A Great Play - Truly Dually

I went to see a great play last night and best of all it was free, it was a very off Broadway play about homelessness. Many of you will not get past here, because you will say, “Oh homelessness, I don’t care about that.” and click the back button. But it should be an important issue for everyone. There are more homeless people here in the U.S. then every before. Here in Connecticut there are over 14,000 homeless.

One of my former classmates posted it on her page and it got my attention because one of my term papers at grad school was on homelessness and also one of the major concerns I have is homelessness in the trans-community. In “Transitioning Our Shelters” it says that,

In our nation’s capital, the Washington Transgender Needs Assessment Study found that one third of transgender people were earning $10,000 or less per year, and 29% of respondents were unemployed. Only one in four respondents reported being satisfied with his or her housing situation. Hostility and insensitivity of housing staff and other residents were reported as the most common barriers to housing. Thirteen percent of respondents reported not feeling safe in their current housing. Fifteen percent reported losing a job due to discrimination in the workplace and only 58% had paid employment.

And from reports that I have heard, the same can be said about Connecticut. I have had many reports trans-people have been turned away for Connecticut shelter or forced to stay at the shelter of their birth gender, both of which are a direct violation of Connecticut non-discrimination law.

OK, back to the play… Truly Dually is a musical about the homeless, it takes place mainly in a park and it covers all the stigma and daily problems that the homeless face. On the Facebook page that one of the sponsors of play said,

Original Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael Ullman and Roslyn Catracchia.

TRULY DUALLY is a transformative musical about the stigma and solutions to chronic homelessness among persons with mental illness and substance abuse.

The musical is a family friendly, entertaining and educational original play that uses wit and humor to portray persons experiencing long term homelessness who strive to maintain their dignity in the most difficult of times.

In the opening scene a boy chases his over to a group of homeless people and his parents chastise him for going by the homeless people. Throughout the play I was able to connect with some of the scenes because of my internship and some of the classes in grad school. In one scene that sang a song about the DSM and the different Axis diagnoses, called "Axis One" The Psychiatrist, Ensemble and you could tell those in the audience who were familiar with Axis.

There was a scene in the play about a trans-person and that brought a flashback of a meeting that I attended while I was interning at True Colors. At that meeting with a state agency, they were looking for housing for a trans-girl who ran away from her parents and was picked up by a pimp who forced her to get addicted to heroin by locking her in a room and shooting her up with heroin. Once she was addicted to it the pimp forced her into prostitution. When she was arrested for prostitution she testified against the pimp, who latter shot her on the courthouse steps. The agency was looking for someplace where they would take her in besides jail, which the agency did want to do because it would force her into a male prison and in more danger.

When the trans-actor came out on stage there was laughter which hurt me deeply and one woman down in front center laughed through the entire scene which made me wonder if that was what she thought of her clients. I imagine that most of the people there at theater were in some way connected homeless, whether through state agencies or non-profits that serve the homeless community and some of those there were probably social works.

As I mentioned earlier, here in Connecticut it is against the law to house trans-people in any other shelter than of the gender that they identify as. In many location around the U.S. they have polices on how to house the trans-homeless, here are some of them…

• NYC Department of Homeless Services, Policy for Transgender Individuals, Procedure No. _06-1-31
• The Boston Public Health Commission Protocol for Serving Transgender Guests and Health Services Guidelines for Serving Transgender Guests
• Central Arizona Shelter Services: Transgender Policy

In “Transitioning Our Shelters” they say this about integrated shelters in San Francisco…

Judith Pomeroy, who for over five years has managed the Marian Residence for Women, one of the services run by the St. Anthony Foundation in San Francisco, explains that their women’s shelter has had a policy of accepting transgender women since before she was manager and they haven’t found assault to be a problem. “We operate on behavior here and don’t assume that one person is more likely to harm others just by looking at them. If anyone hurts another person, we deal with that reality rather than thinking based on a stereotype that someone will hurt another person.”  By focusing on inappropriate behavior that is not allowed from anyone and enforcing those rules if they are violated, shelters balance the needs of everyone involved without discriminating against transgender women.

That is how it should be behavior focused not your gender at birth and also if there is a problem the troublemaker is the one to be ejected, not the trans-person unless the trans-person is the troublemaker.

I hope that Connecticut shelters will develop a trans-inclusive policy before they are sued and forced to do so by the courts or the CHRO.