LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.
Who are we to deny the truth of who someone else is?
Along with others I’m writing in response to a planned action by Julia Serano, timed to coordinate with the reconvening of congress to bring attention to the most recent antitrans legislative proposals. While targeting transgender individuals, the effects of the hatred and dangerous attitudes and policies toward trans individuals won’t be confined to them. Don’t kid yourself.
The issue of transgender became personal for me when in 2018 I received an email from my nephew, who lives in Canada that my grand-niece had changed her gender identity and now identified as male. After trying out gender neutral/non-binary for a month he decided to take the next step. Two years later, after meeting with a rabbi over the course of a year, my grand-nephew was bar mitzvah. The pandemic had taken hold and so while most of us didn’t show up in-person, the family turned out on zoom and along with friends we watched my grand-nephew perform the ritual acknowledging the coming of age of a Jewish boy.
Of course I offered total support, but I was also worried. Very worried, what obstacles and difficulties and heartache, above and beyond what many of us face in the normal course of our lives, would he confront? How did he KNOW that this was who he was meant to be?
In March 2021, Brandon Boulware, a Missouri father, a lawyer, someone you’d tag as ‘conservative,’ spoke to the legislature about one of his four children, his transgender daughter. “I didn’t get it either, for years.” For years I didn’t let my daughter wear girl clothes, play with girl toys. I forced my daughter to wear boy clothes…” He says that she was miserable. “I remember the day everything changed for me. …” He realized that his daughter was equating being good with being someone else. “I was teaching her to deny who she is. As a parent, the one thing we cannot do is silence our child’s spirit.” I will never forget his heart and his courage as he came to terms with his daughter’s truth, and as he appealed to the legislature not to pass the student-athlete bill which would prevent his daughter from participating in sports. In August 2023 a law passed banning transgender athletes from competing in sports according to their gender identity, though a year later policies have yet to change and there’s been little if any enforcement.
As a therapist, I began to work with people who were transgender before it garnered so much attention. In particular, I remember a young person who was identified female at birth, transitioned to male as a young adult, and came to see me because they had decided to de-transition. Often I would mix up the pronouns, sincerely apologetic, and feeling inadequate to the task of making this person’s life better. At best, what I offered was permission and acceptance.
Recently, I watched the Netflix documentary, Will & Harper. Will Ferrell of Saturday Night Live fame, had received an email from Harper Steele who was former head writer for the show, that he was now she. Once closest of friends, they reconnected and took a road trip together to bond, and to introduce Harper to the country she used to travel and know as a guy. A repeated message throughout their journey is how Harper finally feels like she lives in the right skin, that from the earliest days, she felt out of synch with her being. This is the same message that Lucy Sante conveyed in her memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name, about her later in life gender transition.
And it’s the message that Brandon Boulware delivered in his speech to the Missouri legislature about his transgender daughter. The message is consistent. Who are we to deny the truth of who someone else is?
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Below are links to two articles that I wrote soon after my grand-nephew’s transition, articles reviewed and okayed by the entire family.
https://www.newsweek.com/listen-transgender-youth-opinion-1621253
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Please contact your Congressperson and Senators (and perhaps even local politicians) and tell them that backpedaling is not ok.
WE ARE THE WORST OF AMERICA. PREJUDICED, CRUEL, AND FULL OF SHIT.
Thank you. I'm always concerned that my cerebral tendencies detract. So this is important to me.