Krishnath's Lair

Problems at the jail took center stage in the 2018 primary for Durham County sheriff.  Under incumbent Mike Andrews’s administration, nine people had died in the facility, three by suicide, and Andrews frequently clashed with protesters.  When Clarence Birkhead defeated Andrews by a 2–1 margin, it was a mandate to do things differently.

The jail’s population has been decreasing for years, down from about six hundred a day a decade ago to an average of 481 in fiscal year 2016.  On Sunday, about two months into Birkhead’s term, it housed 395 people.  That’s not his doing.  He credits judges, the District Attorney’s Office, and diversion programs for working to keep people out of the system.

But he wants to overhaul the jail’s operations to build relationships between staff members and detainees and help detainees leave better off than they came in.

The first tangible reform on Birkhead’s agenda is to finish modifications started in the late nineties to reduce suicide risks.  It took nearly twenty years for the Durham County Sheriff’s Office to modify the windows six detainees used to hang themselves.  Nearly five hundred HVAC grates and 159 beds still need to be replaced.  The remaining work should be completed in about nine months.

More broadly, however, Birkhead hopes to change the facility’s culture and run it as a direct supervision facility, a concept introduced by the National Institute of Corrections in the 1980s.

The Durham County Detention Facility was designed as a direct supervision facility when it opened in 1996, which means that it’s built to encourage continuous interaction between detainees and guards.  But the second element of direct supervision — how those interactions should take place — was never fully implemented.

Under direct supervision, jail staff members place more trust in detainees, offering incentives for positive behavior rather than simply punishing bad behavior.  The idea is to create a community with social norms detainees are expected to meet, and where officers are more attuned to the people in their care and can spot budding problems.

So instead of rationing toilet paper on designated days, jail staffers would make supplies available to grab as needed.  Instead of making detainees earn “privileges” like TV time or phone time, they’d all start out with those privileges and only lose them if they caused problems.  Instead of locking an entire pod in their cells if a detainee acts out, only that individual would face consequences.  Eventually, officers wouldn’t even escort detainees around the facility.

In 2016, following regular protests against conditions at the jail, Andrews asked the NIC to conduct an operational assessment of the facility.  The NIC reviewer notified the jail’s administrators that the jail wasn’t operating as a true direct supervision facility and offered to provide free training, which began in January 2018.  Andrews embraced the idea, but Birkhead has given it new energy, jail officials say.

“Direct supervision allows for that interaction where it’s not just us against them, where they’re locked up and we tell them what to do,” Birkhead says.

A 2006 review of research on direct supervision facilities found they are “consistently perceived by staff and inmates to have safer environments and in fact experience fewer violent or security-related incidents.”

The evidence was less clear, however, on whether detainees in direct supervision were less likely to re-offend or whether employees have more job satisfaction.

Birkhead says the facility needs more staff to fully implement the model — and it needs staff members who see working in the jail as more than just a stepping stone in their careers.  In recent years, DCSO recruits had to start in the jail in order to move to other positions.  As a result, the facility frequently lost staffers to agencies willing to put them on the streets.  From now on, Birkhead says, the DCSO will recruit detention and patrol officers separately.

Right now, the agency has the budget for 240 positions, 216 of which are filled.  The DCSO has asked county commissioners for another 29 employees in next year’s budget to fully implement direct supervision.

In the current system, officers rotate among the housing pods on a particular floor.  Under direct supervision, they would stick with a pod for two or three months; administrators are still pinpointing a timeframe that would allow detainees and staff to strike a rapport without burning out or becoming too friendly.

It’s going to be an adjustment for detainees as they get more autonomy and for staff as they find the balance between being mentors and being in charge.  The administration is implementing more activities, such as talent shows and chess tournaments (high school equivalency and life-skills classes are already offered).  Officers will be trained in conflict resolution and verbal de-escalation, as well as how they should conduct themselves with detainees, regardless of what charges they may face.

“We have to instill in them it’s not your job to be judge, and it’s not your job to treat them any differently than anyone else in that facility,” says Colonel Anthony Prignano, the detention director.

Of course, the facility is still a jail — there are rules, consequences, and a power structure.  But Birkhead hopes the direct supervision model will improve the quality of life for both officers and detainees, and reduce the likelihood that people will be detained again.

“Hopefully those soft skills of being a part of something bigger than themselves, being responsible for their own behavior but knowing that it could have an impact beyond them — hopefully, that translates when they’re released,” he says.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that towel racks need to be replaced as part of modifications to reduce suicide risks in the jail.  All towel racks have been modified.

Contact staff writer Sarah Willets by email at [email protected], by phone at 919-286-1972, or on Twitter @sarah_willets.

