Lauren, I agree; people are just people...not politicians. They require a defective DNA pattern all their own!
Petunia, I wrote this two years ago. It's a little bit long, but you may identify with some of this, and it might make you laugh.
Welcome to a Tour of My Very Deep Transgender Closet
Wading through decades of my own gender ignorance
"Welcome to my closet!
Before we proceed on the tour, you need to be prepared for a very unsteady and unfamiliar experience. It was the same for me on my first tour.
So please watch your step.
It can be very treacherous.
Let me attach a safety rope to your waist for protection, and please don't forget your flashlight and wear your boots and safety helmet; we will be wading through some really deep, dark ignorance.
Let me know if I'm not loud enough for those in the back, but that shouldn't be a problem. This closet is large enough to cause an echo.
I am now in my fifth year of gender discovery, which starts with the very shocking realization that I am transgender. Unearthing that fact triggered a series of explosive suicidal panic attacks followed by a relentless attack of gender dysphoria. It spared neither my heart, mind, nor my soul.
That discovery literally blew open the door of my transgender closet.
Be careful as you walk through the doorway. The explosion caused numerous splinters of deep social denial, shame, and guilt. But have no worries, there is no chance of that door ever closing again behind us.
It took years of therapy and self-examination to escape from the back of this very, very deep closet.
It is filled with an amazing amount of stuff. It makes the worst hoarder ever look like a minimalist. I, my life, and the society that raised me helped fill it. Even now as I try to empty it, the world keeps adding to the pile. I am overwhelmed with both junk and treasures, accumulated over a long lifetime, that all blocked my initial escape and now prove next to impossible to eliminate entirely.
Let's start our walking tour of my closet.
Watch out for the deep piles of ignorance as you go, and don't get splashed by the societal bigotry that seeped in.
Please be careful as you walk; you can easily get lost in the clutter as I did for 60 years. Stay close, and I will take you safely on our brief tour. Now would be a good time to turn on your flashlights. I am confident that we have chased away all of the misogynistic bogeymen.
Sadly, one who escaped is running for president.
All my life I would hear that someone was coming out of a "closet". At first, as a child, in my naivete, I thought: "Why would someone stay in a closet and why would anyone else care what they did?" In adult hindsight, that turned out to be two very mature questions. At the time, though, I even thought that "race riots" were when people were unhappy losing money at the race track.
My world in the 1960s was small, simple, and filled with ignorant rules and understandings.
You were either a boy or a girl, a mom or a dad, a nun or a priest, a doctor or a nurse. I remember my Catholic parochial grammar school, which was dominated by Irish Catholics, would have its own St. Patrick's Day play. The hallmark was our own St. Patrick's Day parade down the middle of the auditorium. All the kids loved it because we got to choose whatever profession we wanted to march as: firemen, police, and soldiers for boys; and nurses, nuns, and teachers for girls. Our professional lives were funneled at a very early age by gender.
There were no boy nurses or girl soldiers.
As I became a teenager, there seemed to be a large number of people taking an aggressive interest in other people's "closets". There were a lot of gossipy adult whispers that were easy to overhear but left me with so many questions like, "Were they in a closet?" and "Why would they stay in one?". When I heard, "They came out of the closet!" I thought that made perfect sense. Who wanted to live in a closet? I learned that when someone did come out, that person became an outcast and the family suffered from mortification and the phony sympathy of the neighbors.
It made no sense to me as a child, but ah, the innocence of youth.
It was the late 1960s and the time of the Stonewall Riots* and the world was confronted with its dirty little secret that they had tried to hide for so long:
There were some people who were gay and lesbian.
GASP!!!
"Hide your children! Protect your woman folk! For God's sake be careful in the bathroom!"
So many people were worried about my safety in the bathrooms, that they ignored that the real predators were some of my parish priests and adult Boy Scout leaders. The true shame was that the Church and the Boy Scouts hid the predators instead of protecting us from them. Tragically, pedophiles were lumped in with being gay, and it took years and dozens of lawsuits to correct that misconception. But lawsuits couldn't undo damage to those abused and to the slandered gay community. It would take years before gays and lesbians were deemed "safe" enough to love and care for a child.
The world suffered for it.
Please step over that large pile of ignorance as we proceed. It is clingy and hard to wash off.
It seemed like a lot of people chose a similar exit from their own closets at that time, and there suddenly seemed to be lots of closets. It was a disturbing time for me. It confused me. I was still carrying my binary dictionary tight in my grasp, but important words were missing from its pages, like "transgender".
I would pay for that lapse of language for most of my life.
It was historically a painful time of change but, thankfully, we can see the positive results today. Arguably, though, we have a long way to go. Transgender closets, like mine, are finally starting to open but with the same ignorant reaction that the gay and lesbian community experienced decades earlier.
During those days I was still oblivious. My strict binary upbringing and my continued submergence in a testosterone-filled male world shielded me from "infection".
The gay and lesbian community were still the "other" people and I was told, "Stay away from them. Be careful in the bathroom. Don't let them recruit you!"
As I left those years of hormonal imbalance behind, those fears faded away, but not entirely the public bigotry. I have heard homophobic curses even now, yelled by older guys, in frustration at fellow motorists in a traffic jam. The stain of past prejudices, unfortunately, is sometimes shallowly buried. For some, their ignorant prejudices harden with time like cold stone.
Please don't trip over their misshapen stones as we walk.
As we move on, we see the clutter that having a family adds. This is my happy clutter that will always be stored in the heart of my closet. It is well-protected and always cherished. It is all my shining trophies that I look on with pride that made my pseudo-cisgender life all worthwhile.
Throughout the tour, you may have noticed a series of locked boxes. You weren't supposed to see them, but I can't seem to hide them effectively anymore. Some contain my collections of shame, doubt, and fear. In a few, there are moments of private feminine joy that had to be double-locked for fear of discovery and rejection. I will share more about them later.
Further on, we see the awakening of my ultimate confusion. Thank you, Bruce Jenner!
Bruce was a sneaky part of my closet. I was impressed that there was a picture of him on the Wheaties but I never knew what he was hiding inside that box. I thought it was just his Olympic gold medal.
When he became Caitlyn, she seemed to take everyone by surprise. Everyone was stunned! Bruce was an Olympic gold medalist. He was every boy's hero and every girl's heartthrob.
Where did this all come from? He can't possibly be a woman! He must be crazy!
OK, be careful now as we walk. We are approaching a rather large pile of ignorance. Step delicately.
He was a guy's guy. Now we are supposed to buy that he has been a "she" all this time? Did he spend way too much time with the Kardashians? Is he crazy? Was he taking drugs? He must have hit his head in the car accident.
"What is wrong with this guy???"
My friends split into the obvious two cisgender groups, the women and the men.
I was still very much locked in the guy's camp. Like my guy friends, I had trouble understanding what happened to him. Was it a mental illness? What closet did he come out of? He was married with kids. He was an Olympian that we all looked up to! What is he doing in a dress?
The women were just as violent in their rejection. How can he be a woman? He never had a period, cramps, or given birth to a child. How could he have any idea what it is to be a real woman?
The binary consensus at the time was that he wasn't a real woman regardless of what he called himself. Shamefully, I agreed. My ignorance was very deep and I was still in the thick of it.
Moving along past that very ugly pile, we come across a small candle, properly shielded from general view. I think Bruce may have lit it. I am not entirely sure. Something or maybe many things did. It started a fire in my closet that forced me to open the door for some air, little knowing that that little flame was about to ignite a massive explosion in my life. It blew my closet door apart. You may have noticed pieces of it hanging from the door hinges on your way in.
It started me thinking about my gender and that was very dangerous.
Remember those locked boxes that we passed along the way? Well, I reopened one of the prettier ones, little knowing it was officially Pandora's box. I have been unable to close it since.
I, like so many baby-boomer transitioners, had bought and thrown out countless female clothing purchases throughout the years. We each chose the female elements that meant the most to us and touched some part of our hidden souls. Then, in a fit of shame and fear, we would purge them from our lives declaring ourselves cured, until we did it again...and then again and again and again and again.
Careful as you step over the endless piles of clothes. Pick out something if you see something you like. I can't get them all back in the box.
I just couldn't 'cure" myself no matter how much I tried. In my 60th year, with my adult children out of the house, something didn't feel right, something was out of place.
But what?
Watch out for the next pile of ignorance.
I felt this sense of female identity explode inside me and I didn't have a clue where it came from. All my life I was able to contain my feminine desires in my locked boxes. Suddenly, they all sprang open!
There was a box for my denial, the largest one. That box held my shame, the one over there was my fear of discovery, and next to it was the box for my fear of rejection. There were others, though, that took me totally by surprise.
One in particular was huge.
It was prettier than the others and was held closed by a beautiful ribbon. When I opened it, there was a little girl. She had been locked up for so long, and now she was out. Her smile was radiant and I could immediately feel the warmth of her heart. She looked pretty dressed in her ballet outfit. I had yet to learn who she was and why she was there. My ignorance was massive.
I found out later she was me.
Please step lively past this deep pile and watch animated recreation on the screen of the fireworks as my head continuously explodes! It really is an exciting show to watch.
Each explosion was met with an exclamation of "->-bleeped-<-!" The internal explosions became so bad that I, for the first time in my life, had panic attacks. All the fireworks were suddenly exploding in sequence. The detonations made it impossible to contain or control. They were so painful that I considered suicide for the first time in my life.
I clearly needed help.
Now let me introduce my therapist, Molly. She is the closet expert. She helped me unpack each of these boxes. Note there are a few more boxes to open. She has a permanent job in this closet.
Please wave to her as we pass.
So now you can relax. You will no longer need to worry about stepping in my piles of ignorance as we leave my closet. We have done a great job in sweeping them into piles for easy removal. Whatever my choice is on my transgender journey, at least I am no longer wading through my ignorance or afraid to open my boxes. They no longer frighten me.
I hope you enjoyed the private tour. I hope your closet is cleaner and better organized than mine was, but I suspect we all have our own very deep closets to explore.
If you choose to explore yours, don't forget your safety harness and flashlight. You may need to hire a professional guide like I did because there is no map.
Thank you for taking our tour, and please feel free to leave your comments below. Tips are always welcome."
