http://kabithops.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/fix-it-for-the-children/ (Password "susans.org") But here's the full text:
I'm 35. I've come a long way through this world and I have a long road ahead. I have had happy times and I have and will have unhappy ones. I coped, and barely, for years. Being obese significantly lowers testosterone in men. I remember what it felt like before I gained the weight and I feel like that now. I'm smarter now and doing something about it. I'm not contemplating mutilation or worse, but I am in pain – often extreme pain. Coping masked the problem and becoming healthy has brought it all back. The fact is, I was hidden.
I don't say I was hiding. Hiding implies that I tried to do it, that I had a big secret that I just didn't want anyone to know about. I was hidden because I denied that secret. I was hidden because I was convinced that I couldn't be who I was. I am no longer hidden but at my age, with a wife and kids, the pain is worse now than it should have been. The pain is spread to others who should have been spared. I strongly feel that this situation was created; not by me – I was the tool, the weapon that was used against my family; but by society and how society deals with gender and transgender people.
Some things about our society cannot easily be changed. We are fully ingrained into social gender roles. This appears immutable – it is something that can be changed over centures, but not significantly over decades. It is a good fight, but it is not something I'm asking for.
When I was growing up, I was bullied. I am smart, and that's the reason my parents think I was bullied, but it falls far from the truth. I was withdrawn, anti-social, and independent. I had one or two female friends that I lost to geographic separation at a very young age and, having passed into a period of self inflicted gender separation, I never recovered. I had no true friends from 1st grade until junior high and high school. Some of the bullying was due to my intelligence because it's all I had over others.
In high school, and some of the years leading up to it, I found other like-minded individuals. Independent, anti-socialites who were all a bit different. We were different than the arts geeks (music, drama, art) but we were all smart and marginalized for being different. One friend was wheelchair bound, highly intelligent, and nobody could see that because of her condition. Her twin sister and a male friend came out of the closet in college. Others were just very geeky and didn't care for those who weren't, though they fit in better than the rest of us. I remember one incident when we were all hanging out at the twins' house. They brought out an article about an ex-military man who had transitioned into being a woman. This clearly resonated with me, but even then the general view was that it was weird. I now wonder if one of them was trying to come out, but even if not... if it had just been them and me, I could have said something. I lament that day above all others. If only we knew then what we individually know now.
I don't know their stories, their details. I have been withdrawn for the last 20 years; I withdraw from people I knew and I lose touch easily. I do know why I suppressed who I was for so long. I was able to come out about who I was by leaving out a notebook with a story I'd written. It was about a young, high school man who got a brain transplant after an accident and started over as a girl. My parents found it, assumed I was jealous of my sister, and had a long talk with me. It was my coming out. I told them that no, I wanted to be a girl. They told me I could never look like a girl, that I would never find love and that I'd need to tell anyone I married about those sorts of things. I was told I wasn't gay and I was given a teen sex book that said that (not surprisingly, I have been unable to find this book online). The memories are faint from so many years of suppression, but they are clear and real. My parents recently denied this, but I can remember it now so clearly, so firmly, that there's no doubt in my mind. I cannot remember exactly what was said and how.
Shortly after this, what little internet existed for me (the "Prodigy" network) was taken away. This was my only outlet at that time, and I turned to worse. This conversation had such a profound, lasting effect on me that to this day I can see that every time my feelings of being transgender surfaced, these thoughts are what drove it under again. I don't want to cause my parents too much guilt over it, and suffer their comments now for it.
My suppression was caused by two things. My parents had an important effect on my repressed life, but first and foremost it was a lack of resources. The only possible way to prevent people like me from disrupting the lives of innocent women and children is to identify and support transgender kids as early as possible. Identification is difficult. Resources need to be made available in schools and parents and children both need to be educated. The kids will come out on their own if they are welcomed. Early detection is not an easy problem to solve, but supporting transgender kids is easy.
Transgender girls are girls, not boys, and need to be treated as such. The opposite case appears neglected, those girls who are truly boys inside. They do get less visibility and should get more, but it's a sign of how masculinity is respected and femininity is not. The media is far more concerned about boys sneaking into the girls' room than a male identifying (female assigned) boy being raped in the boy's room. The fact is, these kids fit in well. Not as well as they could, but they associate with their actual gender for a reason – any problems they have come from unaccepting society members.
We are on a path to acceptance. I believe I will see transgender kids almost completely accepted in US schools before I'm 50. My own acceptability is a tougher path and always has been. I am 20 to 30 years too late, but 20 to 30 years earlier and I might not have made it to 50. It is a changing world and it is clearly changing for the better. It's just so unfortunate that society must go kicking and screaming along the way.
