To A T

Have you ever had “one of those weekends?” Right about now you’re probably wondering something on the lines of “what the heck is she talking about? I have one of those weekends every weekend and I’m alive!” 🙂 Yep, so do I. But this weekend, due to the incessant and sometimes violent rain along the East Coast, or due to the the arrangement of the stars and planets as seen from Terra, was simply “one of those weekends” for me. (Right about now I should be sighing deeply, deciding I simply cannot write about it, get up from the iMac and leave this space blank until tomorrow.) 

OK, I’m not following through with that idea. I probably should because, well, it would simply make good sense to do so. I’m not certain that I can make this essay flow through in a way that will be 1), understandable, 2) talk about what I truly want it to talk about, 3) write it in such a way that I don’t simply lash-out at something and manage to alienate a whole flock of folks in doing so. (Insert the deep sigh here.)

It was one of THOSE weekends. Is that plainer? My partner and I have had a struggle lately and yesterday we spent about three hours away from the boys just hashing things out. I was trying to get together an essay to write today in the afternoon and got a really nice comment from someone I’ve also met in “real life.” Then the biggie, the one I sat and ranted and cried about, after already crying a great deal, for hours last night. Then I got a call, after emailing a pretty broad hint, from a very good friend and we chatted about what I was then crying about. Finally I got a letter that said:

And I also think, that even though you and I both don’t ever say it outright – it would be rude – that there is a hell of a difference in saying “I was/am a ______ ” and I’m trying to make it to that” and “I really, really am a failure at being a _________, hence, I should be the other.”  

That, is a very different deal than being a tranny.  A real tranny loves and worships the other, rather than hating what they are, and that’s a huge difference, and we have many that run on hate, not love and worship.  They don’t really want to be men [/women], and I mean “Men”[/”Women”], they just don’t want to be girls [/boys.]  And they fail to realize that the grownup part of male is ‘man’ not ‘boy’.

But, you are the real deal, you knew what you were and became it.  

Now, you truly are wondering, truly, “what the Hell is she on about!”

I don’t always like his words, my letter-writing friend, but I think I understand them.

Most of all, I think he “gets it.” No, not because he referred to me as “the real deal,” but because he has a specific type of human being in mind when he refers to “tranny.” (I really do wish he’d use something other than “tranny.” But, since I have a real and deep affection for him, I don’t make a fuss when he uses it. From him it’s not pejorative, even if it makes me cringe when I read it. Plus, like I said, I don’t just think he “gets it,” I know he does, even if I’d say it an entirely different way.)

He tries to understand without living it. Does a good job of that. I live it. I’ll probably always talk and know differently than he will when it comes to “transsexuality.” I love him though. He makes the effort.  

I’ve had that “real deal” trope used about me before, way more than once, “you’re the real deal,” or the “real thing.” It’s been used by other people with histories of transsexing and by people who have never had any deeply-defined inner knowing that they walk through this world in bodies that are somehow not being read right by their fellow human beings, ordinary, garden-variety cissexual folks. [I know! the verbiage and the meanings of transsexing words often escape the untutored cissexual person who has never in their lives had to know that their body didn’t match their internal make-up. Just bear with me.]

So, “real deals.”

Transsexuals have the strong feeling, often from childhood onwards, of having been born the wrong sex. The possible psychogenic or biological etiology of transsexuality has been the subject of debate for many years [1,2]. Here we show that the volume of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc), a brain area that is essential for sexual behaviour [3,4], is larger in men than in women. A female-sized BSTc was found in male-to-female transsexuals. The size of the BSTc was not influenced by sex hormones in adulthood and was independent of sexual orientation. Our study is the first to show a female brain structure in genetically male transsexuals and supports the hypothesis that gender identity develops as a result of an interaction between the developing brain and sex hormones [5,6].

That’s the “real deal.” You can read it: Zhou, et al. Nature, 378: 68-70 (1995). Just go here, there’s a reprint. (Sorry, I didn’t feel like signing into my grad school library and copying the original. Besides, you may not have been able to get to the article without paying for it at this point. The reprint is readily available.) The “real deal” is that there is scientific evidence that shows that people with male and female bodies externally have differentiated brains that match the neural make-up of the sex we know we are. 

The same authors have made a few newer studies (0021-972X/00/$03.00/0 Vol. 85, No. 5 The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Copyright © 2000 by The Endocrine Society,  http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/reprint/85/5/2034;  “Male-to-Female Transsexuals Show Sex-Atypical Hypothalamus Activation When Smelling Odorous Steroids”, Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908.   http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/18/8/1900) but that first one was the one that set off the storm. If you wish to find other citations just Google “zhou transsexuality” and you’ll find pages, not all in agreement with the brain-sex science.) 

