All the lonely people, where do they all come from?—Heather’s Ex
Or in the immortal words of the immortal Tommy Lee Jones in Coal Miner’s Daughter: “Yes, ma’am, there’s a lot of lonely people out there.”
Or this take from Jacques Brel: “The concert of sobbing and weeping of men who are afraid. . .”
And somebody else said, “When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes. . .”
We all know the feeling. The question is how to deal with it. Generally speaking people choose among three options:
[1] They join the herd, throw in their lot with the majority. When you’re lonely, what better solution than to surround yourself with bodies? And when you see yourself with so much company, it’s easy to believe that you’re in the right. In the right about what? Who knows? Who cares? You’re in the right. And that is so wonderfully comforting.
If you look at news items on the web concerning Trans issues, so often you’ll see the transphobes on a roll—all of them ganging up on some hapless transman or woman or child, all of them patting each other on the back, reassuring each other: “See! There’s so few of them, and so many of us! We must be right, we must be good, we must be virtuous! Ah! What a fine fellow I am!”
Poor saps! Because a majority is never anything but a temporary alliance of people who temporarily perceive they share a common self-interest. They can agree on one question. Ask another and they’ll be at each other’s throats, all the more outraged since their feeling of being in the majority has been proven illusory.
[2] They declare themselves an elite. “Oh, yes, we’re small in numbers, but we have a vision that the benighted masses can’t share.”
So they form their own little group, and for a short time there’s lots of shaking hands and mutual congratulations—“Hail, fellow, well met!”—until it’s time to start setting up a hierarchy and orthodoxy because we have to protect the identity and integrity and authenticity of the group so that we don’t get swallowed up again in the faceless majority. The purists, the self-appointed high-priests of righteousness will take control, and those poor souls who joined the group only out of the desire to enjoy a sense of belonging for the first time in their lives will be told to shape up. They will be useful soldiers who can obey orders and listen to the instruction of their betters, or they’ll be cast into the outer darkness again.
Sooner or later the opposition will coalesce around some charming renegade and will separate and form their own minority within a minority, even more self-righteous than the priests they’ve just denounced since there’s no one more pure than a schismatic. Then the process can start up again.
[3] Someone might declare himself an Impregnable Fortress of One. That is, he embarks on the Supreme Bluff: “I am a rock, I am an island! Don’t you see my handsome books with all their wisdom and profound thoughts? Have you not read my lovely poetry? I am shielded in my armor, safe within my womb. Nobody can touch me.”
And the World smiles upon him indulgently, knowing that the only reason he’s still standing is because it hasn’t yet bothered to crush him. The World does have a sense of humor, and there is something richly comic about a two-year-old shaking his fist at the gods.
If I wish to make myself a fortress, should I be so proud of the venture? For it is possible to confuse toughness and callousness, independence and misanthropy—and even courage can be warped into a parody of itself, so that it becomes no more than a desire to gloat and a desire for revenge.
So what can we do, folks? There are lots of people in this world who are religious, who believe in the existence of a Supreme Being who created the world with a purpose in mind, a master plan that we ordinary mortals cannot fathom. It’s been a long time since I believed that myself. But if I did, and if someone were to ask why God made transpeople, this would be my answer:
By putting center-stage a small group who are as different as it is possible to be, he wanted all people to see how different they are. He wanted everyone to understand that they are unique, that they cannot take refuge in “sameness” with their fellow creatures. You cannot buy salvation on a group ticket. You stand or fall on your own.
By showing how fiercely our hearts ache for acceptance and kindness and understanding, he wanted all people to examine themselves and realize how fiercely their own hearts ache for that same acceptance and kindness and understanding. For all people, whether they seek refuge with the majority or an elite or within their own fortress, instinctively know how vulnerable they are, how lonely they are.
So to Mr. Joe Normal, I would say this, “Look, Joe, you can bluff all you like. You’re not fooling me, and you’re not fooling your friends or neighbours or colleagues. Above all, you’re not fooling your wife and kids, and not even yourself. Deep down inside, you know what the score is. So relax. For all your bluster and posturing and self-righteous chest-thumping, you do have your virtues, and at bottom you’re a decent enough guy. So relax.
“Don’t cut yourself off. Don’t try to set yourself apart from or above others. You’re desperately seeking some refuge when there isn’t any, when what you really want is acceptance. By cutting yourself off, by refusing to accept others, you only deny yourself acceptance. If you want acceptance, give it to others, and then you’ll have it for yourself. Because when everybody is accepted, you will be, too, Joe. As long as there are people who aren’t accepted, you’ll always fear and feel that you’re one of them.”
That is the purpose of transpeople: by seeking acceptance for ourselves, we’re seeking acceptance for everybody, for when people can accept us, they can accept anybody. We’re all different, and that means we’re all the same. We’re all in the same boat. So why don’t we just row, rather than rocking it and threatening to sink us all?
Is that one reason cisgender people dislike us so much? When they see us, do they instinctively understand they’re seeing themselves? Relax, people: when you can accept us, you can accept yourselves, too.
Best wishes, Annabelle
Originally Posted by Veronica27
