The man who was misgendering Tallie at work has finally been fired.  This good news comes a little too late for Tallie. 

One of her work friends has been keeping Tallie apprised of the goings-on with the jerk who called Tallie “sir” and “he” and made pointed comments when she walked into the same room.  Her former co-workers kept Tallie in the loop about the jerk who had said to co-workers, “That dude [Tallie] is a man.  I don’t care what he says.” 

Before Tallie quit her job, she had complained to her supervisor that the jerk was misgendering her on purpose. The supervisor asked Tallie to file a formal complaint with Human Resources (HR). Tallie was uncomfortable doing so, but did it anyway, and that decision turned out to be a big mistake.

The HR person assigned to Tallie’s case showed her own transphobia right away.  After taking a report over the phone, the HR person sent Tallie a formal report and asked Tallie to sign it.  Tallie was horrified, refused to sign it, and sent it to me.  Here is the first sentence of the HR report with the name of the jerk redacted: “From the first time he met K-. K- referred to him as man or dude, ‘Like thank you Man’[.]”  This, too, came from the report: “This has now become an issue because K- is intentionally misgendering him.” WTF?

As a writing teacher, I should have been shocked that a professional HR report from a large non-profit hospital system was full of grammatical errors. But I missed the dependent clause being handled as an independent clause: “From the first time he met K-.”  Yep, that was the “sentence.” I didn’t notice this on my first read because of the glaring misgendering in the report itself!  “From the first time he…”  and “K- referred to him…”  and “K- is intentionally misgendering him.”  He. Him.

Appalling.  Unacceptable.  And, in Illinois, illegal.  According to Illinois.gov “On Friday, August 13, 2021, the Second District Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed the expansive protections of the Illinois Human Rights Act (Act) for transgender individuals.” This expansion of human rights was a result of a court case against Hobby Lobby.  Illinois.gov states, “The decision recognized that a person’s gender identity is a valid basis for determining a person’s sex under the law.”  Illinois Governor JB Pritzker stated, “Ours is a welcoming and inclusive state, and the Illinois Department of Human Rights will go toe to toe with any employer or business that tries to treat individuals differently because of their identity.”

Before Tallie would sign anything, she asked for a correction, and spoke to a different HR person who assured her they would assign someone else to her case.  They also told her they were consulting with their lawyers. This huge non-profit medical institution prides itself on being LGBTQ+ friendly, and they often sponsor Pride events, including one in our small Illinois town.

HR did NOT reassign the case to a new person and did not do anything additional to investigate the complaint. Why? The hospital where Tallie once worked is based in Missouri, although Tallie worked at a branch in Illinois.  Missouri has been doubling down on anti-trans rhetoric, has pressured the trans center in St. Louis to stop providing gender-affirming care to youth, and this summer Missouri’s governor signed a bill that bans trans care for all youth in the state.  (For clarification, and for the 15^th million-time, gender-affirming care for children does NOT include surgeries.) 

The Human Resources Department at Tallie’s workplace and their lawyers decided the HR employee’s misgendering of Tallie was no big deal.  An accident. A simple “oops!” and then to rub salt in the wound of indignity, the “investigation” showed that K- did nothing wrong. 

HR claimed it was “a he said/she said” situation.  None of Tallie’s co-workers were interviewed.  None of her witnesses questioned. They told Tallie her eyewitnesses’ testimony would be hearsay.  HR also told her they couldn’t consider K-‘s history of bullying and other complaints against him because those complaints didn’t pertain to her situation. The “he said/she said” excuse smacked of unchecked sexual harassment from back in the day, for sure, and wreaked of full-on transphobia. Inclusive and supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community, my ass. 

I am exhausted by corporate whitewashing, greenwashing, and gaslighting, but that is a rant for another day.

I told Tallie that if she felt unsafe at work, she should quit.  She was determined to tough it out and kept reporting to work.  She suffered panic attack after panic attack.  She still saw K- in the hallways and she knew her employer had no intention of protecting her.

After I assured her I preferred a healthy wife to an anxious, panicky, unhappy, and, let’s face it, bullied wife, she quit.  She quit without a two-week notice because it was unsafe to be there.  She knew deep down that if something happened to her because she was trans, her employer and the institution’s HR did not care.

