Guinea Pig

[Foxglove]

Hi, Folks!

I've been in contact by private message with another member here who urged me to say something about my life since I came out. I have to say that I'm not really sure what to say. So maybe I'll just put down a few thoughts at random, and if any of this means anything to anybody, then I'll be well satisfied with that.

I've been out full time for a bit over seven years now. (Actually I came out the day Obama was re-elected. Thanks, Obama!) I still recall the struggle I faced in the weeks and months before I came out. I was trying to tell myself that all my hesitation was due to my fear. Well, I was a bit afraid. Who wouldn't be? In fact, I was being dishonest with myself. And in this game is there anything more difficult than being honest with yourself?

I'd say I faced two main hurdles. The first would be residual feelings of shame and internalized transphobia. I was telling myself that other transpeople might be out, but "I didn't need that myself." I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that. Maybe somebody else can explain it to me. But the main idea was that I still had some feelings of shame. I still saw myself as something a bit dirty, and hence all transpeople were a bit dirty. Getting out in the world, introducing their dirtiness into the world in order to satisfy their own personal needs was something that "lesser folk" might do, but I could stay above the fray. I could keep my feelings and needs to myself and thus not bother anybody else with them. A fairly horrible way of seeing yourself and your brothers and sisters, right? But such are the inner struggles I had to resolve.

The second hurdle was convincing myself that getting out was actually possible. Yes, I'd seen that other people had done it, but the notion that I could do it as well just didn't strike me as something I could do. I had the feeling of "You just don't do that!" Something like jumping up and grabbing the moon. It's simply not a possibility. All the laws of physics and social propriety, etc., were conspiring to put such a thing out of my reach.

Well, I got over those hurdles and I got out. I don't really know what to say to people who are still hesitating. A contact of mine (a transman who was out) told me, "You just gotta do it." He was right. You simply have to take the plunge. Now obviously this is a difficult matter. You do have to weigh up the risks and potential losses. But if you've prepared the ground as well as you possibly can, and if you really, really want to get out, then at some point you just have to find the faith and courage within you to do it. It's an odd thing: such a simple step, and yet such a great leap at the same time. The potential rewards are great. The potential losses, well, you'll find out about those in due course.

And now, well, now, sometimes I struggle with feelings of guilt. I sometimes refer to myself as a "guinea pig transgender person". It's as if whatever powers that rule the universe got together and just by way of an experiment decided to choose one transgender person out of all those on Earth and give them everything their heart could desire, just to see if it was possible for a transperson to live happily in this world. Somehow their choice landed on me. I couldn't begin to speculate why.

I haven't got everything my heart could desire, but close enough to satisfy me, and I have no doubt that 99.99% of the world's transgender population would truly envy me. They would love to be in my shoes. Hence, my feelings of guilt. I see so many other people facing such struggles in their daily lives, whereas I, well, I'm getting along just fine, thank you.

A good bit of my good fortune is due to the fact that I live in Ireland (despite having grown up in Texas). Ireland's Gender Recognition Act of 2015 makes it almost ludicrously easy for transgender people to get their legally recognized gender changed. No shrinks, no gatekeepers, no counselors--if you want to change your legal status from male to female or vice versa, there's a little application form that hardly takes you three minutes to fill in, you get it notarized by a lawyer, send it in to the relevant state office, and you're done.

I also have the good fortune to live in a tiny little town where people just don't care in the least about transgender people. They knew me for years before I came out, and once I did come out, they took it right in their stride. I had a bit of harassment from some idiot young lads at the beginning, but among responsible adults, nobody's ever bothered me. I'm just one more person about town, and that's all they care about. I live my life, they live theirs, and nobody's bothered.

Despite the fact that I've always been so spoiled in this way, I nonetheless recently had an experience that just blew me away. Honestly, I was in tears a few times, overwhelmed by the goodness and kindness that people can show you. I had a bit of an illness that kept me in the hospital for a week (followed by a stay in something of a halfway house for a further two weeks). Given the nature of my illness, it would have been immediately obvious to any medical person that I'm trans. And they simply didn't care. I don't know how many doctors, nurses, technicians I saw. Every last one of them without exception gave me the same professionalism and respect that they'd give to anybody else. Furthermore, because of my legal status, I was on the women's ward, and nobody had any problem with that. I was telling myself it was almost worth getting sick to enjoy an experience like that.

If I have some feelings of guilt, I have to say that these days I'm often quite angry. The main reason is that what my life is proving (if we needed proof) and what the lives of other Irish transgender people are proving is that the abuse and harassment and persecution that are so often meted out to us are the product of sheer wickedness and nothing else. Give us legal recognition, give us the legal right to live our lives, and it doesn't any way harm society or any individual.

I'm active on an American blogsite, one dedicated to atheist issues, and on this site LGBT issues often come up, given that atheists keep their eyes on religious people and their doings and given that so much of the opposition to LGBT rights arises in religious circles. Often when a blog is posted dealing with transgender issues, then the haters (not all of them religious by any means) come flooding in. We all know them, right? And we all know the uselessness of engaging with them, right? But I often do that nonetheless, because it is useful to show our many supporters on that forum how you address the arguments that the haters present against us.

You show our supporters that the haters can't actually make any coherent arguments against us. You show (as I have pointed out many a time on that forum) that no one can be honest and oppose transgender rights. No one can come up with any honest arguments against our rights, and I've formulated two universal rules concerning haters. I say "universal" because of all the haters I've ever encountered I have yet to see a single exception to these rules:

(1) Anti-trans haters don't actually understand what it is to be transgender.
(2) Anti-trans haters never mention a single thing that any transgender person has ever done to harm their lives in any way.

In other words, they harass us to no end despite the facts that they don't begin to understand us and that we're not actually harming them in any way. Their opposition to our rights and freedom come from the sheer wickedness of their hearts.

The positive side of this experience, however, is that I have made a reputation for myself on this site. The regular members of this forum tend to be very sympathetic to transpeople, though they know little about the issues. So I post regularly there, and although my posts tend to be pretty long (like this one) people do read them, and they regularly give me lots of upvotes. They are quite willing to learn about us, and I've given them the opportunity to do so, and they've taken advantage of that opportunity. One member paid me what is undoubtedly the finest compliment I've ever received in my life (and I told him so). He said, "If you can read Foxglove and not support transgender rights, then you're just a b****d." So I do feel that in this way I am perhaps making my small contribution to the cause. I certainly hope so.

Best wishes to one and all here!