Rainbow Fields

When I was a college freshman, I spent a semester in therapy. For the first session, the counselor handed me a pad of paper and some crayons. "Draw a picture of your childhood," she said.

That was easy. Without hesitation, I drew a large circle, for the horizon. I drew a line intersecting the southern edge of the circle - that was the road. Most of the circle I colored green, pink and blue. The fields were green - they were never actually pink and blue, but that's the way I remember them: magical colors. In the summer they turned orange and yellow (for real!) with Indian paintbrush flowers. I should have drawn the woods too but I can't remember if I did.

I put a dot out in the field to represent myself. Where our house was I put a large black dot. It was concentrated: thick, black, ugly. I put four dots next to it to represent my family. I put one more dot outside of the circle to represent my father. Then I was done.

The counselor and I looked at the picture. "What do you see?" she asked. I started to explain it to her and then I stopped.

"That's strange," I said. "I didn't intend to do that."

"What?" she asked (no doubt with a certain professional satisfaction.)

"That dot out in the field is me," I said. "That's where I was happy. I put four dots to represent my family . . . my mother, my two brothers . . . and me, again. I didn't realize I was putting myself twice."

"There are two of you," she said.

"Yeah. There are two of me."

I don't recall that we talked about that very much. I needed time to assimilate this new idea, and there were more specific things that I wanted to talk about. But it's certainly true that I spent a lot of time - then, and right up to now - trying to find my real self. Not the self that everybody else saw, or failed to see.

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I told her I was queer, but I had not yet excavated the fact that I was also transgendered. There were other issues I had to deal with first. But obviously, the existence of my "two selves" suggests that I had things to hide.

My mother said to me recently that she interprets my change of name as a reference to my maturity. My new name is my adult name; my old name belongs to the child I was, "out in the fields." I don't see it that way at all. I know that I'm still the child I was then. I have the same secrets. I must have the same gender.

It's certainly true that the lessons I learned as a child in the rainbow fields are what have kept me alive. To summarize: the human world is not the only world, thank goodness. Human beings (including myself) are selfish, narrow-minded, and scared.

There's a whole universe out there, much bigger than humanity. It provides beauty, nourishment, and a certain amount of danger, too. It is constantly changing. Constantly alive. Humans build their little structures and push their little buttons. Many of them don't seem to realize that the universe is alive. Life goes on without them. I was stifling inside that little box. I had to get out.

Sometimes I still forget those lessons. But I have to remember, because I can't survive without them. Nor have I learned everything I need to know, remembered everything I need to remember. I kept secrets even from myself.

The universe is still out there.

Pity vs. Respect?

Several years ago I discovered a website which I thought had some very good advice on how to come out to your family. These were the bits that really struck me:

You don't want a parent to feel sorry for you; they won't take this as seriously as you want them to if they pity you. . . .

Be patient with them; if they don't accept it right off, don't be angry with them. This is a very big thing for them and for you. You are not the only person going through this transition; your parents or parent goes through it with you, just in a different way. No matter how much they may cry, fall apart, rant, or fall silent, always be the strong one; the adult. . . .

If you give in to childish behavior and act like a victim, you disrespect yourself and you lose the respect of them in the long run.

In general, I don't want people to pity me. (And I believe that self-pity is probably the most pernicious thing in the universe.) I like it when people respect me, although they don't always.

I'm writing about this now because I find myself in a place where neither pity nor respect seem appropriate. Over the past year I've been struggling with certain things that are very difficult for me. (No, not my gender -- or at least, that's been difficult for entirely different reasons.) I have to admit that I've been pretty stupid. I'm not accustomed to feeling stupid, and I have to admit it, not just to myself, but to other people.

Anyway, I still don't want pity and I don't (yet) deserve respect. Because everybody does stupid things sometimes. So this is some kind of middle ground, called life, I guess.

Great Butches in History

Missy (Mathilde de Morny, 1862-1944) - in English, it sounds like a femme name, but Missy was about as butch as they come. Colette had a fling with her, between husbands, and they scandalized Paris by performing a sketch in which an Egyptian mummy (Colette) comes to life and seduces an archeologist (Missy).

(Image source: I got these pictures some years ago, probably in 2001, from a French-language site which I can't find again now.)

Bryher (1894-1983) - novelist, film critic, and "patron" (translation: her family had a whole bunch of money, and she spent her share on art and artists.) During the 1930s she lived in Switzerland and helped many people (mostly Jews) to escape from Nazi Germany. Finally she had to flee herself. Most of her novels are historical; one is a work of "Science Fantasy" called Visa for Avalon.

(Image source: Fembio. This photo appears to have been taken about the same time as the film Borderline (1930), which was directed by her second husband and features Bryher in a small part.)

Valentine Ackland (1906-1969), poet and lover. I discovered her because she was the life partner of one of my absolute favorite writers, Sylvia Townsend Warner (and shows up as a character in several of her short stories). Their collected letters, published under the title I'll Stand By You, tell an amazing story. Noteworthy is the bit where Sylvia asks her to explain how this lesbian stuff works, and part of Valentine's answer is "I'm the bisexual one." She was not referring to sexual practice, but to gender identity - for her, bisexual was synonymous with androgynous. (Image source: The Sylvia Townsend Warner Archive)

Leslie Feinberg (1949 - still around) Feinberg's book Transgender Warriors made transgender a reality for me. I thought I bought it to learn about a friend's transgender. Surprise!

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Obviously, these are just a few of my personal favorites. There are many more. I used to think that I didn't believe in role models . . . and it's easy to pick out a person's flaws and say, "I don't want to be like that." But if I had role models, these would be them. Thank you all.