Transgender

Transgender

Suddenly this concept is popping up wherever I look.

There is the Oscar nominated film, the Danish Girl.  My good friend Cal revealed to me that he is transgender. North Carolina passes a law around transgenders and public toilets.

I cannot give this topic a superficial pass.  Suddenly this condition is ascending to claims on constitutional rights.  I have to ask myself, where has this issue been all my life?

I was certainly aware of transvestites, men who like to dress in women’s clothing.  There were plenty portrayed in movies as being prostitutes, flirting with men.

In grammar school there was a boy who was in my dance class.  He was more sensitive, gentler than other boys.  He grew up, got married, and raised a family.

Another boy, handsome, Italian, slight build, flamboyant and a hairdresser to boot, appeared at the 20-year high school reunion with his wife on his arm.  I would not have predicted that.

There were what we called dykes.  Females with masculine preferences for dress and demeanor.

How did we come from that, to a state where a mother says she knows her three year old son is transgender?

Our culture is becoming more and more fractured, with everyone indulging their individuality at the cost of a cohesive society.  Why suddenly do they claim special rights and privileges, special concessions to their preferences.  I don’t get it.  As someone famously once said, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’

I look at my own life through these newly ground lenses.  I never played with dolls.  In our day, the name given to girls like me was tomboy.  No one ever called me a dyke.  I played nice with boys, when forced to, like having a crush in high school, and needing a date for prom night.  None of this ever came to anything.

Years and years ago when I was in the workforce, I had the sense that I was a man in a woman’s body.  I was independent, self-reliant.  I didn’t know how to pick up boys.  Boys sensed no pheromones from me.  Of course, I did live through the sixties when men suddenly had permission to screw anything that moved on two legs, and women were persuaded to think this brought them ‘hip’ status. 

It didn’t help that I was raised in a home without open displays of affection.  My mother was indoctrinated into the child-raising philosophy of the time, that to give too much attention to a child is to spoil them, give them an over inflated ego.  She took it to the extreme, closer to the ‘cold bitch’ side of the spectrum.  Once I discovered sex I had a spell of insatiability for physical intimacy.  But before long I was able to distinguish between the biological act of sex, and genuine affection and love based on mutual respect and admiration.  In fact, I found that latter to be extremely rare, though I held onto the possibility that it might be more than an urban legend.  I got tired of pretending that I was finding love in each encounter, when in fact I was being used as a dumping ground for male sweat and sperm.

While traveling alone around the world I gradually found my balance.  I developed a sense that I could do anything a guy could do, and often better.  I did not relate with the women whom I met traveling, who seemed to require a male counterpart to help make her decisions.  I did occasionally run into the rare couple who absolutely did complement each other, and I did envy them.  You never know a book by its cover, but they had the appearance of being best friends.

I did encounter women to whom I was attracted.  That is, their femininity and grace made the sun shine a little brighter for me.  And then there were the other women like me, such as the famous Miss Jones. 

We met on a Greek Island, and met again on a kibbutz.  I had already started to meditate, so we would meditate together.  Her energy helped me find my center, and my meditation improved.  Then we went our separate ways, only to meet again in Nepal.  I had heard of this American who ran a café in Kathmandu.  My colleagues at the monastery would visit her shop when they were in town.  It was a meeting place, also a place to dump the shopping while you go out for dinner, that sort of thing.  When eventually I had the opportunity to go into town with these people, she and I rediscovered each other to mutual delight. 

I think of her, when I see how my bakery in China has served a similar purpose in its short life.

Would my life have been easier if I taped my breasts and walked around in men’s clothing and hairstyle?  That seems weird to me.  I would have complicated my life even more.  The only possible advantage I could imagine would be if women were then attracted to me.  But in fact, I think my personality is a put off to men and women alike, so I doubt that would have been the result.

I speculate as to how different my experience is to someone calling themselves transgender.  I guess I will never know.  As I said, I didn’t play with dolls.  I played cowboys and Indians.  I dug out dirt to make runways and villages for what is now called matchbox cars and trucks, together with the neighborhood boys.  I climbed trees, played stick ball (when the cruel neighbor kids weren’t ostracizing me, for whatever reason of the moment).  I flew with the wind on my bicycle, exploring the town, visiting the far flung kids from my school class.  Alone, always alone.

This was all excellent preparation for the long and adventurous life I led, taking me around the world, learning languages, absorbing cultures, and having many careers.  This life was well-suited to someone who has given up romantic dreams of idyllic love.  The romance was in the travels, the possibilities that lie just around the corner.  Had I been a dependent woman, waiting for my identity and security to be provided by a male, I would have been stopped in my tricks thousands of miles and decades ago.

I feel bad for people who are not confident in expressing themselves.  For that poor little boy who likes to dress up as a girl and play with dolls, that he should have to be stigmatized for the rest of his life by his mother telling him his gender roll was confused, I feel for him.  Why must everything be so black and white.  Why cannot I be both male and female, in whatever body God gave me?  Why do I have to choose one or the other?  From talking to my transgender and gay (or should I say LTGBQ) friends, I feel that the real problem is a lack of tolerance in our relationships.  If a guy wants to wear ruffles and laces to work, why can’t he?  Why must he be gossiped about, judged wanting in masculinity?  If a woman chooses a mannishly short haircut and is given to wearing three-piece suits, what’s the problem?  Why must we treat these people differently, to where they develop a chip on their shoulder, and feel the need to run from civilized society and develop a subculture?

My cousin, when here four children were under ten years old, came home and found her husband in flagrante with a man in the basement.  Did she have to get hysterical?  Did she have to treat him like he was a felon who should never be near his children again?  For the rest of her life, does she have to go ballistic whenever they need to have a conversation?  He did not go on to develop a stable relationship with a man.  She forced the breakup of the marriage, and her children to grow up without a father, for what?  I admit I am not walking in their shoes.  Maybe I would not feature being penetrated by a tool that had been dunked in shit.  Or maybe, just maybe, enlightened people could find a way around such traumas and let their friendship go deeper.  We are all flawed human beings.  Can’t we make a better effort at loving each other unconditionally, accepting our flaws and theirs, and just get on with life?

Why do we have to fragment our society into smaller and smaller peer groups, and then demand special treatment because our decisions stand in the way of our sharing the rights and responsibilities of the society we have chosen to leave?  Many States have passed laws given gay couples legal rights, such that if one of them were hospitalized the other would have the right to be treated as family; they can be on each other’s medical insurance.  Why must they go a step further, and demand the right to shatter the milleniums-old established institution of marriage?

Truly, our culture is on the brink of extinction, no less than our planet as we know it.  Young people can’t see it, they are caught up in the moment.  Like not seeing the forest for the trees, they are blind to what is happening.  We old people are marginalized, so clearly our perspective is quaint and irrelevant.

There is nothing new under the sun.  When we have to develop a whole new vocabulary to describe what has been going on forever, we are ascending a tower of babel.