It would be easy to dismiss Lisa/Lee Iacuzzi as a troublemaker. Iacuzzi—who uses the names Lisa and Lee interchangeably, identifies as bi-gendered and prefers the pronoun s/he—has been arrested four times for petty crimes like jaywalking and calling 911 when a police officer videotaped her/him. One summer, while driving a Volvo on which s/he'd written 'Legalize marijuana,' s/he reportedly was pulled over two dozen times by Portland, Oregon police.
Iacuzzi is the blogger behind NotAGoodQueer.Blogspot.com—not to be confused with notagoodqueer-oae.blogspot.com, which seems dedicated to undermine Iacuzzi and 'her fantasy that, contrary to physiological evidence, she is a ) a male; or b ) a transgendered female.'
Once a schoolteacher, Iacuzzi allegedly lost her/his job to gender discrimination four years ago. Afterward, s/he publicly accused the school of mishandling asbestos removal, and s/he's still hoping to organize a class action suit against the school.
S/he says she has filed a gender discrimination suit against Portland State University, and has Oregon state Bureau of Labor and Industry complaints pending against two Portland social service agencies.
It was after losing both her/his job and house and becoming a victim of domestic violence that Iacuzzi ended up at the Bradley-Angle House, a Portland-based shelter for battered women s/he contends discriminated against his/her gender identity when they forced her/him to leave without receiving transitional housing.
'They were like, 'You lied to us about your identity. Here's a list of men's shelters. But we will not give you the nine months of transitional housing.' I kept asking them, 'Why can't trans people stay here?' I just didn't get it.'
Iacuzzi says the organization was worried it could lose its funding by allowing him/her to stay in the house.
'In one respect, they can say to trans people, 'We respect your gender.' They can argue that, but I don't have any [ male ] hormones, I don't have any surgery, so what's the problem? I'm male and female.'
Because s/he doesn't identify as male and has a female body, Iacuzzi contends, s/he would not feel safe in a men's shelter. S/he argues that the system doesn't provide housing for those who can't fit into a binary world—except the YWCA, where Iacuzzi admits, 'they don't care if you're trans.'
Iacuzzi says s/he prefers the term bi-gendered, because it 'makes more sense for someone like me who doesn't want surgery—people like me who don't go through hormones or full legal name changes and who stay in this third sex. Bi-gendered makes sense to straight people. It doesn't fit in their mind to call me a 'he.' I have a female voice and I have noticeable breasts. I don't wear a bra and I don't bind. I don't blame them for not wanting to call me a 'he.''
'I think genderqueer is a very good word,' Iacuzzi acknowledges. 'But it doesn't do anything to improve understanding, and that's what we need. So we're seen as really intelligent human beings that have both male and female perspectives on things, which is invaluable.'
For now, Iacuzzi is living at another Portland shelter, where s/he's fighting frequent eviction notices s/he traces to conflict with other residents, who s/he claims harass her/him constantly, saying, 'This is an all woman's building, you don't belong here. We don't need anyone packing a penis.'
'If I did this to someone, to another resident, I would be out the door,' Iacuzzi complains. 'But nothing is going to happen to them. From their point of view I'm the problem. Gender discrimination is difficult to prove.'
The trans writer Jacob Anderson-Minshall co-authored Blind Leap, the second installment of the Blind Eye mystery series available now. For more information visit anderson-minshall.com or e-mail jake@trans-nation.org .
© 2007 Jacob Anderson-Minshall