I went up with a friend to Smith College last night to hear Jennifer F. Boylan keynote speech at the Gender Conference; she is the author of “She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders” and was on the “Oprah” show twice and “Larry King”. She read from her new book that I think is coming out this summer. I enjoyed the excerpt from it that she read and at times it reminded me of my boyhood. I had a stash of clothes that I had hidden and use to put on when I did my homework also and it reminded me of one incident that happen one night.
I was dressed and sitting at my desk when I heard my father coming down the stairs to the den where I studied. I jumped up shedding my clothes and putting on my male clothes in my haste I stubbed my toe, breaking it. There I was sitting quietly at my desk when my father walked in, the scene of the dutifully student studying away while I was in pain trying to keep tears from flowing down my face.
But one of the points I think she was trying to make is that we all have a unique backgrounds that we should be proud of our past and not try to hide from it. That does not mean that we carry a flag around saying that we are trans but rather we should not deny it to ourselves. She talked about the differences that gives us a different prospective on life and how we cannot block it out because our background has shaped our personality, something that I talked about in my blog; “Are We Women”
The weather made the drive back miserable, the normal one hour drive from
She must have been a great speaker to hear. I wish more people would preach both self-acceptance and acceptance of each other, both within the GLBT community and the general population.
ReplyDeleteGlad you made it home okay. Sounds like a terrible drive.
In the transcommunity we are slightly different from the rest of the GLBT community in that many of us want to go stealth (or as I call it, back into the closet again.) once we finish our transition and have surgery. They want to fit into “Normal” society, denying their past. My thoughts are that you can never deny your past it is what shaped you as the person you are today. As an example when women are talking about child rearing they are talking about it from a maternal prospective not a paternal prospective. That is only one example and there is a whole lifetime of differences and that is why I say you can go stealth but you can never escape your past.
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