Rytas Vilgalys discovered the recipe for Krupnikas in an old cookbook a generation after his family fled Soviet-occupied Lithuania following World War II.  In their home in Durham, where the family settled after Rytas became a Duke biology professor, his son Rim remembers watching him hunched over a pot on the stove, stirring herbs into a sweet syrup, a thick aroma of honey, nutmeg, and cinnamon flooding the kitchen.  

Then Rytas would add Everclear — Rim’s mother’s cue to leave the room.

The liqueur became a family holiday tradition.  Rim took the recipe with him to college at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  It became a hit at parties.  When he graduated and returned to Durham in 2008 and friends kept asking for it, he had an idea.  He took business classes, got permits, and opened The Brothers Vilgalys distillery out of a windowless warehouse on the outskirts of downtown with some money from family and friends.

Krupnikas hit the shelves at Triangle ABC stores at the end of 2012, selling about nine thousand bottles the first year.  The brand slowly spread across the state, and over the next few years, Vilgalys expanded to six products lines: different blends of the Lithuanian concoction, like Zaphod, a fruit and herbal liqueur, and Beatnik, a savory, beet-flavored drink.

Despite his early success, Vilgalys struggled to get his products shelved in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Asheville.  He spent three years driving all over the state to pitch the 168 local ABC boards to invest in his product, often without luck.  It was a chicken-and-egg problem, he says. If he couldn’t demonstrate big sales numbers, the boards wouldn’t stock his products unless bars and restaurants demanded them.  But bars and restaurants wouldn’t order them unless they were already on ABC shelves.

What he needed, Vilgalys says, was a way to reach customers directly — to sell cocktails directly out of his distillery, just as breweries have their beers on draft.  But North Carolina law doesn’t allow that.  Unable to turn a profit, Vilgalys took a second job in software development two years ago.

“Until there’s regulatory change or reform, we’re not going to be able to really find a good growth curve,” Vilgalys says.

Now he’s staring down another hurdle.

In June, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission will begin enforcing a longstanding rule that could knock all of his blends except Krupnikas out of the state’s warehouses.  That would make local ABC boards even less likely to pick them up.  And if he can’t sell them in stores, that leaves just two options: convincing his customers to order by the case through a convoluted process, or trying to sell out of his distillery at a maximum of five bottles per person per year.

Neither is a viable business model.

The rule, which has been on the books for at least a decade but has never been enforced, requires all products in stock to net the ABC system at least $5,000 a year in profit.  Once it goes into effect, a third of North Carolina distillers could see their access to the market diminish, and nearly a quarter of North Carolina–made spirits — about fifty of 209 — could soon be out of stock.

For small distillers — and new ones — this threshold could make it nearly impossible to get their products in front of consumers.  And that could stunt the industry’s burgeoning growth, advocates say. Since 2010, North Carolina’s market has grown from seven distillers to eighty-one, echoing a national trend that has seen the number of distillers nearly triple since 2013 to more than eighteen hundred, according to the American Craft Spirits Association.

Any change will have to come from the General Assembly.  Scott Maitland, the founder of Top of the Hill’s brewery (in 1996) and TOPO Organic Spirits (in 2012), is gearing up for a fight.  He was instrumental in the Pop the Cap legislation that kicked off the craft beer movement in 2005, and in 2017, as president of the Distillers Association of North Carolina, he led the effort to pass the so-called Brunch Bill, which allowed liquor sales before noon on Sundays at restaurants and let distillers sell five bottles per person per year, as opposed to one, from their distilleries.

“Everyone sees the success of craft brewing,” Maitland says.  “Memories are short, so they don’t know the history, that it took us twenty years to get the laws to [this] point.  The raising of the distribution cap, the Pop the Cap effort — I don’t think that people truly appreciate the blocking and tackling that happened by earlier pioneers of the industry.”

He adds, “We have a long, long way to go.”

‘Whiskey is the devil’

Once, Mystic Farm & Distilling co-owner Jonathan Blitz says, he asked an ABC official why the state treats liquor so differently from other alcoholic beverages.

The official’s response: “Beer is food, wine is sacrament, and whiskey is the devil.”

“Spirituous liquor is treated as this extreme evil, when in reality, it’s the same product,” Blitz says.  “Wine and beer are in every gas station and Quickie Mart.  Spirits are in this parallel universe, where, gosh, you may not be responsible for yourself if you have a drop of this devil juice.”

In 1909, North Carolina became the first Southern state to go dry, a decade before the Nineteenth Amendment took Prohibition nationwide.  Like everywhere else, government-enforced temperance didn’t always go over well.  By the 1920s, North Carolina’s chief enforcement official bemoaned the underground epidemic of moonshiners: “We have more illicit distilleries than any other State in the Union, and the number is increasing.”

