| Ben Maze wants Calgarians to realize that gender isn’t necessarily defined by what’s between your legs.
He knew from age four that although he was biologically a girl, he was really meant to be a boy. Maze has since gone through sexual reassignment surgery and is living happily as a man.
But instead of staying anonymous about his transgendered status, Maze has decided to speak out in a city that may be nearing a million people, but still isn’t overly welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered (GLBT) people, particularly trans people.
Maze recently organized a transgender awareness day at Mount Royal College, where he’s a social work student, and organized a local event to mark the worldwide Transgender Day of Remembrance, which commemorates trans people who have been murdered because of their identity.
"Because of my sense of justice and passion for equal treatment, there’s a lot of work to be done before I can just go and live life peacefully as a man," says Maze.
When you listen to his personal story, it quickly becomes evident that life remains extremely challenging for transgendered people.
Maze remembers being told by a therapist at 17 that he should just get married and have kids, and then his feeling that he was meant to be a man would "go away." Maze got married, had two children and was divorced by 21. He then decided that he was going to start the process of physically changing his gender.
Since he completed his sexual reassignment surgery, Maze’s sister has refused to talk to him, his mother continues to call him by his feminine name, and his brother won’t introduce him to other people as his brother, but simply as Ben. He’s also lost friends who couldn’t accept his transition.
Meanwhile, Maze’s two daughters have encountered discrimination in the school system. In Grade 2, one daughter wanted to make two Father’s Day cards – one for her biological dad and one for her biological mom who is now a man.
"Her teacher said that she wasn’t allowed to. A student in her class asked her on the playground at recess why she wanted to make two Father’s Day cards. She told them, ‘because my mom is becoming a boy,’ and another teacher overheard that and my daughter was called down to the principal’s office. She was told that she wasn’t allowed to talk about me at school," says Maze.
When Maze’s other daughter was in Grade 1, a teacher told her that Maze’s physical transition from female to male was "wrong."
"I have no problem if you have that opinion, but when you’re a public school teacher, you cannot share that with my daughter," says Maze.
Maze went to the school and said he would file a complaint with the Alberta Teachers’ Association if there was another similar incident.
"You know how upset and angry and hurt I was, and how worried for my kids I was, when they faced discrimination? That’s not something I would ever choose to put them through," he says.
Maze says one of the toughest periods in making the physical transition to becoming a man was when he had started taking testosterone and had facial hair, but he still hadn’t had his breasts removed.
"I had a 38 triple D, so that’s really hard to hide, and I’m kind of short, so that was pretty difficult," says Maze, laughing. "I used to bind, which is very painful and uncomfortable and you can’t really exercise."
He wanted to go swimming at Mount Royal College, but didn’t want anyone to see his breasts. He finally decided to deal with the issue by bringing up his trans status in class one day. Maze says he pointed out that perceptions can be wrong.
"That way I could say, ‘I’m trans and I still have breasts and so if you see me swimming, don’t freak out.’"
Maze also remembers when he burned himself badly after tripping in the kitchen with a pan of grease. He didn’t want to go to the hospital because he was still in transition.
"My health care card said ‘female’ and I did not want to go to the hospital and I had second degree burns on a good portion of my body."
Maze says he eventually passed out and his partner called an ambulance, and he was surprised to find that the staff at Rockyview Hospital was "wonderful."
When Maze wanted to have chest surgery to remove his breasts, however, he did face discrimination from the medical system. He says one plastic surgeon said he’d do it, but only if Maze also paid several thousand dollars for liposuction on top of the chest surgery. Other plastic surgeons said they wouldn’t do transgender surgery. Maze ended up having to go to Montreal to have it done.
"I was quite depressed before my chest surgery because I’d gotten to a point where I couldn’t fit in either world anymore and that was really the worst thing for me…. I’d been living as a man, but I still had breasts and so I couldn’t quite fully be in the male world, but I no longer could be in the female world," he says.
Plastic surgeons aren’t the only health professionals reluctant to work with transgendered people. While putting together a resource binder for transgendered people, Maze contacted every family doctor in Calgary and asked if they would be willing to have a transgendered patient.
"I was quite shocked about how many said no," he says.
In one instance, he went into one walk-in clinic for a refill of testosterone and was told the doctor was too busy to see him, even though it was a walk-in clinic.
Laurie Arron, Egale Canada’s director of advocacy, says his organization regularly hears from transgendered people about the discrimination they face.
"I think trans people today are basically where gays and lesbians were 30 years ago, when there wasn’t much in the way of human rights protection and there wasn’t much in the way of understanding by the public," says Arron. "A lot more violence, I think, is directed at trans people than gays and lesbians."
With all the challenges Maze has faced in his personal life, it’s easy to understand what galvanized him to become an activist. Maze’s highest priority is to have the term "transgendered" put into human rights legislation to ensure equality. It is currently only included in human rights legislation in the Northwest Territories.
Arron says Egale is also pushing for that change.
"It seems pretty routine almost for trans people to be fired when they transition or when they announce that they’re trans, and for them to have great difficulty finding employment as trans people, to find housing," says Arron.
Maze wants to change how transgendered people are classified under the medical system. He’d like to see "gender identity disorder" de-listed as a psychiatric condition and, instead, classified as a medical condition. He says he resents being classified as "mentally ill."
He also wants to see sexual reassignment surgery covered across the country. It is currently covered in Alberta, B.C. and Quebec, and was previously covered in Ontario until the Mike Harris Conservative government de-listed it.
GLBT organizations also have to provide more services specifically for transgendered people, Maze says.
"A lot of gay and lesbian organizations will add a ‘T’ to their name, but they don’t offer or provide any services," he adds.
When it comes to mainstream Calgary society, Maze says the main issue for transgendered people in Calgary is ignorance. Often people display ignorance of what to do and how to respond and be respectful," he says. "I think there really just needs to be more awareness and understanding of transgendered persons."
The Hollywood film Transamerica, in which actor Felicity Huffman portrays a transgendered woman prior to sex-change surgery, could help educate people by bringing more attention to the challenges facing transgendered people. Huffman has been nominated for an Oscar for the role.
"I think it probably will raise the awareness and get some discussion going, which is good. I think overall the movie doesn’t portray anything in a negative way. In that respect, it’s really very good," says Maze.
But societal acceptance of transgendered people still has a long way to go. Unfortunately, outright hatred towards trangendered people still exists and Maze says he still doesn’t feel entirely safe. For example, he relates the experience of a transgendered friend, who picked up a man at a bar and went back to his place – when the man found out he was trans, he "beat the crap out of him."
"Particularly around Transgender Day of Remembrance, I feel, not threatened, but just concerned," says Maze. "I worry that that could happen to me if somebody were to find out and decide that’s what they wanted to do – they wanted to murder me simply because they found out I was transgendered and because I’m fairly active and outspoken about it. I don’t really hide the fact."
When it comes to violence, Arron says trans people often still feel like "they brought it on themselves," which is "completely ridiculous."
When asked what he’s hoping to accomplish in his role as a transgendered activist, Maze says, "I think just people being aware and realizing I’m not a freak, that I’m not committing sins and I’m not going to hell, and just the security that nobody can fire me because I’m trans, that I can’t be discriminated against."
Maze says he wants to see a future where society is more open about gender roles and where people are no longer placed in confining categories they don’t want to conform to. He wants everyone to be free to be who they are without any judgment or discrimination. |
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