Owning It

I am finally regaining enough composure after the Roe vs. Wade devastation to blog again.  In order to remain calm, I keep reminding myself that the Supreme Court, although the supreme law of the land, isn’t like Moses with his tablets. Supreme Court rulings aren’t necessarily set in stone. 

I keep reminding myself it’s not over. We can enact laws that give cis women, trans men, and nonbinary people the rights to rule their own uteri.  Some states have enacted these laws already.  The state I live in, Illinois, has legislated abortion protections and protections for LGBTQ+ people.  And hopefully other states will follow.  Even better, the United States could collectively enact legislation that protects a person’s privacy and protects a person’s ownership of their own body.

 It could happen.

Especially if we do our part to advocate for and enact positive change.  Look at how the Gen Zs are using social media to “disrupt” the patriarchy. Currently, Gen Z activist Olivia Julianna is playing mind games with Representative Matt Gaetz and making a lot of money for pro-abortion services from the game. Let’s follow her example and get creative!

The focus of this blog is primarily one of gender and identity because my current relationship dictates that I can no longer be a dilettante when it comes to gender identity and sexuality.  I can no longer rest on my hand-me-down 2^nd-wave feminism. I’m tired (and a little lazy) and would like to rest, but I can’t.  It’s imperative I confront the deeper layers of what it means to live openly and proudly in a society designed to erase us. 

I can no longer use dismissiveness as way to protect myself.  My days of “Yeah, yeah, I’m bisexual, but you don’t understand, and you don’t care, so it doesn’t matter, so let’s move on” are over.  I can no longer squirm quietly when my cis women friends expect me to want babies (even though this no longer happens because I’m post-menopausal, THANK THE GODDESSES!). I can no longer hide behind a tomboy façade in order to disguise my gender queerness (Truth be told, I’m not a tomboy. I’ve never played sports or been that physically tough or risk-taking rough and tumble.  I’m a freakin’ book-worm documentary-nerd who prefers good conversation to athleticism).  What I’m saying is because of my relationship with Natalie, I can no longer hide in the shallow end. 

I can’t afford to not act.  I can’t afford to hide.  I have to own who I am and who she is, and I have to be bold about it.  Not being louder and bolder about abortion rights is what got us into the mess we’re in now with Roe, so…

Last night, as I was hurriedly and unsuccessfully trying to open a package of cheese before the taco meat got cold, I said to Natalie, “’This is the stuff of my nightmares, trying to accomplish something, and needing to do it in a hurry, and not being able to. The frustration nightmare.  Do you ever have those?”

She responded quicker than usual, “No.  I don’t dream about not being able to do things.  Do you ever dream of alien troll monsters chasing you?”

“No,” I said, then thought, her current nightmares resemble my old nightmares where men, not monsters, used to chase me, often through fields of broken glass.  I know where those types of dreams come from.

Natalie must be terrified, I think. Trans people, especially trans women, are being terrorized by politicians and easily fired-up bigots. The anti-trans rhetoric is coming in from all sides, too (as it always has).

Dave Chapelle thinks LGBTQ+ issues are the leisure of white people, because Black Americans have been abused and silenced since the beginning of our country.  But he’s neglecting to remember that the gays and lesbians and bi-folk and transgender folk, and all of us queers have been in hiding, forced to hide. He’s avoiding the thought that it is Black trans people who suffer the most.  He doesn’t seem to understand that the LGBTQ+ folk and BIPOC folk are kin in the battle to exist safely in shared spaces.

J.K. Rowling thinks that the word “woman” is being stolen from the “real women” by the trans folk and nonbinary folk who want a seat at the table.  She doesn’t seem to understand, or simply chooses not to acknowledge that homophobia and transphobia are one and the same as sexism, that we all walk hand-in-hand in that march toward equality, equity, inclusion – or at least, we should be.  Why won’t she see that it’s okay to acknowledge not all people with uteri are women, and it’s better to link arms than throw punches.  Rowling aligns herself with bigots so she can keep the fucking word “woman” to her cis-self and her cis-ters. 