K- kept his job and suffered no consequences for intentionally misgendering and bullying Tallie.  As a matter of fact, during “the investigation” that wasn’t an investigation, K- was put on leave, while Tallie was showing up to work frazzled, anxious, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Once the non-investigation was closed, K- received back pay.  And, of course, after Tallie quit, K- continued to bully people at work.

But transphobes be transphobing, and bullies be getting by with bullying (just look at all the anti-trans bills being passed, all the anti-diversity outrage being flung at and by school boards, just look at the previous U.S. president –it seems there’s a big percentage of Americans who love a good bully).

Recently, two of Tallie’s former co-workers gave their boss an ultimatum: Fire K- or they would quit.  HR was again brought in to investigate, and this time, HR actually investigated and found – da dum! – K- was behaving inappropriately at work, was insubordinate, and they fired him.

Which brings us to the present and explains why we haven’t yet filed a complaint with Illinois (and we have that sweet, sweet hard evidence).  We were waiting to see what would happen with K-, if anything, because sooner or later bullies get called out (again, see our previous U.S. president).

After K- was finally fired, Tallie’s former co-workers contacted her and asked her to consider returning to work there.  I was against the idea, but Tallie is a grown woman and I can’t stop her from doing what she wants to do. She liked her old job and she likes most of her old co-workers. She said to me when explaining why she was considering returning even after all of that, “It was work I was proud of!”

What was Tallie’s job at the hospital? She was a housekeeper, one of the most underappreciated jobs a person could have. Yet there was my kind, loving, hard-working Tallie proud of her contribution to our community, proud of her work at the hospital.

Then K- came along and spouted his hate at her, and a transphobe in HR came along and failed to do her job, and the Missouri attorney came along and told HR they were in the clear, and Tallie felt unsafe, so she quit.

Tallie decided she wants to return to the hospital, so her co-worker checked with the housekeeping supervisor about bringing Tallie back, and guess what?

They can’t hire her back because she quit without notice.

Yes, we’re filing a complaint with the state of Illinois.  Yes, we’re furious. 

The “he said/she said” excuse smacked of unchecked sexual harassment from back in the day, for sure, and wreaked of full-on transphobia.

Our neighbor suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and his wife is dedicated to his care. She has him at home still, which means his care is her full-time job.  She told me today, when I saw her at the mailboxes, it is their 30^th anniversary.  “I couldn’t take him to a restaurant,” she said, pointing to her husband in the car, “but we can still celebrate! We have Applebee’s take out.”  I wished her a happy anniversary and we spoke briefly, checking in.  How are you? How are you? Holding up. Doing my best.

We moved into the neighborhood five years ago and met the husband while he still had some light left in him.  He was a funny person.  He probably was a real cut-up before the disease took hold.  He is also a warm person, even to this day.  Once, before my wife came out as trans, we were talking to this couple and the husband whispered to my wife, “You are pretty.”  He somehow saw through her façade and saw her! Now he often seems far away, in a world we couldn’t recognize.

I admire my neighbor’s dedication to her husband.

It isn’t easy shifting your entire life and lifestyle on a dime because your beloved changes.

Three years ago, my own wife, who was my (assigned male at birth) husband at the time, informed me she was planning to become more herself by transitioning.  She was terrified to tell me she was transgender. I had my suspicions, so it wasn’t a total shock, and although I was and am accepting, I had (still have) a lot to learn about the process of transitioning, what it means to the person and to their family, what language to use, how to navigate a world not designed for and often not welcoming to transgender people.

How to navigate a world not designed for …

people with disabilities 

people suffering from life-altering diseases

people who don’t fit into, can never force themselves to fit into, society as it is.

I’ve had to grow a lot since Tallie came out.  I’ve had to face my own secrets and accept parts of me that I’ve kept hidden or denied.  I’ve also had to learn to be brave and protective.  I’ve learned a great deal from my friends and family and neighbors and co-workers about what real acceptance looks like.  I imagine my neighbor, whose husband has Alzheimer’s, and I both feel lonely. 

It’s difficult to explain how it feels to live a life in constant dread of the next shoe dropping.  What new hellish legislation will be passed in which hellscape states?  Where is it safe to travel?  How long will it be safe here?  Is it really safe for my wife to use the public restroom?  Is it really safe for my wife?  Is it safe?

Who do I talk to about this: 

What should I have done when I noticed my wife was misgendered on the medical report of her recent colonoscopy? 

How should I have responded? 