Four years after the Prohibition ended in 1933, the General Assembly created the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, a state-run monopoly on the sale and distribution of alcohol.  Nationally, seventeen states (as well as Montgomery County, Maryland) use some version of this model.

North Carolina’s system generates more than $430 million a year — just under 2 percent of the state’s $24 billion budget — on more than $1 billion in sales a year.  On every bottle, the state collects a 30 percent excise tax, a 7 percent sales tax, and fees, as well as a mixed beverage tax if the bottle is sold to a restaurant or bar.

To get onto a store shelf, a product has to pass through two gatekeepers: the Commission, a three-person body appointed by the governor to oversee permits, distribution, enforcement, and set policy; and the 168 local boards, appointed by county or municipal officials, which act as franchises and sell to customers, bars, and restaurants.

After obtaining permits from the state, distillers produce a pallet of their product for storage in one of two ABC warehouses.  Then, they need a local ABC board to order it.  Once a spirit reaches the store, North Carolina products are typically relegated to a “local” shelf in the store, sometimes referred to as the moonshine section.  (They can be placed alongside national brands, but that’s up to the local board.)

The ABC Commission says it decided to enforce the profitability threshold for two reasons: to provide local boards with “the most appealing product options,” and, more important, because its warehouses are running out of room.

But this isn’t accurate, distillers say: A state audit last year found that LB&B, the company with which the Commission contracts to operate warehouses in Raleigh and Clayton, was utilizing less than a quarter of the space in its Clayton warehouse.  The audit also found that poor contract negotiations and a lack of monitoring have cost taxpayers $14 million.

The Commission disputed the auditor’s findings, arguing that the Clayton warehouse reaches capacity in spring and summer, and the auditors showed up in December.  Still, it plans to seek bids for a new contractor when LB&B’s contract expires in 2021.

The ABC announced its decision in November, and the rule was scheduled to go into effect at the end of 2018.  It was delayed until June following pushback from the Distillers Association and its new president, Southern Distilling Company owner Pete Barger.

Once the rule takes hold, Vilgalys will have to sell 1,320 bottles of Krupnikas a year to hit that mark, which shouldn’t be an issue.  Last year, that product netted the state about $22,000, he says.  But his other five blends, which come in smaller bottles, have to sell a lot more, and they’re not even close.

And while the new rule is particularly problematic for small distilleries, even the big guys are concerned.  Maitland says not all of TOPO’s products may make the cut.  The same goes for Barger.

“Not all of our [products] meet that threshold,” Barger says.  “So yeah, we’re impacted, and frankly, the five-thousand-dollar requirement is a pretty high bar for a small brand, for [a product] that we’re just trying to get set up and develop.”

In principle, they say, earning one’s keep makes sense, and having to store products no one wants would drain the state’s resources.  But they also see the threshold as arbitrary and argue that the Commission should make exceptions for North Carolina distillers.

Negotiations between the Distillers Association and the Commission are ongoing, says Agnes Stevens, the Commission’s staff administrator.

“We want nothing but success for them, and I think they know that,” Stevens says.  “We are trying to work cooperatively to do what we can to make sure that their businesses have every chance for success.”

While Barger convinced the ABC Commission to delay its enforcement, he acknowledges that’s a temporary victory.

“We may have won the point but lost the war,” Barger says, “because no one is going to order the product because it is going to be too difficult for them to get.”

‘It was a disaster’

While distillers hope the ABC Commission will find ways to accommodate them, Chuck McGrady just wants to get rid of the damn thing.

McGrady, a Republican state representative from Henderson County, sees the state’s monopoly as anathema to his free-market principles.  “Getting government out of the sale and distribution of distilled spirits is the best thing, I think,” McGrady says.  “I think the private sector can handle it better than we can.”

He says he’ll introduce a bill this session to privatize the sale and distribution of liquor, though he doesn’t like the term privatize, nor does he offer many specifics.  In short, though, the state would oversee enforcement of liquor laws like most states do, through a licensee system in which retailers and distributors would apply for a permit from the state.

To McGrady, part of the problem is the lack of parity between how the state treats spirits, wine, and beer.  The latter you can buy in grocery stores and gas stations, even on Sundays.  But not booze.  Why not treat all alcohol the same? he asks.  And if you got rid of the red tape, McGrady says, craft distillers would be better able to compete.

You might think the Distillers Association would be his biggest champion.  But that’s not the case.  Barger likes being in a control state.  His group just wants the Commission to make things easier for them.

In North Carolina, Barger says, a product at least has a chance at exposure.  Even with the profitability threshold in place, products will still have a year to prove their viability.  In a private system, craft distillers have to compete against the handful of companies that manufacture most major brands and have massive marketing budgets, and they wouldn’t get the state-mandated local shelf.

