Partly, it’s that I have spent far too much time reading the news this week. The news out of France is particularly grim, with a sharp increase in homophobic attacks, even as the country nears marriage equality. Patrick, my friend, be safe!
Partly, I’m feeling a bit discouraged over QUILTBAG issues in my own life. On Sunday, a friend of mine came over having a bit of a crisis. Their child is questioning their gender and it’s hitting my friend rather hard. My friend is usually quite open minded and didn’t turn a hair when their child was questioning their orientation, but somehow questioning their gender was a whole different issue.
To give some context, my friend is a lovely, generally open minded individual. Their biggest difficulty is very little understanding of trans* issues beyond what little they’ve read about in mainstream media. I think their picture of a trans* woman is drawn from The Crying Game and the idea of a trans* man has never really crossed their radar.
Their child is not yet out of high school. In the past year, this child has begun making small gestures and dropping hints, apparently trying to let their parents know what has being going on in their mind. Sadly, there are a lot of other things happening in the family that make the child’s own troubles less visible.
The child has been experimenting with androgynous hair and clothing for few months now. Parent figured it was a phase and fortunately in the child’s particular social milieu, this is safe enough. Parent was uncomfortable, but willing to cope, assuming it was something that would pass. Just as a note to all parents and future parents out there; NEVER dismiss something as a “phase”-- it will bite you in the ass later.
This all came to a head this past week, when child announced their intention to have transition surgery just as soon as humanly possible. This resulted in my friend in my kitchen, essentially asking what they’d done wrong. My friend was not pleased with their own reaction to the whole thing and was trying to find a way to understand what was happening. It’s so hard.
One of the best arguments for QUILTBAG visibility is just this situation. To my friend’s knowledge, they had never met a transexual person. In reality, they do know at least one or two. The trouble is, when Queer people aren’t visible, a scary mythology develops that Queer is rare.
The funny thing is, by some estimates, judging by new studies of sexuality made possible by the Internet, MOST people are Queer in some way. Going strictly by what one finds attractive, sixty percent of women and twenty percent of men are bisexual. Not that they ever act on it necessarily, but the attraction is there. Add in the ten percent of men who are gay, the ten percent of women who are strictly lesbians, those who are trans* and the unknown number of aces and gray-a’s, pretty much most of us humans are Queer.
Thanks to to magic of the Internet, in the last twenty years, we have been able to examine more human behaviors than ever before. Most startling has been the expansion of the understanding of sexuality. Due to the sense of anonymity, people can divulge their deepest darkest secrets, things that they may not even feel comfortable discussing with their priest, therapist, or hairdressers. There’s a great book about this called A Billion Wicked Thoughts.
There’s an Alcoholics Anonymous saying, “If you spot it, you got it.” Meaning that what we most hate in others are the things that make us uncomfortable about ourselves. The people who study these things have shown that men with the most fear of gay men are also the same men who are most aroused by photographs of other men. I wonder sometimes if people who have an immediate negative reaction to trans* people are those who do not feel genuinely comfortable in their gender identity. We’re all a little androgynous, after all.
So, I gave my friend a pep talk and a bit of education on the issue. Explaining that NOTHING they did or didn’t do could affect the child’s gender identity. I explained how transition is a long process requiring years of time and effort. This is not something child could just rush into.
I gave them a little biology lesson, explaining how genitals form at a different time than the brain and how the hormone balance has to be so perfect that its just amazing that any of us manage to come out with all our parts matching. Most of all, I explained that this was still their child. I think my friend was comforted.
If Queer people of all stripes are out and visible, I will need to have fewer conversations that dance around these topics. Fewer people will say, “Well, I certainly don’t know anyone who’s Queer.” Because the fact is, they almost certainly do.
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