Should I have played hero and called attention to the paperwork while we were still at the hospital?  Or should I have allowed my wife to be her own advocate, which is what I told myself I was doing when I did nothing.

On the way home from the hospital, I said nothing.  My wife was still groggy from the colonoscopy and I must admit I was amused by her grogginess.  But, once she sobered up, she picked up the paperwork and discovered the misgendering on her own.  I wondered what would happen next.

Nothing.  We have done nothing. We remain silent even to each other.  I’m even uncomfortable writing this, and I feel compelled to send this draft to my wife before posting it on my blog.  Is it wise to speak/write the pain back into existence? It’s been two months now. I have no idea where the paperwork walked off to. 

I can’t forget my wife’s face when she read the report and saw the misgendering in print. The light in her eyes dimmed. She looked confused. Then hurt.  It is unnecessary pain carelessly and cruelly induced by people purported to be caring for her.

Here is where cisgender people, who aren’t in any way intimate with a trans person, may say, “But what’s the big deal?”

Okay, let’s start with context.

My wife works at the same hospital where she had her colonoscopy. They know her.

My wife’s official paperwork has been legally changed for two plus years now.  Her driver’s license, her medical records, her social security card, her birth certificate, all of it!

And if the paperwork name and gender markers changes aren’t enough, my wife has had an orchidectomy .  She’s in transition, which is obvious if you’re down in that area, which they were! 

My wife hasn’t had a complete genital change yet, because it requires getting on a waiting list, it requires all sorts of cost-prohibitive preparation, it’s a costly surgery that requires a lot of time off work, and none of it is paid for by her insurance or my insurance, and my wife is a housekeeper for a living, so you can surmise she doesn’t have expendable income.

Instead of treating my wife, their vulnerable patient, with dignity, the bureaucrat? the doctor? the attending nurse? described my wife as male instead of writing transgender woman.  Or woman.

Stop and consider: If your identity, your sense of self was ignored, dismissed, casually tossed aside, by people you trusted to take care of you, by the very people who saw you at your most vulnerable, how would you feel?

Whoever made the decision to ignore the name, the legal paperwork, the partial surgery, the preferences, shouldn’t be in healthcare. Although, to be fair, the medical community is notorious for forcing intersex babies into the binary before these babies have had a chance to form their own identities. 

Who do I talk to about these moments?  My self-doubt, my second-guessing, my questions for which I have no one to ask?

The questions remain: What should I have done? Did my silence at the hospital make me complicit? Why didn’t I put up a fight? Will I be better able to protect my wife in the future? How can I learn to be as fierce as my neighbor? How do we navigate a world not designed for us? 

A few years back, pre-pandemic, I asked my students to read an Elie Wiesel excerpt about dignity and the horrors of Nazi Germany.  I then asked the students to discuss the importance of dignity, what it means, who deserves it, and why Wiesel, considering his experience in WWII, thought the concept is important enough to write about. Students gave many answers.

Not one student gave the answer I was desperately seeking. 

The answer I wanted to hear: We all deserve dignity simply for being alive.

My neighbor with Alzheimer’s deserves dignity, and his lovely wife is ensuring he gets it.  She shares Applebee’s with him to celebrate their wedding anniversary, although he may not even remember he is married. She treats him with love.  She sees him even as his sense of self disappears into the ether.

My lovely wife deserves dignity. Her paperwork should reflect who she is, not who the gastroenterologist decided she is. She is worthy of respect.  We all are.

Our worth shouldn’t be calculated by our pocketbooks, our intelligence, our beauty, the color of our skin, our gender identity, our genitals, or our ability to function in a world not designed for us. We are worthy simply for being alive, for being a part of the world in which we are all interconnected. 

When I was a kid I used to sneak books from my brother’s personal “library,” which consisted of his college books stacked in the top of his closet. Many of those books changed the trajectory of my life because of their revolutionary ideas. One writer hidden in my brother’s library who had a tremendous impact on my worldview was queer writer and philosopher James Baldwin.

Baldwin’s queerness, philosophy, and politics inform his fiction and stealthily reading his work literally under covers in my childhood bedroom opened my mind in seismic blasts. Since I was sneaking the books, I had no one to talk to about what I was reading, so instead I quietly mulled over what I was learning about racism, sexuality, art, the brutality that permeates our country, my place in this country’s fabric, etc.

