lgbT

When your wife, your bestie and your old friend all question your judgment it may be time to stop?  It's just hard because is it crazy that I love him?  I think he's just about the most beautiful person I've ever seen.  And she's right,  I'm learning every day about how there is cause for concern when you're different.  I straddle the line between standing out and the fitting in every day and still struggle with it.  But when I look in his eyes all I see is beauty and love and light and perfection and it doesn't matter if he's wearing a dress but what I can't tell is whether or not the dress actually enhances the beauty.  And if it does, is it fair?  

   Transgenderism is the fringe of our community.  It always has been.  I remember my professor in college opening my mind to the reality that we think the "Trannies" are the most visible and therefore avoid association with them or embrace them only in humor.  It's our coping mechanism.  But in the end, our movement is actually a push to show the world that we're not like them.  We're just like you, Straight People.  That's why we come out in droves to you as your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, peers and friends.  We aren't just lovers.  We live - everywhere.

   And the truth is, we always have been.  Just look the history of blending in by switching teams.  My eyes opened to this after reading Trumpet by Jackie Kay, and the movement now to understand Transgenderism and their long history of going to bathrooms!  

   But then just as Staceyann Chin says, sooner or later we see that all oppression is connected.  And it's time we turn around and look seriously at our transgendered brothers and sisters.  What are they doing?  We inevitably ask.  Don't they see?  Look what we've done for them!  Gender no longer matters.  Why are they insisting on it?  Girls need not wear dresses anymore.  Why are they wearing that dress!?!

   Complicate that even more: I thought that as an LGBT parent there would be nothing I couldn't handle.  Why is my son wearing a dress!  What's going to happen to him?!

   Much to the confusion of my family I always purported that it was my wife who eventually gave me my feminine side.  Two years after dating her I dropped to one knee on a beach in Florida, asked her to "marry" me, and gave her my entire inheritance: my late mother's diamond engagement ring.  We returned, proud and euphoric showing off her fingers to family who smiled politely at a stone they'd all seen before, but happy to be nice to me.  One year after that, they didn't know what to do when she shocked me by saving up for a rainbow studded diamond engagement ring to give me when she asked me to "marry" her.  All they knew was that their little tomboy/lesbian was now running around like a blushed bride showing off her new rock saying something about marriage - which was illegal at the time - and didn't they already perform their smily faced support dance with all the proper etiquette required a year ago?

   I was so happy.  I wore that shiny ring loud and proud and never felt like I fit into society more than I did then.  It was like a rite of passage.  People would remark, I got to say that I was "engaged."  I got to refer to her as "my fiancé" and bask in that unique ungendered uniformity.  I got to come out if I wanted to, but first, I got to experience fitting in.

   In our first child all I wanted was health.  Boy/Girl didn't matter.  I had beautiful names chosen for each and a cradle of love ready to grow.  But after we had our first boy, and I got pregnant with our second, I dreamed of a little girl.  I could raise her empowered with vision.  I already had "Future President" onesies I'd bought for my niece and I was armed with a full boy colored wardrobe ready for commandeering for gender battle with my old foe, the color pink.

   I cried when I was told Niky would be a boy.  Big heavy plopped tears even though I fought to stay adhered to my purported "Gender doesn't matter" face.  My wife told me it was awesome that Kody would have a little brother and she lovingly referred to them first as "The boys."  But I spent the better part of my life avoiding boys and by this point I feared the loss of my little mini me fantasy.  All that independence, all that privilege!  What would I have to offer a him?

   And here I am gazing into my mother's eyes real time just above my own nose and hair.  My heart twirls around my life on it's own two legs complete separate from me or my power and often in a green fairy dress.  He didn't specifically ask for a dress.  He just put one on at the first opportunity.  The first opportunity was at a friend's house of half girls/half guys, all lezbo moms.  There was no extra attention paid.  

   When it was "dress crazy" day at school he immediately ran to dig out the rainbow tutu he hadn't touched in six months.  He wore it to school too.  He even came home happy.

I showed him a couple dresses after watching this story about a trans girl's euphoria after getting a whole new wardrobe.  He liked the green shoulder strapped with the matching hairband of white daisies and green streamers.  I took a chance.  I bought it.  I thought I'd just have it available.

   And he didn't ask to wear it right away.  When it arrived he said it "used to be" his favorite color.  Then last night he just puts it on.  And this morning asks to wear it to school.

   We told him it's too cold and will later explain dresses are for special occasions?  He later asked to wear it to play rehearsal.  I was simply too tired.  I couldn't deal.  I told him no.  He changed without complaint.  

   Amy, my friends, everyone it seems to me is too quick to dismiss it as a phase or the whim of an all-too-proud lesbian mom?  I don't know.  I see him as such an individual I can't even assign gender.  He doesn't fit in those boxes to me yet.

   We took him to the department store to look for T Shirts.  Amy gathered five shirts, two from the girl's side and asked him to choose two we'd buy for him.  After much deliberation, he chose one of each.

   Are we doing it right?  It seems we can't help doing it wrong.  But we're trying.