Attending a Transgender group at the GLBT Center of Nassau County
One of the themes in both my book and in this blog here is my historical lack of much of any sense of community or shared identity over this gender-identity stuff.
In 1980, the year when I first developed this understanding of myself and tried to come out to people, the term "transgender" wasn't in widespread use yet, and most people (me included) had never heard of it. Albuquerque had gay and lesbian community centers and a small handful of sex-segregated gay or lesbian bars and one or two that were mixed-sex and encouraging of bisexuals to come and meet there. I went to them a few times and tried to mingle and strike up conversations but I didn't get any encouraging nods of recognition. The support centers didn't have anything relevant. Gay marriage was decades away, gays were not tolerated in the military, and it was considered entirely legitimate to discriminate in housing or employment. Critically important to do so, even: gotta protect the children from the predatory attention of those deviant fags and all that.
I often tried to start conversations around the theme of transsexuality, which I *HAD* heard of, and the split off from that to explain how I was a variation on that, but although people had generally heard of it, it was regarded as a freakshow kind of weirdness and it was conflated both with homosexuality and with cross-dressing. Those conversations weren't getting me where I was trying to lead, and I didn't meet people who said "Oh, you too?"
I was in Athens GA from 1981 to 1983, and the trendy downtown evening scene, heavily leavened with music (the 40 watt club) and lefty politics and vegetarianism and whatnot, was also a scene where ambivalence about one's sexual orientation and gender was fashionable. Here, also, though, I neither met up with kindred spirits nor explained my issues well. If I floated through parties and interacted in cafes and hung out at poetry readings and played up the unspoken messages, I was wearing the same trendy question mark, and the question was all around straight versus bi versus gay. When I opted to be more overt, my shyness turned it into a ponderously serious lecture that folks found less than entertaining.
By 1984 I was in New York City and had dropped in on Identity House, the solidly established support and community center for gay lesbian bisexual and etcetera folks downtown, but even here... they had weekly support groups for gay guys and lesbian gals and mixed groups for political issues like the worrisome new health crisis and so on, and once a month they had a bisexual support group, fourth tuesday of each month. I attended a few and asked about, well, less common variants... someone mentioned transsexuals and a coordinator there laughed and said "they can meet on the fifth tuesday of the month". It wasn't that they were unwilling to offer services, but there was no demand for it, and for most people it was something they'd heard of more than a phenomenon represented by people they'd actually met in person. Well, except for me, but that's not who I was, either. Transsexual meant you thought you were in the wrong body. Really close yet still not quite it.
In the mid-1990s I consulted with a therapist, explaining how cut off I felt over this, and she became all excited about it and seemed very understanding about it, and she said I had "gender dysphoria disorder" and it was a "thing". It felt nice to be understand, but the implicit pathological-izing of sticking a "disorder" label on it overweighed any of the good stuff. And still no sense of shared identity-in-common.
Didn't find it in school. Dropped in on Identity House again in the 2000s and still didn't connect.
SO... yesterday evening I attended a group specifically for transgender people! My partner anais_pf and I ate dinner and then she lent me the use of her car and I headed off to Woodbury. Got tied up in traffic, tried to take shortcuts, got confused, then temporarily lost the slip of paper with the address on it. I was frenetic, wild-eyed, frustrated, worried that I'd be late, worried that I wasn't going to find it at all if I couldn't find that damn piece of paper, then lost in a labyrinth of big industrial-looking blocky buildings poorly marked for specific street names and addresses. Been looking all my life for a group that would constitute "us" and now I'm going to be late or miss it, this can't be happening!!! But it worked out and I arrived and they were just about to get started and it was... it was really nice and I *DID* feel like for once I was with people who shared this in common with me. Not carbon-copy clones, but they knew what I was talking about and they were interesting to listen to as they talked about their situations. They thanked me for coming and said I had a lot of good and useful feedback and interesting attitudes.
I don't conceptualize myself as primarily "seeking therapy" or "support", so much as finally finding allies to talk about what we want to say to the world at large, discuss the politics of our identities and all that, but they made me feel like my presence was a good thing, that I was a good listener and knew what they were going through. And for me... it felt good. I felt like I belonged there, something I never managed to feel in all the years of going to Idenity House and other such places, attending groups that weren't really centered on my stuff, places where I felt like a possibly unwelcome interloper.
I'm OK on my own, having built a life with people who understand me and love me as I am, and as I told them during the initial go-around-the-circle introductions, I am having a good life and I'm lucky and quite happy.