Baldwin has been one of my most impactful teachers. He taught me to accept myself as a bisexual human being, to reject white supremacy, to question white male authority, to create my own rules suitable to who I am, and to not give in to hate.

Baldwin was a visionary and he was courageous. He wrote about interracial and homosexual/bisexual relationships in a time when interracial marriage was mostly illegal in the U.S. and homosexuality was considered a mental illness (if you haven’t read it, check out the novel Giovanni’s Room).

In his fiction, Baldwin puts white supremacy under a microscope and asks the unspoken questions about what causes men to become sadistic in their quest for power (if you have the stomach for it, read Baldwin’s short story “Going to Meet the Man” — Trigger warning: rape, lynchings, sexual sadism, unchecked racism). In one of his most taught stories, “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin explores the transcendence and pain of making art, how art can capture the historical essence of a people, and how rationalism can smother the very process of making art, and more! In one brilliant story!

Later in life, I learned Baldwin had dared to debate white intellectual darling William F. Buckley about race in America. And he, a Black gay man who was mostly an expat because the U.S. rejected his genius, won the debate! As it should be.

I could go on and on and on about Baldwin’s work and his impact on me, but this a blog post, not a thesis, so I will end by summarizing: Baldwin’s work liberated me.

Happy Pride Month!

Pictured: Max standing in front of a painting of James Baldwin, which hangs in her living room. Painting by Mila Ray Duffy.

We’re ordinary people. We work, pay bills, discuss what to make for dinner, watch our stories on streaming, fret over minutiae, are servants to our pets. There is nothing glamorous or exciting or dangerous about our lives. Still, we’re being targeted as “the enemy,” a threat to family values. Our gender nonconformity has been transmuted from a fact of us to an illness, a sickness,  a disease intent on infecting “the children.” Because transgender folk are the smallest minority,  we are the easiest to attack. 

In conservative states across the country, we are being criminalized. The conservative patriarchy prefers restrictions on bodies to restrictions on guns, or on environmental pollution,  or on anything that restricts profit or that taxes the wealthy.  It’s a “look, squirrel” distraction laid out by authoritarians and greedy corporatists, who don’t care if innocent ordinary people are harmed in the making of their wealth. Elon Musk seems to want to destroy his trans daughter’s life.  He seems to be taking pleasure in his awfulness. 

And somehow, these money hoarders have convinced Johnny Doe-eyed and Julie Juke-joint that the LGBTQIA+ community’s need to express their authentic selves threatens the social fabric.  Now, ordinary people on the right are beating up beer cans and screaming about rainbows in Target as if the sky will fall if the “alphabet mafia” isn’t reined in and shoved back into closets.  

Because of the hysteria whipped up against transgender folks,  Natalie and I have to be careful where we shop, eat, and travel. We don’t have the luxury of freedom white cisgender people do. According to the people who want to hurt us we’re monsters, we’re groomers, we’re deviants. These angry people will feel justified when they bash skulls to “protect the children.”

Our mundane lives, our averageness, the fact we pay taxes, and are law-abiding citizens (Tallie was recently disappointed because she wasn’t selected for jury duty) won’t protect us against fear mongering and righteous (not righteous) rage.  

Friends sometimes ask me how we’re doing. We’d be doing better if fueling hate wasn’t so easy.  We’d be doing better if people would stop buying into the bullshit.  We’d be doing better if people realized just how ordinary we really are. 

I remember the first time I saw my childhood girlfriend put on men’s underwear.  I don’t remember the exact time.  I don’t remember if we were in high school, or if *Zee was already in college, but I remember the feeling I had when she deliberately pulled men’s underwear out of her dresser drawer, held them up to show me, and then put them on with all the pride of a bride putting on her bridal gown.  Zee pranced around the bedroom while I lay on the bed admiring her. Before that moment it hadn’t occurred to me that women could wear men’s underwear.  

The underwear my mother bought me was ugly and ill-fitting, and the lingerie I saw in Frederick’s of Hollywood stores (we didn’t have Victoria’s Secret stores in the Midwest yet) did not appeal to me.  I hated underwear.  I hated bras.  I hated makeup.  I hated frills.  I hated dresses.  I hated everything my mother and my sisters and my girlfriends and my teachers and the television and the magazines told me I should desire. 

Every Easter, when I was a child, my mother dressed me in itchy dresses with impractical shiny black shoes whose soles had no tread and then expected me to compete with boys on Easter egg hunts.  I hated Easter and still hate Easter to this day because of those dresses and those shoes. I was traumatized by the forced girliness. I felt awkward and vulnerable and misunderstood and alone when wearing those ridiculous clothes.

In first grade, my elementary school, Chapel Elementary in Raytown, Missouri, dropped the dress code requirement that girls wear dresses to school.  I remember hearing the principal’s announcement over the intercom “Girls may now wear pants to school” and jumping out of my desk chair and dancing a happy dance and the kids laughing at me and the teacher scolding me and none of that ruining the joy I felt knowing I would no longer be forced to be girly at school.  I could play on the jungle gym without worrying my “panties” would show when I hung upside down.  I could avoid the perversions of the second-grade teacher who lifted girls’ skirts when standing in line on the playground.  I could run and roughhouse and I would be safe!  

But until I saw Zee put on those men’s underwear, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could be free to be me underneath my clothes, too! 

We didn’t have access to the worldwide web like we do today, so I couldn’t jump online and run a search for men’s underwear, and although I could buy men’s underwear at a department store, I wasn’t yet brave enough to try.  When I was a bit older, in my 20s, I asked my first spouse to buy me some men’s underwear. He reluctantly did so, but they didn’t fit right, so I gave up. I went years wearing women’s underwear, compromising by wearing “granny panties” because they were the most comfortable, and seething inside because the world in which I lived insisted I conform to a standard and way of being that rubbed me wrong and made me feel like I didn’t belong.

I learned to mask my gender queerness enough to get by in school, the workplace, and among my friends, but the masking came with self-harm.  I drank too much.  Did too many drugs.  Was promiscuous.  And although I was openly bisexual, I only slept with women when I was half out of my mind on booze and drugs because I couldn’t face my bisexuality sober.   Anger was always seething beneath the surface.

I was angry at the shoe store salesman who tried to chase me out of the men’s section when he caught me trying on wingtips.

I was angry at my boss at my first professional job for asking me to dress more feminine.

I was angry at my girlfriends who tried to make me “pretty” with make-up.

I was angry at the barber who chased me out of his barbershop when I asked for a man’s haircut. I’m still angry at women stylists who won’t give me a fucking man’s haircut!

I was angry at fashion designers for designing clothes only for small and feminine women, at professional sports for being segregated by gender, at the run-of-the-mill person on the street who dared to call me “girl” or “lady.” 

My anger has been subsiding as our understanding of gender grows, as the language changes. My anger has been subsiding now that I found a romantic partner who understands me because she’s had similar experiences as a transgender woman. My anger has been subsiding now that I can go into Target and buy a packet of boy cut underwear that fits my body and size and it’s no big deal.

Unfortunately, my anger still crackles and my heart is breaking (the reason I haven’t been attending to my blog is because of health issues — I’m wearing a heart monitor in this moment, because my heart may literally be breaking). My heart is breaking as politicians and white supremacists and Christian nationalists and ignorant people try to push us gender non-conforming and trans folx back into the closets. My heart breaks and my anger reemerges as I see families flee Texas ( and maybe now Missouri) to save themselves and their gender queer and trans children. My anger turns from a crackle to a sun-sized explosion when Florida enacts “Don’t Say Gay” and my heart goes from breaking to shattering as conservative states enact new legislation against trans care, as school boards infected by Moms for Liberty ban books about inclusivity and social justice.

For a brief moment in time, I was at peace thinking that at our kids wouldn’t have to suffer the same indignities my spouse and I and multitudes of us have suffered under the enforced gender binary. For a brief moment of time, I could take solace in small things such as underwear that fits all of me.

*name changed for privacy

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.

The Supreme Court took away a person’s personhood today by taking away federal protections, promises, progress, by telling us we don’t own our bodies once another body begins, even in half-hearted stages, zygotes got more rights than a full-on fully-formed human, and here we are being told our rape, our molestation, our mistake, our going-to-miscarry-nonformed-nonbaby, who is going to take us to the grave with it, that non-baby matters more than I matter, because they’ve been on a crusade to take it all away, to take back the protections, promises, progress we’ve been fighting for these many years, and maybe soon, the gays and lesbians can’t be married everywhere again, and folks can’t take pills to stop from breeding, and maybe white men will have the upper hand again and women and sissies and cross dressers will stop invading the white-collar workplaces, and stop stop needing them to live, and now I sit here gobsmacked that there’s a possibility my marriage will be anulled by the state of Misery, because they insist a woman should marry a man, not a trans man, not a trans woman, not a woman, because we all have to breed; they need us to breed, cuz they say this is a christian nation, but I have no idea what Christ has to do with any of this taking away of autonomy, because I can tell you right now Jesus keeps shattering the temples with his rage; Jesus had faith in us for a minute, but he keeps losing the faith, because every time we come so fucking far, we fuck it up, just like how we fucked up our chance at Reconstruction, just like how we just had to have Jim Crow, just like how we love to slam people in the slammer to make up for not having slavery, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, cuz look at the planet and look how we just love to frackin’ frack for fucks sake cuz we can’t have nice things, just like right now with Roe we’re turning back time again and Jesus is turning in his grave (again) knowing that lives are being devalued and endangered in his name (again).

Natalie recently had the first in a series of gender reassignment surgeries. Back in the day we called it “the sex change,” but now I know better.  There isn’t just one sex change surgery and — BAM! –transition done.  I wish.

I’m sure multitudes of trans people wished so, too. But unfortunately, the transition is a long, slow series of surgeries and pills and shots and bureaucratic paperwork and roadblocks, and I can say with authority, transitioning isn’t easy. 

From this particular surgery, Natalie and I learned a hilarious and unimportant (or is it important?) detail. Balls aren’t just for hanging from the back of pick-up trucks and making sperm! Testicles actually keep one’s thighs from chafing. 

Without testicles Natalie is experiencing the problem of the rubbing, sweating, chafing thighs!   

Natalie’s complaints about her chafing thighs are muffled by her relief the surgery is covered by insurance. She’s worried the Supreme Court is going to take away newly gained trans protections and she’s hoping to do as much as she can toward her transition while she can.

She is worried because right now the Supreme Court is currently preparing to decimate a woman’s right to choose.  If women’s rights can be canceled overnight, LGBTQ+ rights are not far behind (and, when I think about it for longer than a minute, I see how LGBTQ+ rights are tightly entwined with women’s rights.)

The fundamentalists, far-right conservatives, and originalists are fetishists when it comes to the body.  They love to bind everyone in chastity belts because they consider bodily freedom dangerous.  I think they’re afraid of their own bodies, so they insist on controlling everyone else. I’m pretty sure they need everyone to fall in line with predetermined gender roles because they’re worried their world will collapse without restraints. 

And now,  because of a small minority of tightly wound fearful people, if you find yourself accidentally, or dangerously, or forcefully made pregnant, you will have to carry that zygote until it’s a baby, and then, baby oh baby, you’re on your own.  Essentially, once the sperm meets your egg, your autonomy is also screwed.

Because the GOP and their fetishists allies can no longer openly hate on gays and lesbians, they have realigned their laser focus on transgender people. They are so intent on stoking hate and on oppressing transgender people, I am afraid of what strangers will do to Natalie.  This fear turned into pre-operation worry about Natalie’s surgery.  I played it cool at work and going about my day, and lied to everyone about how I felt about the surgery, but the truth is I was terrified the medical professionals wouldn’t treat Natalie with dignity.  I’ve seen the videos of surgeons making fun of patients on the operating table. Two years ago I discovered my pulmonologist was a right-winger! You never know who to trust. You never know what someone really thinks of you. And god forbid someone on the medical team is a transphobe! Or worse. A T.E.R.F.

T.E.R.F.s are trans exclusionary radical feminists (you know, the folks whose team Dave Chappelle so proudly announced he’s a part of).  They don’t believe trans women are women. This makes me ask: What is a woman? But that’s a complicated contemplation for another time. Before Natalie came out, I knew T.E.R.F.s existed.  I was vaguely aware of a stink they made years ago when The Vagina Monologues decided to include trans women.  And, oh my gawd, my stepdaughter has more than schooled me on the bullshit Team T.E.R.F. J.K. Rowling writes on Twitter.  I didn’t pay much attention. T.E.R.F.s seemed ridiculous, and frankly inconsequential to me, until they weren’t.  Now I know the T.E.R.F.s are not inconsequential, at all.  They’re dangerous. And, wittingly or not, they are fast becoming tools for the fetishist fundies.

These “radical” feminists may be my sisters, but we do not share worldviews.  I prefer a more intersectional feminism.  I prefer a more tolerant, expansive, progressive worldview based on history and science and kindness. 

Plus, I believe firmly and without hesitation that each individual’s body belongs to them and only them.  My body belongs to me.  If your body doesn’t sync with your soul, and we have the medical know-how to fix the problem, then go for it!  Life is too short to be miserable.   Your body belongs to you!

It wasn’t until we were at the hospital waiting for the surgery to begin that I found out I used to work with the surgeon’s aunt-in-law!  The surgeon and I had a connection!  That made Natalie and me real in the surgeon’s eyes (or so I imagined)!  The St. Louis 6 (known as the six degrees of Kevin Bacon in the wider world) came to my emotional rescue once again!  (I won’t digress into a litany of times the St. Louis 6 has worked to my advantage, but it has, believe me.  If you’re a St. Louisan, you know what I’m talking about.)

The hospital staff were all kind and helpful and eventually, after hours at the hospital, I finally relaxed. 

While I was imploding from anxiety pre-surgery, Natalie was giddy with anticipation.  She was so giddy, she scripted a joke to tell post-surgery.  She repeated the joke multiple times pre-surgery to ensure she’d be able to tell it post-surgery while still groggy from anesthesia.  And she pulled it off!  Upon waking up, Natalie asked the attending nurse, “How did the colonoscopy go?”

Her humor is one of the many reasons I love her.  She’s a keeper, and I’m glad I have chosen to stay with her through her transition and beyond.  I’m learning quite a bit in the process.  I’m learning there are more loving people than mean-spirited people.  I’m learning about gender and my own relationship to it.  I’m learning about love and how to love.  And, I’m learning why people with balls don’t complain about chafing thighs like people without balls do.

This post has little to do with gender and everything to do with sisterhood. 

In less than two years I’ve lost four important women in my life, two blood sisters and two chosen sisters, and the grief is almost unbearable.  I’m swallowed up by the hole that these women left behind, and I go about my day in an almost zombie-like resignation.  My world shrinks as I gain weight because I am eating my feelings (or is it my newly diagnosed hypothyroid? The same hypothyroid disease my two dead sisters contended with while alive? The same hypothyroid problem two of my nieces contend with now?).   

First, I lost my sister Nancy to Covid-19.  No. First, I lost my sister Nancy to dementia, and then to Covid-19.  Wait. No. First, I lost my sister Nancy to Fox News and then to dementia and then to Covid-19.  I lost my sister Nancy, the woman who bragged about raising me, who taught me how to sing, who showed me the joy of flirtation, and the thrill of drama.  I lost my sister Nancy, with whom I had little in common with, except DNA, and a sense of humor, and a sense of wonder, and a belief in ghosts and hauntings.

The day after Nancy died, my goddaughter called to tell me it was time.  Her mother had been fighting pancreatic cancer but was losing.  My goddaughter called to tell me to come say goodbye, now, immediately, don’t wait, and my lovely trans-wife and I rushed an hour away and to the side of my friend, who was eaten from the inside out from cancer.  My friend, Michelle, was a living corpse, her face sunken like the photos we see of people in World War II concentration camps.  Pancreatic cancer is a horrible thing, a nightmare, and it ate up my lovely, gorgeous, vivacious friend Michelle.  She died 45 minutes after Natalie and I left her house.  I felt guilty for not having spent more time with her, for not having told her repeatedly how much I loved her.  I felt guilty for assuming too much.  For thinking her stomach pains were stress, and her fear that something was wrong was perimenopause.  I felt guilty, but relieved I was able to tell her I loved her, that I had always loved her, that I never stopped loving her, and that I promised to love her daughter just as loyally and as long and longer.

Time passed and other people died, too.  Lots and lots of people died from Covid-19.  Every night the news reported the losses.  So much death.  So many families grieving.

My friend, Walter, from high school who lived in St. Louis, too, died. He had once expressed to me the thought that I often thought but never said out loud, “We survived Raytown, Max,” he had said. “We got out of there!”  Walter had a perpetual smile and positivity about him, and it is this positivity that probably helped him survive. He survived Raytown but no amount of goodwill and good nature can survive cancer. 

Natalie’s Aunt Sandy survived cancer longer than anyone expected, but she, too, died during this time.  We were able to attend her graveside funeral, because Covid-19 is less scary when we’re all outside.  It was windy and cold and I was shaking from loss and from the wind. Aunt Sandy was a teacher, a bird lover, a friend to hundreds of hummingbirds who visited her feeders.  Who feeds her hummingbirds now? Does her husband, Don, remember to?

