My Story Part 113 – For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan

Monday night I did an outreach at a community college, one of the people who was there with me asked the class, “How many know someone who is transgender?” and about a quarter of the class said they did know a trans-person. Back when I first started doing outreach at colleges about ten or twelve years ago, no one raised their hands. Whether that was because they were too embarrassed to raise their hands or they knew no one who was trans, it still is a dramatic change.

Back when I was their age, the stigma was so strong that I hid until I was in my fifties, back then gays, lesbians and trans-people were ostracized from society. Now I know children who have transitioned in kindergarten. There is a television show called “What Would You Do? And last week they had a teenager come out as trans to the “mother” in a restaurant and she called him names to see what other people in the restaurant would do, and they all spoke up for the teenager. Ten years ago you would never have seen that response.

But still it is not all a bed of roses. I hear trans-people my age say that the kids have it so easy, that back in my day… But they have it wrong, kids now-a-days have it different, when kids transition they face a whole new set of discrimination and face bullying in school. There are now laws to protect them, but many school systems do not enforce them and look the other way when it comes to bullying.

However, there is improvement and hopefully each generation will find more acceptances and less hate.


And here is another great video discussion that you would have never seen ten years ago…

It is amazing that we are having these types of discussions now. When I was a teenager, I use to sneak a peek at dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference books to see what they said about transgender or transsexuals and most of the time the definition was “a perversion” and I knew that didn’t describe me. I felt so isolated and alone.

It wasn’t until I heard the song “Lola”, Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls.
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, that I realized that I was all alone, if there was song about the way I felt, there must be others like me out there. Now, with television, the internet and support groups for trans-children parents can find out about kids like me and get needs support…
For the times they are a-changin'. Hopefully for the better.