Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance – the conclusion of Transgender Awareness Week.  On the third Thursday of every November, the transgender community and those who care about us take a moment to remember the lives and deaths of our transgender contemporaries who were slain over the past 12 months as a result of the violent transphobia that constantly surrounds us.

Just over a week ago, Gizzy Fowler was found shot to death outside her vehicle in a North Nashville residential neighborhood.  Police reported the crime under the headline “Man found shot to death wearing women’s clothing in north Nashville.”  Gizzy’s death and that of so many other transgender people around the world was covered by the media in a way that sensationalized the incident, cast blame on the victim for inviting their own death, and showed utter disrespect for the victim’s experience and identity.

When I read the coverage on Gizzy Fowler’s death, I had already come to a defeated understanding that murderously violent transphobic assaults against my ilk are inevitable in our society.  All I could ask myself was, “when will we be allowed to die with dignity?”

226 transgender people were reportedly killed in the past 12 months, but statistics are unreliable because most countries do not hold accurate data on transgender victims.  That number also does not include violent assaults and attempted murders against transgender people who survive (like the 15 year old transgender girl who was stabbed by a man on a DC metro train in late July – luckily the victim’s friends helped her escape to safety).  Looking through the list, I recognize many of the names (especially the 12 North Americans), having read about their deaths every month, all year long.  What follows is an incomplete record of our departed, please take a moment to remember each of them.

Have you ever had one of those moments?

I had one of those moments last year.  It was one of those “this is one of the most significant points in my life” moments.  The kind that is usually reserved for the morning of your wedding, the first moment you hold your child in your arms, or when someone so dear to you that it’s like you share a soul passes out of this world.  It may be good or bad – in your control or beyond it.  When it happens, at least for a little while, you seem to stop moving through time and you are just confronted with the magnitude of this very point in time.  I had one of those moments in the early fall of 2013.

For a year and few months I had been operating outside the confines of religious dogma.  I had been learning to think freely – something very difficult for an individual who was taught from an early age that there are good things that you should spend your time thinking about and bad things that you should avoid thinking about at all costs.  I finally had been freed from that self-directed mind control and I really began to analyze my thoughts without any conclusion or topic being “out of bounds.”  What I had kept coming back to was the arbitrary shame that I carried with me.

Having grown up in an environment where the phenomenon of being transgender was a “perversion,” it was constantly reinforced that men behaved one way and women behaved another – girls did this and boys did that.  Anything outside the norm wasn’t just strange – it was wrong.  So I developed shame over the fact that out of all the colors of the rainbow, my favorite happened to be purple.  My shame was so deep that from a very young age until very recently I told everyone that I favored green – just one part of the mask I’ve had to wear to hide my “guilt.”

This arbitrary shame didn’t revolve solely around favorite colors.  It seeped into hobbies and pastimes; it deeply influenced dress and behavior; and it led me to hide from everyone around me the fact that I spent more nights than I can remember crying myself to sleep praying fervently that God would let me wake up a girl.  My self-directed mind control prevented even me from really hearing and listening to that message.  I had no idea why I felt so passionate about such a seemingly silly and impossible notion (i.e., that I might supernaturally receive a change in gender), but I did know that it was an “impure thought” and that it would be best not to dwell on it or analyze it.

Finally, after I stopped believing in the existence of a higher being, I was able to dwell on it – I was able to analyze it.  For a year and a few months I explored my penchant, perhaps my deep-seated need, for cross-gender expression.  I researched the phenomenon in general, I practiced it in private, and I analyzed its significance to me as an individual.  All my research, analysis, and experimentation culminated, early last fall, in one of those “this is one of the most significant points in my life” moments: I had the epiphany that I am transgender.  My intrinsic internal gender identity does not align with the sex I was assigned at birth based solely on the presence of a penis.

After that moment, when I said the words “I’m transgender” out loud for the first time, everything lined up.  I had known of those people for some time.  Throughout my life I had seen transgender people mocked, derided, threatened, and met with open schadenfreude.  Yet, without warning, they were no longer some random miserable group of wretches.  They were my people.  And, while my experiences are mine and mine alone, I suddenly realized that I understood them at a deep and substantial level.  In that instant, I didn’t know what it would lead to or where it would take me, but I did know “this is one of the most significant points in my life.”

This is just me (also, go vote!)

So, for my obligatory first blog post, I guess I’ll just say a little about who I am (I’ll get into the more thought provoking posts later).  I have been married to my amazing wife L. for four years and am a mother of two (J. is 3 years old and O. is 2).  I am an honorably discharged and decorated veteran of the U.S. Air Force and I recently graduated with my Bachelor’s degree.  I’m pretty sure I’m about to get a job offer from a major U.S. retailer for a position supervising 15-20 people per shift (we’ll see how Friday’s fifth-round interview goes).

Anyone interested in my life story?  My three brothers and I were raised by Mom and Dad in a Christian home that was as conservative in its politics as its religion (i.e., very).  For you birth-order enthusiasts out there, I was third-born and very much a middle child — I was the peace keeper and I didn’t want to rock the boat.  That only lasted until I started thinking for myself in my mid-20s.

I stopped making excuses for why I should continue buying into religious dogma, and dumped my faith in a higher power shortly after becoming a parent — I was just no longer convinced (no offense to those of you who are).  Having been freed from the repressive nature of religion I began to rebuild my worldview from scratch, find my own purpose in life, and repair the damage done by dogma.  During this time, I began to really think about the arbitrary shame I carried with me that stemmed from religious repression — namely, with regard to my compulsion toward cross-gender expression.  Having spent a year or more in research, I realized that I had been experiencing gender dysphoria my whole life and that I am certainly transgender.

I shared this news with my wife and together we have navigated what this means for me, for us, and for our family.  A few months later, in February 2014, I began to medically transition from male to female.  By the time National Coming Out Day rolled around on October 11, I was already living full time as my true self, so I decided to come out to the world.  So here I am.  A wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a veteran, an American, a college graduate, (possibly soon a department manager,) and a woman who just so happens to be transgender.

P.S.: Today is election day. If you haven’t voted yet, get out there and do it!