Quote from: Mrs. Oliphant on March 30, 2025, 10:59:25 AMBut for the past year or so little acts of cowardice make me realize how far I still have to travel. For example, my daughter doesn't say anything when she sees me in a dress; she merely rolls her eyes. So, I tend not cross dress when she's around. My three supportive sisters have a theory: I'm not really genderfluid, I'm merely empathetic to the trans and queer communities. So, instead of arguing, instead of asserting an authentic self, I tell them they may have a point. I hate these acts of cowardice. But I no longer hate me.
This experience resonates with me. One of the things I can't help noticing is even when people are promoting tolerance, when they're faced with non-normativity, they fall back on the very behaviours they're deprecating in others. It used to make me cross, now I'm more understanding of it, because they're only doing what I was doing to myself years ago.
Hey, look on the bright side, at least your daughter only eye-rolls when she sees you in a dress, so chances are once she's used to this being who her dad is, she'll be more likely than most to come around in time. A lot of these reactions in family are there because people have no idea how to behave toward someone dressed in the 'wrong' clothes. I sometimes point out that men had to get used to women wearing masculine clothing starting close to a hundred years ago, so what's the issue if we follow their example?
It's tough knowing what the right thing is to do with a situation like your daughter and how far you should encourage her to accept you in a dress. If it helps, something I once said, with massive effect, was, 'Since I don't think you'll happier knowing I'm pretending not to be who I am, how can I dress to meet you halfway and make this easier for both of us, because I love you no less than I ever did?' That got it on the table and cut through the denial enough for her attitude to sort in half a year. Early on though, there were quite some overtones of her being the victim in this because I was making her feel uncomfortable. To which my reply was, 'I'm with that, but doing it the other way around is making me feel uncomfortable, so maybe we'll both feel happier if we pitch halfway?'
Your sisters' theory made me smile. I'm a class act as a man and people can't believe, absolutely can't, that it's an illusion and nothing to do with how I am at my core. So I've had similar things proposed to me by people who are trying to reconcile the paradox in a way that makes me normative for them.
One time a friend said, 'How could you have deceived me all this time, what you're saying can't be right, you should have therapy!' to which I was, 'This is where therapy got me,' and they were, 'Then find a different therapist!' TL;DR it was all about coming up with versions of me that friend found acceptable and your sisters are most likely doing the same thing. I find it easy to understand why they do so, because they'll have had as long an experience of your class act as my family have had of mine.
It's tempting, easy and often practical to stage a tactical retreat now and again to land a strategic aim. That's not cowardice, more a good way of avoiding taking casualties and saving the main force, is it not?
