What If?

It’s October, which means Halloween, which is my favorite holiday. So I’m going to write about that, right?

Nope.

I’m going to challenge you, dear reader, with a “what if” scenario.

Last week on my blog, I wrote about a dream I had. In this dream, I returned to my fraternity house, where a current brother revealed that he is a closet TG. So I’m out for a drink with a former coworker who reads my blog, and she asks me “What would you have done if you’d met a transgender person when you were in college?”

Ooo! Good question.

Here’s some background. I graduated high school in 1984 and college in 1989 (I transferred schools and lost a year.) So I went to university during the Reagan era; an era of conservatism run amok. And I was in a fraternity, an organization not known at the time for its liberalism, despite the fact that all fraternities do philanthropic work. And, I was an Outsider, even then. I knew about my feminine side, but was deeply repressing it at that time. After all, I gave up crossdressing early in high school, and did my best afterwards to prove myself a man.

Which obviously worked.

I met my first transgender people (that I knew of) in December of 2008, at South East PA Renaissance, which is a support group for TGs. It wasn’t until I met my “Big Sister” Mel that I actually got to know a person who had fully transitioned. 2008 was nearly twenty years after graduating college. By then, I had also earned a master’s degree, travelled extensively (usually for work,) married, had a daughter, and was far different from the scared skinny kid who walked the halls of my fraternity house in the late 1980s. And the person I am now is light years different from that person a mere six years ago.

Transition will do that to a person.

So. How would that fraternity boy have dealt with meeting a transperson? I thought about this, and thought some more. I’m ashamed of what I believe to be the answer.

You see, we all like to think that we’re good people. We like to think we’re the hero/heroine of our story. But that’s not always true, is it? No, almost of all of have done things we are ashamed of, especially things that we in our older years regret having done when we were younger. (Regrets about things we haven’t done are a whole other story and may also be addressed someday, but not here.)

So what is my answer? I know who I was back then (hell, I wrote a whole book about my college years) so I feel a bit confident in saying this. I’m ashamed to say my answer is a conditional one: it depends if I met this transperson when alone or among a group of my fraternity brothers.

If I were alone, I would’ve treated said person as the gender they presented, and, if permitted, may have asked a few questions in a quest to learn a bit about the TG experience and shed some light on my own repressed condition. That’s not so bad, right?

But what if I were around my brothers? What then? I hate to say that I probably would’ve sat quietly as the brothers had their fun, as I have no doubt some of my fraternity brothers would’ve heckled said transperson. Had it escalated to violence, I like to think I would’ve stepped in to help the TG. But would I have defended them from my brothers’ taunts? I doubt it.

Why?

I was so deep in hiding, and so desperately trying to fit in that I wouldn’t have wanted to expose myself, either as a TG myself or even as having a different opinion. Oh, I had different opinions from the bulk of the fraternity, even then, and I voiced them. I was one of the few liberals in the house, and often found myself being gang shouted-down by the Republicans in the house. I also, sad to say, found myself with opposing views as to how to treat women and even minorities from a good number of my brothers. And I voiced my dissent. As you can imagine, this didn’t help my standing. Mostly though, I kept quiet, and endured the occasional swirley dished out for, well, for just being me.

So, sad to say, I probably would’ve sat by quietly as the few bad apples taunted this poor person — especially if said person was a transwoman (remember, in the ’80s, being gay was still grounds to beat a person with legal impunity, and transwomen were considered gay.)

I’m not proud of my analysis. I like to think that today I am a better person. I am still a raging liberal, and I fight hard for my causes and against that which I believe to be unjust. And, just as important, I am now true to myself. I know who and what I am now. I am no longer a scared, skinny boy who tried to prove his manhood by drinking and fighting and raging against the Pain. Now, at 48, I am a proud woman who still fights, but for causes, not in bars over stupid slights. Age sometimes brings maturity. I hope I’ve found some.

So. You knew this was coming. For my older readers, how would you have reacted to meeting a transperson back in the 1980s or 1990s? (This assumes you didn’t transition back then.) For my younger readers, how would you have dealt with meeting a transperson five or ten years ago? Be honest with yourself.

Seeing the bad in oneself is not a bad thing. It is only through honest introspection that we learn and grow as people. We in the trans community were known by certain Native American tribes as “two spirits” and we were said to have strong wisdom and even magical powers. I like to think that our insights to both sides of gender circle; indeed for our knowledge of the tapestry that gender truly is; does bring us wisdom if we truly wish to learn from it. Helen Reddy sang “Yes, I am wise, but it’s wisdom born of pain” in her song I am Woman. Our wisdom IS born from pain, and I think that this wisdom needs to be shared.

This is why I wrote this piece instead of another homage to my favorite holiday: Halloween.

Maybe next year.

Tags: featured, Identity, Transgender, Transition

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion