I Agree, Trans People are Fascinating

A summer’s worth of work culminated last weekend in a two-day conference I co-ran in a fancy hotel in Philadelphia. An old friend started a new event planning company, and she reached out to me in May to work with her on a large and prestigious medical symposium.

My friend and I had worked together in the marketing department of a large academic medical center, where event planning and conference organizing were two of my many job responsibilities. Her timing was fairly impeccable, and I spent this summer working from home, reacquainting myself with spreadsheets and mail merges and such. It was, by every measure, a hugely successful conference.

Finding the clothes I would wear felt more complicated than the work itself. This was my first time working, in public, as Martha. It’s not the same as attending a concert with friends, or going to Target, or enjoying dinner in a restaurant. I’ve climbed those hills. This was different.

Fortunately, I have a closet full of hand-me-downs. My girls have taken good care of me for years, and some of what I own amounts to “business clothes” even if from thrift shops, some once used for various drag numbers back when I was a performer.

I managed to cobble together two professional outfits that fit and flattered. On Day One, I wore a skirt. That was the first time Martha wore a skirt in public, and it could not have felt more natural. When I left my hotel room (at 6am!) for the first day, I felt beautiful, competent, and ready. And while we certainly faced the normal glitches that happen during any large professional gathering, we handled it all quite well. By the end of day one I was exhausted, but affirmed.

I was not misgendered once. I was not side-glanced once. I was one of the women in charge, and that was that. And I wasn’t looking to be misgendered, either. I was looking to do my job effectively, welcome attendees and exhibitors, and solve issues as they arose. Done.

I wasn’t pretending to be a woman at work. I WAS a woman at work. I was using my mind, and the job skills I’d honed over decades, grateful after years away to be given the opportunity once again.

It felt more natural, more empowering, to ME to be working in pearls than it ever felt to be working behind a necktie. I had this moment with myself where I wondered if this was me “passing” and immediately chuckled, “as what?” I’m a trans woman. I stand 6’ tall and weigh in close to 250. I’m not what one would call diminutive. And I do not “alter” my voice. My velvet gravel from years of smoking is what it is. I am what I am. And this weekend I worked with and among nearly 300 people who accepted me as Martha, and we all kept it pushing. As so much of my current life is very personal, the impersonality of it all was actually refreshing.

It is not my desire to return full time to event planning. Podcasting -and writing- has too much of my heart and soul to use up my remaining years printing name badges. But am I grateful? I am. Immensely so.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to work. It isn’t always easy for us to find work as trans folk, and the opportunities that are offered are often far below our competencies.

I’m grateful for the women in my life who have always accepted me, whatever I was and wherever I was on my journey. I have Dear Ones who have been by my side through thick and thin, and they hold me up and keep me going. And they always know where to find me when life gets hard.

***

Trans (LGBTQ++) human beings have existed for as long as human beings have existed. The words may change and evolve, but trans men and women, and nonbinary folks, and all the glorious shades of gender and orientation have ALWAYS been here. Some of our cishet ancestors were wise enough to revere us as healers, caregivers, shamen. And some of them through history, like some of them now, treated us as far less than human.

What we are is Rare. Nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, just people who have always, beautifully, existed. Medicine has progressed for us, not nearly as far as many of us would prefer, but it has. And the thing we now FINALLY acknowledge is that trans kids know who they are, often at a very young age.

Why so many hateful humans, under the guise of “concern,” are so fascinated by us these days boggles my mind. Why they don’t just worry about their own communities and leave us alone is chilling, degrading and disheartening. They are causing mayhem and chaos, which seems to be their life’s goal. They seemingly must have an Other to condemn and demean in order to feel relevant.

If they were truly “concerned” they’d do a lot more work educating themselves before opening their ugly mouths to speak. I’m not naming the players, (that’s what they WANT) but most of you are familiar with their names. They actually make MONEY messing with innocent lives, spewing lies, misinformation and half-truths, and their minions troll us, work hard to intimidate those of us who dare speak out in truth or support family in crisis, and Chaos seems to be their only contribution to this world.

How very sad to spend your precious time on earth lathered up over a fake cause you are working to CREATE so that you can speak against it. And then shrug your shoulders and say, “I’m just asking questions.”

They aren’t asking innocent questions, they are twisting facts and working to ruin (or end) lives that have nothing to do with them, I assume because they can’t find relevance otherwise. One notable exception should have stuck to her writing, but her opinions, while harmful, are not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about those who engage in stochastic terrorism for giggles. I’m talking about bullies who I have to assume are so broken and unhappy that fussing with a minority group of vulnerable citizens helps them to feel like they somehow matter. It’s actually quite sad, and I would feel sorry for them if the consequences of their actions weren’t so very devastating.

I said all that to let you, Dear Reader, know that I am paying attention, I see the ugly, and it is real. Pollyanna I am not. But what I am about to say comes from this place of knowing, and seeing, and hearing and feeling -where we are in 2022.

I will speak for myself here, and only me, because that is the only human for whom I am indeed THE appointed and anointed Spokesperson.

I have known since around the time I turned three that I had a “boy” body and a “girl” mind. My family knew it, too. And they said all the things these “new” Neanderthals are saying. They said I wasn’t possible. I obviously misunderstood myself. I clearly had a domineering mother and a passive father. I must have been molested. They said I could not know my own mind. They knew MY mind better than I could, and since their lexicon did not extend to include trans people, trans people must not be real. They saw the world (as we ALL tend to see it) not as it is, but as they were.

