Paula Sophia is seeking a little wisdom, that’s all. And she’s going to keep writing until she finds it. So far, she’s written a bunch of slam poetry, a ton of essays, a slew of short stories, and a novel. Her work appears in numerous publications online, and her e-book “Hystericus” is available for purchase through Etopia Press, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Kobo. Her novel “Shadow Boxer” was released December 2011.

Years ago, I joined the Masonic Lodge. I was drawn to the idea of apprenticeship, of subjecting myself to the tutelage of men who’d mastered the art of manhood. Over the course of two years I was instructed how to shape a cornerstone of character, about the need for proportion and balance in one’s life, and about the importance of fellowship. I found the teachings beautiful and the aspirations honorable, but the Masonic Lodge did not answer my questions or quell my doubts.

The Masonic Lodge aroused in me a sense of injustice, raising disturbing questions, most prominent among them: why was the Masonic Lodge still racially segregated? Though there seems to be a policy of inclusion aspiring to racially integrate the lodges, the practice still tends toward “separate but equal.”

I remember attending a lodge meeting, witnessing the rituals and getting a spiritual boost, a sense of brotherhood, but afterwards, when the brothers met in the kitchen to share coffee and donuts, I heard many derogatory comments about the President of the United States (Bill Clinton at the time), about the infiltration of illegal immigrants into our society, the “gay agenda.” They spoke fearfully about the crumbling foundations of American society, and someone even blamed it on black people. “It all started with the ____ (insert the n-word).”

I was appalled.

Perhaps this was only an isolated incident, but I never went back to lodge again. My ideals had been shaken to the core. I didn’t want to associate with men who seemed so backwards, so angry, speaking intolerance with great relish, masking their statements as nothing but the unvarnished truth unrestrained by political correctness.

I don’t know who coined the term “politically correct,” and I don’t know when trying to develop a sensitive public discourse became an “oppressive conspiracy,” but I do have a sense that the backlash against political correctness has its roots in resentment. When African American men no longer accepted being called “boy,” when grown women no longer accepted being described as “girls,” when people asserted their desires to be seen as fully equal, some of the old establishment viewed these developments as infringing on their rights.

The world is changing; the United States of America is changing. We are fast becoming a pluralistic society where no single demographic dominates the political discourse. President Barack Obama signifies this shift by the sound of his name and the color of his skin, and there are many folks who fear this change, wishing for a time when they didn’t have to huddle in secret clubs where they could speak openly about their prejudices.

In truth, if you’ve had a bigger slice of the pie than you deserved, when formally deprived folks begin insisting on an equal share, it might feel like you’re losing some of your rights.

Equality for all is not necessarily good news for some people.

Next month I will have completed twenty years with the Oklahoma City Police Department, a milestone to be sure, one that encourages me to pause and reflect upon my journey over the last decade.

Quite often, folks in the lgbt community have called me courageous for being Oklahoma City’s first openly transgender police officer and I have appreciated their comments and support. Without my friends, family and chosen family, I wouldn’t have made it this far.

Humility compels me to decline the status of hero because I did not intend to transition on the job, nor did I intend to live so openly as a transgender woman. I had plans to relocate, Dallas or Houston, somewhere in the region so I wouldn’t be too far from my children. I had plans to live a life of stealth, burying my past as much as possible.

But, you know what they say about our best laid plans, right?

I stayed in Oklahoma City because my truth exploded before I was ready to leave, and I was terrified to lose my job, of having to look for work while transitioning from male to female. It was an economic decision. No job meant I couldn’t support my kids. No job meant I couldn’t finance my transition. No job meant I couldn’t pursue the American Dream.

Over the years, I’ve seen other transgenders transitioning in the workplace, choosing to keep their jobs rather than risking the job market where we face the most debilitating discrimination. Though awareness about transgender issues has increased in recent years, and though some governments and corporations are adopting protections for gender identity/expression, we are still vulnerable.