But yeah, it sure felt good to finally be in a room with others like me.
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Index of all Blog Posts
In 1980, the year when I first developed this understanding of myself and tried to come out to people, the term "transgender" wasn't in widespread use yet, and most people (me included) had never heard of it. Albuquerque had gay and lesbian community centers and a small handful of sex-segregated gay or lesbian bars and one or two that were mixed-sex and encouraging of bisexuals to come and meet there. I went to them a few times and tried to mingle and strike up conversations but I didn't get any encouraging nods of recognition. The support centers didn't have anything relevant. Gay marriage was decades away, gays were not tolerated in the military, and it was considered entirely legitimate to discriminate in housing or employment. Critically important to do so, even: gotta protect the children from the predatory attention of those deviant fags and all that.
I often tried to start conversations around the theme of transsexuality, which I *HAD* heard of, and the split off from that to explain how I was a variation on that, but although people had generally heard of it, it was regarded as a freakshow kind of weirdness and it was conflated both with homosexuality and with cross-dressing. Those conversations weren't getting me where I was trying to lead, and I didn't meet people who said "Oh, you too?"
I was in Athens GA from 1981 to 1983, and the trendy downtown evening scene, heavily leavened with music (the 40 watt club) and lefty politics and vegetarianism and whatnot, was also a scene where ambivalence about one's sexual orientation and gender was fashionable. Here, also, though, I neither met up with kindred spirits nor explained my issues well. If I floated through parties and interacted in cafes and hung out at poetry readings and played up the unspoken messages, I was wearing the same trendy question mark, and the question was all around straight versus bi versus gay. When I opted to be more overt, my shyness turned it into a ponderously serious lecture that folks found less than entertaining.
By 1984 I was in New York City and had dropped in on Identity House, the solidly established support and community center for gay lesbian bisexual and etcetera folks downtown, but even here... they had weekly support groups for gay guys and lesbian gals and mixed groups for political issues like the worrisome new health crisis and so on, and once a month they had a bisexual support group, fourth tuesday of each month. I attended a few and asked about, well, less common variants... someone mentioned transsexuals and a coordinator there laughed and said "they can meet on the fifth tuesday of the month". It wasn't that they were unwilling to offer services, but there was no demand for it, and for most people it was something they'd heard of more than a phenomenon represented by people they'd actually met in person. Well, except for me, but that's not who I was, either. Transsexual meant you thought you were in the wrong body. Really close yet still not quite it.
In the mid-1990s I consulted with a therapist, explaining how cut off I felt over this, and she became all excited about it and seemed very understanding about it, and she said I had "gender dysphoria disorder" and it was a "thing". It felt nice to be understand, but the implicit pathological-izing of sticking a "disorder" label on it overweighed any of the good stuff. And still no sense of shared identity-in-common.
Didn't find it in school. Dropped in on Identity House again in the 2000s and still didn't connect.
SO... yesterday evening I attended a group specifically for transgender people! My partner anais_pf and I ate dinner and then she lent me the use of her car and I headed off to Woodbury. Got tied up in traffic, tried to take shortcuts, got confused, then temporarily lost the slip of paper with the address on it. I was frenetic, wild-eyed, frustrated, worried that I'd be late, worried that I wasn't going to find it at all if I couldn't find that damn piece of paper, then lost in a labyrinth of big industrial-looking blocky buildings poorly marked for specific street names and addresses. Been looking all my life for a group that would constitute "us" and now I'm going to be late or miss it, this can't be happening!!! But it worked out and I arrived and they were just about to get started and it was... it was really nice and I *DID* feel like for once I was with people who shared this in common with me. Not carbon-copy clones, but they knew what I was talking about and they were interesting to listen to as they talked about their situations. They thanked me for coming and said I had a lot of good and useful feedback and interesting attitudes.
I don't conceptualize myself as primarily "seeking therapy" or "support", so much as finally finding allies to talk about what we want to say to the world at large, discuss the politics of our identities and all that, but they made me feel like my presence was a good thing, that I was a good listener and knew what they were going through. And for me... it felt good. I felt like I belonged there, something I never managed to feel in all the years of going to Idenity House and other such places, attending groups that weren't really centered on my stuff, places where I felt like a possibly unwelcome interloper.
I'm OK on my own, having built a life with people who understand me and love me as I am, and as I told them during the initial go-around-the-circle introductions, I am having a good life and I'm lucky and quite happy.
But yeah, it sure felt good to finally be in a room with others like me.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts