I was invited to lunch by a local self-described ally of the LGBT community. She was a defender of a local Equality Ordinance, passed by one of the larger nearby suburbs that while supposedly protecting LGBT people, excludes "T" people in a big way. The politics of this don't matter - it was passed without any input from the trans community, and my opinion of the thing is that its problems outweigh the good it does. Others in the community disagree. The actual details don't matter, other than many big conservative religious groups are fighting to kill the thing. For reasons that don't really merit debate on this forum, and much to my eternal surprise, I agree with the religious people, and want the thing to die. Not for the same reasons, of course - in fact I completely disagree with them. (My complaint is that it allows trans people to be excluded from gender appropriate restrooms, and has unusually broad anti-trans exclusions for things like schools and charitable organizations.)

Anyway, this woman had been posting a facebook campaign, and handing out flyers with her group in support of the Equality Ordinance. The religious folks, after all, are frankly posting lies about what the ordinance will do. The common theme is that men will be allowed into the women's room, putting the lovely daughter's of this burg at risk from cross dressing sexual predators. This is, of course, ridiculous.

But the argument against this conservative hyperbole isn't "well, that's just a load of codswallop!" No, the argument is, instead "well, the ordinance excludes trans from public restrooms, so that can't happen!" In other words, both sides pretty much agree that trans women are the problem.

That angered me. So I simply took to posting various polite comments on the various pages of the groups supporting the ordinance as to why the trans community didn't love it. Not surprisingly, these were deleted by our allies on those pages.

That's the backdrop for my lunch meeting with Mrs. Ally. She told me she was on my side, and wanted to meet with me. She met me at The Meddlesome Moth, a really neat pub in the Design District in Dallas. (It was nice of her to meet me on my home turf.) We sit down, chat for a minute or two (we both are attracted to men in uniform, for example), it's all pretty nice. And I begin to think "Well, this is going to go a lot better than I had expected!"

But not so fast - for next she asks me:
"Have you had the surgery yet?"

I reply:
"What difference does that make? And uh, that's awfully personal! I mean would you ask that of another woman you just met? If I asked you about your genitals, wouldn't you take that kind of personally?"

Her reply:
"I'm not the one trying to prove they are not a man."

I'm used to getting asked this question - honestly, I get asked it a lot. Like typically the first or second question. Sure, it gets old, but I didn't really expect it from a self-described ally. Her justification for asking it - "prove you aren't a man", really did upset me though.

We talked some more, I tried to explain trans 101, we kept circling around the point about cross dressing sexual predators. It was a pleasant enough conversation on the surface, although the whole thing really depressed me. We took a nice photo together after lunch, and decided we'd meet and talk again sometime. I emailed her later, and told her that I did think that her question implied an awful lot of feelings of superiority to me, on her part, as I just don't believe most people would ask another person something like that on a first meeting, but I was used to that, since most people really don't think of us as being human beings. I don't think she liked that much, so I kind of doubt we'll meet for lunch again.

She offered to pay, and told me to pick the place and pickup the tab next time. I guess at least I got a free lunch out of the deal.

Anyway, yeah, allies. Yay.

BTW, in this entire debate, centering on excluding us because of the fear of cross dressing sexual predators, no one actually mentions regular old MtF heterosexual cross dressers. It's like nobody knows there are any in this town. Not that I mind - I wouldn't want to see CDs getting hated on by the same folks who are hating on transsexuals. It just kind of struck me as surprising.

Why do I even care about the equality policy in this hateful, conservative little town? See this thread:

"Pass or Die"