I tell ya boy and girls, I sit here at my 'puter scanning the interweb tubes and I sometimes wonder if getting my head pulled out of my lower recesses has been worth the stress.
Back when I used the little boys room, I was blissfully ignorant of the vitriol, hatred, and outright lies visited upon my newly acquired community. Oh I heard news reports and felt that Matthew Shepard's murder was a tragedy. When I was younger still I heard about the Stonewall riots and how the gays had an uprising. I thought it was probably appropriate since just about everyone was rioting about something back in those days.
But it never *touched* me!
I was a true blue male! And I liked girls and all, and had me quite a few! Yeah, I had a rather peculiar hobby, but it wasn't anything serious. Really!
While I agreed that people should be allowed to do whatever they liked regardless of their gender, I really thought it was none of my business really. I was just your average guy. I could never take *that* road! All I ever heard was that transsexuals became pole dancing, sex working, drug addicts just so they could be girls. And the gays and lesbians seemed to be so easy a target for laughter (I think just about every stand up comic had some sort of "fag" routine), or more darkly, being hunted, and killed with no real effort for justice.
No sir! I was NOT one of those! I had more important things to do! I had my whole career to think of! I was raising a family! I was a GUY! Maybe not quite so macho, but still I knew the whole "This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for business, this is for FUN!" rhyme.
Times change.
Things change.
I changed.
There was a giant sucking sound so loud it measured on the richter scale when I pulled my head out of my, uhm you know, opened my eyes, and found out who I really was! I've documented quite a bit of it here so I'm not going to rehash that stuff in this post.
Now I'm a newly minted female find myself being a card carrying lesbian. I got the toaster oven sign up bonus to prove it! But I cannot marry the woman I love in the state in which I live. And were we to make the trek to one of the states that allow same sex marriage, it would not be recognized in my state. If we don't carry our power of attorney forms when we travel, we could be denied access to each other in case we are hospitalized. And the literally THOUSANDS of benefits that are accorded federally recognized married couples are denied us simply because our genitalia is similar not different. Our casual discrimination is accepted by the rest of the populace as no big deal.
I've become an advocate for the LGBT community at my office and I am a staunch supporter for the repeal of DOMA and DADT and fervently pray for the passage of ENDA.
Just a scant few years ago I would never have known what those particular acronyms meant!
And now when I read about the murders and the violence and the lack of justice I am incensed and outraged. I read about John McCain who I thought was a reasonable candidate for president especially when he showed distasted for calling Mr Obama an arab, stated emphatically, during the campaign, that if the Joint Chiefs called for the repeal of DADT then he would listen to them as president. Now he claims that the Joint Chiefs are out of line to even consider that since we have so much war going on (the same wars that were going on during Mr. Bush's reign of error). Or when extreme right wing bigots call for the murder of gays and lesbians as being in the name of God and Catholic bishops say that gays are worse than terrorists, I sometimes fail to see how humanity will progress.
Everyone in the community, EVERY SINGLE ONE, has had episodes of humiliation, discrimination, anger, or violence committed on them simply because of the differences we have. And in cold November we take time to remember the ADDITIONAL trans people who have been murdered since the last reading of the dead.
I was so g*d*m'd blissfully ignorant of all of this when I had the world as my urinal! I would have taken this blissful ignorance to my grave had I not changed.
I sometimes wonder if knowing is better than not knowing. Is having your eyes opened, and seeing, really seeing, what the fnck goes on in the world part of the blessing or part of the curse?
I am in a particular bitter and cynical mood of late. It may be due to a number of things. The recent loss of my brother surely has something to do with it. But also just the seemingly unending bitter and hateful rhetoric on the one side and the impassioned, though impotent action from our "friends" on the other just makes me feel hopeless and helpless.
I sometimes think that I would like to turn my back on the whole lot of it and just walk away. But I could never look in any mirror ever again.
I have not finished paying off my debt to Christine Jorgensen, and all the rest of the pioneers, activists and martyrs who have gone before me. I do not seek the notoriety that others have, and certainly others are more deserving.