The hiring process is often an employer’s best chance to turn away transgenders without much risk, and so often transgenders make it easy for them because we often try to erase our former lives. Because of the Internet, background checks are more thorough than ever, making it almost impossible to transition without leaving some kind of record. A discrepancy in someone’s gender history can give an employer an opportunity to refuse an applicant or fire a new employee because they had supposedly provided misleading information on the initial application.

When I look at the progress made in the fight for marriage equality, I’m thrilled. When I saw the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I was relieved, but I must remind people in the lgbt community – transgenders are still falling through the cracks. We’re still unable to serve openly in the military, and we can still be terminated from our jobs without cause because of our gender status since most employers and governments have yet to recognize gender identity/expression in personnel policies.

Transgenders have been involved in the fight for gay and lesbian rights since the beginning. We stood side by side gays and lesbians at Stonewall, and we’ve been proud supporters of openness about our identities and relationships. It is my hope that our LGBT advocates don’t forget about employment issues. Without jobs we can’t pursue happiness, and without jobs, all too often, we can’t be ourselves.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, eradicating the stigma of mental illness from the lives of gays and lesbians. Presently, this development seems like a moment of elementary understanding that declares an obvious truth, a “well, duh” in the struggle for gay and lesbian equality. Though public perception took decades to catch up, the idea of declaring gays and lesbians mentally unfit by virtue of their sexual orientation alone seems laughable, mere fodder for the discredited organizations that still advocate and practice reparative therapy.

Transgender people have yet to experience such a watershed moment. Because gender identity disorder is often considered a mental illness, many trans men and women must endure a great deal of scrutiny, subject to strict evaluations of their mental fitness in the workplace. As more and more government agencies and private employers develop policies related to gender identity issues, those who would discriminate against transgenders often rely on the specter of mental illness that still haunts us, interpreting normal emotional reactions to stress as signs of dysfunction to justify dismissal or demotion.

At Private First Class Bradley Manning’s preliminary hearing in December, prosecutors and defense attorneys revealed that Manning was struggling with gender identity disorder when his alleged crimes had been committed. This causes me great alarm. Apparently, both prosecution and defense are focusing on Manning’s gender confusion as a contributing factor in the release of hundreds of thousands of government documents to the WikiLeaks website.

If Manning’s gender identity disorder becomes a major issue during the court martial proceedings, it may amount to an insanity plea, one of the worst scenarios for those of us who advocate for transgender equality in the work place and/or the United States military. It will bolster the military’s use of the gender identity disorder diagnosis as an automatic disqualifier for top secret security clearances, thus sending a message to the world at large that transgenders are inherently untrustworthy people, deceivers at best, outright dangerous at worst but always a national security risk.

Of course, the pressures of gender confusion can be great, and the fear of being outed can generate a weakness someone can exploit. However, it does not seem like blackmail has been a factor in Manning’s case. According to defense statements during the preliminary hearing, Manning outed himself to his supervisors while stationed in Iraq before his arrest. Was that a plea for help, or was it a cynical attempt to lay the ground work for an insanity defense? We may never know the true answer.

In my estimation, though, Manning’s gender identity crisis does not eclipse his ability to discern right from wrong, nor does it justify his failure to uphold his oath of service. If he’s the hero some are making him out to be, if he released those documents to make a statement about the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, then I’d like to see him take responsibility for his actions. No excuses.

In recent Republican Presidential debates, the old specter of Social Darwinism has reared its ugly head. Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are espousing a “survival of the fittest” brand of laissez-faire economics. They want government to do little or nothing to help those in need in order to facilitate “natural selection.”

The problem with the reemergence of this brand of Social Darwinism is the blatant hypocrisy.

According to the principles of capitalism, a free market should be allowed to run its course, letting businesses and corporations succeed and fail by their own merits, replenishing the “gene pool” of free trade through the business cycle. That being true, what we have done with TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) is allow the old dinosaurs of our system to run amok long after they should have been extinct, potentially stagnating the gene pool of innovation and evolution.