In fact, craft distillers tend to fair better in control states, according to the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, because the state opens up broader access to the market than do private retailers, marketers, or wholesalers.

“It’s not a surprise craft producers have done well in a control jurisdiction,” says Steven Schmidt, vice president of the NABCA.  “One of the values to those systems is that with one phone call or one contact, you have the ability to interact with a much larger jurisdiction than you may if you have to go through individual retailers.”

“The free market doesn’t necessarily benefit the little guy, because when you go private, the guy with the biggest marketing budget is the guy that wins the shelf space,” Barger says.  “It’s counterintuitive, but the system we have today, as challenging and frustrating as it is, does give us access to the market that we would not necessarily get in a true private system.”

Previous attempts to privatize liquor sales in North Carolina have been unsuccessful, in part due to moralistic concerns, and also because legislators are worried about losing revenue.

It’s unclear whether McGrady’s latest initiative will fare any better.  But the General Assembly is considering its options — including what privatization would look like.

A report from the Program Evaluation Division, released Monday, found that, while most North Carolinians want to abolish the ABC system, privatization would lead to lost revenue (unless the state raised liquor taxes), more liquor stores, and more booze consumption.  The report also argued that the existing regime is working: Of Southeastern states, North Carolina takes in the most money per gallon of liquor, has the lowest number of liquor stores per population density, and is second to last in its consumption rate.

The report looked at what happened in Washington State, which, in 2012, switched from a control to a licensure system, as McGrady is proposing.  There, the number of liquor stores quadrupled, but craft distillers took a big hit.

“It was a disaster,” Maitland says.  “Washington State very unwisely did away with being a control state, then just allowed the Wild West to come in, and it wasn’t good.  When you go from being totally regulated to free, the pendulum swings all the way the other way, and so what does the free market, the unfettered free market, do?  Well, the eight-hundred-pound gorillas in the free market set up the distribution systems, and what you end up getting is lots more alcohol but much fewer selections because they’re selling their stuff, and they’re selling their most cost-effective stuff, and because of the scale of the operations, the idea of creating actors that could provide true choice gets squeezed out.”

‘Burn it all down’

The distillers may not want to throw the ABC Commission baby out with the bathwater, but they do want what they consider a few simple fixes.

“The real issue with our existing ABC system is the act of omission — the failure to understand what an economic powerhouse the distilling industry in North Carolina could be,” Maitland says.

For starters, they argue, the state could let them sell more of their bottles and cocktails at their distilleries.  Currently, they can give out quarter-ounce samples of raw spirits — not always the best sales pitch for, say, gin.  They can’t mix it with anything.  They can’t serve food.  And those restrictions, they say, don’t allow them to create the ambiance or customer experience that would help build their brands.

Removing the cap on direct sales to consumers out of distilleries would also pad profit margins.  And surely, distillers say, the Commission could take a cut and put it toward warehouse space.

The Distillers Association is still finalizing its agenda for the legislative session, but it will likely focus on creating equity with breweries, including lifting the five-bottle cap and allowing for limited self-distribution.

Right now, the distillers say, the system is preventing them from growing.  Their products comprise less than 1 percent of all liquor sales in the state.  After the Pop the Cap and other reforms, they point out, craft breweries claimed more than 10 percent of the state’s beer sales.

They might get some of what they want.

On Monday, a joint legislative oversight committee backed a bill — supported by the authors of the report from the Program Evaluation Division — that would permit distillers to hold tastings in ABC stores and allow customers to place special orders for a single bottle rather than an entire case.

The bill would also require the ABC Commission to seek bids for a new warehouse contractor this year instead of 2021, force counties with multiple ABC boards to consolidate them, and enable Sunday liquor sales with local approval.

Whether the bill can win over the rest of the General Assembly — or whether legislative leaders choose to make it a priority — remains to be seen.

While all of this plays out, uncertainty abounds for Vilgalys.  Come June, the new rule could cut into a third of his sales, he says, and he’s not sure how he’ll recoup those losses.

For now, he’s waiting it out — and hoping reforms are on the way.

“I want to hang on to it because, like, our customers love it.  I am optimistic we’ll improve,” Vilgalys says.  “If I’m in a bad mood, I’m just like, burn it all down.  But most the time, I’m seeing the whole picture.”

Contact staff writer Leigh Tauss by email at [email protected], by phone at 919-832-8774, or on Twitter @leightauss.

“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential.” — Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby “Moneyball” Kotick

Activision Blizzard, a company of more than 9,000 employees who’ve built some of the world’s most popular games, is a few things.  They are a company who bragged about having a “record year,” on an earnings call this afternoon, a quarter where only raking in $2.4 billion in revenue was considered a disappointment.  They are a company who granted a $15 million signing bonus and a $900,000 salary to a high-ranking executive who joined last month.  And they are a company who just laid off around 800 employees, or 8% (!!!) of its total workers.

