Out in the Open

Recently I was at a church event where our minister led us in a song called "Safe Passage." When he sang the line "Safe passage, sisters" he glanced at the woman on his right and squeezed her hand. When he sang the line "Safe passage, brothers" he glanced at me (on his left) and squeezed my hand. I was pleasantly surprised, especially since he and I had never had a conversation about my gender identity and I wasn't sure how much he knew.

But although I was happy, when I thought of this occurrence on subsequent days, I found myself feeling angry too. I now believe that this anger was a form of fear. I mentioned in my last post that the idea of presenting my "true self" to people is still strange to me. It's also very, very frightening. To be out in the world with no camouflage, nothing to hide behind . . . as I mentioned in my previous post, this is not what I'm used to.

Another expression of fear is that when I started writing this blog post, my brain started telling me that the incident I described above never happened. I was remembering it wrong, I misinterpreted his actions, he couldn't possibly have done that on purpose. These thoughts never crossed my mind until I wrote the incident down. I spent a week remembering it and wondering why I felt angry. (Can you feel angry about something that never happened?)

Update: I actually went and asked the minister if he remembers that incident the same way I do. And he does. He writes:

You do remember accurately, and though you and I never have had that conversation (until now!), several of your friends at church who know and care about you made sure I knew your gender identity. And, yes, I absolutely intended to call you "brother" in that moment. And what else I remember is how you smiled and showed me by the glint in your eye that you felt seen and known in that moment.

Take that, evil brain!

---

The mind is a very strange place. I spent most of my life in complete denial about my gender identity. And now I realize that my powers of denial have been reversed. It no longer seems strange to me that I'm what people used to call "a man in a woman's body." (We no longer consider that terminology to be politically correct, but I'll use it now for its element of paradox.) In fact, in a surprisingly short amount of time I went from "of course I'm not transsexual" to "of course I'm a man." It seems perfectly natural to me now. I know what I am on the inside.

I believe now that denying my gender identity enabled me to keep it safe, untouched, buried like treasure deep in the earth. And now that it's uncovered, it's amazingly strong.

The thing that frightens me is that I still don't expect other people to understand. I still expect other people to disapprove, to hate and fear and despise me. I find myself in a welcoming community now. And I want to emphasize that the reason this community is welcoming to trans people is because of the work of those who went before me. I wasn't the first trans person they ever met. (I assumed I would be, but I was wrong.)

I rely on my trans brothers and sisters to protect me, even if they never met me. They keep me strong. And in my heart it's perfectly clear. But there's a big huge world out there. And I still don't like being out in the open. That's why I'm posting this.

"Coming Out" as Trans

I just came across this very interesting article: "‘Coming Out’ Doesn’t Begin to Describe It: Message from a Trans Survivor." The author, Meredith Talusan, describes how disclosing that one is transgender often causes people to doubt one's gender identity.

When I revealed myself as trans to my entire class of fine arts master's students at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, my classmates also praised me for being courageous. But then I overhead myself referred to as “he," both mistakenly in my presence, and intentionally when people didn't think I was within earshot.

On more than one occasion, I heard those who I thought were friends warn men who might be interested in me about my trans status.

Because the experience of coming out as trans is so different from the experience of coming out as homosexual or bisexual, Talusan prefers to speak of herself as a trans survivor. This fascinates me, although I still feel that the term "coming out" is relevant to my experience.

For one thing, I had to come out to myself as transgender. For another thing . . . I identify with other trans and gender-nonconforming people more than I identify with cis people. It took me a while to reach out to a trans community, but once I did I felt like I belonged. As for the term "trans survivor," it resonates with me but it doesn't describe the way I felt for most of my life. I've survived a lot of things, and it's only very recently that I realized I survived being transgender as well. I'm still trying to comprehend my own experience.

Some of my trans friends say that transitioning is about becoming "your true self." This is a challenge to other people. They thought they knew your true self, but they were wrong. I knew who my true self was, but I blocked that knowledge out because I was afraid. For me, discovering my true self has been such a revelation that introducing other people to my true self actually takes second place. I'm still amazed at myself.

Moreover, I'm still bemused by the idea of presenting myself to people. How often do we ever really see someone else's "true self"? Not very often. This is not confined to transgender people at all. It's just that we expect to be able to recognize someone's gender as soon as we meet them. (And then we think we've discovered something about their true self.)

Talusan says that for LGB people, coming out means "revealing one's 'true' identity [as] an act of freedom, of moving from the confined space of the private realm to the expansive public. This allows everyone to recognize you for who you really are, and for people to accept and celebrate you in your entirety without secrets and lies. But for trans people, to speak our truth is also to have it called into question."

I think that this is partly a result of social acceptance. There was a time when homosexuality was not a "real thing," just as gender identity is not a real thing for most people today. Nowadays, when someone comes out as LGB, very few people will question their sexual orientation (although bisexuals are more likely to be challenged.) When someone comes out as transgender, people line up in droves to question their gender identity. (For an example of this, check out the "talk" page on Chelsea Manning's Wikipedia entry.) Hopefully society will continue to evolve in this area.

Moreover, although this happens less often now, it used to be quite common for people to marry someone of the opposite sex, have children, and then suddenly announce that they really were homosexual and none of their heterosexual activities had expressed their "true selves." Under those circumstances, it's natural for other people to wonder if they really mean it. And this type of delayed "coming out" is still very common for trans people.

Of course, it's also true that for many trans people, presenting as their "true selves" means erasing the fact that they were born transsexual. They just want to be ordinary men and women.This is the paradox of transgender. But it seems to me the real problem is that we live in a society that doesn't recognize the validity of trans existence.

One last comment -  although I like the distinction between "coming out" and "surviving," I'm not sure that it makes much difference on a practical level. If you tell people you're a trans survivor, they will ask what that means and at some point you will have come out to them, with all the attendant problems.

Stephen Colbert Discovers Trans People

I'm a big fan of The Colbert Report. But for a long time it's made me sad that he never had any trans guests on his show, or acknowledged the existence of trans people as human beings. Every so often he'd make jokes about men in dresses, which doesn't count.