As my friend, Zoe Brain, says, it’s not as certain as the [First Law of Thermodynamics] (actually she used some other scientifically-accepted theory/law) but it is as certain as the Theory of Gravity in which we cannot define, exactly, the force, but we know it’s there and how it works. So, at the risk, I’m willing to take it, of puncturing the “scientific” credentials of Kenneth Zucker, Paul McHugh, Ray Blanchard, Anne Lawrence, J. Michael Bailey as well as various individuals with a transsexed history: the brain-sex theory is a fact.

Transsexuals have brain-maps that mirror the brain-maps of those cissexual people we identify ourselves with. Pretty simple, really. That some, listed above, psychologists and psychiatrists want to deny that people have brain-sexes based on Rohrschach Tests, neo-Freudian faith and their own prejudices amounts not to a hill of beans.

Guys, you are simply wrong. Get over it, accept it, and let’s work to discover exactly how this works. And let’s forget about your pet thought-experiments and do some real science, not this so-called social-science research with plesy-myth-o-graphs, (penile plethysmograph that cannot be said at all to measure what Kurt Freund, Ray Blanchard and Kenneth Zucker want to imagine it can measure.) There’s no science in it.  

O, and for those of you who are concerned that I am hereby tossing all the cross-dressers, drag-queens, transgender-people, androgynous and genderqueer folk under the bus. Forget about it. I suspect that there are much better scientific explanations for their conditions that may have a lot to do with brain-sex as well. (The lines have yet to be drawn as firmly as they have for transsexuals.) Certainly much more to do with brain sex than the totally socially-prejudiced and prejudicial, nasty, vague and totally demeaning definition for “transvestic fetishism” currently promoted in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders by the esteemed American Psychiatric Association. Time to stop “pathologizing” every behavior we simply feel uncomfortable with in ourselves. 

I’ve spent years working with mentally-ill people and with social misfits. There’s a difference and it’s evident, between mentally-ill folk and those we simply feel uncomfortable with because we don’t agree with what they do. Therapists and psychiatrists are not sworn to protect social “norms” or the insurance companies. We are sworn to “do no harm” and to alleviate pain as much as possible.

Time to associate ourselves with our jobs and our callings rather than playing some political game or trying to bolster our own sense that “everyone is like me.” Nor must we continue to maintain our belief and our preconceived ideological bases in the face of some scientific evidence that our thought-experiments were abjectly wrong. Such things would be one’s own problem; they don’t have to be laid on a host of decent human beings. 

Now, reality. And how does all of this build from what you’ve already read? Lemme see if I can’t get you there. Between four and five years ago my partner prevailed on me to join a local chapter of the Unitarian-Universalist Association. I did, we did, and almost immediately became involved with a local chapter of the UUA Interweave group. The local group was tapped to “plan and carry out” a service about four months after we joined.

Caught up in the “acceptance” and  “liberality” of the congregation I agreed to do a small talk about myself. Sadly, in retrospect, I got up in-front of two services and talked about transsexuality and it’s effect on me. The results at the time were quite positive, People I’d never met embraced me and expressed support.

Over time I’ve seen, rather felt, that support drift. I’ve realized that there never was any understanding. Understanding would imply some knowledge and the ability to make distinctions and to know better than to mistake a transsexual for a cross-dresser. One “dresses up” the other lives their life as the sex they are. Instead, there was the semblance of understanding that never was more than skin-deep for many. They simply “wanted to do the right thing.” Many of them will vote for Barack Obama because “it’s the right thing,” but there will continue to be few if any African-American faces in the congregation that years ago left it’s roots in Trenton for the more exclusively white suburban nature of Hopewell Township. 

It’s not that people are bad, cold-hearted or liars. It’s simply a matter that they cannot “get their minds and hearts” around difference. Why? For the same reason we all have trouble with that. We presume our experience, our prejudices, are the default way to human being. Difference is not something we are comfortable with. In point-of-fact, when we get the idea that there might be some personal danger in remaining in Trenton we move to a nice, white suburb. It’s because we are afraid, not because we don’t want to associate with people of color. 

Thus, people, particularly males, who used to hug me after services when they merely presumed I was a lesbian, now offer to “shake my hand” while they continue to hug other women. Women who probably had no clue as to my history until I shared it with them have insisted that I cannot take part in “women’s groups” because “these are not for males. You know, you were born male.”

Well, no, I don’t know any such thing. I know I was born with a brain and soul that managed to be wired somewhat differently than most of the body I was born into. I know that there is a growing body-of-scientific-evidence that supports exactly what I just wrote. I also know you haven’t bothered to make yourself acquainted with the evidence, or the reality. Would you imagine that a Melanesian and an African-American or a Kenyan were all the same based on skin-color?  