800 people will be without jobs at the end of the day.  800 people head into an uncertain future, wondering how long their severance and health insurance will get them before the next job.  That list of 800 will not include Bobby Kotick.  He will, of course, sleep well tonight.

Activision Blizzard, like most of corporate America, does not have the courage to call this what it is: the ruination of lives in service of endless growth and profit maximization to serve the ultra rich becoming the mega rich at the expense of an exploitable underclass with no power to stop every effort to undermine them.  No, no — it’s a “restructuring.”  There is no end to the call for growth.  There is always more.  To them, the publishing of video games are a means to an end, a people-driven creative medium to be exploited until the well runs dry.

The workers at Activision Blizzard are, like most of the industry, not unionized.  Unionization is not a catch-all solution.  It will not stop layoffs, nor will it suddenly turn capitalism into socialism.  The notion that changes to marginally improve the lives of people won’t suddenly make everything perfect and thus aren’t worth exploring isn’t critique, it’s management bootlicking.  Unionization forces a powerful wedge into the relationship between employer and employee, disrupting the power balance.

Recently, VICE’s editorial group negotiated a new union contract with management, and successfully argued for better severance packages.  We worried layoffs were coming and they were — 250 people were cut this month.  The VICE union wasn’t able to save their jobs, but did give them more security.

Gaps in health insurance.  Missed paychecks.  Daily stress.  Even if someone laid off today found a job tomorrow, life is interrupted.  What if the job is across the country?  In another country?  If you’ve got kids, how do you tell them the reason you’re changing schools, forcing them out of social circles and uprooting all they know is because, dang, shareholders aren’t happy with two billion, they need three billion?  That’s more than a hiccup — that’s trauma.

As of this writing, the market has weighed in on Activision’s decision to uproot the economic safety of 800 people in service of an even better record year: shares are up near 4%.  Oh, and there’s this:

Activision Blizzard $ATVI Dividend increasing 9%. Headcount reducing 8%. Translation: Giving more to shareholders, while firing employees. (Yes, this is wholly reductive. But it’s also true.) [source]

Eat the rich.

Follow Patrick on Twitter. If you have a tip or a story idea, drop him an email: [email protected].

South Carolina cops love the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow the police to seize any property they believe represents the proceeds of a crime and keep it, unless the property’s former owner hires a lawyer to prove the innocence of their goods: more than $17m was seized last year, and in a fifth of these cases, no one was convicted of a crime (71% of the people whose stuff gets stolen by South Carolina cops are Black).

After a longrunning, deeply reported expose on civil asset forfeiture in South Carolina, the Greenville News contacted cops who’d used civil asset forfeiture to pad their budgets to get their take on things.

The most dramatic take came from the lobbyist Jarrod Bruder, executive director of the South Carolina Sheriff’s Association, who said that without the right to steal things from people without charging them with a crime or even arresting them (19% of forfeiture cases involve no arrest!), they wouldn’t be motivated to go after drug dealers and other criminals.

Bruder is quoted as saying: “What is the incentive to go out and make a special effort? What is the incentive for interdiction?”

Asset forfeiture is one of the most perverse features of US law: in 2014, US cops seized more forfeited property from Americans than was stolen from them by burglars in the same year. Obama’s DOJ was limited the practice, then stopped facilitating asset forfeiture altogether after Congress zeroed out the budget it had used for the program, and Congress came to the rescue again when Trump and Sessions tried to revive and expand forfeiture in 2017.

The states have a patchwork of forfeiture rules: Chris Christie vetoed a unanimous bill limiting forfeiture in NJ, and Illinois’s forfeiture rules fund the Chicago PD’s extensive black ops programs, DC is a forfeiture hellscape (as is Missouri) while Nebraska has banned forfeiture outright, and forfeiture is subject to strict legal oversight in Montana and New Mexico.  

Every trans person deserves respect

Transmasculine? Dandy

Transfeminine? Stunning

Genderfluid? Rock n roll

Nonbinary? Superb

Agender? Fantastic

Post-Op with No Regrets

by Ariana Danielle Wojcik  11/15/2018

You have probably seen certain headlines or heard certain talking points being discussed over the airwaves such as these:

“Sex Reassignment Doesn’t Work!”

“De-transitioners and Transgender Regret”

“Sex Change Horror Story”

et al.

Exactly one incredible year ago today, and three years after beginning hormone replacement therapy, I underwent gender confirmation surgery or GCS. My results and my story are the polar opposite of these frightening headlines that are part of a narrative being pushed by certain groups.