But I will say that I will do this for one more day, and hopefully, tomorrow, I can say it again.
-Sandy
Back when I used the little boys room, I was blissfully ignorant of the vitriol, hatred, and outright lies visited upon my newly acquired community. Oh I heard news reports and felt that Matthew Shepard's murder was a tragedy. When I was younger still I heard about the Stonewall riots and how the gays had an uprising. I thought it was probably appropriate since just about everyone was rioting about something back in those days.
But it never *touched* me!
I was a true blue male! And I liked girls and all, and had me quite a few! Yeah, I had a rather peculiar hobby, but it wasn't anything serious. Really!
While I agreed that people should be allowed to do whatever they liked regardless of their gender, I really thought it was none of my business really. I was just your average guy. I could never take *that* road! All I ever heard was that transsexuals became pole dancing, sex working, drug addicts just so they could be girls. And the gays and lesbians seemed to be so easy a target for laughter (I think just about every stand up comic had some sort of "fag" routine), or more darkly, being hunted, and killed with no real effort for justice.
No sir! I was NOT one of those! I had more important things to do! I had my whole career to think of! I was raising a family! I was a GUY! Maybe not quite so macho, but still I knew the whole "This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for business, this is for FUN!" rhyme.
Times change.
Things change.
I changed.
There was a giant sucking sound so loud it measured on the richter scale when I pulled my head out of my, uhm you know, opened my eyes, and found out who I really was! I've documented quite a bit of it here so I'm not going to rehash that stuff in this post.
Now I'm a newly minted female find myself being a card carrying lesbian. I got the toaster oven sign up bonus to prove it! But I cannot marry the woman I love in the state in which I live. And were we to make the trek to one of the states that allow same sex marriage, it would not be recognized in my state. If we don't carry our power of attorney forms when we travel, we could be denied access to each other in case we are hospitalized. And the literally THOUSANDS of benefits that are accorded federally recognized married couples are denied us simply because our genitalia is similar not different. Our casual discrimination is accepted by the rest of the populace as no big deal.
I've become an advocate for the LGBT community at my office and I am a staunch supporter for the repeal of DOMA and DADT and fervently pray for the passage of ENDA.
Just a scant few years ago I would never have known what those particular acronyms meant!
And now when I read about the murders and the violence and the lack of justice I am incensed and outraged. I read about John McCain who I thought was a reasonable candidate for president especially when he showed distasted for calling Mr Obama an arab, stated emphatically, during the campaign, that if the Joint Chiefs called for the repeal of DADT then he would listen to them as president. Now he claims that the Joint Chiefs are out of line to even consider that since we have so much war going on (the same wars that were going on during Mr. Bush's reign of error). Or when extreme right wing bigots call for the murder of gays and lesbians as being in the name of God and Catholic bishops say that gays are worse than terrorists, I sometimes fail to see how humanity will progress.
Everyone in the community, EVERY SINGLE ONE, has had episodes of humiliation, discrimination, anger, or violence committed on them simply because of the differences we have. And in cold November we take time to remember the ADDITIONAL trans people who have been murdered since the last reading of the dead.
I was so g*d*m'd blissfully ignorant of all of this when I had the world as my urinal! I would have taken this blissful ignorance to my grave had I not changed.
I sometimes wonder if knowing is better than not knowing. Is having your eyes opened, and seeing, really seeing, what the fnck goes on in the world part of the blessing or part of the curse?
I am in a particular bitter and cynical mood of late. It may be due to a number of things. The recent loss of my brother surely has something to do with it. But also just the seemingly unending bitter and hateful rhetoric on the one side and the impassioned, though impotent action from our "friends" on the other just makes me feel hopeless and helpless.
I sometimes think that I would like to turn my back on the whole lot of it and just walk away. But I could never look in any mirror ever again.
I have not finished paying off my debt to Christine Jorgensen, and all the rest of the pioneers, activists and martyrs who have gone before me. I do not seek the notoriety that others have, and certainly others are more deserving.
But I will say that I will do this for one more day, and hopefully, tomorrow, I can say it again.
-Sandy
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