The greatest contribution of capitalism to modern society is the movement from scarcity to abundance through the means of competition. Competitors have to innovate new and efficient ways to bring products to market, a process that facilitates a great diversity of choices for the consumer. Yet, the biggest danger of capitalism is the shadow of its greatest attribute. Competition, unregulated, can produce monopolies, which lack incentives toward innovation and evolution, preferring a stagnant status quo to a vibrant, active environment.

We now have an overpopulation of Tyrannosaurus Rexes devouring the herd of the middle class, all in the name of preserving the Great American Way. But really, how much can a T-Rex love America? After all, they have little bitty arms, too short to embrace anyone but themselves – an evolutionary failure if I ever saw one.

If the government had been truly interested in facilitating the Great American Way, they should have taken more care to make sure the middle class is strong and healthy, aiming recovery programs at Main Street instead of Wall Street. Keeping the herd healthy so as many people as possible can prosper.

But with government still focused on feeding the dinosaurs, there won’t be so many new opportunities. Conserving the status quo is not the key to survival. It is a path to disaster, toward extinction not evolution.

Soon, when they’ve devoured everything else, the dinosaurs will devour each other, and when there is only one remaining, we’ll have the death of competition, innovation and evolution – a tyrannical nightmare. The middle class will be nothing but a fossil stomped into the ground by a system catering to the kind of insatiable eating machines that died out hundreds of millions of years ago.

[box]Paula Sophia is seeking a little wisdom, that’s all. And she’s going to keep writing until she finds it. So far, she’s written a bunch of slam poetry, a ton of essays, a slew of short stories, and a novel. Her work appears in numerous publications online, and her e-book “Hystericus” is available for purchase through Etopia Press, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Kobo. Her novel “Shadow Boxer” was released December 2011.[/box]

Occupy Wall Street has occupied my mind a lot lately. I’ve celebrated the emergence of a progressive movement, cringed at the less than articulate occupiers interviewed on local and national television, raged about the violent outbreaks in Oakland, the brutal police tactics used against peaceful protesters, the lack of leadership and focus in the camps.

My heart is with the occupiers in many ways.

When I was growing up, I saw my father go from a sole breadwinner able to support a wife and three kids, pay for a home and a car and still have enough left for fabulous Christmases and vacations, but near the late 1970’s he started getting laid off on a routine basis. My mother had to start working to help make ends meet. Then the factory closed. All the while, Roger Smith (the CEO of General Motors at the time) was getting raises, living the high life while we lost our home and my parents divorced.

I saw the dawn of “trickle-down economics” and have lived through a long drought of meager wage increases while executive salaries have doubled, tripled, quadrupled… I was among the first generation of children who couldn’t expect a living wage right out of high school, and now I’m watching my children learn they can’t count on a good job with a bachelor’s degree. Plus, they’ll probably end up with a substantial student loan debt to boot.

It feels like our system has been trying to eradicate and enslave the middle class. They tell us to work hard and save our money, then they blow our retirement accounts on bad investments and lay us off so they can keep their bonuses.

I want the Occupy communities to succeed. I want them to learn how to live in harmony, to show America a different way of life. But honestly, I’m worried about their contentiousness, the alcohol and drug abuse in the camps, the fringe elements with a penchant for anarchy and an open disregard for rules.

(How can you ask the 1% to hedge their greed, adjust their morals and live according to the same rules as everyone else when you’re willing to risk the credibility of the movement by smoking dope in the camps?)

Then I realize this is just the beginning. The movement is still finding an identity, is still wandering in the wilderness looking for sustenance, trying to find ways to survive. I hope, in time, the Occupy Wall Street movement will be blessed with the manna of reason, the fruits of focus and the wisdom to help build a more just society.

Paula Sophia is seeking a little wisdom, that’s all she wants, and she’s going to keep writing until she finds it. So far, she’s written a bunch of slam poetry, a ton of essays, a slew of short stories, and a novel. Her work appears in numerous publications online, and her e-book “Hystericus” is available for purchase through Etopia Press, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Kobo. Her novel “Shadow Boxer” is due to be released in December 2011.