Folks, lean in close and listen.. it works!

My life is good, great, and wonderful with respect to my surgery and its results. If this surgery is in your future and you are nervous about it and have read the horror stories, know that most of us come out of it with the results we were hoping for. It is major surgery, so you have to expect a long carefully monitored recovery. For me, it was so very worth it. In addition, the common feared road blocks of transition from legal name changes, identity document updates, workplace transition, the disapproval of certain family members, dealing with the loss of loved ones, laser treatments, online attacks, disapproving stares, being purposely misgendered and dead-named, countless blood tests, injections galore, electrolysis (even in the nether regions before surgery), the nightmare of dealing with insurance companies and billing departments, were all things I had to face. I would still say despite all of that, it was all worth it!

There are many risks, just as there are with any major surgery. There are possible side effects that could cause life long issues. This is all known and will be explained to prospective surgical candidates in minute detail by any surgeon performing this operation. This surgery is never undertaken lightly and represents the end result of years of refinement and accepted medical practice.

This does not sit well with those who want to vilify not only transgender people, but their doctors, therapists, surgeons, and parents. Transgender people are under attack at every level and this includes a targeted effort on whether or not transitions should even be allowed. As an example, I suggest you search for information about the plan of attack of the anti-LGBT hate group ironically named the “Family Research Council”. The problem with all of the efforts from groups like the FRC is that their hatred and dismissal of the existence of transgender people is based on their own “beliefs” and not on reality. The medical professionals who actually study and understand this topic fully support the practices of hormone replacement therapy, and gender confirmation surgery for those that require either treatment. They do this because it is the right, and extremely successful treatment path for many transgender people. Transgender people exist and have been a part of the human condition throughout history. Attempting to erase us from history will not succeed. These groups like the FRC are wasting their time, breath, and money from donors who often do not even realize they are funding hate.

Many transgender women contact me every week asking questions about my transition and surgery, often expressing worry that surgery is a long shot to be successful. When external efforts to cast doubt and fear on transgender health practices cause confusion among those who deeply need help, it is time to speak up. I am writing all of this to try and address those concerns and to discount some of the stigma regarding this surgery and transition.

Can you find examples out there of people who regretted transitioning?

Yes, you can find a small number of cases of people who experience regret. In fact you can find those rather easily because those cases are purposely and inaccurately touted by motivated anti-LGBT groups as the “consistent and unfortunate experience” for those who have this surgery. This is not accurate. Thousands and thousands of transition related surgeries are performed every year by surgeons across the globe. There is a growing number of surgeons in the United States and the numbers of surgeries performed is only growing, not shrinking. My surgery was performed in Chicago, IL by one of the more recent additions to the experts in this field.

Do I worry that no surgery could ever make me a real (insert societal definition of a certain gender type here)?

Nope, not a concern. I underwent gender confirmation surgery because it was right for me. My doctors, (yes plural), my surgical team, my therapist and psychiatrist (a therapist and psychiatrist are both required by the WPATH standards of care) all agreed that this surgery was right for me as a medically accepted treatment for my personal health and well being. Who is anyone else to think they have a right to get in between that circle of people? My doctors, surgical team, therapist, psychiatrist, and I are the only ones that should have input into whether or not gender confirmation surgery is right for me. Every other person on the planet should rightfully decline from attempting to insert themselves into that discussion. To do so is to tamper with things they do not understand. This goes for people in government, religious institutions, water-cooler discussions at the office, people online, family members at Thanksgiving dinner, really anyone. Do not presume you know better than the true experts involved in a person’s care.  The surgeons who perform this medically necessary surgery should never have their professionalism questioned in the slightest bit.

Detractors will try to argue semantics about whether or not this surgery actually changes a person’s sex/gender often interchanging the two as if they are synonyms (they are not). By now most people have probably heard the commonly used quips, such as the often tweeted “you can’t change chromosomes” (which of course is now widely accepted to be an inadequate single determining factor of one’s gender). We could spend time refuting every “argument” but I simply see no need for me to do so. Do you know why? I AM HAPPY. Now at age 44 as a “late transitioner,” my life is just one of many that are the ultimate refute to all of those who attempt to misinform and to spread hate regarding transition and surgery.

