Transsexuals Among Us

Probably the weirdest thing that happened to me this weekend while I was down in Jacksonville, Florida was when an old woman shook my hand and told me how warm my hands were. That doesn't sound weird unless you've actually held my hands, in which case you'd know that I met the one person in the world with worse circulation in her fingers than me. It's sort of a family trait, but just take my word for it -- my hands are ice cold.

I was in Florida for my grandmother's 90th birthday party, a nice little party with 150 of her closest friends and relatives held in an evangelical church. She's great, my granny. She's really happy for me and I can tell she's proud of me for going through this. I'm really happy for her, too, since she's 90 and still in such good health. I think she's really enjoying this part of her life, and I am too. My grandfather died many years ago at 92. I doubt he'd have been as comfortable with my transition, having fairly rigid definitions of gender, but I think he'd have probably come around, too, in his way. I love my family. They're so supportive and loving. Strange, but very supportive.

Pretty much everyone else at the party was oblivious to my "condition", as far as I could tell. Possibly not this one family, from whom I got a strange vibe, but they might have been tipped off about me (for reasons I won't go into). Anyway, I felt pretty much welcome among a group of (mostly elderly) strangers.

When I got home, my friend Keith sent me a link to a story about people trying to revoke transgender rights in Gainessville. Some conservative group ran ads that showed a little girl going into a women's restroom followed by a scruffy man, with the words "Your City Council Made This Legal" (check it out). I realize I'm preaching to the choir here, but honestly, this is really disgusting. Implied in this ad is that (a) allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their chosen gender enables child molestation, (b) somehow it would be more acceptable for a boy to be in a men's room alone with a creepy pervert than a girl, and (c) transsexuals = perverts. It's kind of a beautiful in its oversimplicity, really. Why, you can even agree with the message and still claim you don't have anything against transgender people. I don't have a problem with those people themselves, I just don't want scruffy perverts in ballcaps molesting my daughter, which would obviously happen if... wait, how does this work again? Well, kudos to the ad wizards who came up with this one, anyway. I think it's a brilliant little piece of shock propoganda.

It's a pity that to many people, trans rights come down to these sorts of inflamatory non-issues. And it's a shame that most people don't have the slightest idea what being transgender is really about, as if it's just some kind of sexual thrill for us. I think I'm very lucky to blend in sometimes. I avoid a lot of this sort of misunderstanding and bigotry and hatred mostly (or so far -- knock on wood). I don't expect that stuff will ever disappear. I've met a lot of transgender people, and by and large, we're a strange bunch. We'll never quite blend in as a group. Different = fear.

But I can still walk up to a lot of the people who don't realize they should be afraid of me and what I represent, and the biggest clue they'll get is that my hands are the icy cold hands of pure evil. If I'm wearing gloves, they might never know...