and prejudice. There is a cost involved that I think the mainstream just has no clue how much loss the mainstream has because of the fear and the discrimination that LGBT people feel. And again, this is a, this is a universal design thing. It’s not just LGBT people, but LGBT people is a good place to focus because we don’t fit the normal models and if you work on anybody that doesn’t fit the normal models and make them more inclusive you’re gonna automatically make it more inclusive for other people that aren’t that particular minority.

AMBER
Do you have anything you want to add?

LOREE
Well, one of the things that I’m really concerned about, coming from the trans perspective, is that the LGBT movement has a tendency to think that everybody in our movement or everybody that’s affected by homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are themselves LGB or T. And that’s, again, where the SOFFA concept comes in of the significant others, friends, family and allies.

It’s not just us. It’s our parents. If we are visiting our parents in a housing — uh, in elder housing, and somebody takes — realizes we’re trans or we’re lesbian or we’re gay and decides to start harassing Mom or Dad, there are no protections for Mom or Dad. More and more of us are having children. Often those children are heterosexual, but they’re still bearing the brunt of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia.

As I mentioned with this OB/GYN that we use, it was painful watching how distressed she was. The issue of LGBT aging is not just LGBT. It’s also again the SOFFAs. And I think we need to keep thinking more broadly about, it’s not just us. It’s our loved ones. It’s our caregivers. It’s — so many of our service providers and our family members and the people who aren’t identified as LGBT do have good intentions. Do want to do the right thing. And our systems don’t support them, either. So we really need to start thinking a little bit more broadly of how are we going to bring the whole system along? It’s not just us. It’s not just “we’re the victims.” You know, we can look at “we’re just the victims” or we can look at “we’re the leaders. We understand systems that don’t work for everybody.”

We have an opportunity, a golden opportunity, to really look at, how can we help everybody make the changes that’s gonna lift all of the boats.

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Loree Cook-Daniels being interviewed by Amber Hollibaugh. Produced by Rebecca Fureigh for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Check out www.theTaskForce.org for photos, transcripts and resources from the National LGBT Aging Roundtable.