Four years ago, I was suddenly happier than I had ever been just weeks after beginning hormone replacement therapy or HRT. Having your body and brain in sync with the correct hormones alleviates so many of the issues that transgender people face. It is something that has to be experienced to fully understand it. I was more in sync after starting HRT than I had ever been as a human being. It only got better from there as the hormone replacement therapy advanced and slowly over time did its work to reshape my body. It is funny how many of the detractors out there do not even understand what hormone replacement therapy actually entails. Our hormone levels are closely monitored by our doctors and this means that at any given time we know our levels are the same as those of any non-transgender woman. With that comes the expected changes to our bodies. Yes, we do actually grow breasts and our body shape can dramatically change only with HRT. I have had people admit to me they assumed all transgender women get breast augmentation, not knowing that we “grow our own”. It’s a second puberty after all and a “body reset”. We experience not only the obvious breast growth and softer, thicker hair, but softer skin, changes in things like our overall temperament, sense of smell, sense of touch, range of emotion (such highs and lows now!), energy levels, and most importantly, we find a sense of peace within ourselves. It’s miraculous what finally having the right hormones for our transgender bodies does for us. The happiness I experienced was so palpable that it just flowed out of me constantly. Despite the difficult circumstances brought about in social transition, the physical transition is life giving and life affirming. Gender confirmation surgery, for some like me, takes all of that happiness to another level of magnitude. No regrets.

What were my reasons for having surgery? 

Was I “so gay” that I just had to have surgery so I could have sex with men?

Nope, it’s all about just being me. “Just be you,” became my mantra. Even if I never had sex with anyone else again, surgery was still my path. In fact, sex and future sexual prospects were of very little concern to me as I sought help. The gender (binary or non!) of any current or future sexual partners of mine is my business, but the point here is that a certain type of sex act was never a driving factor in the least bit in my decision to transition or to have surgery.

Was I some loser who could not cut it “as a man.”

Nope, I already had the “American Dream.” By American societal standards, I had it all. You would have known me then as a college grad with a successful career supporting a family on one income with a lovely house, two cars, a nice yard, and a garage. The problem was, there was the painful fact that I experienced all of that while not ever being free to be me. I stopped myself from being me because of fear and denial and eventually I had to address it because my health was starting to fail as I rotted from the inside out.

Was I a “pervert” that wanted to dress in women’s clothes because it excited me sexually, so much so that I would undergo surgery for the privilege?

No. Are you serious? Not even close. The stigma and hatred towards transgender women specifically gets a lot of fuel from the lie that we are perverts or sexually driven (As a side note, it is interesting how transgender men are not targeted the same way). Far right religious groups are nothing but consistent when it comes to attacking sexually driven behavior of all kinds. Please understand that I am not judging fetish driven cross-dressers here. I am merely pointing out that there is a difference between us. Heterosexual cross-dressers are men who choose to wear women’s clothing because it excites them. They can spend time enjoying that practice, but then they happily go back to their often very manly and very “normal” life. When people open up their minds and accept that people can be born transgender, then they can also understand that what is different about us is that we are simply wearing the clothing that is appropriate for our gender. I was actually being forced to crossdress in men’s clothing most of my life because I was not being honest with myself about the fact that I was a transgender woman. Nowadays, I regularly get excited about finding a super cute dress on sale and will tweet about it and post pics on Instagram for my girlfriends to see. “Look at the bargain I found!” They get excited and I get excited. I just don’t get that excited. Am I being clear enough there? It doesn’t turn me on. Get it now? The same goes for heels and tights. Nope, no heels or tights fetish here. I like practical boots and sandals. I work in an office you all, so wearing tights is called for with certain outfits, it does not mean I am a walking, quivering, mass of constant sexual excitement because I own and wear tights. I should be so lucky if it were that easy! Do some transgender women have a particular thing for heels or tights? Sure they do, but then any given human being regardless of gender can also have a “thing” for tights or heels or other things. All people have kinks, it’s a part of life. I am so glad we do, otherwise we would be a boring species. I am merely further pointing out that the stereotype that transgender women are by default fetishists regarding clothing and sex fantasies is complete garbage. We may have other kinks just like anyone else, but don’t falsely assign to me things that just aren’t there!

Was I ever suicidal?

No, I was not healthy though. Until I made the decision to finally admit to myself and the world at large that I was transgender, my health was at a steady drastic decline. By the time I finally began to accept myself, I was overweight (over 65 lbs lost by this point), with high-cholesterol and on cholesterol medication, considered pre-diabetic, and I was experiencing heart palpitations regularly. I reduced and eliminated all of those negative health conditions by transitioning and beginning to actually care about myself and my body again.

Eventually, staying in shape and being mindful of what I put into my body became easy once I began to accept and love myself for who I was.

You can see much more regarding my transition on my advocacy website and specifically you may want to check out my Gender Reveal Pictorial and my Full Timeline.

Other Questions to Address

Did you worry about dying alone and unloved if you underwent surgery?