Yesterday our 10-year old went to spend the afternoon at the home of boys whom he likes immensely. When I arrived to pick him up I was invited into the house and the father called out, “Ian, your father is here to pick you up.” OUCH!! That didn’t just hurt, it devastated. The man then asked, “Is it father or mother?”  What did my answer, mother, really matter? What he thought he knew because I had told him years ago was what he was comfortable with. He’s not comfortable with the idea that sex is not an easy discernment whereby knowing what genitalia someone once possessed is enough to label them forever. I mean, look at those very educated, very much acquainted-with-the-field people I named up there. They have the same difficulty. 

It’s always about their comfort. What I think I may know will always trump what you may know intimately. 

The UUA writes this in it’s web-lit about “Welcoming Congregations” (the congregation I attend has a plaque on it’s wall at the back of the sanctuary it received at one time for becoming a welcoming congregation.)

In 1987, a UUA committee was formed to collect information about how welcomed and accepted gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons felt in their UU congregations. Many individuals reported that they felt unaffirmed, unwelcomed, and unsupported in their liberal religious communities. This hurtful exclusion—much of it very subtle and most of it quite unintentional—has made many people feel that they don’t really belong or have a safe space in our congregations. As a result, many either drift away or stay “in the closet”, hiding basic facts about who they are from other members of their congregations.

Plaques are all truly lovely things to have fastened to one’s walls. But, the fact remains that the vast majority, I mean all but one I am aware of, transsexuals and trangender people leave that congregation and go elsewhere to pursue our lives. Possibly because the plaque on the wall doesn’t provide anyone with much support, understanding or in any way actually reflect the acted-out behavior of the parishioners. Instead the plaque is a symbol that people can point toward, if they think of it, and feel good about themselves. 

I will give credit to two women at the congregation especially, although there are others who also “get it.” One is a very mature and basically quite outspoken and blunt person and the other a woman who argued that I shouldn’t be allowed in a “women’s group.” I talked to both of them. The elder woman I dearly love. To be honest, if she thinks of me as male she doesn’t say so, although in the past she did ask about cross-dressing. Instead we now just girl-talk. She’s my friend and in simply coming to love each other and care for one another we have also come to understanding. I think she might just tell you, “Of course, Radha is a woman. What the heck else would you think she is?”

The younger one I approached and eventually we got to a place where I asked her how she might feel if she had been raised by her parents as a male-child when she was female. She actually stopped abruptly and said she’d have to consider that. Then I asked if she was still a Southern Baptist, having been raised in that denomination. Again, she stopped abruptly. There have been no further situations in which she was apparently dismissing me for the way I was raised, afterall, she was raised as a Southern Baptist herself. Perhaps she has seen that the interior might well reflect the outward surface and that “mistakes have been made.”

At any rate, there are reasons why we chose to hide very intimate parts of our lives from the people we worship with. The “liberality” of a congregation is no bar to prejudice, ignorance and the lack of urgency of those we associate with to discover the truth, or some truths about us. Even the religious right nabob, Pat Robertson can educate himself on the basics:    

There are people who are born with various types of hormonal activity in their bodies and they feel more male than female or more female than male.

Perhaps it would not be too much to think that our liberal allies would do at least as much? Or must we all simply go worship at the Wrath of God Bible Church where they will willingly accept us as parishioners as long as they cannot tell where we came from? 

Either way, the pain and hiding remain paramount for the person who is transsexual. They hurt. Well-meaning though other people may be, it seems to me if one is going to put themselves out there as “welcoming,” then just maybe, learning who, what and how one is welcoming to be part of your community might be incumbent upon yourself, not, perhaps, upon your guest. 

So, reality? The reality is that when I can know what to expect then I can deal with that. When I simply believe that people listened and heard I find myself exposed to a great deal of behavior that brings me to tears and anger. Isn’t it time to teach, and isn’t it time to learn rather than both of us assuming we know?

My partner said yesterday, after my tears were dried and my anger had simply changed to disappointment and the thought I would just as well stop even trying to be part of a welcoming congregation, “O, Radha, you know, honey, you made a decision to be either stealth or out to them. There’s a price that has to be paid.”

Yeah, she’s absolutely spot-on. One does make that decision and sometimes I truly anguish about the one I made, even in the writing of this blog and the choice of ways I make to get it read. I wonder about whether or not my being “out” is worth the price I pay for it. The pangs and torments of the heart, those are forever the most difficult. 

But, here it is, another blog winding down to its terminal words and I truly know I am going to push that “publish” button to my right in just a few more lines. I cast my lot some time ago. Too late and too unsatisfactory to change my mind at this point. Heck, maybe I can actually make an easier way for another woman or man to pass this way in future. Here’s the clincher. 

Please, don’t just think you know because you are liberal. Know to learn: because it’s the right thing to do, and because you are liberal and have a good heart.

I’m open for telephone calls and speaking engagements at the church.