Accepting the Limitations of Others While I Transform… Into Me
Transformation and Me! A Prism & Pen writing prompt
I have realized, as I have dealt with the deepening reality of being transgender, that I am asking a lot from everyone as I transition into me. I have dissected every aspect of myself and, in so doing, my friends and family as well.
Accepting that I am transgender is a very big ask of everyone, including myself. I am asking them to transition with me.
My immediate social circle has never met anyone transgender. In my life, I have only met one personally. Of course, there may have been others but they obviously chose to keep it private and maintain their own privacy just like anyone else.
Our exposure has been almost entirely through the distorted lens of the media. Not the most reliable establisher of facts. From there the information is then filtered through a person’s own personal knowledge, experiences and biases.
That leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding.
My friends and family are actually just like everyone else. They are the “normal” of my community and they reflect the society in which they live. Like everyone, they want to enjoy a peaceful happy life as much as they can. Each has absorbed the challenges that their life has thrown at them in their own way.
They like immediate world the way they see it, defined by rules that they understand even if they don’t always agree. It establishes the parameters that give them comfort. They debate within their self-defined limitations. It could be, for example, who has the best Italian restaurant in the neighborhood or the best baseball pitcher of all time or even is Caitlyn Jenner is really a woman.
The collective answer among my friends was that Caitlyn Jenner was not a woman. The men in the group bemoaned the loss of an Olympic icon and for many a lifetime hero, as if being transgender negated the accomplishments of a lifetime. Many of the women used childbirth, menstruation and cramps as an absolute refutation of Caitlyn’s gender claim.
I was just confused.
What struck me at the time was all the effort that Caitlyn was making for what seemed a very shallow reason. My thoughts were poisoned by the Kardashian Media Empire. I thought the entire family had a personal plastic surgeon on retainer. I felt that Caitlyn was just using it all as a publicity stunt.
It just didn’t feel real.
My limited expectation of understanding then, is exactly what I expect from those around me when/if I come out, now. I am asking a lot. It is not like we spend time drinking beer discussing the theories of John Locke or the philosophical thought of Edmund Burke. We are normal, white, middle class Americans with all the classic thoughts, limitations and biases that we have as a group.
Being transgender is not in the scope of our regular life or experience. Being transgender is alien to them and, because of a parochial, dogmatic religious up-bringing, it is, to most, a deviant sexual abomination.
So, here I am the Abominable Snowperson about to walk into their lives. Talked about by many but whose existence is doubted and lacks validity in their experience.
What should I have expected?
Being transgender is shrouded is complete ignorance, most of it honest but many times militant. Ignorance has its reason for existing in one’s life. Some people like their world simple. They don’t want their core beliefs challenged. It took centuries for the people of Europe to accept the world was round. They generally didn’t care. They were more concerned with food on their table. They innocently lacked knowledge or awareness. The shape of the world was not a hot topic.
Then there are the militant ones that burned heretics at the stake for disagreeing with their core beliefs. They actively reject facts and artfully construe reality to support their own core beliefs. These zealots are the most vocal and the most dangerous to my “kind”. Many believe that they have the wrath of God on their side and the Bible or Koran to back them up. Others follow them like sheep because they refuse to think for themselves. It’s easier to throw stones.
Who really wants to get hit by them?
I might as well be a werewolf, living in their community, threatening the woman and children because I need to use a bathroom or threatening the men because I could be spreading my disease to them and their sons.
Ignorance can be so dangerously creative. It can make me into a monster. You pick your favorite monster and I could probably fit public perceptions of transgender people into it but what’s the point?
Like the monster in Young Frankenstein (sorry, another baby boomer analogy but, given the pandemic, take a moment and enjoy a classic comedy and understand what I am talking about), we are really good people and it is the mob of ignorant villagers with pitchforks and torches who are the real monsters. They just don’t know any better. They are led by very vocal, ignorant militants.
So, I don’t blame my friends and family. Why should they take on an additional unnecessary challenge to their lives? Out of nowhere I am about to thrust a jarring new reality into their life. What’s in it for them? Being transgender forces them to confront an alien concept of gender and their lifelong relationship me. It thrusts a disturbing, shocking and uncomfortable set of facts that they now need to digest. It will be for many irritating while upsetting and totally unpleasant for most.
I have not enjoyed it either. In fact, I have hated it.
I have had enough pain in my life. I did not need to add this need to the pile. But I wasn’t given a choice, I am forced to accept what is, in reality, a serious medical need. Fortunately for them they do have a choice.
I believe that my transformation has made me a much better person and I would never go back to what I was.
What I can hope for is that some will not choose the militantly ignorant path, that some will actually overcome the natural desire to remain ignorant and that some will actually rise above their static gender unawareness for me.
They don’t need to transition into another gender as I do but I hope with all my heart that by coming out to them, their old attitudes will transform into an acceptance and an understanding that is so necessary in the world today.
I hope that they will see that I am not a bad monster and that I have some value in their lives that is worth the effort for them to learn, understand and accept.
I am, after all, a good monster.
Emma Holiday
Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
Thank you for reading my work.
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