The anti-trans bullshit is coming at us from all sides and it’s no wonder Natalie dreams of being chased by monsters.  I’ve experienced my share of violence, put downs, torments because of my gender or my queerness and I know the nightmares come from tamping down real fear.

It sucks living in a perpetual landscape of nobody-ness. I think this is why I love Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man so much – his novel captures and narrates this state of nobody-ness, this state of being afraid simply for being alive.  While I can never truly know what it is like to be a minority, my very gender (or lack of) and sexuality help me understand what it is like to be dismissed and/or erased by the powers-that-be.  The same is true for my understanding of Natalie’s experience.  I am not transgender and not in danger of being legislated out of shared spaces, but I do know what it is like to be legislated into nobody-ness.

Being with Natalie forces me to acknowledge my own bigotries and blind spots and weaknesses.  I am doing my best to confront and change my own cowardice.  I am learning to own my choices, my values, and to show up for them even in the most awkward situations.

This spring, my colleagues at my old campus at my college threw a going away/happy retirement happy hour for me and our retirees.  Because of the pandemic, we waited until it was safe to gather. Much of the details of our personal lives had escaped one another’s notice.  Many of my former colleagues were unaware of Natalie’s transition.  When they asked about {deadname}, I found myself explaining again and again how Natalie was Natalie and no longer the person they once knew, and after five or six times of explaining this, I began to grow weary and defensive and angry that I had to explain and defend my wife’s existence at all.

When I transferred to a new campus, I waited until I gained the trust of my colleagues and felt I could trust them, before I disclosed I am married to a trans woman. I have to weigh each interaction with a stranger, with my dentist, veterinarian, hairdresser, grocer, the contractors I hire to help us with our property.  I have to make a decision: Are they safe?  Can we trust them to know the real us?  Coming out of the closet is only the first step of shedding nobody-ness.

I have been here before but in different ways. I have had long-term serious relationships with people of other colors, from other countries, people of the same gender.  I have broken taboos about sex and what it means to be a woman.  I have roared loudly and often and challenged un-useful belief systems. But, the trans minority may just be the most misunderstood and detested of the minorities and I am not as oblivious as I once was to the danger lurking just outside our safe bubble of support. Thank the universe for all the supportive people in our lives who make up our bubble!

But, because of the stranger danger, I miss the privilege of presenting as a straight white cis-gendered couple.  I try not to linger too long in nostalgia because it’s as much of a myth as the idea that America was once great.  Great for who? I wonder.

When I look at Natalie, I see her even though I don’t understand her, and I don’t need to. I’ve tried. This is what I understand. Some people are born with the mind and the consciousness of the gender opposite their sex. This disconnect was once considered a mental illness, but medical scientists are discovering that gender dysphoria may be caused by hormones in the womb. The chromosomes tell the body to develop as one sex, while the hormones tell the mind it is a different sex. I’m not a scientist, so my explanation is crude, but I know it happens.  Has always happened.  Will continue to happen.  I know when I look in Natalie’s eyes, I see a woman. And, I love seeing Natalie as herself. 

In my heart and soul, I know Natalie’s identity is real because I know my own sense of self doesn’t conform. For instance, I can’t be hyper-feminine no matter how hard I try.  When I wear frilly clothes, I feel like I’m cross dressing.  I know I’m prettier with long hair, but I prefer short hair.  I know men like to take the lead in the bedroom and the boardroom, but I can’t submit to that idea.  I know that my personality and the way I carry myself isn’t my choice but is my essential being.  So, I know that Natalie is a woman and can’t help herself and isn’t “choosing” to be a woman just as she can’t successfully force herself to be a man.  She tried to be the man her family and friends expected her to be, and it almost killed her.

Natalie inspires me to see people for who they are in all their glory and not for nobodies the powers-that-be want them to be. 

I’m glad she’s owning who she is, and no amount of bad Supreme Court decisions or wrong-headed legislation is going to force her to be any different now that she is who she is.  And, while I may not legally own my body, I know my body belongs to me.  I own me.  I am my me. Natalie is her she.  And all of us could be our we if only we would put down our defenses and fears and simply see each other.