My childhood friend, Tammy, lost her mother to dementia.  I talked to Tammy quite a bit while her mom was sick, while Tammy took care of her mom, while Tammy put her own life on hold to take care of her mom.  After her mom passed, I sent Tammy chocolates and asked her to come visit. “I’ll pay for your train ticket,” I said.  “Leave Raytown for awhile.  Come see me!” I pleaded. And she promised she would, but I wondered.  Her grief was wider than the miles between us.  She didn’t have a memorial for her mother, because she couldn’t afford it, and she was afraid no one would come.

Nancy’s memorial service was through Zoom.  There were no heartfelt hugs, no shared tissues, no pushing back a family member’s hair wet with tears.  No softness.  Just tiny boxes filled with grieving faces blinking on the computer screen.

Eventually, I started to heal. We had vaccines!  We had hope!  We left our homes and entered into each other’s homes and restaurants and theaters.  We took off our masks.  We smiled at each other.  I finally felt the heart-to-heart warmth of hugs from people I love.  I invited Tammy again and again.  “Please come visit,” I said.  “We’ll see, kiddo,” she said. And finally I left it at that.

Not long ago, a day, a week, a month ago, Tammy’s brother called me sobbing.  Tammy had passed away in her sleep.  My childhood friend, another of my chosen sisters gone. Suddenly, without warning.  No goodbyes.  Just gone.  Gone.  Her daughter suspected a heart attack.  The autopsy confirmed her daughter’s suspicions.  Her two daughters held a memorial service for her in Kansas City, but the Omicron variant kept me away.  I watched the livestream on my phone and sobbed, alone.

Meanwhile, I transferred campuses, took on the unglamorous and uncompensated role of department chair, because I am resigned to a life of work and death.  I am resigned to this dystopian hellscape we now find ourselves in.  Just when we think it can’t get any worse, it does, and I am resigned to settling in to the safety of work.  At work, I have some modicum of control.  At work, I don’t have to love anyone.  (Even though, I do.  I love my students more than they realize.  I love my colleagues.  I love the staff.  I love the idea of a community college, and I love that I can talk and talk and talk about a subject I love to people who want [or are sort of forced] to hear).  

As a new chairperson, I wanted to make a good impression.  None of these people know me.  They know nothing about me.  They don’t know I am married to a transwoman.  They don’t know I wrote a book of erotica.  They don’t know I was gang raped when I was a kid.  They don’t know how passionate I am about teaching and the arts and literature and community.  They don’t know that I will love them fiercely.  They don’t know what I have in store for them.  So, when I chaired my first department meeting with them, I wanted to make a good impression.

Making impressions via academic Zoom (a.k.a. Microsoft Teams) is not easy or intuitive, and if what happened had happened in a face-to-face meeting, I may have reacted differently. But we were all in our little computer screen boxes sizing each other up while discussing the business at hand when I received a text from my niece that my sister Glenda had passed away. Then my brother called and without blinking I silenced my phone.  All the while, I remained stoic, kept smiling at my new colleagues, continued on with the meeting, while deep inside I simply wanted to scream scream scream scream scream scream scream.  I didn’t say a word to any of them about what was happening to my family at that moment.  When the meeting was over, I asked the two secretaries to stick around, not log off, and it was to them that I bared my ugly news: my sister had passed away.   And while I was telling them this, I looked out my home office window and saw the ambulance at my elderly neighbor’s home.  I watched as they transported my neighbor’s body from the house to the vehicle.  I realized my neighbor had died, too.

The very air is shrouded.

Here’s the thing about sisterhood:  It doesn’t die.  No matter what.

My sister Glenda and I had been estranged for over 20 years, so when I initially found out she had stage 4 lung cancer I didn’t call her. Thanks to the gentle coaxing and interference of my niece and my brother, I extended an olive branch to Glenda and we finally spoke briefly on the phone two days before she died. I could hear death in her voice.  I knew it wouldn’t be long before she passed. I knew Glenda and I didn’t have time to patch things up, really talk about what had happened between us.  We didn’t have time.  The only thing we could do was confess our sisterly love for each other and feel satisfied that love remains no matter how hard the feelings, the disagreements, or the distance in between.