No. Despite what people like Ray Blanchard think. The often quoted transphobe once tweeted “One social problem of MTF trans can’t be solved by legislation: Finding attractive men or women who want to sleep with them”. I did not worry about dying alone and I am very happy to report that dating has been an amazing experience since I began transitioning (both pre and post op). Dating is all about conquering your own fears about the act of dating itself, whether you are a transgender person or not. Also, people who are confident and comfortable with who they are tend to have the most success when dating. Aside from dating, I have built a large group of friends since beginning transition. Being happy with myself allowed me to connect with people more easily and through a purposeful effort of making social connections by attending events and joining groups I was interested in. I now have a much larger collection of friends than I ever have had in my life.

What should you do when you see a quote from someone with a PhD who detracts from the practice of HRT and GCS?

Know that they likely have a paper trail of transphobia or are part of an organization that is backed by known LGBT hate groups. Do actual research and see what is behind their statements, and you will likely find an agenda. My agenda in writing about this is not to promote “turning people transgender” as if that was even possible. My agenda is to speak out against the lies, stigma, and misinformation that for a long time prevented me from being myself and being happy living the life I was meant to lead, which I am now privileged to be doing. I made it through. I am a success story like many others who came before me. I have zero regret and zero shame about the fact that I was born a transgender woman. I also have zero regrets regarding undergoing surgery. Rather than falling silent and again hiding, I wish to clearly tell my sisters out there that they need to know transition and even the big scary surgery that is possibly in your future was all worth it for me.

At long last, I have achieved the basic equilibrium of self that everyone else in the world who is not transgender has a much better hope of finding. Most of you reading this had the privilege of being complete after your first puberty. It took me two, followed by an amazing surgical procedure to find that equilibrium of self. Other than those differences, we are all just people. Transgender people deserve the same level of respect that you would provide any other person. You may “not understand” us, but have you actually tried to? Are you instead believing the negative things being said about us? We do not seek special rights or privileges that take away from your rights. Our fight is about our safety and our basic rights (the same rights you hold to be self-evident) being protected.

How do you remain positive despite the climate in this country and in the world at large for transgender people?

It is amazing what freeing yourself from the concern of what other people think of you can do for your well being. Most human beings have a tendency to want to conform to what those around us expect of us even if it is completely contradictory to who we are as a person. Overcoming that fear of letting people know who we really are is a key part of every human being’s growth and speaks to their level of maturity as an individual. By overcoming that fear and beginning to transition, it is easy for me to project positivity because that just flows from me now. Being right with yourself is a major key to happiness. It makes you a better person. It makes you a better partner, parent, friend, boss, employee, and a better citizen of the world.

  Do you still experience lack of acceptance from friends or family? 

Unfortunately, in certain cases, yes I do. However, that sadness will never eclipse the happiness and overwhelming level of acceptance I have received from so many others, but most importantly, from myself! By the way, one of the best days in my life mid-transition was when after giving them many months to adjust by wearing only androgynous clothing, both of my children told me, “You can come pick us up ‘as yourself’ today!” One of the first things they said upon seeing me ‘as myself’ was, “Oh it’s not really that different. You are still just you.” Yes. They nailed it. Also, I have reconnected even with many friends from my past whom I had made the mistake of pulling away from before I transitioned.

Do you think there is an age that is too young to transition?

I would not for one second attempt to insert myself into that circle I mentioned before of doctors, surgical teams, therapists, psychiatrists, and their patients, and in some cases the parents of young patients. It is for them to decide on the best care and approach and timing. As a young child, growing up in such a different time period, I was unable to express what was going on inside. The explanations were all hidden from me back then and I did not know how to vocalize any of this. I learned to fear it all at a very young age. I could never have imagined the wonderful possibilities my life would hold at that young age or even well into my thirties when I was still fighting against fear, stigma, and self hatred instead of acceptance. You have no idea the damage that causes over time and the wonderful release of it all once it is gone.

How do we get past the stereotypes that stop us all from communicating?

I was able to transition in place while still working with my long standing employer. It is a company based in Alabama and I was at first worried about the attitudes and reaction I would receive from the people in my company who live down South. I have to apologize, because this was an example of me believing in stereotypes. I was so wrong to do that. Thank you to all of my co-workers for proving I was in the wrong to worry about that. We all to some extent can let stereotypes influence us, which is why I bother to try to educate the general public about people like me. Some day, I hope you all have the privilege of knowing someone who has transitioned. Chances are that you already do and may not know it. Please consider looking past stereotypes, misconceptions, and those using hate as a weapon and become a more vocal supporter of transgender people. You might just learn you are already a friend to one of us.

Well, at least now you know one. My name is Ariana, and I am Post-op with No Regrets!

LGBT Hate Group List provided by the SPLC: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/anti-lgbt

<3 ADORABLE RAINBOW LESBIAN <3

VICTORY SMOOCHING HER GOTH GIRLFRIEND :D

Both for winning the day

And also for no one dying!