So I went on to spend fifty years trying to play by their imposed rules. My trans-ness never went away. I compartmentalized it. I said it wasn’t possible. I carried it as some hidden fatal flaw - but what was true of me as a very small human has always been true. I finally agreed with my Soul to acknowledge Her.

I am a deeply empathetic person. I see this world from many of its points of view, as I have walked in many shoes and worn many hats. And I have listened. How I have listened--to every human who ever entrusted me with the depth of themselves. Their realness. Their vulnerabilities. Their darkest secrets, insecurities and fears. And often that has meant them revealing what it feels like in the bones to walk as black or brown or otherwise not white, in this world.

I contain worlds within my Being. I carry the life I have lived, along with sacred pieces of the lives I have been entrusted to know. So many fellow beings have entrusted me with their own tender spots, and I treasure those gifts of shared humanity.

I have a deep capacity for love, and for forgiveness. I’m not stupid, and when a human is so completely fragmented that they seek to do me harm even as I have tried to love them, I know to step away and stay away. But that doesn’t mean I don’t send them compassion and wish for them to find a way to heal themselves. Elsewhere, but still.

I have lived “as a man” in every way conceivable. That never made me a man. I live now as the woman I’ve always been, because I finally revealed that the plumbing never “matched” the wiring, and I decided to love myself not in spite of my difference, but because of it.

I was ALWAYS a woman up in here. Put another way, I was always NOT a man, depending on how you want to arrange words to describe MY life.

I know myself to align with the feminine. I think like a woman thinks. My natural flow is decidedly femme. But I know more about being a man that most men, and more, frankly, about being a woman than many cis women. And I’m happy to tell you why.

I have had to examine all of life to survive it. I have had to study men intently, as any dedicated actor studies a role. I have had to deeply understand other women, first to survive a few, then to know where I had to defer to physical differences as society dictates, and to meet them as dear friends on roads I would never be able to travel.

I will never menstruate. I will never carry children in my body. But if you think I don’t know what it is to be marginalized, sexualized, and a victim of the patriarchy, that’s on you - because I lived so very many of the same horrors -and additional horrors- by virtue of the incongruence of my birth.

So is it possible for me to be right about myself even when it feels like the whole world is against me? Even as it feels like “everyone” is still telling me I am not real? The answer is a resounding and unqualified YES.

That's our fight kids. That we, as trans people, are indeed Real. I do have a depth most humans never have to consider, and predictably never attain. It came with this wiring/plumbing disparity and the need to survive. I’ve had to decide to stay alive almost every damn day of my life, because I was convinced early on that most of this world would strongly prefer me dead to having to “deal” with knowing I exist. But I persist.

I will walk with the dignity of the thousands, nay, millions, of my trans ancestors who knew this struggle and wore the path before me. I will walk with the God-given certainty of one anointed by this Universe to be this situation right here. I’ll likely never know exactly why I was born to be this, but I was born to be exactly this. And I will never again spit in the face of Life by apologizing for being a Rare Human.

If you are also a beautiful Rare trans human, I implore you to let it seep into your bones that you are worthy. You are exceptional. You have enormous value in a calloused, broken down world. Please, don’t let the fact that there are noisy haters in the world ever detract from Who you are. They can make life more difficult -as they almost ALWAYS have- but this brief gift of life is also Yours, and you have as much right to live authentically as all those who cannot recognize authenticity because it is beyond their grasp, and they cannot see it through the fog of hate they choose.

I truly hope the fog will lift. We know it will lift, politically, if those who punish us legislatively are beaten back at the ballot box in November. But if they are emboldened, this could all get even worse. We really are in a fight we didn’t call, for reasons we didn’t cause, and we will be the ones who pay the price if they gain even more power. Because power (and money) is their only real goal -at any cost. VOTE. (And vote Blue, I beg you.)

I want you, my trans family, ALL to have a weekend like I just had. Hours on end where you are fully respected, take up all the space you need, and are afforded the simple dignity of doing work you are good at, and paid fairly for.

The way we get there is to keep going. It all begins with Valuing ourselves. When we walk in the knowledge and power of authenticity, it does disarm folks. Some, sadly, respond like these terrorists. They DO fear us, no matter what they claim. They do hate our freedom to exist in a world where they can’t fathom challenging their rules when it’s far easier to challenge our existence.

But “the rules” were never designed for our benefit. The gender rules of the patriarchy that have so many of them hurting, (while also still defending the status quo) never applied to Us. We are beyond them. We are more than that. Just like those who came before us, and those who will come after us, we are simply, magically, RARE. I choose to consider that an honor, and I’m not going back into any closet for ANYONE else’s comfort. F*ck their “rules.” They don’t even serve them, let alone begin to serve us.

It’s Time to welcome the changes that ARE happening to make more room for all of us. And those changes scare the bejesus outta those who’ve held us down for too long. That’s why they’re doing this. This silly house of cards is tumbling down, and they KNOW they’ve tortured so many of us with their utter nonsense, and they don’t wish to be treated as they have treated us. I don’t blame them. Fortunately for them, we are peaceful beings who wish only to live in peace.

In the meantime, try hard not to get any of their mess on you, Precious Ones. Keep. Going.

Peace, Lovelies

-MM

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